So we opened Bronwyn’s trunk, shoved the pigeon inside with Miss Peregrine, and slammed down the lid. The pigeon screeched like it was being torn apart.
I winced and shouted, “Go easy, Miss P!”
When Bronwyn opened the trunk again, a poof of pigeon feathers fluttered into the air, but the pigeon itself was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, no—she’s ate it!” cried Bronwyn.
“No she hasn’t,” said Emma. “Look beneath her!”
Miss Peregrine lifted up and stepped aside, and there underneath her was the pigeon, alive but dazed.
“Well?” said Enoch. “Is it or isn’t it one of Miss Wren’s?”
Miss Peregrine nudged the bird with her beak and it flew away. Then she leapt out of the trunk, hobbled into the square, and with one loud squawk scattered the rest of the pigeons. Her message was clear: not only was Horace’s pigeon not peculiar,
Miss Peregrine hopped toward the cathedral and flapped her wing impatiently. We caught up to her on the cathedral steps. The building loomed above us, soaring bell towers framing its giant dome. An army of soot- stained angels glared down at us from marble reliefs.
“How are we ever going to search this whole place?” I wondered aloud.
“One room at a time,” Emma said.
A strange noise stopped us at the door. It sounded like a faraway car alarm, the note pitching up and down in long, slow arcs. But there were no car alarms in 1940, of course. It was an air-raid siren.
Horace cringed. “The Germans are coming!” he cried. “Death from the skies!”
“We don’t know
But the streets and the square were emptying fast; the old men were folding up their newspapers and vacating their benches.
“
“Since when are we afraid of a few bombs?” Enoch said. “Quit talking like a Nancy Normal!”
“Need I remind you,” said Millard, “these are not the sort of bombs we’re accustomed to. Unlike the ones that fall on Cairnholm, we don’t know where they’re going to land!”
“All the more reason to get what we came for, and quickly!” Emma said, and she led us inside.
