Hollow City (7 page)

“Word of Cuthbert’s kindness spread throughout the forest,
and soon peculiar animals were coming to him every day, asking to be lifted up to the mountaintop and out of danger. And Cuthbert said, ‘I’ll protect you, little brothers and sisters. All I ask in return is that you talk to me and keep me company. There aren’t many giants left in the world, and I get lonely from time to time.’

“And they said, ‘Of course, Cuthbert, we will.’

“So every day Cuthbert saved more peculiar animals from the hunters, lifting them up to the mountain by the scruffs of their necks, until there was a whole peculiar menagerie up there. And the animals were happy there because they could finally live in peace, and Cuthbert was happy, too, because if he stood on his tiptoes and rested his chin on the top of the mountain he could talk to his new friends all he liked. Then one morning a witch came to see Cuthbert. He was bathing in a little lake in the shadow of the mountain when she said to him, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got to turn you into stone now.’

“ ‘Why would you do something like that?’ asked the giant. ‘I’m very kindly. A helping sort of giant.’

“And she said, ‘I was hired by the family of the hunter you squashed.’

“ ‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Forgot about him.’

“ ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ the witch said again, and then she waved a birch branch at him and poor Cuthbert turned to stone.

“All of the sudden Cuthbert became very heavy—so heavy that he began to sink into the lake. He sank and sank and didn’t stop sinking until he was covered in water all the way up to his neck. His animal friends saw what was happening, and though they felt terrible about it, they decided they could do nothing to help him.

“ ‘I know you can’t save me,’ Cuthbert shouted up to his friends, ‘but at least come and talk to me! I’m stuck down here, and so very lonely!’

“ ‘But if we come down there the hunters will shoot us!’ they called back.

“Cuthbert knew they were right, but still he pleaded with them.

“ ‘Talk to me!’ he cried. ‘Please come and talk to me!’

“The animals tried singing and shouting to poor Cuthbert from the safety of their mountaintop, but they were too distant and their voices too small, so that even to Cuthbert and his giant ears they sounded quieter than the whisper of leaves in the wind.

“ ‘Talk to me!’ he begged. ‘Come and talk to me!’

“But they never did. And he was still crying when his throat turned to stone like the rest of him. The end.”

Bronwyn closed the book.

Claire looked appalled. “That’s
it
?”

Enoch began to laugh.

“That’s it,” Bronwyn said.

“That’s a
terrible
story,” said Claire. “Tell another one!”

“A story’s a story,” said Emma, “and now it’s time for bed.”

Claire pouted, but she had stopped crying, so the tale had served its purpose.

“Tomorrow’s not likely to be any easier than today was,” said Millard. “We’ll need what rest we can get.”

We gathered cuts of springy moss to use as pillows, Emma drying the rain from them with her hands before we tucked them under our heads. Lacking blankets, we nestled together for warmth: Bronwyn cuddling the small ones; Fiona entangled with Hugh, whose bees came and went from his open mouth as he snored, keeping watch over their sleeping master; Horace and Enoch shivering with their backs to one another, too proud to snuggle; myself with Emma. I lay on my back and she in the crook of my arm, head on my chest, her face so invitingly close to mine that I could kiss her forehead anytime I liked—and I wouldn’t have stopped except that I was as tired as a dead man and she was as warm as an electric blanket and pretty soon I was asleep and dreaming pleasant, forgettable nothings.

I never remember nice dreams; only the bad ones stick.

It was a miracle that I could sleep at all, given the circumstances. Even here—running for our lives, sleeping exposed, facing
death—even here, in her arms, I was able to find some measure of peace.

Watching over us all, her black eyes shining in the dark, was Miss Peregrine. Though damaged and diminished, she was still our protector.

The night turned raw, and Claire began to shake and cough. Bronwyn nudged Emma awake and said, “Miss Bloom, the little one needs you; I’m afraid she’s taking ill,” and with a whispered apology Emma slipped out of my arms to go and attend to Claire. I felt a twinge of jealousy, then guilt for being jealous of a sick friend. So I lay alone feeling irrationally forsaken and stared into the dark, more exhausted than I had ever been and yet unable now to sleep, listening to the others shift and moan in the grip of nightmares that could not have equalled the one we would likely wake to. And eventually the dark peeled back layer by layer, and with imperceptible gradations the sky feathered to a delicate pale blue.

*   *   *

At dawn we crawled from our shelter. I picked moss out of my hair and tried in vain to brush the mud from my pants, but succeeded only in smearing it, making me look like some bog creature vomited from the earth. I was hungry in a way I’d never experienced, my belly gnawing at itself from the inside, and I ached just about everywhere it was possible to ache, from rowing and running and sleeping on the ground. Still, a few mercies prevailed: overnight the rain had let up, the day was warming by degrees, and we seemed to have evaded the wights and their dogs, at least for the time being; either they’d stopped barking or were too far away to be heard.

In doing so we’d gotten ourselves hopelessly lost. The forest was no easier to navigate by day than it had been in the dark. Green-boughed firs stretched away in endless, disordered rows, each direction a mirror of the others. The ground here was a carpet of fallen
leaves that hid any tracks we might’ve made the night before. We’d woken in the heart of a green labyrinth without a map or compass, and Miss Peregrine’s broken wing meant she couldn’t fly above the treeline to guide us. Enoch suggested we raise Olive above the trees, like we had in the fog, but we didn’t have any rope to hold her, and if she slipped and fell into the sky, we’d never get her back again.

Claire was sick and getting sicker, and lay curled in Bronwyn’s lap, sweat beading her forehead despite a chill in the air. She was so skinny I could count her ribs through her dress.

“Will she be all right?” I asked.

“She’s feverish,” Bronwyn said, pressing a hand to the girl’s cheek. “She needs medicine.”

“First we’ll have to find our way out of this accursed forest,” said Millard.

“First we should eat,” said Enoch. “Let’s eat and discuss our options.”

“What options?” said Emma. “Pick a direction and we’ll walk in it. Any one’s as good as another.”

In sullen silence we sat and ate. I’ve never tasted dog food but I’m sure this was worse—brownish squares of congealed meat fat from rusted tins, which, lacking utensils, we dug out with our fingers.

“I packed five salted game hens and three tins of foie gras with cornichons,” Horace said bitterly, “and
this
is what survives our shipwreck.” He held his nose and dropped a gelatinous nugget down his throat without chewing. “I think we’re being punished.”

“For what?” said Emma. “We’ve been perfect angels. Well, most of us.”

“The sins of past lives, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Peculiars don’t have past lives,” said Millard. “We live them all at once.”

We finished quickly, buried our empty tins, and prepared to go. Just as we were about to, Hugh burst through a thicket of bushes
into our makeshift camp, bees circling his head in an agitated cloud. He was out of breath with excitement.

“Where have
you
been?” Enoch demanded.

“I needed some privacy to attend to my morning never-you-minds,” Hugh said, “and I found—”

“Who gave you permission to be out of visual range?” Enoch said. “We nearly left without you!”

“Who says I need permission? Anyway, I saw—”

“You can’t just wander away like that! What if you’d gotten lost?”

“We’re
already
lost.”

“You ignoramus! What if you couldn’t find your way back?”

“I left a trail of bees, like I always do—”

“Would you kindly
let him finish
!” Emma shouted.

“Thank you,” said Hugh, and then he turned and pointed back the way he’d come. “I saw water. Quite a lot of it, through the trees there.”

Emma’s face clouded. She said, “We’re trying to get
away
from the sea, not back to it. We must’ve doubled back on ourselves in the night.”

We followed Hugh back the way he’d come, Bronwyn carrying Miss Peregrine on her shoulder and poor sick Claire in her arms. After a hundred yards, a glisten of gray ripples appeared beyond the trees: some wide body of water.

“Oh, this is just
awful
,” said Horace. “They’ve chased us right back into their arms!”

“I don’t
hear
any soldiers,” said Emma. “In fact, I don’t hear anything at all. Not even the ocean.”

Enoch said, “That’s because it’s
not
the ocean, you dolt,” and he stood up and ran toward the water. When we caught up with him he was standing with his feet planted in wet sand, looking back at us with a self-satisfied
I-told-you-so
grin. He’d been right: this wasn’t the sea. It was a misty, gray lake, wide and ringed with firs,
its calm surface smooth as slate. But its most distinguishing feature was something I didn’t notice right away; not until Claire pointed out a large rock formation jutting from the shallows nearby. My eyes skimmed it at first but then went back for a second glance. There was something eerie about it—and decidedly familiar.

“It’s the giant from the story!” said Claire, pointing from her place in Bronwyn’s arms. “It’s Cuthbert!”

Bronwyn stroked her head. “Shh, honey, you’ve got fever.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Enoch. “It’s just a rock.”

But it wasn’t. Though wind and rain had worn its features some, it looked just like a giant who’d sunk up to its neck in the lake. You could see clearly that it had a head and a neck and a nose and even an Adam’s apple, and some scrubby trees were growing atop it like a crown of wild hair. But what was really uncanny was the position of its head—thrown back with its mouth open, as if, like the giant in the story we’d heard just last night, it had turned to stone while crying out to its friends on the mountaintop.

“And look!” said Olive, pointing at a rocky bluff rising in the distance. “That must be Cuthbert’s mountain!”

“Giants are real,” Claire murmured, her voice weak but full of wonder. “And so are the
Tales
!”

“Let’s not jump to absurd conclusions,” said Enoch. “What’s more likely? That the writer of the tale we read last night was inspired by a rock that just happened to be shaped like a giant head, or that this head-shaped rock was really a giant?”

“You take the fun out of everything,” said Olive. “I believe in giants, even if you don’t!”

“The
Tales
are just tales and nothing more,” Enoch grumbled.

“Funny,” I said, “that’s exactly what I thought all of
you
were, before I met you.”

Olive laughed. “Jacob, you’re silly. You really thought we were made up?”

“Of course. And even after I met you I still did, for a while. Like maybe I was losing my mind.”

“Real or not, it’s an incredible coincidence,” said Millard. “To have been reading that story just last night, and then happen upon the very bit of geography that inspired it the next morning? What are the chances?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Emma said. “Miss Peregrine opened the book herself, remember? She must’ve chosen that story on purpose.”

Bronwyn turned to look at the bird on her shoulder and said, “Is that right, Miss P? Why?”

“Because it means something,” said Emma.

“Absolutely,” said Enoch. “It means we should go and climb that bluff. Then maybe we’ll see a way out of this forest!”

“I mean the
tale
means something,” said Emma. “In the story, what was it the giant wanted? That he asked for over and over again?”

“Someone to talk to!” Olive answered like an eager student.

“Exactly,” said Emma. “So if he wants to talk, let’s hear what he has to say.” And with that, she waded into the lake.

We watched her go, slightly perplexed.

“Where’s she heading?” said Millard. He seemed to be asking me. I shook my head.

“We’ve got wights chasing us!” Enoch shouted after her. “We’re desperately lost! What on bird’s green earth are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking peculiarly!” Emma shouted back. She sloshed through the shallows to the base of the rock, then climbed up to its jaw and peered into its open mouth.

“Well?” I called. “What do you see?”

“Don’t know!” she replied. “Looks like it goes down a long way, though. I’d better get a closer look!”

Emma hoisted herself into the giant’s stone mouth.

“You’d better come down from there before you get hurt!” shouted Horace. “You’re making everyone anxious!”

“Everything makes
you
anxious,” Hugh said.