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

because they could finally live in peace, and Cuthbert was happy, too, because if he stood on his tiptoes and rested his chin on the top of the mountain he could talk to his new friends all he liked. Then one morning a witch came to see Cuthbert. He was bathing in a little lake in the shadow of the mountain when she said to him, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got to turn you into stone now.’

“ ‘Why would you do something like that?’ asked the giant. ‘I’m very kindly. A helping sort of giant.’

“And she said, ‘I was hired by the family of the hunter you squashed.’

“ ‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Forgot about him.’

“ ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ the witch said again, and then she waved a birch branch at him and poor Cuthbert turned to stone.

“All of the sudden Cuthbert became very heavy—so heavy that he began to sink into the lake. He sank and sank and didn’t stop sinking until he was covered in water all the way up to his neck. His animal friends saw what was happening, and though they felt terrible about it, they decided they could do nothing to help him.

“ ‘I know you can’t save me,’ Cuthbert shouted up to his friends, ‘but at least come and talk to me! I’m stuck down here, and so very lonely!’

“ ‘But if we come down there the hunters will shoot us!’ they called back.

“Cuthbert knew they were right, but still he pleaded with them.

“ ‘Talk to me!’ he cried. ‘Please come and talk to me!’

“The animals tried singing and shouting to poor Cuthbert from the safety of their mountaintop, but they were too distant and their voices too small, so that even to Cuthbert and his giant ears they sounded quieter than the whisper of leaves in the wind.

“ ‘Talk to me!’ he begged. ‘Come and talk to me!’

“But they never did. And he was still crying when his throat turned to stone like the rest of him. The end.”

Bronwyn closed the book.

Claire looked appalled. “That’s it?”

Enoch began to laugh.

“That’s it,” Bronwyn said.

“That’s a terrible story,” said Claire. “Tell another one!”

“A story’s a story,” said Emma, “and now it’s time for bed.”

Claire pouted, but she had stopped crying, so the tale had served its purpose.