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

Gypsies fled back to their wagons or into the woods. In moments we were left alone, seemingly forgotten.

Their leader strode toward us.

“Open the cage!” Emma begged him.

She was ignored. “Hide yourselves under the hay and don’t make a sound!” the man said. “And no magic tricks—unless you’d rather go with them.”

There was no time for more questions. The last thing we saw before everything went black were two Gypsy men running at us with a tarp in their hands. They flipped it over the top of our cage.

Instant night.

*   *   *

Boots tromped by outside the cage, heavy and thudding, as if the wights sought to punish the very ground they walked upon. We did as instructed and dug ourselves into the stinking hay.

Nearby, I heard a wight talking to the Gypsy leader. “A group of children were seen along the road this morning,” the wight said, his voice clipped, accent obscure—not quite English, not quite German. “There’s a reward for their capture.”

“We haven’t run across anyone all day, sir,” the leader said.

“Don’t let their innocent faces fool you. They’re traitors to the war effort. Spies for Germany. The penalty for hiding them …”

“We aren’t hiding anything,” the leader said gruffly. “See for yourself.”

“I’ll do that,” said the wight. “And if we find them here, I’ll cut your tongue out and feed it to my dog.” The wight stomped away.

“Don’t. Even. Breathe,” the leader hissed at us, and then his footsteps trailed away, too.

I wondered why he would lie for us, given the harm these wights could cause his people. Maybe it was out of pride, or some deep-rooted disdain for authority—or, I thought with a cringe, maybe the Gypsies just wanted the satisfaction of killing us themselves.

All around us we could hear the wights spreading throughout the camp, kicking things over, throwing open caravan doors, shoving people. A child screamed and a man reacted angrily, but was cut short with the sound of wood meeting flesh. It was excruciating to lie there and listen to people suffer—even if those same people had been ready to tear us limb from limb just minutes ago.

From the corner of my eye I saw Hugh rise from the hay and crawl to Bronwyn’s trunk. He slipped his fingers over the latch and began to open the lid, but Bronwyn stopped him. “What are you doing?” she mouthed.

“We’ve got to get them before they get us!”