Discovering the Future

Chapter 30- Chapter 11 (Part 1)

Disclaimer: I don't own Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

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We marched up the steep trail and across the ridge like a company of war-weary veterans, single file, heads down, Bronwyn carrying Millard in her arms and Miss Peregrine riding nestlike crown of Fiona's hair. The landscape was gouged with smoking craters, fresh-turned earth thrown everywhere as if some giant dog had been digging at it. We all wondered what awaited us back at the house, but no one dared to ask.

We had our answer even before clearing the forest. Enoch's foot kicked something, and he bent down to look. It was half a charred brick.

All the children gasped.

"Oh no," Emma said, sorrow in her voice and shaking her head.

Panic broke out. The children began to sprint down the path. When they reached the law, the younger ones broke out in tears. There was smoke everywhere. The bomb had not come to rest atop Adam's finger, as it usually did, but had split him straight down the middle and exploded. The back corner of the house had been reduced to a slumped and smoking ruin. Small fires burned in the charred shell of two rooms. Where Adam had been was a raw crater deep enough to bury a person upright. It was easy now to picture what this place would one day become: that sad and desecrated wreck I had first discovered weeks ago. The nightmare house.

Miss Peregrine leapt from Fiona's hair and began to race around on the scorched grass, squaking in alarm.

"Headmistress, what happened?" Olive said. "Why hasn't the changeover come?"

"Reasons that us lesser mortals will never understand," Victor said.

"Please turn back!" begged Claire, kneeling before her.

Miss Peregrine flapped and jumped and seemed to be straining herself, but still couldn't shift her shape. The children crowded around in concern.

"Something's wrong," Emma said. "If she could turn human, she would've done it by now."

"What ever gave you that idea?" Enoch asked, sarcasm evident.

"Perhaps that's why the loop slipped," Enoch suggested. "Remember that old story about Miss Kestrel, when she was thrown from her bicycle in a road accident? She knocked her head and stayed a kestrel for a whole entire week. That's when her loop slipped."

"What's that got to do with Miss Peregrine?"

Enoch sighed. "Maybe she's only injured her head and we just need to wait a week for her to come to her senses."

"That's only a story," Millard said.

"A speeding lorry's one thing," Emma said. "Being abused by wights is quite another. There's no knowing what that bastard did to Miss Peregrine before we got to her."

"Wights? As in plural?"

"It was wights who took Miss Avocet," I said.

"How do you know that?" Enoch demanded.

"They saw it," Horace said.

"They were working with Golan, weren't they? And I saw the eyes of the one who shot at us. There's no question."