When we surfaced again, she grabbed me and screamed, “Why did you do that? I nearly had them!”
“He was about to kill you!” I said, wrestling away—and then it occurred to me that she hadn’t even seen him, she’d been so focused on the cage, so I pointed up at the deck, where the gunner was striding toward it. He picked the cage up and rattled it. Its door hung open, and I thought I saw movement inside—some reason for hope—and then the lighthouse beam washed over everything. I saw the gunner’s face full in the light, his mouth curled into a leering grin, his eyes depthless and blank. He was a wight.
He reached into the cage and pulled out a single sodden bird. From the conning tower, another soldier whistled to him, and he ran back toward the hatch with it.
The sub began to rattle and hiss. The water around us churned as if boiling.
“Swim or it’ll suck us down with it!” I shouted to Emma. But she hadn’t heard me—her eyes were locked elsewhere, on a patch of dark water near the stern of the boat.
She swam for it. I tried to stop her but she fought me off. Then, over the whine of the sub, I heard it—a high, shrieking call. Miss Peregrine!
We found her bobbing in the waves, struggling to keep her head above water, one wing flapping, the other broken looking. Emma scooped her up. I screamed that we had to go.
We swam away with what little strength we had. Behind us, a whirlpool was opening up, all the water displaced by the sub rushing back to fill the void as it sank. The sea was consuming itself and trying to consume us, too, but we had with us now a screeching winged symbol of victory, or half a victory at least, and she gave us the strength to fight the unnatural current. Then we heard Bronwyn shouting our names, and our brawny friend came crashing through the waves to tow us back to safety.
* * *
We lay on the rocks beneath the clearing sky, gasping for air and trembling with exhaustion. Millard and Bronwyn had so many questions, but we had no breath to answer them. They had seen Golan’s body fall and the submarine rise and sink and Miss Peregrine come out of the water but not Miss Avocet; they understood what they needed to. They hugged us until we stopped shaking, and Bronwyn tucked the headmistress under her shirt for warmth. Once we’d recovered a little, we retrieved Emma’s canoe and pushed off toward the shore.
When we got there, the children all waded into the shallows to meet us.
“We heard shooting!”
“What was that strange boat?”
“Where’s Miss Peregrine?”
We climbed out of the rowboat, and Bronwyn raised her shirt to reveal the bird nuzzled there. The children crowded around, and Miss Peregrine lifted her beak and crowed at them to show that she was tired but all right. A cheer went up.
“You did it!” Hugh shouted.
Olive danced a little jig and sang, “The Bird, the Bird, the Bird! Emma and Jacob saved the Bird!”
But the celebration was brief. Miss Avocet’s absence was quickly noted, as was Millard’s alarming condition. His tourniquet was tight, but he’d lost a lot of blood and was weakening. Enoch gave him his coat, Fiona offered her woolen hat.
“We’ll take you to see the doctor in town,” Emma said to him.
“Nonsense,” Millard replied. “The man’s never laid eyes on an invisible boy, and he wouldn’t know what to do with one if he did. He’d either treat the wrong limb or run away screaming.”
“It doesn’t matter if he runs away screaming,” Emma said. “Once the loop resets he won’t remember a thing.”
“Look around you. The loop should’ve reset an hour ago.”
Millard was right—the skies were quiet, the battle had ended, but rolling drifts of bomb smoke still mixed with the clouds.
“That’s not good,” Enoch said, and everyone got quiet.
“In any case,” Millard continued, “all the supplies I need are in the house. Just give me a bolt of Laudanum and swab the wound with alcohol. It’s only the fleshy part anyway. In three days I’ll be right as rain.”
“But it’s still bleeding,” Bronwyn said, pointing out red droplets that dotted the sand beneath him.
“Then tie the damn tourniquet tighter!”
She did, and Millard gasped in a way that made everyone cringe, then fainted into her arms.
“Is he all right?” Claire asked.
“Just blacked out is all,” said Enoch. “He ain’t as fit as he pretends to be.”
“What do we do now?”
“Ask Miss Peregrine!” Olive said.
“Right. Put her down so she can change back,” said Enoch. “She can’t very well tell us what to do while she’s still a bird.”
So Bronwyn set her on a dry patch of sand, and we all stood back and waited. Miss Peregrine hopped a few times and flapped her good wing and then swiveled her feathered head around and blinked at us—but that was it. She remained a bird.
“Maybe she wants a little privacy,” Emma suggested. “Let’s turn our backs.”
So we did, forming a ring around her. “It’s safe now, Miss P,” said Olive. “No one’s looking!”
After a minute, Hugh snuck a peek and said, “Nope, still a bird.”
“Maybe she’s too tired and cold,” Claire said, and enough of the others agreed this was plausible that it was decided we would go back to the house, treat Millard with what supplies we had, and hope that with some time to rest, both the headmistress and her loop would return to normal.
Chapter 11
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 the 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.
Panic broke out. The children began to sprint down the path. When they reached the lawn, 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.