“The airport,” he replied. “Picking up my sister. Anyway, all I said was to enjoy yourself. Explore and don’t worry too much. I’ll see you soon, all right?”
“Thanks again, Dr. G.”
As I hung up the phone, I felt bad for having ragged on him earlier. That was twice now he’d stuck up for me when my own parents wouldn’t.
My dad was nursing a beer across the room. I stopped by his table on my way upstairs. “About tomorrow …” I said.
“Do what you want, I guess.”
“Are you sure?”
He shrugged sullenly. “Doctor’s orders.”
“I’ll be home for dinner. Promise.”
He just nodded. I left him in the bar and went up to bed.
Falling asleep, my thoughts drifted to the peculiar children and the first question they’d asked after Miss Peregrine had introduced me: Is Jacob going to stay with us? At the time I’d thought, Of course not. But why not? If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.
Morning brought rain and wind and fog, pessimistic weather that made it hard to believe the previous day had been anything more than a strange and wonderful dream. I wolfed down my breakfast and told my dad I was going out. He looked at me like I was nuts.
“In this? To do what?”
“To hang out with—” I started, without thinking. Then, to cover my tracks, I pretended to have a piece of food stuck in my throat. But it was too late; he’d heard me.
“Hang out with who? Not those rapper hoodlums, I hope.”
The only way out of this hole was to dig deeper. “No. You’ve probably never seen them, they live on the other side of, um, the island, and—”
“Really? I didn’t think anyone lived over there.”
“Yeah, well, just a few people. Like, sheep-tenders and whatnot. Anyway, they’re cool—they watch my back while I’m at the house.” Friends and safety: two things my dad couldn’t possibly object to.
“I want to meet them,” he said, trying to look stern. He often put on this face, an imitation of the sensible, no-nonsense dad I think he aspired to be.
“Sure thing. We’re meeting up over there, though, so another time.”
He nodded and took another bite of his breakfast.
“Be back by dinner,” he said.
“Roger Wilco, Dad.”
I practically raced to the bog. As I picked my way through its shifting muck, trying to remember the route of semi-invisible grass islands Emma had used to cross it, I worried that all I would find on the other side was more rain and a ruined house. So it was with great relief that I emerged from the cairn to find September third, 1940, just as I’d left it: the day warm and sunny and fogless, the sky a dependable blue, clouds forming shapes that seemed comfortingly familiar. Even better, Emma was there waiting for me, sitting on the edge of the mound casting stones into the bog. “About time!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “Come on, everyone’s waiting for you.”
“They are?”
“Ye-es,” she said with an impatient eye roll, taking my hand and pulling me after her. I sparked with excitement—not only at her touch, but at the thought of the day that lay ahead, full of endless possibility. Though in a million superficial ways it would be identical to the day before—the same breeze would blow and the same tree limbs would fall—my experience of it would be new. So would the peculiar children’s. They were the gods of this strange little heaven, and I was their guest.
We dashed across the bog and through the forest as if late for an appointment. When we reached the house, Emma led me around to the backyard, where a small wooden stage had been erected. Kids were bustling in and out of the house, carrying props, buttoning up suit jackets, and zipping into sequined dresses. Warming up was a little orchestra, made up of just an accordion, a battered trombone, and a musical saw that Horace played with a bow.
“What’s this?” I asked Emma. “Are you guys putting on a play?”
“You’ll see,” she said.
“Who’s in it?”
“You’ll see.”
“What’s it about?”
She pinched me.
A whistle blew and everyone ran to claim seats in a row of folding chairs that faced the stage. Emma and I sat down just as the curtain opened, revealing a straw boater hat floating atop a gaudy red-and-white striped suit. It was only when I heard a voice did I realize that—of course—it was Millard.
“Ladieeees and gentlemen!” he crowed. “It gives me the utmost pleasure to present to you a performance like no other in history! A show of such unrivaled daring, of such accomplished magicianship, that you simply won’t believe your eyes! Good citizens, I give you Miss Peregrine and her Peculiar Children!”
The audience burst into uproarious applause. Millard tipped his hat.
“For our first illusion, I will produce Miss Peregrine herself!” He ducked behind the curtain and emerged a moment later, a folded sheet draped over one arm and a peregrine falcon perched on the other. He nodded to the orchestra, which lurched into a kind of wheezing carnival music.
Emma elbowed me. “Watch this,” she whispered.
Millard set the falcon down and held the sheet in front, screening the bird from the audience. He began counting backward. “Three, two, one!”
On “one” I heard the unmistakable flap of wings and then saw Miss Peregrine’s head—her human head—pop up from behind the sheet to even more uproarious applause. Her hair was mussed and I could only see her from the shoulders up; she seemed to be naked behind the sheet. Apparently, when you change into a bird, your clothes don’t go along for the ride. Taking the edges of the sheet, she wrapped it chastely around herself.
“Mr. Portman!” she said, peering down at me from the stage. “I’m so happy you’ve returned. This is a little exhibition we used to tour around the Continent back in the halcyon days. I thought you might find it instructive.” And then she swept offstage in a flourish, heading into the house to retrieve her clothes.
One after another, the peculiar children came out of the audience and took the stage, each with an act of their own. Millard removed his tuxedo so that he was completely invisible and juggled glass bottles. Olive removed her leaden shoes and performed a gravity-defying gymnastics routine on a set of parallel bars. Emma made fire, swallowed it, then blew it out again without burning herself. I applauded until I thought my hands would blister.
When Emma returned to her seat, I turned to her and said, “I don’t understand. You performed this for people?”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Normal people?”
“Of course, normal people. Why would peculiars pay to see things they can do themselves?”
“But wouldn’t this, like, blow your cover?”
She chuckled. “Nobody suspected a thing,” she said. “People come to sideshows to see stunts and tricks and what-all, and as far as anybody knew that’s exactly what we showed them.”
“So you were hiding in plain sight.”
“Used to be the way most peculiars made a living,” she said.
“And no one ever caught on?”
“Once in a while we’d get some knob-head backstage asking nosey questions, which is why there’d always be a strong-arm on hand to toss them out on their bums. Speak of the devil—here she is now!”
Up on stage, a mannish-looking girl was dragging a boulder the size of a small refrigerator out from behind the curtain. “She may not be the sharpest tool in the woodshed,” Emma whispered, “but she’s got a massive heart and she’d go to the grave for her mates. We’re thick as thieves, Bronwyn and me.”
Someone had passed around a stack of promotional cards Miss Peregrine had used to advertise their act. It reached me with Bronwyn’s card on top. In her picture she stood barefoot, challenging the came
ra with an icy stare. Emblazoned across the back was THE AMAZING STRONG-GIRL OF SWANSEA!
“Why isn’t she lifting a boulder, if that’s what she does on stage?” I asked.
“She was in a foul mood because the Bird made her ‘dress like a lady’ for the picture. She refused to lift so much as a hatbox.”
“Looks like she drew the line at wearing shoes, too.”
“She generally does.”
Bronwyn finished dragging the rock to the middle of the stage, and for an awkward moment she just stared into the crowd, as if someone had told her to pause for dramatic effect. Then she bent down and gripped the rock between her big hands and slowly lifted it above her head. Everyone clapped and hooted, the kids’ enthusiasm undimmed though they’d probably seen her do this trick a thousand times. It was almost like being at a pep rally for a school I didn’t attend.
Bronwyn yawned and walked off with the boulder tucked under one arm. Then the wild-haired girl took the stage. Her name was Fiona, Emma said. She stood facing the crowd behind a planter filled with dirt, her hands raised above it like a conductor. The orchestra began to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” (as well as they could, anyway), and Fiona pawed the air above the planter, her face contorted in effort and concentration. As the song crescendoed, a row of daisies poked up from the dirt and unfurled toward her hands. It was like one of those fast-motion videos of plants blooming, except she seemed to be reeling the flowers up from their loamy bed by invisible strings. The kids ate it up, jumping out of their seats to cheer her on.
Emma flipped through the stack of postcards to Fiona’s. “Her card’s my favorite,” she said. “We worked for days on her costume.”
I looked at it. She was dressed like a beggar girl and stood holding a chicken. “What’s she supposed to be?” I asked. “A homeless farmer?”
Emma pinched me. “She’s meant to look natural, like a savage-type person. Jill of the Jungle, we called her.”
“Is she really from the jungle?”
“She’s from Ireland.”
“Are there a lot of chickens in the jungle?”
She pinched me again. While we’d been whispering, Hugh had joined Fiona on stage. He stood with his mouth open, letting bees fly out to pollinate the flowers that Fiona had grown, like a weird mating ritual.
“What else does Fiona grow besides bushes and flowers?”
“All these vegetables,” Emma said, gesturing to the garden beds in the yard. “And trees, sometimes.”
“Really? Whole trees?”
She sorted through the postcards again. “Sometimes we’ll play Jill and the Beanstalk. Someone will grab hold of one of the saplings at the edge of the woods and we’ll see how high Fiona can get it to go while we’re riding it.” She arrived at the photo she’d been hunting for and tapped it with her finger. “That was the record,” she said proudly. “Twenty meters.”
“You guys get pretty bored around here, huh?”
She moved to pinch me again but I blocked her hand. I’m no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I’m pretty sure that’s flirting.
There were a few more acts after Fiona and Hugh left the stage but by then the kids were getting antsy, and soon we dispersed to spend the rest of the day in summery bliss: lazing in the sun sipping limeade; playing croquet; tending to gardens that, thanks to Fiona, hardly needed tending; discussing our options for lunch. I wanted to ask Miss Peregrine more about my grandfather—a subject I avoided with Emma, who turned morose at any mention of his name—but the headmistress had gone to conduct a lesson in the study for the younger kids. It seemed like I had plenty of time, though, and the languid pace and midday heat sapped my will to do anything more taxing than wander the grounds in dreamy amazement.
After a decadent lunch of goose sandwiches and chocolate pudding, Emma began to agitate for the older kids to go swimming. “Out of the question,” Millard groaned, the top button of his pants popping open. “I’m stuffed like a Christmas turkey.” We were sprawled on velvet chairs around the sitting room, full to bursting. Bronwyn lay curled with her head between two pillows. “I’d sink straight to the bottom,” came her muffled reply.
But Emma persisted. After ten minutes of wheedling she’d roused Hugh, Fiona, and Horace from their naps and challenged Bronwyn, who apparently could not forgo a competition of any kind, to a swimming race. Upon seeing us all trooping out of the house, Millard scolded us for trying to leave him behind.
The best spot for swimming was by the harbor, but getting there meant walking straight through town. “What about those crazy drunks who think I’m a German spy?” I said. “I don’t feel like getting chased with clubs today.”
“You twit,” Emma said. “That was yesterday. They won’t remember a thing.”
“Just hang a towel ’round you so they don’t see your, er, future clothes,” said Horace. I had on jeans and a T-shirt, my usual outfit, and Horace wore his customary black suit. He seemed to be of the Miss Peregrine school of dress: morbidly ultraformal, no matter the occasion. His photograph was among those I’d found in the smashed trunk, and in an attempt to “dress up” for it he’d gone completely overboard: top hat, cane, monocle—the works.
“You’re right,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at Horace. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was dressed weird.”
“If it’s my waistcoat you’re referring to,” he replied haughtily, “yes, I admit I am a follower of fashion.” The others snickered. “Go ahead, have a laugh at old Horace’s expense! Call me a dandy if you will, but just because the villagers won’t remember what you wear doesn’t give you license to dress like a vagabond!” And with that he set about straightening his lapels, which only made the kids laugh harder. In a snit, he pointed an accusing finger at my clothes. “As for him, God help us if that’s all our wardrobes have to look forward to!”
When the laughter had died down, I pulled Emma aside and whispered, “What exactly is it that makes Horace peculiar—aside from his clothes, I mean?”
“He has prophetic dreams. Gets these great nightmares every so often, which have a disturbing tendency to come true.”
“How often? A lot?”
“Ask him yourself.”
But Horace was in no mood to entertain my questions. So I filed it away for another time.
As we came into town I wrapped a towel around my waist and hung another from my shoulders. Though it wasn’t exactly prophecy, Horace was right about one thing: nobody recognized me. Walking down the main path we got a few odd looks, but no one bothered us. We even passed the fat man who’d made such a stink over me in the bar. He was stuffing a pipe outside the tobacconist’s shop and blathering on about politics to a woman who was barely listening. I couldn’t help staring at him as we passed. He stared back, without even a flicker of recognition.
It was like someone had hit “reset” on the whole town. I kept noticing things I’d seen the day before: the same wagon rushing wildly down the path, its back wheel fishtailing in the gravel; the same women lining up outside the well; a man tarring the bottom of a rowboat, no further along in his task than he’d been twenty-four hours ago. I almost expected to see my doppelgänger sprinting across town pursued by a mob, but I guess things didn’t work that way.
“You guys must know a lot about what goes on around here,” I said. “Like yesterday, with the planes and that cart.”
“It’s Millard who knows everything,” said Hugh.
“It’s true,” said Millard. “In fact, I am in the midst of compiling the world’s first complete account of one day in the life of a town, as experienced by everyone in it. Every action, every conversation, every sound made by each of the one hundred fifty-nine human and three hundred thirty-two animal residents of Cairnholm, minute by minute, sunup to sundown.”
“That’s incredible,” I said.
“I can’t help but agree,” he replied. “In just twenty-seven years I’ve already observed half the animals and nearly all the humans.
”
My mouth fell open. “Twenty-seven years?”
“He spent three years on pigs alone!” Hugh said. “That’s all day every day for three years taking notes on pigs! Can you imagine? ‘This one dropped a load of arse biscuits!’ ‘That one said oink-oink and then went to sleep in its own filth!’ ”
“Notes are absolutely essential to the process,” Millard explained patiently. “But I can understand your jealousy, Hugh. It promises to be a work unprecedented in the history of academic scholarship.”
“Oh, don’t cock your nose,” Emma said. “It’ll also be unprecedented in the history of dull things. It’ll be the dullest thing ever written!”
Rather than responding, Millard began pointing things out just before they happened. “Mrs. Higgins is about to have a coughing fit,” he’d say, and then a woman in the street would cough and hack until she was red in the face, or “Presently, a fisherman will lament the difficulty of plying his trade during wartime,” and then a man leaning on a cart filled with nets would turn to another man and say, “There’s so many damned U-boats in the water now it ain’t even safe for a bloke to go tickle his own lines!”
I was duly impressed, and told him so. “I’m glad someone appreciates my work,” he replied.
We walked along the bustling harbor until the docks ran out and then followed the rocky shore toward the headlands to a sandy cove. We boys stripped down to our underwear (all except Horace, who would remove only his shoes and tie) while the girls disappeared to change into modest, old-school bathing suits. Then we all swam. Bronwyn and Emma raced each other while the rest of us paddled around; once we’d exhausted ourselves, we climbed onto the sand and napped. When the sun was too hot we fell back into the water, and when the chilly sea made us shiver we crawled out again, and so it went until our shadows began to lengthen across the cove.
We got to talking. They had a million questions for me, and, far away from Miss Peregrine, I could answer them frankly. What was my world like? What did people eat, drink, wear? When would sickness and death be overcome by science? They lived in splendor but were starving for new faces and new stories. I told them whatever I could, racking my brain for nuggets of twentieth-century history from Mrs. Johnston’s class—the moon landing! the Berlin Wall! Vietnam!—but they were hardly comprehensive.