Chapter Text
“Jacob, you’re back!” The well-dressed boy from the dinner a few nights ago – Horace, if I remembered correctly – was waiting by the entrance to the tunnel, monocle in place and suit somehow still impeccable despite the fact that we were in the middle of the woods. “We, ah– we weren’t sure if you’d be coming back.”
I winced, feeling rather guilty. “I tried to come yesterday, but my dad needed me at the hotel. Birdwatching’s his hobby, which for some reason he refuses to do without backup half the time. It’s a stupid thing to miss this for, but he’s my dad…”
To my relief, Horace nodded, looking completely understanding. I felt a little bad about the white lie, but it was necessary. I didn’t need the peculiars asking questions about that, not when I myself didn’t even have the answers. “Not to worry, I get it. If your father needs your presence, there isn’t much you can do, especially if he’s a normal – it’s not as if we can explain this place to anyone who isn’t a peculiar.”
I nodded. “No one was too upset yesterday, were they? I did promise to come back the next day, and Fiona and Hugh must’ve waited at the cairn–”
“Oh, don’t worry, they hang out around here anyways. It was no trouble for them to stay a while in the woods. Honestly, it’s where Fiona is the most comfortable regardless, and she had plenty of time to grow her flower trail, which she had fun with.” He taps his chin, shrugging as he starts to walk through the cairn’s tunnel. “I suppose Millard was a little disappointed, but he just assumed you had present-time things to be doing and figured you would be coming back when you got the chance.”
There was a moment’s silence as we passed through the cairn, the flash of light signifying the transition in time being a rather difficult thing to talk through, but Horace picked back up a moment later.
“Emma’s been rather surly lately as well, though… she is a bit surly in general. We – mostly Enoch, Bronwyn, and I, though Claire and Millard seem to agree as well – suspect that she’s not a fan of new people, so I may warn you ahead of time that she may take her time, so to speak, in warming up to you.”
“I did get that impression, yeah,” I agreed. Emma seemed to hold a bit of a grudge against me, which was both unfortunate and understandable. Not to mention, there was a good chance that she was the only one who knew about Abraham Portman’s death. If some stranger from the future showed up in the woods and told my caretaker that my old friend was dead, I’d be pretty surly too, especially towards whoever brought the news. I often heard people say to not shoot the messenger, but rarely did I see that advice being listened to.
Following a small trail of pale blue flowers, the ones that Fiona had left for me to follow, we made our way through the forest and up to the path that led to the manor that Miss Peregrine and her wards called home. At the front gate, Millard and Olive were waiting, the former leaning against the fencepost holding a rope tied around the latter’s waist. Olive saw us coming before Millard did, and she started waving and calling out to us.
“Horace, Jacob! You’re both here!” I could hear the grin in her voice, and I gave her a wave of my own.
Millard perked up at her words. “They’re both here?” He started reeling Olive in, holding out a hand for her to take once she was close enough. They both started towards us once Olive was no longer suspended in the air like a human balloon.
“Hey, guys – I’m sorry I couldn’t get here yesterday, my father–” I started sheepishly, but Horace shook his head politely, interrupting.
“It’s no trouble, your father insisted you help with normal business. Couldn’t be helped.”
Millard nodded, his translucent curls bobbing with his head. “Horace is right, and besides, you’re here now. Shall we head into the library? I’ve got the book out, if you still wanted to–”
“Oh! Are we gonna read a story?” Olive grinned again. “Horace, come join us for storytime!”
“If no one else minds, I believe I will,” Horace acquiesced.
oOoOo
“Sto-ry! Sto-ry! Sto-ry!” Olive chanted, jumping up onto the sofa with a deceptive lightness, a wide grin stretched over her face. “Which one are we reading, Millard?”
Millard shrugged. “I was going to let Jacob pick one, unless anyone’s got a particular one in mind?”
“Are we reading from the Tales? I vote for St. Paul’s Pigeons.” A voice I'd briefly heard yesterday cut into the conversation from the open door. Turning, I realised it was the boy with the goggles, a few bees clinging to his shoulders and chest – Hugh, if I remembered correctly. Fiona stood behind him, face mostly blank but with a slight inquisitive tilt to her mouth as she waved politely to us.
“One for The Pigeons of St. Paul’s, then,” Millard repeated. “Fiona, did you want to hang around? There’s room on the sofa with Olive, or we could pull in a chair from the Bird’s drawing room.”
Fiona looked around for a moment before pointing to a flat-topped steamer trunk in the corner, head tilted slightly. Hugh nodded and moved to help her pull it over to the left side of the sofa where she took a seat on top of it, leaning against the cushioned arm of the couch. Hugh dropped down on the sofa right beside her, his hands coming to cover her own. He was right next to Horace, who was now sandwiched between both Hugh and Olive – not that he seemed to mind, at least on the latter’s part, if the way he was ruffling her hair was anything to go by.
The domesticity of the scene made something in my chest twinge, and I quickly turned back to Millard before my face twisted into an expression I didn’t want to have to explain. “St. Paul’s Pigeons?”
“Yes, it’s one of the Tales – there’s also The Splendid Cannibals, Cocobolo, The Tale of Cuthbert… oh, what’s that one about the nightmares called?”
“The Girl Who Could Tame Nightmares,” Horace put in. “I must admit I forgot about the cannibals, so perhaps we should read that one?”
“Maybe, but for the first peculiar story he’s ever read? You want it to be that one?”
“You… raise a fair point. What about The Fork-Tongued Princess, then? I don’t think any of us dislike that one.” Horace turned to the other three children who all shook their heads. “The Pigeons are a good one, but Claire and I just read that one a few days before you and Emma found Jacob, so I may be a bit tired of it at the moment. Though, if everyone else wants to read it–”
“Fork-Tongued Princess is fine with me. Fi?” Hugh glances over to see Fiona nod. “All right, then. Pass him the book, Millard, before we all rot of boredom.”
oOoOo
“Ey, Jacob. You up to anything?”
I turned, closing the book and handing it off to Millard. “Uh… I guess not, since we’re done the story? Why do you ask?”
Enoch shrugged, surly expression ever-present, though somehow it didn’t feel hostile towards me. “Could use a hand with an experiment down in the basement. Emma won’t help ‘nd Bron’s busy, so. New blood’s turn to help out with the icky necromancy.”
“Fair enough. Millard?” I glanced in his direction, but he was already shaking his translucent head. His hair was even longer than I thought, now that half of it wasn’t stuffed into his hat – it nearly reached past his collarbones. It was still a bit hard to distinguish what colour it was, though – I would have thought a sandy blond, but looking closer, it could have been light brown that only looked blond because of how see-through it was.
“I’m good. Already been recruited for enough of those experiments, thank you. Horace might want to join you, though–”
Horace sighed, cutting Millard off. The translucent boy didn’t seem to mind, just giving him a barely-visible look of fond exasperation. “I suppose I shall come and supervise this… endeavour. Heavens forbid you reanimate a predator and get Jacob eaten by an undead bear.”
“One time. It was one time that I tried to revive a bear, and none of you will ever let me live it down.”
“Now, whyever would we do a silly thing like that?” Horace stood, sweeping out of the room to follow an obviously practised path throughout the house, followed closely by myself and Enoch. “Claire, Millard, we likely will not return until supper, so please inform Bronwyn that we have been accosted and kidnapped for nefarious necromantic purposes.”
“Will do!” Chirped Claire. Millard and Enoch both scowled, though one looked far more amused than the other. At this point, I wasn’t sure Enoch even could look amused, though that was probably because I hadn’t spent much time with him.
Horace led the way to the basement, opening the door with a quiet creak and ushering us all in. Enoch allowed this with minimal disgruntlement, which led me to believe that this was a far more common occurrence than I had previously assumed. Evidently, Enoch’s surly disposition wasn’t all that off-putting to the other children in the house – honestly, the only reason I minded it myself was because I couldn’t be sure if Enoch was going to kill and reanimate me or not. Probably not, since Miss Peregrine would be quite displeased if he did that, but, well. You never knew what would happen until it did.
“Mind the step, third from the bottom’s missing,” Enoch grunted out, hopping right past the last few steps and landing heavily on the earthen floor with a loud thud. True to his word, I looked down and saw that one of the steps was completely gone. Horace offered a hand to help me step past, but I shook my head, instead jumping past it like Enoch had just done.
“So, what exactly are we doing?” I asked, hoping dearly that I wouldn’t regret doing so. “You said necromancy, but that’s sort of a broad topic.”
Enoch shrugged. “Made some homunculi. Needed someone to hold ‘em up so I could put hearts in ‘em. That’s your job, Horace is here because it’s a nit and wants to ‘supervise’ or somethin’. Honestly, you reanimate one too many hogs—“
“Jacob does not need to hear about the hogs, thank you,” Horace interrupted. “Where are your little clay people? Don’t you usually keep them on the workbench?”
“Yeah, but these were too big to go on the bench. Got some cows’ hearts for ‘em this time, wanna see?” Without waiting for an answer, Enoch grabbed a nearby jar full of some sort of half-congealed grey fluid and plunged his hand in, pulling out a dirty-looking lump. As I looked closer, I could see the washed-out burgundy squeezing through his thick fingers, the fluid oozing and dripping down his hand as he shot me a pleased grin. “Gross, innit? You gonna hurl now, new blood?”
“Oh, quit being awful, Enoch,” insisted Horace, who looked much closer to hurling than I was.
I just shrugged, still watching the squishy organ as he wiggled it at me. “Uh… not really? I mean, I don’t really want to touch it, but it’s kinda cool if you can use it to bring clay people to life.” That was, if I’d understood his peculiarity correctly. As far as I could tell, Enoch’s ability was to use animal hearts to reanimate (or animate, in the case of things that had never been alive to begin with) either animals or clay figures. I wondered briefly if he could reanimate humans, but promptly decided that it would be a very rude thing to ask, and so kept that thought to myself.
“…Huh.” Enoch blinked, seeming unsure of how to react to my words. “Well, you wanna see me bring some clay soldiers to life, then?”
“Sure, that sounds cool.”
Enoch grinned, showing far more teeth than was probably necessary. Behind me, I could hear Horace groaning, but he dutifully followed regardless as Enoch instructed us on which jars he needed and where to move the suspiciously red-stained box in the corner. Once everything was in place, he motioned for us to both step back as he opened the box, pulling out a lump of muddy clay wrapped in a sheet of parchment paper. Plopping the clay down on the floor, he unwrapped it to reveal a mushy-looking humanoid with the vague imprint of a frowning face on its lumpy head.
Arranging the clay man into a better position, Enoch took a moment to consider his work before nodding decisively, next grabbing for one of the jars and popping off the lid. He reached in and pulled out a squelching mass, shaking it off for a moment to rid it of excess fluid, before promptly plunging it into the homonculus’s misshapen chest.
“Arise, my creation!” He shouted with a cackle, and just as he commanded, the clay man sat up.
I felt my eyes widen as the clay moved, clearly following Enoch’s orders as it stood messily and started to lope around, its full height reaching a little higher than my knee. Its limbs were dead weight against its sides, but that didn’t stop Enoch from grabbing ahold of the left arm and waving it at me, still grinning sharply and looking straight at me. I couldn’t tell if he was just gauging my reaction or waiting for me to be grossed out, but if it was the latter, he would be sorely disappointed.
“That has got to be the weirdest and coolest thing I have ever seen.” My eyebrows were making a valiant attempt for my hairline, but my face quickly scrunched up a moment later as I realised something that I’d missed. “Wait, you tried to bring a bear back to life. How exactly–”
“Let’s not talk about that right now!” Enoch stated loudly, shooting Horace a glare. “Homonculus, grab his legs.”
He held one hand outstretched, fingers splayed and twitching as the clay man followed the direction, stumbling over in Horace’s direction. The latter let out a small shout of alarm and quickly backed up, wedging himself between me and the wall in an attempt to get some sort of barrier between himself and the mud. “Don’t you dare think of ruining my suit – I shall tell Miss Peregrine if you get me all muddy, mark my words!”
“Consider them marked,” Enoch snorts. “Get Jacob’s legs, then, see how the new blood likes it.”
I jolted in surprise, but the homonculus was upon me before I got the chance to do as Horace did and dodge. Clay arms wrapped sluggishly around my legs and smeared mud all over my calves, and I bit back a sigh thinking of how much my father would complain when I came home with dirt all over me. Maybe I could pass it off as me slipping in a puddle – it was still all wet in the present day, so it might work.
But I couldn’t find it in myself to be annoyed with Enoch for it. He didn’t know I’d get in trouble, after all, and besides, he looked so… happy. I couldn’t begrudge him that, even if he did get mud all over my legs.