Hollow City

  If.

  If always propelled my thoughts back to the present, because if depended so much on keeping my wits about me. I couldn’t properly sense things if I was distracted. If demanded my full presence and participation in now.

  If, as much as it scared me, also kept me sane.

  London approached, villages giving way to towns giving way to unbroken tracts of suburbia. I wondered what was waiting for us there; what new horrors lay ahead.

  I glanced at a headline in the newspaper still open in Emma’s lap: AIR RAIDS RATTLE CAPITAL. SCORES DEAD.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing at all.

  If anyone had been watching as the eight-thirty train hissed into the station and ground to a steaming halt, they wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary about it: not about the conductors and porters who wrestled open its latches and threw back its doors; not about the mass of men and women, some in military dress, who streamed out and disappeared into the swarming crowd; not even about the eight weary children who filed heavily from one of its first-class cars and stood blinking in the hazy light of the platform, their backs pressed together in a protective circle, dazed by the cathedral of noise and smoke in which they found themselves.

  On an ordinary day, any group of children as lost and forlorn-looking as these would’ve been approached by some kindly adult and asked what the matter was, or whether they needed help, or where their parents were. But today the platform teemed with hundreds of children, all of whom looked lost and forlorn. So no one paid much attention to the little girl with tumbling brown hair and button shoes, or the fact that her shoes did not quite touch the floor. No one noticed the moon-faced boy in the flat cap, or the honeybee that drifted from his mouth, tested the sooty air, then dove back from whence it came.

  No one’s gaze lingered on the boy with dark-ringed eyes, or saw the clay man who peeked from his shirt pocket only to be pushed down again by the boy’s finger. Likewise the boy who was dressed to the nines in a muddy but finely tailored suit and stove-in top hat, his face drawn and haggard from lack of sleep, for he hadn’t allowed himself any in days, so afraid was he of his dreams.

  No one more than glanced at the big girl in the coat and simple dress, who was built like a stack of bricks and had lashed to her back a steamer trunk nearly as large as herself. None who saw her could have guessed how stupendously heavy the trunk was, or what it held, or why a screen of tiny holes had been punched into one side. Overlooked completely was the young man next to her, so wrapped in scarves and a hooded coat that not an inch of his bare skin could be seen, though it was early September and the weather still warm.

  Then there was the American boy, so ordinary-looking he hardly merited notice; so apparently normal that people’s eyes skipped over him—even as he studied them, on tiptoe, neck swiveling, his gaze sweeping across the platform like a sentry’s. The girl by his side stood with her hands clasped together, concealing a tendril of flame that curled stubbornly around the nail of her pinky, which happened sometimes when she was upset. She tried shaking her finger as one might to extinguish a match, then blowing on it. When that didn’t work, she slipped it into her mouth and let a puff of smoke coil from her nose. No one saw that, either.

  In fact, no one looked closely enough at the children from the first-class car of the eight-thirty train to notice anything peculiar about them at all. Which was just as well.

  Emma nudged me.

  “So?”

  “I need another minute,” I said.

  Bronwyn had set down her trunk and I was standing on it now, head above the crowd, casting my eyes over a shifting sea of faces. The long platform teemed with children. They squirmed like amoebas under a microscope, row upon row receding into a haze of smoke. Hissing black trains loomed up on either side, anxious to swallow them.

  I could feel my friends’ eyes on my back, watching me as I scanned the crowd. I was supposed to know whether, somewhere in that great, seething mass, there were monsters who meant to kill us—and I was supposed to know it simply by looking; by assessing some vague feeling in my gut. Usually it was painful and obvious when a hollow was nearby, but in a giant space like this—among hundreds of people—my warning might only be a whisper, the faintest twinge, easy to miss.

  “Do the wights know we’re coming?” Bronwyn asked, talking low for fear she’d be overheard by a normal—or worse yet, a wight. They had ears everywhere in the city, or so we’d been led to believe.

  “We killed every one of them that might’ve known where we were going,” Hugh said proudly. “Or rather, I did.”

  “Which means they’ll be looking for us even harder,” Millard said. “And they’ll want more than the bird now—they’ll want revenge.”

  “Which is why we can’t stand here much longer,” Emma said, tapping me on the leg. “Are you almost finished?”

  My focus slipped. I lost my place in the crowd. Began again.

  “One more minute,” I said.

  Personally, it wasn’t wights that concerned me most, but hollows. I’d killed two of them now, and each encounter had nearly been the end of me. My luck, if that’s what had been keeping me alive thus far, had to be running out. That’s why I was determined never to be surprised by another hollow. I would do everything in my power to sense them from a distance and avoid contact altogether. There was less glory in running away from a fight, sure, but I didn’t care about glory. I just wanted to survive.

  The real danger, then, wasn’t the figures on the platform, but the shadows that lay between and beyond them; the darkness at the margins. That’s where I focused my attention. It gave me an out-of-body sort of feeling, to cast my sense out into a crowd this way, prodding distant corners for traces of danger. It wasn’t something I could’ve done a few days ago. My ability to direct it like a spotlight—this was new.

  What else, I wondered, was left to discover about myself?

  “We’re okay,” I said, stepping down from the trunk. “No hollows.”

  “I could’ve told you that,” grumbled Enoch. “If there had been, they’d have eaten us by now!”

  Emma took me aside. “If we’re to have a fighting chance here, you’ve got to be faster.”

  It was like asking someone who’d just learned to swim to compete in the Olympics. “I’m doing my best,” I said.

  Emma nodded. “I know you are.” She turned to the others and snapped her fingers for attention. “Let’s head for that phone box,” she said, pointing to a tall, red phone booth across the platform, just visible through the surging crowd.

  “Who are we calling?” Hugh asked.

  “The peculiar dog said that all of London’s loops had been raided and their ymbrynes kidnapped,” Emma said, “but we can’t simply take his word for it, can we?”

  “You can call a time loop?” I said, flabbergasted. “On the phone?”

  Millard explained that the Council of Ymbrynes maintained a phone exchange, though it could be used only within the boundaries of the city. “Quite ingenious how it works, given all the time differences,” he said. “Just because we live in time loops doesn’t mean we’re stuck in the Stone Age!”

  Emma took my hand and told the others to join hands, too.

  “It’s crucial we stay together,” she said. “London is vast, and there’s no lost and found here for peculiar children.”

  We waded into the crowd, hands linked, our snaking line slightly parabolic in the middle where Olive buoyed up like an astronaut walking on the moon.

  “You losing weight?” Bronwyn asked her. “You need heavier shoes, little magpie.”

  “I get feathery when I ain’t had proper meals,” Olive said.

  “Proper meals? We just ate like kings!”

  “Not me,” said Olive. “They didn’t have any meat pies.”

  “You’re awfully picky for a refugee,” said Enoch. “Anyway, since Horace wasted all our money, the only way we’re getting more food is if we steal it, or find a n
ot-kidnapped ymbryne who’ll cook us some.”

  “We still have money,” Horace said defensively, jingling the coins in his pocket. “Though not enough for meat pies. We could perhaps afford a jacket potato.”

  “If I have another jacket potato, I’ll turn into a jacket potato,” Olive whined.

  “That’s impossible, dear,” said Bronwyn.

  “Why? Miss Peregrine can turn into a bird!”

  A boy we were passing turned to stare. Bronwyn shushed Olive angrily. Telling our secrets in front of normals was strictly forbidden, even if they were so fantastic-sounding no one would believe them.

  We shouldered through one last knot of children to arrive at the phone booth. It was only large enough to hold three, so Emma, Millard, and Horace squeezed inside while the rest of us crowded around the door. Emma worked the phone, Horace fished our last few coins from his pocket, and Millard paged through a chunky phone book that dangled from a cord.

  “Are you kidding?” I said, leaning into the booth. “There are ymbrynes in the phone book?”

  “The addresses listed are fakes,” said Millard, “and the calls won’t connect unless you whistle the right passcode.” He tore out a listing and handed it to Emma. “Give this one a go. Millicent Thrush.”

  Horace fed a coin into the slot and Emma dialed the number. Then Millard took the phone, whistled a bird call into the receiver, and handed it back to Emma. She listened for a moment, then frowned. “It just rings,” she said. “No one’s picking up.”

  “No bother!” Millard said. “That was just one of many. Let me find another …”

  Outside the booth, the crowd that had been flowing around us slowed to a stop, bottlenecking somewhere out of sight. The train platform was reaching capacity. There were normal children on every side of us, chattering to one another, shouting, shoving—and one, who stood right next to Olive, was crying bitterly. She had pigtails and puffy red eyes, and she carried a blanket in one hand and a raggedy cardboard suitcase in the other. Pinned to her blouse was a tag with words and numbers stenciled in large print:

  115-201

  London → Sheffield

  Olive watched the girl cry until her own eyes began to shimmer with tears. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and asked what the matter was. The girl looked away, pretending not to have heard.

  Olive didn’t take the hint. “What’s the matter?” she asked again. “Are you crying because you’ve been sold?” She pointed to the tag on the girl’s blouse. “Was that your price?”

  The girl tried to scoot away but was blocked by a wall of people.

  “I would buy you and set you free,” Olive went on, “but I fear we’ve spent all our money on train tickets and haven’t enough even for meat pies, much less a slave. I’m awfully sorry.”

  The girl spun to face Olive. “I’m not for sale!” she said, stamping her foot.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes!” the girl shouted, and in a fit of frustration she ripped the tag off her blouse and threw it away. “I just don’t want to go and live in the stupid country, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t want to leave my home, either, but we had to,” Olive said. “It got smashed by a bomb.”

  The girl’s face softened. “Mine did, too.” She put down her suitcase and held out her hand. “Sorry I got cross. My name is Jessica.”

  “I’m Olive.”

  The two little girls shook hands like gentlemen.

  “I like your blouse,” Olive said.

  “Thanks,” said Jessica. “And I like your—the—the whatsit on your head.”

  “My tiara!” Olive reached up to touch it. “It isn’t real silver, though.”

  “That’s okay. It’s pretty.”

  Olive smiled as wide as I’d ever seen her smile, and then a loud whistle blew and a booming voice crackled over a loudspeaker. “All children onto the trains!” it said. “Nice and orderly now!”

  The crowd began to flow around us again. Here and there, adults herded the children along, and I heard one say, “Don’t worry, you’ll see your mummies and daddies again soon!”

  That’s when I realized why there were so many children here. They were being evacuated. Of all the many hundreds of kids in the train station this morning, my friends and I were the only ones arriving. The rest were leaving, being shuttled out of the city for their own safety—and from the look of the winter coats and overstuffed cases some of them carried, maybe for a long time.

  “I have to go,” Jessica said, and Olive had hardly begun to say goodbye when her new friend was borne away by the crowd toward a waiting train. Just that quickly, Olive made and lost the only normal friend she’d ever had.

  Jessica looked back as she was boarding. Her grim expression seemed to say: What will become of me?

  We watched her go and wondered the same about ourselves.

  * * *

  Inside the phone box, Emma scowled at the receiver. “No one’s answering,” she said. “All the numbers just ring and ring.”

  “Last one,” said Millard, handing her another ripped-out page.

  “Cross your fingers.”

  I was focused on Emma as she dialed, but then a commotion broke out behind me and I turned to see a crimson-faced man waving an umbrella at us. “What are you dallying about for?” he said.

  “Vacate that phone box and board your train at once!”

  “We just got off one,” said Hugh. “We ain’t about to get on another!”

  “And what have you done with your tag numbers?” the man shouted, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. “Produce them at once or by God I’ll have you shipped somewhere a great deal less pleasant than Wales!”

  “Piss off this instant,” said Enoch, “or we’ll have you shipped straight to Hell!”

  The man’s face went so purple I thought he’d burst a blood vessel in his neck. Clearly, he wasn’t used to being spoken to this way by children.

  “I said get out of that phone box!” he roared, and raising the umbrella over his head like an executioner’s ax, he brought it down on the cable that stretched between the top of the booth and the wall, snapping it in half with a loud thwack!

  The phone went dead. Emma looked up from the receiver, boiling with quiet rage. “If he wants to use the phone so badly,” she said, “then let’s give it to him.”

  As she, Millard, and Horace squeezed out of the booth, Bronwyn grabbed the man’s hands and pinned them behind his back.

  “Stop!” he screamed. “Unhand me!”

  “Oh, I’ll unhand you,” said Bronwyn, and then she picked him up, stuffed him headfirst into the booth, and barred the door shut with his umbrella. The man screamed and banged on the glass, jumping up and down like a fat fly trapped in a bottle. Although it would’ve been fun to stick around and laugh at him, the man had drawn too much attention, and now adults were converging on us from all across the station. It was time to go.

  We linked hands and raced off toward the turnstiles, leaving behind us a wake of tripped and flailing normals. A train whistle screeched and was echoed inside Bronwyn’s trunk, where Miss Peregrine was being tossed around like laundry in the wash. Too light on her feet to run, Olive clung to Bronwyn’s neck, trailing behind her like a half-deflated balloon on a string.

  Some of the adults were closer to the exit than we were, and rather than running around them, we tried to barrel straight through.

  This didn’t work.

  The first to intercept us was a big woman who smacked Enoch upside the head with her purse, then tackled him. When Emma tried to pull her off, two men grabbed her by the arms and wrestled her to the floor. I was about to jump in and help her when a third man grabbed my arms.

  “Someone do something!” Brownyn cried. We all knew what she meant, but it wasn’t clear which of us was free to act. Then a bee whizzed past Enoch’s nose and buried its stinger in the haunches of the woman sitting astride him, and she squealed and leapt up.

  “Yes!” Enoch
shouted. “More bees!”

  “They’re tired!” Hugh shouted back. “They only just got to sleep after saving you the last time!” But he could see that there was no other way—Emma’s arms were pinned, Bronwyn was busy protecting both her trunk and Olive from a trio of angry train conductors, and there were more adults on the way—so Hugh began pounding his chest as if trying to dislodge a piece of stuck food. A moment later he let out a reverberating belch, and ten or so bees flew out of his mouth. They did a few circles overhead, then got their bearings and began stinging every adult in sight.

  The men holding Emma dropped her and fled. The one holding me got stung right on the tip of his nose, and he hollered and flapped his arms as if possessed by demons. Soon all the adults were running, trying to defend themselves from tiny, stinging attackers with spastic dance moves, to the delight of all the children still on the platform, who laughed and cheered and threw their arms in the air in imitation of their ridiculous elders.

  With everyone thus distracted, we picked ourselves up, bolted for the turnstiles, and ran out into a bustling London afternoon.

  * * *

  We became lost in the chaos of the streets. It felt like we’d been plunged into a jar of stirred liquid, racing with particles: gentlemen, ladies, laborers, soldiers, street kids, and beggars all rushing purposefully in every direction, weaving around tiny, sputtering cars and cart vendors crying their wares and buskers blowing horns and buses blowing horns and shuddering to stops to spill more people onto the teeming sidewalks. Containing all this was a canyon of column-fronted buildings that stretched to vanishing down a street half in shadow, the afternoon sun low and muted, reduced by the smokes of London to a murky glow, a lantern winking through fog.

  Dizzy from it, I half closed my eyes and let Emma pull me along while with my free hand I reached into my pocket to touch the cold glass of my phone. I found this strangely calming. My phone was a useless relic of the future but an object which retained some power nevertheless—that of a long, thin filament connecting this baffling world to the sane and recognizable one I’d once belonged to; a thing that said to me as I touched it, You are here and this is real and you are not dreaming and you are still you, and somehow that made everything around me vibrate a little less quickly.