“They were working with Golan, weren’t they? And I saw the eyes of the one who shot at us. There’s no question.”

“Then Miss Avocet’s as good as dead,” said Hugh. “They’ll kill her for sure.”

“Maybe not,” I replied. “At least not right away.”

“If there’s one thing I know about wights,” said Enoch, “it’s that they kill peculiars. It’s their nature. It’s what they do.”

“No, Jacob’s right,” said Emma. “Before that wight died, he told us why they’ve been abducting so many ymbrynes. They’re going to force them to re-create the reaction that made the hollows in the first place—only bigger. Much bigger.”

I heard someone gasp. Everyone else fell silent. I looked around for Miss Peregrine and saw her perched forlornly on the edge of Adam’s crater.

“We’ve got to stop them,” Hugh said. “We’ve got to find out where they’re taking the ymbrynes.”

“How?” said Enoch. “Follow a submarine?”

Behind me a throat cleared loudly, and we turned to see Horace sitting cross-legged on the ground. “I know where they’re going,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean, you know?”

“Never mind how he knows, he knows,” said Emma. “Where are they taking her, Horace?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the name,” he said, “but I’ve seen it.”

“Then draw it,” I said.

He thought for a moment and then rose stiffly. Looking like a beggar evangelist in his torn black suit, he shuffled to an ash pile that had spilled from the cracked-open house and bent to gather a palm full of soot. Then, in the soft light of the moon, he began to paint on a broken wall with broad strokes.

We gathered around to watch. He made a row of bold vertical stripes topped with thin loops, like bars and razor wire. To one side was a dark forest. There was snow on the ground, rendered in black. And that was all.

When it was done, he staggered back and sat down hard in the grass, a dull distant look in his eyes. Emma took him gently by the shoulder and said, “Horace, what more do you know about this place?”

“It’s somewhere cold.”

Bronwyn stepped forward to study the marks Horace had made. She held Olive in the crook of her arm, the little girl’s head resting sweetly on her shoulder. “Looks like a jail to me,” said Bronwyn.

Olive raised her head. “Well?” came her small voice. “When do we go?”

“Go where?” Enoch said, tossing up his hands. “That’s just a lot of squiggles!”

“It’s somewhere,” Emma said, turning to face him.

“We can’t simply go someplace snowy and look for a prison.”

“And we can’t very well stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Look at the state of this place. Look at the headmistress. We had a damn good run here, but it’s over.”

Enoch and Emma went back and forth for a while. People took sides. Enoch’s argued that they’d been too long out of the world, that they’d get snared in the war or caught by hollows if they left, that it was better to take their chances here, where at least they knew the territory. The others insisted that the war and the hollows had come to them now, and they had no choice. The hollows and wights would return for Miss Peregrine, and in ever-greater numbers. And there was Miss Peregrine herself to consider.

“We’ll find another ymbryne,” Emma suggested. “If anyone will know how to help the headmistress, it’ll be one of her friends.”

“But what if all the other loops have slipped too?” said Hugh. “What if all the ymbrynes have already been kidnapped?”

“We can’t think that way. There must be some left.”

“Emma’s right,” Millard said, lying on the ground with a chunk of broken masonry under his head for a pillow. “If the alternative is to wait and just hope—that no more hollows come, that the headmistress gets better—I say that’s no alternative at all.”

The dissenters were finally shamed into agreement. The house would be abandoned. Belongings would be packed. A few boats would be requisitioned from the harbor and pressed into service, and in the morning everyone would go.

I asked Emma how they were going to navigate. After all, none the children had been off the island in nearly eighty years, and Miss Peregrine couldn’t speak or fly.

“There’s a map,” she told me, turning her head slowly to look at the smoking house. “If it hasn’t burned, that is.”

I volunteered to help her find it. Wrapping wet cloths over our faces, we ventured into the house, entering through the collapsed wall. The windows were shattered, the air hung with smoke, but by the bright light of Emma’s hand-flame we found our way to the study. All the shelves had fallen like dominoes, but we shoved them aside and searched through the books spilled across the floor, crouching low. As luck would have it, the book was easy to find: it was the largest one in the library. Emma yelped with joy and held it up.

On the way out, we found alcohol and Laudanum and proper bandages for Millard. Once we’d helped clean and dress his wound, we sat down to examine the book. It was more atlas than map, bound in quilted leather dyed a deep burgundy, each page drawn carefully on what looked like parchment. It was very fine and very old, and big enough to fill Emma’s lap.

“It’s called the Map of Days,” she said. “It’s got every loop ever known to exist.” The page she’d opened to appeared to be a map of Turkey, though no roads were marked and no borders indicated. Instead, the map was scattered with tiny spirals, which I took to be the location of loops. At the center of each was a unique symbol that corresponded to a legend at the bottom of the page, where the symbols reappeared next to a list of numbers separated by dashes. I pointed to one that read 29-3-316 / ?-?-399 and said, “What is this, some kind of code?”

Emma traced it with her finger. “This loop was the twenty-ninth of March, 316 A.D. It existed until sometime in the year 399, though the day and month are unknown.”

“What happened in 399?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t say.”

I reached across her and turned to a map of Greece, even more clustered with spirals and numbers. “But what’s the point of listing all these?” I said. “How would you even get to these ancient loops?”

“By leapfrogging,” said Millard. “It’s a highly complex and dangerous undertaking, but by leapfrogging from one loop to another—a day fifty years in the past, for instance—then you’ll find you have access to a whole range of loops that have ceased to exist in the last fifty years. Should you have the wherewithal to travel to them, within those you’ll find still other loops, and so on exponentially.”

“That’s time travel,” I said, astonished. “Real time travel.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“So this place,” I said, pointing to Horace’s ash painting on the wall. “We wouldn’t just have to figure out where it is, but when, too?”

“I’m afraid so. And if Miss Avocet is indeed being held by wights, who are notoriously adept at leapfrogging, then it’s extremely likely that the place she and the other ymbrynes are being taken is somewhere in the past. That will make them all the more difficult to find, and getting there all the more dangerous. The locations of historical loops are well known to our enemies, who tend to lurk near the entrances.”

“Well then,” I said, “it’s a good thing I’m coming with you.”

Emma spun to look at me. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” she cried, and hugged me. “Are you certain?”

I told her I was. Tired as they were, the children whistled and clapped. Some embraced me. Even Enoch shook my hand. But when I looked at Emma again, her smile had faded.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

She shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something you should know,” she said, “and I’m afraid it’ll make you not want to come with us.”

“It won’t,” I assured her.