When she came out again, she had on a sacklike blouse with ripped sleeves and a broomstick skirt that brushed the top of her feet. (Much more urchin like.) She’d kept the red shoes, though. Emma could never resist a touch of glitter, however small.
“And this?” said Horace, waving a poofy orange wig he’d found.
“How’s this going to help anyone ‘blend in with the normals’?”
“Because it seems we’re going to a carnival,” said Hugh, looking up at a poster on the wall that advertised one.
“Just a moment!” Horace said, joining Hugh beneath the poster. “I’ve heard of this place! It’s an old tourist loop.”
“What’s a tourist loop?” I asked.
“Used to be you could find them all across peculiardom,” Millard explained, “placed strategically at times and locations of historical import. They made up a sort of Grand Tour that was once considered an essential part of any well-bred peculiar’s education. This was many years ago, of course, when it was still relatively safe to travel abroad. I didn’t realize there were any left.”
Then he got quiet, lost in memories of a better time.
When we’d all finished changing, we left our twentieth-century clothes in a heap and followed Emma through another door, out into an alleyway stacked with trash and empty crates. I recognized the sounds of a carnival in the distance: the arrhythmic wheeze of pipe organs, the dull roar of a crowd. Even through my nerves and exhaustion, I felt a jangle of excitement. Once, this was something peculiars had come from far and wide to see. My parents had never even taken me to Disney World.
Emma gave the usual instructions: “Stay together. Watch Jacob and me for signals. Don’t talk to anyone, and look no one in the eye.”
“How will we know where to go?” asked Olive.
“We’ll have to think like ymbrynes,” Emma said. “If you were Miss Wren, where would you be hiding?”
“Anywhere but London?” said Enoch.
“If only someone hadn’t
The headmistress stood on the cobblestones looking up at us, but no one wanted to touch her. We had to keep her out of sight, though, so Horace went back into the disguising room and fetched a denim sack. Miss Peregrine wasn’t enthusiastic about this arrangement, but when it became clear that no one was going to pick her up—least of all Bronwyn, who seemed entirely disgusted with her—she climbed inside and let Horace knot the top closed with a strip of leather.
* * *
