“The sound of Miss Peregrine’s life slipping away! Emma, you should’ve burned those Gypsies’ faces off while you had the chance!”
“We were surrounded!” Emma said. “Some of us would’ve gotten hurt in a big fight. Maybe killed. I couldn’t risk that.”
“So you risked Miss Peregrine instead!” said Enoch.
“Enoch, leave her be,” said Bronwyn. “It ain’t easy, deciding for everyone. We can’t take a vote every time there’s a choice to be made.”
“Then maybe you should let
Hugh snorted. “We would’ve been killed ages ago if
“Look, it doesn’t matter now,” I said. “We have to get out of this cage and make it to that town. We’re a lot closer now than if we hadn’t hitched a ride in the first place, so there’s no need to cry over milk that hasn’t even spilled yet. We just need to think of a way to escape.”
So we thought, and came up with lots of ideas, but none that seemed workable.
“Maybe Emma can burn through this floor,” Bronwyn suggested. “It’s made of wood.”
Emma swept a clear patch in the hay and knocked on the floor.
“It’s too thick,” she said miserably.
“Wyn, can you bend these bars apart?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she replied, “but not with those Gypsies so close by. They’ll see and come running with their knives again.”
“We need to
Then we heard a whisper from outside the bars. “Did you forget about me?”
“Millard!” Olive exclaimed, nearly floating out of her shoes with excitement. “Where have you been?”
“Getting the lay of the land, as it were. And waiting for things to calm down.”
“Think you can steal the key for us?” said Emma, rattling the cage’s locked door. “I saw the head man put it in his pocket.”
“Prowling and purloinment are my specialty,” he assured us, and with that he slipped away.
* * *
The minutes crawled by. Then a half hour. Then an hour. Hugh paced the length of the cage, an agitated bee circling his head.
