Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

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We tumbled through the black woods for what seemed like hours, no moon or movement of stars by which to judge the passing time. The sound of men shouting and dogs barking wheeled around us as we ran, menacing us from everywhere and nowhere. To throw the dogs off our scent, we waded into an icy stream and followed it until our feet went numb, and when we crossed out of it again, it felt like I was stumbling along on prickling stumps.

After a time we began to fail. Someone moaned in the dark. Olive and Claire started to fall behind, so Bronwyn hefted them into her arms, but then she couldn’t keep up, either. Finally, when Horace tripped over a root and fell to the ground and then lay there begging for a rest, we all stopped. “Up, you lazy sod!” Enoch hissed at him, but he was wheezing, too, and then he leaned against a tree to catch his breath and the fight seemed to go out of him.

We were reaching the limit of our endurance. We had to stop.

“It’s no use running circles in the dark like this, anyway,” said Emma. “We could just as easily end up right back where we started.”

“We’ll be able to make better sense of this forest in the light of day,” said Millard.

“Provided we live that long,” said Enoch.

A light rain hissed down. Fiona made a shelter for us by coaxing a ring of trees to bend their lower branches together, petting their bark and whispering to their trunks until the branches meshed to form a watertight roof of leaves just high enough for us to sit beneath. We crawled in and lay listening to the rain and the distant barking of dogs. Somewhere in the forest, men with guns were still hunting us. Alone with our thoughts, I’m sure each of us was wondering the same thing—what might happen to us if we were caught.

Claire began to cry, softly at first but then louder and louder, until both of her mouths were bawling and she could hardly catch a breath between sobs.

“Get ahold of yourself!” Enoch said. “They’ll hear you—and then we’ll all have something to cry about!”

“They’re going to feed us to their dogs!” she said. “They’re going to shoot holes in us and take Miss Peregrine away!”

Bronwyn scooted next to her and wrapped the little girl in a bear hug. “Please, Claire! You’ve got to think about something else!”

“I’m truh-trying!” she wailed.

“Try harder!”

Claire squeezed her eyes shut, drew in a deep breath, and held it until she looked like a balloon about to pop—then burst into a fit of gasping cough-sobs that were louder than ever.

Enoch clapped his hands over her mouths. “Shhhhhhh!”

“I’m suh-suh-sorry!” she blubbered. “Muh-maybe if I could hear a story … one of the tuh- Tales …”