𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐎 | ᴍɪʟʟᴀʀᴅ ɴᴜʟʟɪɴɢꜱ

𝟐𝟏] 𝐌𝐘 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐏𝐀 𝐈𝐒 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ MY GRANDPA IS DEAD!

WE WERE LUCKY, IN A WAY.

It wasn't long and drawn-out, months in a hospital hooked up to machines." —That was ridiculous—of course his death had been needless, obscene-but I think it made us both feel a little better to say it.

Setting aside her needlework, Miss Peregrine rose and hobbled to the window. Her gait was rigid and awkward, as if one of her hips were shorter than the other.

She looked out at the yard, at the kids playing. "The children mustn't hear of this," she said. "Not yet, at least. It would only upset them."

"Okay. Whatever you think," Jacob said with a quick nod.

She stood quietly at the glass for a while, her shoulders trembling. When she finally turned to face me again, she was composed and businesslike. "Well, Mr. and Mrs. Portman," she said briskly, "I think you've been adequately interrogated. You must have questions of your own."

"Only about a thousand."

She pulled a watch from her pocket and consulted it. "We have some time before supper-hour. I hope that will prove sufficient to enlighten you."

Miss Peregrine paused and cocked her head. Abruptly, she strode to the sitting room door and threw it open to find Emma crouched on the other side, her face red and streaked with tears. She'd heard everything.

"Miss Bloom! Have you been eavesdropping?"

Emma struggled to her feet, letting out a sob.

"Polite persons do not listen to conversations that are not meant for--" but Emma was already running from the room, and Miss Peregrine cut herself short with a frustrated sigh. "That was most unfortunate. I'm afraid she's quite sensitive as regards your grandfather."

"I noticed," I said. "Why?"

"Were they..." Jacob started, but was promptly cut off by Miss Peregrine.

"When Abraham left to fight in the war; he took all our hearts with him, but Miss Bloom's especially. Yes, they were admirers, paramours, sweethearts."

I began to understand why Emma had been so reluctant to believe us; it would mean, in all likelihood, that we were here to deliver bad news about our grandfather.

Miss Peregrine clapped her hands as if breaking a spell. "Ah, well," she said, "it can't be helped."

I followed her out of the room to the staircase. Miss Peregrine climbed it with grim resolve, holding the banister with both hands to pull herself up one step at a time, refusing any help.

When we reached the landing, she led me down the hall to the library. It looked like a real classroom now, with desks arranged in a row and a chalkboard in one corner and books dusted and organized on the shelves. Miss Peregrine pointed to a desk and said, "Sit," so we squeezed into two right beside each other.

She took her place at the front of the room and faced us.

"Allow me to give you a brief primer. I think you'll find the answers to most of your questions contained herein."

"Okay."

"The composition of the human species is infinitely more diverse than most humans suspect," she began. "The real taxonomy of Homo sapiens is a secret known to only a few, of whom you will now be one. At base, it is a simple dichotomy: there are the coerlfolc, the teeming mass of common people who make up humanity's great bulk, and there is the hidden branch--the crypto-sapiens, if you will—who are called syndrigast, or "peculiar spirit" in the venerable language of my ancestors. As you have no doubt surmised, we here are of the latter type."

I bobbed my head , understanding most of what she was saying.

"But why don't people know about you? Are you the only ones?" Jacob asked, his eyes on the woman.

"There are peculiars all over the world," she said, "Though our numbers are much diminished from what they once were, Those who remain live in hiding, as we do." She lapsed into a soft regretful tone. "There was a time when we could mix openly with common folk. In some corners of the world we were regarded as shamans and mystic, consulted in times of trouble. A few cultures have retained this that relationship with our people, though only in places where both modernity and the major religions have failed to gain a foothold such as the black-magic island of Ambrym in the New Hebrides. But the larger world turned against us long ago. The Muslims drove us out. The Christians burned us as witches. Even the pagans of Wales and Ireland eventually decided that we were all malevolent faeries and shape-shifting ghosts."

"If you don't mind me asking," I said cautiously. "Why didn't you just make your own country somewhere? Go and live by yourselves?"

"If only it had been that simple," she said. "Peculiar traits often skip a generation, or ten. Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do not always, or even usually, bear peculiar children. Can you imagine, in a world so afraid of otherness, why this would be a danger to all peculiar-kind?"

"Because normal parents would be freaked out if their kids started to, like, throw fire?" Jacob said.

"Exactly, Mr. Portman. The peculiar offspring of common parents are often abused and neglected in the most horrific ways. It wasn't so many centuries ago that the parents of peculiar children simply assumed that their 'real' sons or daughters had been made off with and replaced with changelings--that is, enchanted and malevolent, not to mention entirely fictitious, lookalikes- which in darker times was considered a license to abandon the poor children, if not kill them outright."

"So, it's like, The X-Men?" I whispered to Jacob, though he was obviously done with my modern-day references. "What? It's the only way I can wrap my head around everything."

"It is extremely awful. Something had to be done, so people like myself created places where young peculiars could live apart from common folk-physically and remporally isolated enclaves like this one, of which I am enormously proud."

"People like yourself?"

"We peculiars are blessed with skills that common people lack, as infinite in combination and variety as others are in the pigmentation of their skin or the appearance of their facial features. That said, some skills are common, like reading thoughts, and others are rare, such as the way I can manipulate time."

"Time? I thought you turned into a bird."

"To be sure, and therein lies the key to my skill. Only birds can manipulate time. Therefore, all time manipulators must be able to take the form of a bird."

She said this so seriously, so matter-of-factly, that it took me a moment to process. "Birds ... are time travelers?" I felt a goofy smile spread across my face.

Miss Peregrine nodded soberly. "Most, however, slip back and forth only occasionally, by accident. We who can manipulate time fields consciously-and not only for ourselves, but for others--are known as ymbrynes. We create temporal loops in which peculiar folk can live indefinitely."

"A loop," Jacob repeated, remembering our grandfather's command: find the bird, in the loop. "Is that what this place is?"

"Yes. Though you may better know it as the third of September, 1940."

I leaned toward her over the little desk. "What do you mean? It's only the one day? It repeats?"

"Over and over, though our experience of it is continuous. Otherwise we would have no memory of the last, oh, seventy years that we've resided here."

"That's amazing," I said.