Текст книги "Hollow City"
Автор книги: Ransom Riggs
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
“Bird willing,” echoed the others.
* * *
Afternoon was slipping toward evening. In an hour the animals’ loop would be dark, and finding our way down the mountain would be much more dangerous. As we made preparations to leave, the animals kindly outfitted us with stores of fresh food and sweaters spun from the wool of peculiar sheep, which Deirdre swore had some peculiar property, though what exactly it was she couldn’t quite remember. “Impervious to fire, I think—or perhaps water. Yes, they never sink in water, like fluffy little lifejackets. Or maybe—oh, I don’t know, they’re warm in any case!”
We thanked her and folded them into Bronwyn’s trunk. Then Grunt came loping forward holding a package wrapped up with paper and twine. “A gift from the chickens,” Deirdre explained, winking as Grunt pressed it into my hands. “Don’t drop it.”
A smarter person than I might’ve thought twice about bringing explosives along on our trip, but we were feeling vulnerable, and both the dog and emu-raffe swore that if we were gentle with the eggs they wouldn’t go off, so we nestled them carefully between the sweaters in Bronwyn’s trunk. Now at least we wouldn’t have to face men with guns without weapons of our own.
Then we were nearly ready, except for one thing: when we left the animals’ loop, we’d be just as lost as when we’d come in. We needed directions.
“I can show you the way out of the forest,” said Addison. “Meet me at the top of Miss Wren’s tower.”
The space up top was so small that only two of us could fit at a time, so Emma and I went, climbing its railroad ties like the rungs of a giant ladder. Grunt monkeyed his way up in half the time, delivering Addison to the top under one arm.
The view from the top was amazing. To the east, forested slopes stretched away to a vast, barren plain. To the west, you could see all the way to the ocean, where an old-looking ship rigged with giant, complicated sails glided down the coast. I’d never asked what year it was here—1492? 1750?—though to the animals I guess it hardly mattered. This was a safe place apart from the world of people, and only in the world of people did the year make any difference.
“You’ll head north,” Addison said, jabbing his pipe in the direction of a road, just visible, tracing through the trees below like a faint, pencil-drawn line. “Down that road is a town, and in that town—in your time, anyway—is a train station. Your medium of inter-loop travel is when—1940?”
“That’s right,” Emma replied.
Though I only vaguely understood what they were talking about, I’d never been afraid to ask dumb questions. “Why can’t we just go out into this world?” I asked. “Travel to London through whatever year it is here?”
“The only way is by horse and carriage,” said Addison, “which takes several days … and causes considerable chafing, in my experience. I’m afraid you don’t have that much time to spare.” He turned and nosed open the door to the tower’s little shack. “Please,” he said, “there’s one more thing I’d like to show you.”
We followed him inside. The shack was modest and tiny, a far cry from Miss Peregrine’s queenly setup. The entirety of its furniture was a small bed, a wardrobe, and a rolltop desk. A telescope sat mounted on a tripod, aimed out the window: Miss Wren’s lookout station, where she watched for trouble, and the comings and goings of her spy pigeons.
Addison went to the desk. “Should you have any difficulty locating the road,” he said, “there’s a map of the forest in here.”
Emma opened the desk and found the map, an old, yellowed roll of paper. Underneath it was a creased snapshot. It showed a woman in a black sequined shawl with gray-streaked hair worn in a dramatic upsweep. She was standing next to a chicken. At first glance the photo looked like a discard, taken during an off moment when the woman was looking away with her eyes closed, and yet there was something just right about it, too—how the woman’s hair and clothes matched the black-and-white speckle of the chicken’s feathers; how she and the chicken were facing opposite directions, implying some odd connection between them, as if they were speaking without words; dreaming at one another.
This, clearly, was Miss Wren.
Addison saw the photo and seemed to wince. I could tell he was worried for her, much more than he wanted to admit. “Please don’t take this as an endorsement of your suicidal plans,” he said, “but if you should succeed in your mad quest … and should happen to encounter Miss Wren along the way … you might consider … I mean, might you consider …”
“We’ll send her home,” Emma said, and then scratched him on the head. It was a perfectly normal thing to do to a dog, but seemed a strange thing to do to a talking one.
“Dog bless you,” Addison replied.
Then I tried petting him, but he reared up on his hind legs and said, “Do you mind? Keep your hands at bay, sir!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and in the awkward moment that followed it became obvious that it was time to go.
We climbed down the tower to join our friends, where we exchanged tearful goodbyes with Claire and Fiona under the big shade tree. By now Claire had been given a cushion and blanket to lie on, and like a princess she received us one by one at her makeshift bedside on the ground, extracting promises as we knelt down beside her.
“Promise you’ll come back,” she said to me when it was my turn, “and promise you’ll save Miss Peregrine.”
“I’ll try my best,” I said.
“That isn’t good enough!” she said sternly.
“I’ll come back,” I said. “I promise.”
“And save Miss Peregrine!”
“And save Miss Peregrine,” I repeated, though the words felt empty; the more confident I tried to sound, the less confident I actually felt.
“Good,” she said with a nod. “It’s been awfully nice knowing you, Jacob, and I’m glad you came to stay.”
“Me, too,” I said, and then I got up quickly because her bright, blonde-framed face was so earnest it killed me. She believed, unequivocally, everything we told her: that she and Fiona would be all right here, among these strange animals, in a loop abandoned by its ymbryne. That we’d return for them. I hoped with all my heart that it was more than just theater, staged to make this hard thing we had to do seem possible.
Hugh and Fiona stood off to one side, their hands linked and foreheads touching, saying goodbye in their own quiet way. Finally, we’d all finished with Claire and were ready to go, but no one wanted to disturb them, so we stood watching as Fiona pulled away from Hugh, shook a few seeds from her nest of wild hair, and grew a rose bush heavy with red flowers right where they stood. Hugh’s bees rushed to pollinate it, and while they were occupied—as if she’d done it just so they could have a moment to themselves—Fiona embraced him and whispered something in his ear, and Hugh nodded and whispered something back. When they finally turned and saw all of us looking, Fiona blushed, and Hugh came toward us with his hands jammed in his pockets, his bees trailing behind him, and growled, “Let’s go, show’s over.”
We began our trek down the mountain just as dusk was falling. The animals accompanied us as far as the sheer rock wall.
Olive said to them, “Won’t you all come with us?”
The emu-raffe snorted. “We wouldn’t last five minutes out there! You can at least hope to pass for normal. But one look at me …” She wiggled her forearm-less body. “I’d be shot, stuffed, and mounted in no time.”
Then the dog approached Emma and said, “If I could ask one last thing of you …”
“You’ve been so kind,” she replied. “Anything.”
“Would you mind terribly lighting my pipe? We have no matches here; I haven’t had a real smoke in years.”
Emma obliged him, touching a lit finger to the bowl of his pipe. The dog took a long, satisfied puff and said, “Best of luck to you, peculiar children.”
We clung to the swinging net like a tribe of monkeys, bumping clumsily down the rock face while the pulley squealed and the rope creaked. Coming to earth in a knotted pile, we extricated ourselves from its tangles in what could’ve been a lost Three Stooges bit; several times I thought I was free, only to try standing and fall flat on my face again with a cartoonish whump! The dead hollow lay just feet away, its tentacles splayed like starfish arms from beneath the boulder that had crushed it. I almost felt embarrassed for it: that such a fearsome creature had let itself be laid low by the likes of us. Next time—if there was a next time—I didn’t think we’d be so lucky.
We tiptoed around the hollow’s reeking carcass. Charged down the mountain as fast as we could, given the limits of the treacherous path and Bronwyn’s volatile cargo. Once we’d reached flat land we were able to follow our own tracks back through the squishy moss of the forest floor. We found the lake again just as the sun was setting and bats were screeching out of their hidden roosts. They seemed to bear some unintelligible warning from the world of night, crying and circling overhead as we splashed through the shallows toward the stone giant. We climbed up to his mouth and pitched ourselves down his throat, then swam out the back of him into the instantly cooler water and brighter light of midday, September 1940.
The others surfaced around me, squealing and holding their ears, everyone feeling the pressure that accompanied quick temporal shifts.
“It’s like an airplane taking off,” I said, working my jaw to release the air.
“Never flown in an airplane,” said Horace, brushing water from the brim of his hat.
“Or when you’re on the highway and someone rolls down a window,” I said.
“What’s a highway?” asked Olive.
“Forget it.”
Emma shushed us. “Listen!”
In the distance I could hear dogs barking. They seemed far away, but sound traveled strangely in deep woods, and distances could be deceiving. “We’ll have to move quickly,” Emma said. “Until I say different, no one make a sound—and that includes you, headmistress!”
“I’ll throw an exploding egg at the first dog that gets near us,” said Hugh. “That’ll teach them to chase peculiars.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Bronwyn. “Mishandle one egg and you’re liable to set them all off!”
We waded out of the lake and started back through the forest, Millard navigating with Miss Wren’s creased map. After half an hour we came to the dirt road Addison had pointed to from the top of the tower. We stood in the ruts of an old wagon track while Millard studied the map, turning it sideways, squinting at its microscopic markings. I reached into the pocket of my jeans for my phone, thinking I’d call up a map of my own—an old habit—then found myself tapping on a blank rectangle of glass that refused to light up. It was dead, of course: wet, chargeless, and fifty years from the nearest cell tower. My phone was the only thing I owned that had survived our disaster at sea, but it was useless here, an alien object. I tossed it into the woods. Thirty seconds later I felt a pang of regret and ran to retrieve it. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, I wasn’t quite ready to let it go.
Millard folded his map and announced that the town was to our left—a five– or six-hour walk, at least. “If we want to arrive before dark, we’d better move quickly.”
We hadn’t been walking long when Bronwyn noticed a cloud of dust rising on the road behind us, way in the distance. “Someone’s coming,” she said. “What should we do?”
Millard removed his greatcoat and threw it into the weeds by the side of the road, making himself invisible. “I recommend you make yourselves disappear,” he said, “in whatever limited way you are able.”
We got off the road and crouched behind a screen of brush. The dust cloud expanded, and with it came a clatter of wooden wheels and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. It was a caravan of wagons. When they emerged clanking and rumbling from the dust and began to pass us, I saw Horace gasp and Olive break into a smile. These were not the gray, utilitarian wagons I’d gotten used to seeing on Cairnholm, but like something from a circus, painted every color of the rainbow, sporting ornately carved roofs and doors, pulled by long-maned horses, and driven by men and women whose bodies fluttered with beaded necklaces and bright scarves. Remembering Emma’s stories of performing in traveling sideshows with Miss Peregrine and the others, I turned to her and asked, “Are they peculiar?”
“They’re Gypsies,” she replied.
“Is that good news or bad?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Dunno yet.”
I could see her weighing a decision, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was. The town we were heading for was far away, and these wagons were moving a lot faster than we could ever travel on foot. With wights and dogs hunting us, the extra speed might mean the difference between getting caught and getting away. But we didn’t know who these Gypsies were, or whether we could trust them.
Emma looked at me. “What do you think, should we hitch a ride?”
I looked at the wagons. Looked back at Emma. Thought about how my feet would feel after a six-hour walk in still-wet shoes. “Absolutely,” I said.
Signaling to the others, Emma pointed at the last wagon and mimed running after it. It was shaped like a miniature house, with a little window on each side and a platform that jutted from the back like a porch, probably just wide and deep enough to hold all of us if we squeezed tight together. The wagon was moving fast but not faster than we could sprint, so when it had passed us and we were out of the last driver’s sight, we leapt out of the brush and scurried after it. Emma climbed on first, then held out a hand for the next person. One by one we pulled ourselves up and settled into cramped positions along the wagon’s rear porch, careful to do so quietly lest the driver hear us.
We rode like that for a long time, until our ears rang with the clatter of wagon wheels and our clothes were caked with dust, until the midday sun had wheeled across the sky and dipped behind the trees, which rose up like the walls of a great green canyon on either side of us. I scanned the forest constantly, afraid that at any moment the wights and their dogs would burst out and attack us. But for hours we didn’t see anyone—not a wight, not even another traveler. It was as if we’d arrived in an abandoned country.
Now and then the caravan would stop and we’d all hold our breath, ready to flee or fight, sure we were about to be discovered. We’d send Millard out to investigate, and he would creep down from the wagon only to find that the Gypsies were just stretching their legs or reshoeing a horse, and then we’d start moving again. Eventually I stopped worrying about what would happen if we were discovered. The Gypsies seemed road-weary and harmless. We’d pass as normal and appeal to their pity. We’re just orphans with no home, we’d say. Please, could you spare a morsel of bread? With any luck, they’d give us dinner and escort us to the train station.
It wasn’t long before my theory was put to the test. The wagons pulled abruptly off the road and shuddered to a stop in a small clearing. The dust had hardly settled when a large man came striding around back of our wagon. He wore a flat cap on his head, a caterpillar mustache below his nose, and a grim expression that pulled down the corners of his mouth.
Bronwyn hid Miss Peregrine inside her coat while Emma leapt off the wagon and did her best impression of a pathetic orphan. “Sir, we throw ourselves at your mercy! Our house was hit by a bomb, you see, and our parents are dead, and we’re terribly lost …”
“Shut your gob!” the man boomed. “Get down from there, all of you!” It was a command, not a request, emphasized by the decorative-but-deadly-looking knife balanced in his hand.
We looked at one another, unsure what to do. Should we fight him and run, and probably give away our secret in the process—or play normal for a while longer and wait to see what he does? Then dozens more of them appeared, piling out of their wagons to range around us in a wide circle, many holding knives of their own. We were surrounded, our options dramatically narrowed.
The men were grizzled and sharp-eyed, dressed in dark, heavy-knit clothes built to hide layers of road dust. The women wore bright, flowing dresses, their long hair held back by scarves. Children gathered behind and between them. I tried to square what little I knew about Gypsies with the faces before me. Were they about to massacre us—or were they just naturally grumpy?
I looked to Emma for a cue. She stood with her hands pressed to her chest, not held out like she was about to make flame. If she wasn’t going to fight them, I decided, then neither was I.
I got down from the wagon like the man had asked, hands above my head. Horace and Hugh did the same, and then the others—all but Millard, who had slipped away, unseen, presumably to lurk nearby, waiting and watching.
The man with the cap, whom I’d pegged as their leader, began to fire questions at us. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are your elders?”
“We come from the west,” Emma said calmly. “An island off the coast. We’re orphans, as I already explained. Our houses were smashed by bombs in an air raid, and we were forced to flee. We rowed all the way to the mainland and nearly drowned.” She attempted to manufacture some tears. “We have nothing,” she sniffled. “We’ve been lost in the woods for days with no food to eat and no clothes but the ones we have on. We saw your wagons passing but were too frightened to show ourselves. We only wanted to ride as far as the town …”
The man studied her, his frown deepening. “Why were you forced to flee your island after your house was bombed? And why did you run into the woods instead of following the coast?”
Enoch spoke up. “No choice. We were being chased.”
Emma gave him a sharp look that said: Let me do this.
“Chased by who?” asked the leader.
“Bad men,” Emma said.
“Men with guns,” added Horace. “Dressed like soldiers, although they aren’t, really.”
A woman in a bright yellow scarf stepped forward. “If soldiers are after them, they’re trouble we don’t need. Send them away, Bekhir.”
“Or tie them to trees and leave them!” said a rangy-looking man.
“No!” cried Olive. “We have to get to London before it’s too late!”
The leader cocked an eyebrow. “Too late for what?” We hadn’t aroused his pity—only his curiosity. “We’ll do nothing until we find out who you are,” he said, “and what you’re worth.”
* * *
Ten men holding long-bladed knives marched us toward a flatbed wagon with a big cage mounted on top of it. Even from a distance I could see that it was something meant for animals, twenty feet by ten, made of thick iron bars.
“You’re not going to lock us in there, are you?” Olive said.
“Just until we sort out what to do with you,” said the leader.
“No, you can’t!” cried Olive. “We have to get to London, and quick!”
“And why’s that?”
“One of us is ill,” said Emma, shooting Hugh a meaningful look. “We need to get him a doctor!”
“You don’t need to go all the way to London for no doctor,” said one of the Gypsy men. “Jebbiah’s a doctor. Ain’t you, Jebbiah?”
A man with scabrous lesions spanning his cheeks stepped forward. “Which one of ye’s ill?”
“Hugh needs a specialist,” said Emma. “He’s got a rare condition. Stinging cough.”
Hugh put a hand to his throat as if it hurt him and coughed, and a bee shot out of his mouth. Some of the Gypsies gasped, and a little girl hid her face in her mother’s skirt.
“It’s some sort of trick!” said the so-called doctor.
“Enough,” said their leader. “Get in the cage, all of you.”
They shoved us toward a ramp that led to it. We clustered together at the bottom. No one wanted to go first.
“We can’t let them do this!” whispered Hugh.
“What are you waiting for?” Enoch hissed at Emma. “Burn them!”
Emma shook her head and whispered, “There are too many.” She led the way up the ramp and into the cage. Its barred ceiling was low, its floor piled deep with rank-smelling hay. When we were all inside, the leader slammed the door and locked it behind us, slipping the key into his pocket. “No one goes near them!” he shouted to anyone within earshot. “They could be witches, or worse.”
“Yes, that’s what we are!” Enoch said through the bars. “Now let us go, or we’ll turn your children into warthogs!”
The leader laughed as he walked away down the ramp. Meanwhile, the other Gypsies retreated to a safe distance and began to set up camp, pitching tents and starting cookfires. We sank down into the hay, feeling defeated and depressed.
“Look out,” Horace warned. “There are animal droppings everywhere!”
“Oh, what does it matter, Horace?” Emma said. “No one gives a chuck if your clothes are dirty!”
“I do,” Horace replied.
Emma covered her face with her hands. I sat down next to her and tried to think of something encouraging to say, but came up blank.
Bronwyn opened her coat to give Miss Peregrine some fresh air, and Enoch knelt beside her and cocked his ear, as if listening for something. “Hear that?” he said.
“What?” Bronwyn replied.
“The sound of Miss Peregrine’s life slipping away! Emma, you should’ve burned those Gypsies’ faces off while you had the chance!”
“We were surrounded!” Emma said. “Some of us would’ve gotten hurt in a big fight. Maybe killed. I couldn’t risk that.”
“So you risked Miss Peregrine instead!” said Enoch.
“Enoch, leave her be,” said Bronwyn. “It ain’t easy, deciding for everyone. We can’t take a vote every time there’s a choice to be made.”
“Then maybe you should let me decide for everyone,” Enoch replied.
Hugh snorted. “We would’ve been killed ages ago if you were in charge.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter now,” I said. “We have to get out of this cage and make it to that town. We’re a lot closer now than if we hadn’t hitched a ride in the first place, so there’s no need to cry over milk that hasn’t even spilled yet. We just need to think of a way to escape.”
So we thought, and came up with lots of ideas, but none that seemed workable.
“Maybe Emma can burn through this floor,” Bronwyn suggested. “It’s made of wood.”
Emma swept a clear patch in the hay and knocked on the floor.
“It’s too thick,” she said miserably.
“Wyn, can you bend these bars apart?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she replied, “but not with those Gypsies so close by. They’ll see and come running with their knives again.”
“We need to sneak out, not break out,” said Emma.
Then we heard a whisper from outside the bars. “Did you forget about me?”
“Millard!” Olive exclaimed, nearly floating out of her shoes with excitement. “Where have you been?”
“Getting the lay of the land, as it were. And waiting for things to calm down.”
“Think you can steal the key for us?” said Emma, rattling the cage’s locked door. “I saw the head man put it in his pocket.”
“Prowling and purloinment are my specialty,” he assured us, and with that he slipped away.
* * *
The minutes crawled by. Then a half hour. Then an hour. Hugh paced the length of the cage, an agitated bee circling his head.
“What’s taking him so long?” he grumbled.
“If he doesn’t come back soon, I’m going to start tossing eggs,” said Enoch.
“Do that and you’ll get us all killed,” said Emma. “We’re sitting ducks in here. Once the smoke clears, they’ll flay us alive.”
So we sat and waited more, watching the Gypsies, the Gypsies watching back. Every minute that ticked by felt like another nail in Miss Peregrine’s coffin. I found myself staring at her, as if by looking closely enough I might be able to detect the changes happening to her—to see the still-human spark within her slowly winking out. But she looked the same as she always had, only calmer somehow, asleep in the hay next to Bronwyn, her small, feathered chest rising and falling softly. She seemed to have no awareness of the trouble we were in, or of the countdown that was hanging over her head. Maybe the fact that she could sleep at a time like this was evidence enough that she was changing. The old Miss Peregrine would’ve been having nervous fits.
Then my thoughts strayed to my parents, as they always did when I didn’t keep a tight rein on them. I tried to picture their faces as I’d last seen them. Bits and pieces coalesced in my mind: the thin rim of stubble my dad had developed after a few days on the island; the way my mom, without realizing it, would fiddle with her wedding ring when my dad talked too long about something that disinterested her; my dad’s darting eyes, always checking the horizon on his never-ending search for birds.
Now they’d be searching for me.
As evening settled in, the camp came alive around us. The Gypsies talked and laughed, and when a band of children with battered horns and fiddles struck up a song, they danced. Between songs one of the boys from the band snuck around back of our cage with a bottle in his hands. “It’s for the sick one,” he said, checking behind him nervously.
“Who?” I said, and then he nodded at Hugh, who wilted to the floor in spasms of coughing, right on cue.
The boy slipped the bottle through the bars. I twisted off the cap, gave it a sniff, and nearly fell over. It smelled like turpentine mixed with compost. “What is it?” I said.
“Works, that’s all I know.” He looked behind him again. “All right, I done something for you. Now you owes. So tell me—what crime did you do? You’re thieves, aincha?” Then he lowered his voice and said, “Or didja kill someone?”
“What’s he talking about?” said Bronwyn.
We didn’t kill anyone, I came close to saying, but then an image of Golan’s body tumbling through the air toward a battery of rocks flashed in my mind, and I kept quiet.
Emma said it for me instead. “We didn’t kill anyone!”
“Well, you musta done something,” the boy said. “Why else would they have a reward out for you?”
“There’s a reward?” said Enoch.
“Sure as rain. They’re offering a whole pile of money.”
“Who is?”
The boy shrugged.
“Are you going to turn us in?” Olive asked.
The boy twisted his lip. “Dunno if we will or we won’t. The big shots are chewing it over. Though I’ll say they don’t much trust the sort of people who’s offerin’ the reward. Then again, money’s money, and they don’t much like it that you won’t answer their questions.”
“Where we come from,” Emma said haughtily, “you don’t question people who come to you asking for help.”
“And you don’t put ’em in cages, either!” said Olive.
Just then a tremendous bang went off in the middle of the camp. The Gypsy boy lost his balance and fell off the ramp into the grass, and the rest of us ducked as pots and pans went flying through the air away from a cookfire. The Gypsy woman who’d been tending it sped off screaming bloody murder, her dress on fire, and she might’ve run all the way to the ocean if someone hadn’t picked up a horse’s drinking bucket and doused her with it.
A moment later we heard the footsteps of an invisible boy pounding up the ramp outside our cage. “That’s what happens when you try and make an omelet from a peculiar chicken egg!” said Millard, out of breath and laughing.
“You did that?” said Horace.
“Everything was too orderly and quiet … bad weather for pickpocketing! So I slipped one of our eggs in with theirs, et voilà!” Millard made a key appear out of thin air. “People are much less likely to notice my hand in their pockets when dinner’s just exploded in their faces.”
“Took you long enough,” said Enoch. “Now let us out of here!”
But before Millard could get the key in the door, the Gypsy boy stood up and shouted, “Help! They’re trying to get away!”
The boy had heard everything—but in the confusion following the blast, hardly anyone noticed his shouts.
Millard twisted the key in the lock. The door wouldn’t open.
“Oh, drat,” he said. “Perhaps I stole the wrong key?”
“Ahhhh!” the boy screamed, pointing at the space Millard’s voice emanated from. “A ghost!”
“Will someone please shut him up!” said Enoch.
Bronwyn obliged, reaching through the cage to grab the boy’s arms, then pulling him off his feet and up against the bars.
“Haaaaalp!” he screamed. “They’ve got mmmfff—”
She slapped a hand over his mouth, but she’d silenced him too late. “Galbi!” a woman shouted. “Let him go, you savages!”
And suddenly, without really meaning to, we’d taken a hostage. Gypsy men rushed at us, knives flashing in the failing light.
“What are you doing?” cried Millard. “Let that boy go before they murder us!”
“No, don’t!” Emma said, and then she screamed, “Free us or the boy dies!”
The Gypsies surrounded us, shouting threats. “If you harm him in any way,” the leader yelled, “I’ll kill every last one of you with my bare hands!”
“Stay back!” Emma said. “Just let us go and we won’t hurt anyone.”
One of the men made a run at the cage, and instinctively, Emma flicked out her hands and sparked a roaring fireball between them. The crowd gasped and the man skidded to a stop.
“Now you’ve done it!” hissed Enoch. “They’ll hang us for being witches!”
“I’ll burn the first one that tries!” Emma shouted, widening the space between her palms to make the fireball even larger. “Come on, let’s show them who they’re messing with!”
It was time to put on a show. Bronwyn went first: with one hand she raised the boy even higher, his feet kicking in the air, and with the other she grabbed one of the roof bars and began to bend it. Horace stuck his face between the bars and shot a line of bees from his open mouth, and then Millard, who’d sprinted away from the cage the moment the boy had noticed him, shouted from somewhere behind the crowd, “And if you think you can contend with them, you haven’t met me!” and launched an egg into the air. It arced above their heads and landed in a nearby clearing with a huge bang, scattering dirt as high as the treetops.
As the smoke cleared, there was a breathless moment in which no one moved or spoke. I thought at first that our display had paralyzed the Gypsies with awe—but then, when the ringing in my ears had faded, I realized they were listening for something. Then I was, too.
From the darkening road came the sound of an engine. A pair of headlights flickered into view beyond the trees, along the road. Everyone, Gypsy and peculiar, watched as the lights passed the turnoff to our clearing—then slowed, then came back. A canvas-topped military vehicle rumbled toward us. From inside it, the sounds of angry voices shouting and dogs, their throats hoarse from barking but unable to stop now that they’d caught our scent again.
