peculiar journeys// j.p.

chapter one// into the unknown

        We rowed through the harbor, past bobbing boats weeping rust from their aging seams, past flocks of silent seabirds nesting among the barnacled remains of rotting, sunken docks. We passed by fishermen who lowered their nets to stare in frozen shock as we slipped by, almost uncertain as to whether we were real or figments of their imaginations; a procession of waterborne ghost children, or ghosts soon to be. We were eleven children and one bird in three small and unsteady boats, rowing with quiet intensity straight out to the open sea. Our only safe harbor for miles was quickly receding behind us, craggy and magical in the bluish-gold light of dawn, beautiful but too hauntingly painful to look at. Our goal, the rutted coast of mainland Wales, was somewhere ahead but only dimly visible, an inky smudge on the very far horizon.

   Our boats passed by the old lighthouse, tranquil now in the distance, which only last night had been the scene of a seemingly endless bout of trauma. It was there that, with bombs exploding all around us, we had nearly drowned, nearly been torn apart by bullets. I had tapped an ability I had spent years fighting, Jake had taken a gun and pulled its trigger and killed a man, an act I knew he hadn't fully come to terms with. We had lost Miss Peregrine and gotten her back again- snatched from the wights- but the Miss Peregrine we rescued was damaged, in need of help none of us could begin to know how to give. She perched now on the stern of our boat, watching the peaceful sanctuary she'd created slip away, further and further lost with every oar stroke.

Finally, we rowed past the breakwater and into the great, blank open, and the glassy surface we'd been gliding through gave way to little waves that rocked the sides of our boats. I heard a plane in the clouds, high above us, and tilted my head back, trying to spot it. I let my mind wander, none of us speaking to break the silence we'd lapsed into long ago, thinking about the situation we were in.

All our precious, peculiar lives contained in three tiny splinters of wood, adrift on the vast, unblinking eye of the sea.

    

         The boats slid easily through the water alongside one another, a friendly current bearing us coastward. The boys rowed in shifts, taking turns to avoid exhaustion. Emma and I sat side by side at the bow, sunhats shielding our eyes, the map stretched across both our laps. We studied it quietly, mulling it over amongst ourselves. Every so often, one of us would look up to compare the horizon to what was on the page in front of us. When I lifted my head to look again, I caught Jake staring at me, still dragging the oars through the water. The lean muscles in his arms flexed beneath his shirt, and his gaze was both piercing and adoring as he looked at me. I felt my face flush hot and looked back to the map, but not before catching the smirk on his face.

Horace shouted from one of the other boats to ask how much ocean was left until the mainland, and Emma squinted at the map, measuring with her fingers, then called out, somewhat doubtfully, "Seven kilometers?" That didn't sound right to me at all, so I looked down and shook my head, yelling, "Eight and a half kilometers!" Everyone seemed to wilt a little as soon as the words left my mouth.

Eight and a half kilometers was a journey that would've taken a mere hour on the stomach-churning ferry that had first brought Jake and me to Cairnholm weeks ago. A distance that any engine-powered boat could clear easily. Jake's out-of-shape uncles boasted about running marathons only one and a half kilometers less than that distance on the weekends, and only slightly less than his mother boasted she could manage during rowing-machine classes at her fancy, expensive gym. I officially knew entirely too much about his family, I thought with a shudder, people I'd rather I didn't know at all.

The ferry between the island and the mainland wouldn't start running for another thirty years, however, so we were stuck with trying to row three boats loaded with passengers and luggage across eight and a half kilometers of treacherous, moody, changeable sea, the floor beneath littered with greening wrecks and sailors' bones. But worse than all that was the U-boat carrying the wights, still lurking somewhere in the deep darkness, fathoms below.