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

We followed Hugh back the way he’d come, Bronwyn carrying Miss Peregrine on her shoulder and poor sick Claire in her arms. After a hundred yards, a glisten of gray ripples appeared beyond the trees: some wide body of water.

“Oh, this is just awful,” said Horace. “They’ve chased us right back into their arms!”

“I don’t hear any soldiers,” said Emma. “In fact, I don’t hear anything at all. Not even the ocean.”

Enoch said, “That’s because it’s not the ocean, you dolt,” and he stood up and ran toward the water. When we caught up with him he was standing with his feet planted in wet sand, looking back at us with a self-satisfied I-told-you-so grin. He’d been right: this wasn’t the sea. It was a misty, gray lake, wide and ringed with firs, its calm surface smooth as slate. But its most distinguishing feature was something I didn’t notice right away; not until Claire pointed out a large rock formation jutting from the shallows nearby. My eyes skimmed it at first but then went back for a second glance. There was something eerie about it—and decidedly familiar.

“It’s the giant from the story!” said Claire, pointing from her place in Bronwyn’s arms. “It’s Cuthbert!”

Bronwyn stroked her head. “Shh, honey, you’ve got fever.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Enoch. “It’s just a rock.”

But it wasn’t. Though wind and rain had worn its features some, it looked just like a giant who’d sunk up to its neck in the lake. You could see clearly that it had a head and a neck and a nose and even an Adam’s apple, and some scrubby trees were growing atop it like a crown of wild hair. But what was really uncanny was the position of its head—thrown back with its mouth open, as if, like the giant in the story we’d heard just last night, it had turned to stone while crying out to its friends on the mountaintop.

“And look!” said Olive, pointing at a rocky bluff rising in the distance. “That must be Cuthbert’s mountain!”

“Giants are real,” Claire murmured, her voice weak but full of wonder. “And so are the Tales!”

“Let’s not jump to absurd conclusions,” said Enoch. “What’s more likely? That the writer of the tale we read last night was inspired by a rock that just happened to be shaped like a giant head, or that this head-shaped rock was really a giant?”

“You take the fun out of everything,” said Olive. “I believe in giants, even if you don’t!”

“The Tales are just tales and nothing more,” Enoch grumbled.

“Funny,” I said, “that’s exactly what I thought all of you were, before I met