At the mere mention of food, my stomach growled like a wild animal. None of us had eaten since our train ride to London, which seemed eons ago.
“Of course,” said the folding man. “This way.”
We followed him down the hall.
“So tell me about this peculiar army of yours,” Emma said.
“We will crush the wights and take back what’s ours. Punish them for kidnapping our ymbrynes.” He opened a door off the hallway and led us through a wrecked office where people lay sleeping on the floor and under desks. As we stepped around them, I recognized a few of their faces from the carnival: the plain-looking boy, the frizzy- haired snake-charmer girl.
“They’re all peculiar?” I asked.
The folding man nodded. “Rescued from other loops,” he said, holding a door open for us.
“And you?” said Millard. “Where did you come from?”
The folding man led us into a vestibule where we could talk without disturbing the sleepers, a room dominated by two large wooden doors emblazoned with dozens of bird insignias. “I come from land of frozen desert beyond Icy Waste,” he said. “Hundred years ago, when hollows first born, they strike my home first. Everything destroy. All in village killed. Old woman. Baby. All.” He made a chopping motion in the air with his hand. “I hide in butter churn, breathe through reed of straw, while own brother killed in same house. After, I come to London to escape the hollows. But they come, too.”
“That’s awful,” said Bronwyn. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“One day we take revenge,” he said, his face darkening.
“You mentioned that,” said Enoch. “How many are in your army, then?”
“Right now six,” he said, gesturing to the room we’d just left.
“Six people?!” said Emma. “You mean …
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“With you, makes seventeen. We growing quick.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “We didn’t come here to join any army.”
He gave me a look that could freeze Hell, then turned and threw open the double doors.
We followed him into a large room dominated by a massive oval table, its wood polished to a mirror shine. “This is Ymbryne Council meeting place,” the folding man said.
