Ransom Riggs - Hollow City

We left Millard alone with the boy and his mother. Returning to the campfire, we found nearly everyone, peculiar and Gypsy alike, gathered around Horace. He was standing on a tree stump before the astounded fortune teller, his eyes closed and one hand atop her head, and seemed to be narrating a dream as it came to him: “… and your grandson’s grandson will pilot a giant ship that shuttles between the Earth and the moon like an omnibus, and on the moon he’ll have a very small house, and he’ll fall behind on the mortgage and have to take in lodgers, and one of those lodgers will be a beautiful woman with whom he’ll fall very deeply in moon-love, which isn’t quite the same as Earth-love because of the difference in gravity there …”

We watched from the edge of the crowd. “Is he for real?” I asked Emma.

“Might be,” she replied. “Or he might just be having a bit of fun with her.”

“Why can’t he tell our futures like that?”

Emma shrugged. “Horace’s ability can be maddeningly useless. He’ll reel off lifetimes of predictions for strangers, but with us he’s almost totally blocked. It’s as if the more he cares about someone, the less he can see. Emotion clouds his vision.”

“Doesn’t it all of us,” came a voice from behind us, and we turned to see Enoch standing there. “And on that tip, I hope you aren’t distracting the American too much, Emma dear. It’s hard to keep a lookout for hollowgast when there’s a young lady’s tongue in your ear.”

“Don’t be disgusting!” Emma said.

“I couldn’t ignore the Feeling if I wanted to,” I said, though I did wish I could ignore the icky feeling that Enoch was jealous of me.

“So, tell me about your secret meeting,” Enoch said. “Did the Gypsies really protect us because of some dusty old alliance none of us have heard of?”

“The leader and his wife have a peculiar son,” said Emma. “They hoped we could help him.”

“That’s madness,” said Enoch. “They nearly let themselves be filleted alive by those soldiers for the sake of one boy? Talk about emotion clouding vision! I figured they wanted to enslave us for our abilities, or at the very least sell us at auction—but then I’m always overestimating people.”

“Oh, go find a dead animal to play with,” said Emma.

“I’ll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity,” said Enoch, and he went away shaking his head.

“Sometimes I think that boy is part machine,” Emma said. “Flesh on the outside, metal on the inside.”

I laughed, but secretly I wondered if Enoch was right. Was it crazy, what Bekhir had risked for his son? Because if Bekhir was crazy, then certainly I was. How much had I given up for the sake of just one girl? Despite my curiosity, despite my grandfather, despite the debts we owed Miss Peregrine, ultimately I was here—now—for one reason alone: because from the day I met Emma I’d known I wanted to be part of any world she belonged to. Did that make me crazy? Or was my heart too easily conquered?

Maybe I could use a little metal on the inside , I thought. If I’d kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?

Easy—I’d be at home, medicating myself into a monotone. Drowning my sorrows in video games. Working shifts at Smart Aid. Dying inside, day by day, from regret.

You coward. You weak, pathetic child. You threw your chance away .

But I hadn’t. In reaching toward Emma, I’d risked everything—was risking it again, every day—but in doing so I had grasped and pulled myself into a world once unimaginable to me, where I lived among people who were more alive than anyone I’d known, did things I’d never dreamed I could do, survived things I’d never dreamed I could survive. All because I’d let myself feel something for one peculiar girl.

Despite all the trouble and danger we found ourselves in, and despite the fact that this strange new world had started to crumble the moment I’d discovered it, I was profoundly glad I was here. Despite everything, this peculiar life was what I’d always wanted. Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

“What is it?” Emma said. “You’re staring at me.”

“I wanted to thank you,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose and squinted like I’d said something funny. “Thank me for what?” she said.

“You give me strength I didn’t know I had,” I said. “You make me better.”

She blushed. “I don’t know what to say.”

Emma, bright soul. I need your fire—the one inside you.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said. And then I was seized with the sudden urge to kiss her, and I did.

Though we were dead tired, the Gypsies were in a buoyant mood and seemed determined to keep the party going, and after a few cups of hot, sweet, highly caffeinated something and a few more songs, they’d won us over. They were natural storytellers and beautiful singers; innately charming people who treated us like long-lost cousins. We stayed up half the night trading stories. The young guy who’d thrown his voice like a bear did a ventriloquist act that was so good I almost believed his dummies had come alive. He seemed to have a little crush on Emma and delivered the whole routine to her, smiling encouragingly, but she pretended not to notice and made a point of holding my hand.

Later they told us the story of how, during the First World War, the British army had taken all their horses, and for a while they’d had none to pull their wagons. They had been left stranded in the forest—this very forest—when one day a herd of long-horned goats wandered into their camp. They looked wild but were tame enough to eat out of your hand, so someone got the idea to hitch one to a wagon, and these goats turned out to be nearly as strong as the horses they’d lost. So the Gypsies got unstuck, and until the end of the war their wagons were pulled by these peculiarly strong goats, which is how they became known throughout Wales as Goat People. As proof they passed around a photo of Bekhir’s uncle riding a goat-pulled wagon. We knew without anyone having to say it that this was the lost herd of peculiar goats Addison had talked about. After the war, the army gave back the Gypsies’ horses, and the goats, no longer needed, disappeared again into the forest.

Finally, campfires dwindling, they laid out sleeping rolls for us and sang a lullaby in a lilting foreign language, and I felt pleasantly like a child. The ventriloquist came to say good night to Emma. She shooed him away, but not before he left a calling card. On the back was an address in Cardiff where he picked up mail every few months, whenever the Gypsies stopped through. On the front was his photo, with dummies, and a little note written to Emma. She showed it to me and snickered, but I felt bad for the guy. He was guilty only of liking her, same as me.

I curled up with Emma in a sleeping roll at the forest’s edge. Just as we were drifting off, I heard footsteps in the grass nearby, and opened my eyes to see no one at all. It was Millard, back again after having spent the evening talking with the Gypsy boy.

“He wants to come with us,” said Millard.

“Who?” Emma mumbled groggily. “Where?”

“The boy. With us.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him it was a bad idea. But I didn’t say no, precisely.”