We didn’t go directly. I asked the others if we could find a route that avoided some of the thickest crowds, and in the spirit of exploration and mild disobedience, they agreed. Enoch claimed to know a fast way that was almost sure to be deserted, and a minute later we were tracing the banks of the river, Fever Ditch.
This part of the Acre had not been cleaned up like the center had been. Perhaps it was not cleanable. Devil’s Acre was a loop, so the basic environmental facts of the place would reset themselves daily. The Ditch would always be a brown and polluted ribbon of filth. What sun was able to filter down through the pall of factory smoke that hung above us would always be the color of weak tea. The normals who were stuck here, part of the endlessly repeating scenery, would always be the same miserable, half-starved wretches who peered suspiciously at us from the alleys and tenement windows we were now passing. Millard said that somewhere there must have been a map of all the murders, assaults, and robberies that took place the day Devil’s Acre was looped, so those dangerous places could be avoided, but none of us had ever seen it. Everyone knew to be careful when passing through the normal regions. For as long as we could stand the smell, we hugged the edge of the Ditch to avoid passing too close to the dark buildings.
When they were not glancing nervously around them, my friends discussed their new assignments. Most of them sounded disappointed. A few sounded bitter.
“I should be charting maps of America!” Millard grumbled. “Perplexus Anomalous is head of the blasted Mapping Department now. If the ymbrynes don’t think they owe us anything for all we did, he surely does.”
“Then you should appeal directly to him,” said Hugh.
“I’ll do that,” Millard said.
Enoch, once his initial excitement had worn off, had realized that his job in the Dead Letters Office was about 5 percent dead-rising, 95 percent filing. “How can they stick us with grunt work, after what we pulled off in the Library of Souls?” he said. “We saved the ymbrynes’ hides. They should either let us have a nice long holiday, or give us shiny jobs with loads of underlings beneath us.”
“I wouldn’t say it precisely that way,” said Horace. “But I agree. Assistant to the anachronist in the Costumes Department? I should be advising the Ymbryne Council on strategy, at the very least. I can see the future, for birds’ sake!”
“I thought Miss Peregrine believed in us,” said Olive.
“She does,” said Bronwyn. “It’s the other ymbrynes. They don’t know us as well.”
“They’re threatened by us,” said Enoch. “These assignments? They’re meant to send a message. You’re still just peculiar children.”
Emma sidled up to me, and we trudged side by side. I asked her how her assignment meeting had gone.
“Look at this,” Emma said, pulling a slim rectangular box from her bag. “It’s a folding camera.” She flipped a switch and a lens accordioned out of the body.
“So they gave you the job you wanted, after all? Documenting things?”
“Nah,” she said. “I nicked it from the equipment room. They gave me three shifts a week guarding ymbrynes during wight interrogations.”
“That could be interesting, though. You might hear some crazy things.”
“I don’t want to hear all that. Going over all their crimes and what they did to us for years and years . . . I’m tired of rehashing ancient history. I want to see new places, meet new people. What about you?”
“Me too,” I said.
“I mean, what about your assignment? I’m dying to know what they gave you. Something amazing, I’m sure.”
“Motivational speaker,” I said.
“What the devil is that?”
“I’m supposed to go around to different loops telling people about myself.”
She screwed up her face. “For what?”
“To . . . inspire them?”
She laughed so hard it actually hurt my feelings a little.
“Hey. It’s not that weird,” I said.
“Don’t take this the wrong way: I think you’re very inspiring. But I just . . . I can’t see it.”
“Me, neither. That’s why I’m not going to do it.”
“Really?” she said, impressed. “So what are you going to do?”
“Something else.”
“Oh. I see. Very mysterious.”
“Yep.”
“You’ll let me know?”
I smiled. “You’ll be the first.”
I didn’t want to keep Emma in the dark about my plans. I just didn’t exactly have plans yet, only a certainty that something would bubble up.
And then something did. There was a noise from the river—a splash followed by a loud drawing of breath.
Claire shouted, “Fish monster!”