Chapter Text
My ears were ringing.
I could feel a wrenching in my gut and a pounding in my head, but both were quickly subsiding as I slowly opened my eyes to see that…
…my surroundings were different. I was still in the garden under the topiary of adam, but the sky was cloudy instead of clear, the cool air had suddenly turned humid, and most of all, the bomb that had just been right overhead was nowhere to be found.
“It’s yesterday now,” I mumbled. “Isn’t it?”
Next to me, Horace nods, gas mask now in his hand instead of on his face. “Indeed. The loop has reset, so we’ve essentially gone twenty-four hours into the past. It's still 9:26, but now it’s 9:26 on the second of September instead of the third.”
“That,” I said, dragging a hand down my face as I pulled off the gas mask, “is absolutely insane.”
“Is that a good thing?” Bronwyn wondered.
“Yeah, it’s a good thing.”
“Are you staying the night, Jacob?” Olive asked, leaning on my hip. “You should! We got a few empty rooms if you wanna–”
“We have a few empty rooms, Miss Elephanta,” Miss Peregrine gently reminded her. “Mr. Portman, is there anyone in the modern day who would want you to be home at night?”
“Well… technically, I‘ve already been out too late, but it should be fine. I can’t stay the night, though, my dad wouldn’t like that. Maybe I could… come back tomorrow? If none of you mind too much?”
“Oh, you definitely should!” Olive grinned.
Millard nodded, looking equally pleased. “Yes, come back and see us tomorrow morning! Would you like one of us to wait for you by the cairn? I don’t know if you remember the way here and back.”
I shook my head. “I should be fine, I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“It’s really no trouble,” insisted Hugh. “Fiona and I could come and meet you, if you don’t mind, Fi?”
She shook her head, but then leaned in to mumble something in Hugh's ear that I couldn’t quite hear.
He nodded, then turned back to me. “Fi wouldn’t mind coming down, and if it doesn’t work out for some reason, she could leave you a flower trail to follow. That way, you won’t get lost on any other visits, either.”
“That would be really nice,” I said, a bit surprised. They were going much too far out of their way for me, but… it was nice. Besides, I couldn’t deny that a trail would certainly make things a lot easier. “No one else will recognize the trail, right? I don’t know if having other people up here is something you guys mind or not…”
Miss Peregrine shook her head at that. “The locals of Cairnholm have already decided that we are best left alone, thankfully. One thing we have never had cause to worry about in our lovely home is curious normals coming to pester us.”
“You said that you’re already late getting home, shouldn’t you go soon before you really do get in trouble?” Claire pointed out, sounding a bit worried.
I nodded. “Yeah, I probably should… but I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise!”
“I’ll walk you back,” Millard offered. “Just in case. The woods look awfully different when it’s dark, you know – I’d hate for you to get lost.”
“Thanks, Millard. I appreciate it.”
oOoOo
We bid the peculiars goodnight and then we were off, trudging down the dark dusty road as we headed back to the cairn that I had come through. Along the way, Millard started off comfortably quiet, but it seemed his curiosity quickly got the better of him.
“So, Jacob,” he began. “You’re Abraham Portman’s grandson?”
“I am.” I wasn’t sure if I was really supposed to tell Millard too much about my grandfather, but I didn’t want to lie to him. If he asked, then I would tell, but only then.
“Did he tell you about peculiars and the like? Probably not us specifically, since you didn’t know us when you came, but anything else?”
I shook my head. “Not really… I guess he implied it sometimes, but he never really said anything directly. He liked to show me the photographs he had of people using their powers, and I suppose he told me stories about peculiars when I was really little, but he stopped doing that when I got older. I always thought they were only stories, like the ones you make up to entertain kids. I never thought it was all…”
“Real?”
“...yeah. Sorry, that’s probably a rude thing to say–”
“Not at all! Honestly, if I weren’t peculiar myself, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. It’s a lot to take in, especially if normals are still teaching all that silly nonsense about magic and devil worship and going to hell for having opinions.”
“Well… not exactly that, but there are some very opinionated people. What you’re describing sounds like a witch trial, though, we definitely haven’t had another one of those.”
“Witch trials… yes, Oxford, Cambridge–”
“Cambridge?” I tilted my head. “I didn’t hear of anything like that in Cambridge.”
“Well, it was a peculiar witch trial, you know? People with one power banded together against people with another power, started getting all uppity and claiming they weren’t truly peculiar because of some stupid reason or another. The Cambridge disaster was a small peculiar town of waterwalkers against an ymbryneless group with mixed abilities. According to the group, the town didn’t count as peculiar because they all had the same ability and it rarely skipped, so they accused the townsfolk of being some sort of fae masquerading as peculiar.”
“I thought peculiar abilities weren’t usually hereditary. Can they be passed down through blood in some situations, or is it only certain abilities that do that?”
“Well, no one’s really sure, see. The waterwalkers obviously had a hereditary peculiarity, but then there’s plenty of people with peculiar abilities who are born into perfectly ordinary families that have no prior peculiar blood whatsoever.”
“So, it’s really a tossup, and no one is quite sure what the distinguishing features are of people with a peculiarity that can be passed down and people who have a one-time power?”
“Pretty much. It’s actually a fascinating science – Enoch researches with me sometimes, and so will Emma, but neither of them are quite as into peculiar history as I am… it’s a bit silly to get so worked up over it, but no one’s asked me in a while…” He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, looking quite bashful, and I shook my head.
“It’s not silly at all. Besides, I wanted to hear it too, so there’s not much of a problem, is there?”
“I suppose not!” Millard grinned. “Say, what kinds of stories did Abe tell you?”
“I… don’t remember all of them,” I admitted. “But I think he might’ve told me about Fiona, though he never said her name. He said that back where he used to live, the trees were friendly and would catch you if you fell, but he never mentioned many details in most of his stories.”
“So he told you stories from his life?” Millard mused. “Damn, I was wondering if he’d gotten his hands on a better edition of the Tales.”
“Tales?”
“There’s a book of old peculiar stories called Tales of the Peculiar. Supposedly, they’re all real stories, but some of them have been banned or changed due to holding ‘dangerous knowledge’. If I remember correctly, one of them got a bunch of people racing after the idea of true immortality outside of a loop and they all got themselves killed or worse, so the Council of Ymbrynes had it removed so that no one else would try and follow it.”
“I can see why they’d take that one out, at least… do you have a copy of the Tales?”
“The Bird does, but we’re free to borrow it whenever. We can look at it when you come back tomorrow, if you like? Olive might join us, she loves storytime.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”
We had reached the cairn. Millard stopped in his tracks, and turned to me, tipping his hat with a wry grin. “Looks like this is your stop, Jacob. See you tomorrow, yeah?”
I nodded, starting through the tunnel. “Yeah. See you tomorrow!”