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

gasped for breath, and instantly I could feel that the weather had changed: it was hot and muggy now, and the light had changed to that of a golden afternoon. The depth of the lake had changed, too—now it came all the way to the giant’s chin.

“See?” Emma said, grinning. “We’re somewhen else!”

And just like that, we’d entered a loop—abandoned a mild morning in 1940 for a hot afternoon in some other, older year, though it was difficult to tell just how much older, here in the forest, away from the easily datable cues of civilization.

One by one, the other children surfaced around us, and seeing how much things had changed, had their own realizations.

“Do you realize what this means?” Millard squealed. He was splashing around, turning in circles, out of breath with excitement. “It means there’s secret knowledge embedded in the Tales!”

“Not so useless now, are they?” said Olive.

“Oh, I can’t wait to analyze and annotate them,” said Millard, rubbing his hands together.

“Don’t you dare write in my book, Millard Nullings!” said Bronwyn.

“But what is this loop?” asked Hugh. “Who do you think lives here?”

Olive said, “Cuthbert’s animal friends, of course!”

Enoch rolled his eyes but stopped short of saying what he was probably thinking—It’s just a story!—maybe because his mind was starting to change, too.

“Every loop has an ymbryne,” said Emma, “even mystery loops from storybook tales. So let’s go and find her.”

“All right,” said Millard. “Where?”

“The only place the story made mention of aside from this lake was that mountain,” Emma said, indicating the bluff beyond the trees. “Who’s ready to do some climbing?”

We were tired and hungry, every one of us, but finding the loop had given us a burst of new energy. We left the stone giant behind and set off through the woods toward the foot of the bluff, our clothes drip-drying quickly in the heat. As we neared the bluff, the ground began to slope upward, and then a well-worn path appeared and we followed it up and up through clusters of brushy firs and winding rocky passages, until the path became so vertical in places that we had to go on all fours, clawing at the angled ground to pull ourselves forward.

“There’d better be something wonderful at the end of this trail,” said Horace, dabbing sweat from his forehead. “A gentleman doesn’t perspire!”

The path narrowed to a ribbon, the ground rising sharply on our right side and dropping away on the left, a