It didn't happen often, but Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine was nervous. More nervous than the time she transformed into a peregrine bird for the very first time, more nervous than the first time she fought a hollow, and even more nervous than when she first started training with Miss Avocet.
"I can't believe this day," Alma thought as she walked along a muddy path through rows of tall thin trees. She was in northern England on a cool fall day, and the leaves were beginning to change from green to red before falling gently to the ground below and crunching under Miss Peregrine's uncharacteristic black working boots.
"You'll need boots. Sturdy, thick-toed boots," Miss Avocet had correctly warned her. "Anything fancy will be ruined, so pay no mind to style this time."
Another leaf crunched under Miss Peregrine's foot as she veered her feet to the right, narrowly missing a large mud puddle that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere. No mind to style indeed, she thought to herself.
As a young ymbrine, Miss Peregrine was training under Miss Avocet's tutelage in order to learn how to fully harness her powers in preparation for becoming a protector of peculiars. It was no small task, and Miss Peregrine had been working toward it for many years. She needed to learn to harness her energy to effectively create loops, she needed to keep detailed records of peculiar children in her area, and she needed—above all—to protect her wards at any cost.
After thousands of hours of hard work, she was almost at the finish line. A year out, to be exact, but this last year was more important than many of the years combined.
In one year, I'll have peculiars of my own to look after, she mused. The thought both excited and terrified her. As a meticulous overachiever and a "type A" student, she was more than capable of taking on the responsibility, but it was still a daunting task. Being tasked with a peculiar was like being assigned to a mission, and there was no way to tell whether the peculiar would be receptive, or if a ymbrine and peculiar would get along. For all of Miss Avocet's encouragement and belief in her, the horror stories that Alma heard about poor ymbrine/peculiar relationships tortured her with worry and made her afraid of failing.
Sometimes Miss P caught herself thinking about these stories, but she couldn't help it. The story about the peculiar who locked a ymbrine in a cellar to gain control haunted her. The story about a peculiar drowning himself with his water power was equally haunting to Alma. She couldn't imagine how she could go on if any peculiar children she knew acted that way or ended their life. Even before meeting them, she was too sensitive to that.
That will not happen, Alma told herself. You will be a good ymbrine to your peculiars, and they will be safe.
Miss Avocet echoed the sentiment, and while it didn't totally kill Miss P's nerves, it did calm them. Miss Peregrine would need to master her emotions over this last year, because it was by far the most important in her ymbrine training. During this last year, she was going to face her biggest challenge yet—adopting a peculiar charge of her own, her very first ward.
She and Miss Avocet had discussed it and come to the agreement that she should start interacting more with Miss Avocet's peculiars next month to get a better feel for what being a ymbrine requires, when Miss Peregrine's nerves had calmed slightly. They had yet to decide whom Alma would adopt, but it would likely be one of the elderly Miss Oriole's wards, since her loop was beginning to get overcrowded.
"Her heart is unmistakably larger than that 1920s house she insists on residing in," Miss Avocet had said. "There are practically children bursting from the floorboards! And she never remembers their names."
It was true. For all her love and jolliness, old Miss Oriole was terrible with names. Miss Peregrine wasn't exempt either; she had been called every name under the sun—Miss Pelican, Miss Parrot, even Miss Penelope once.
"Penelope isn't even the name of a bird," Miss Peregrine thought to herself. "How absurd."
But all of that was thrown to the wind when a serious emergency occurred.
In a state of dire panic, Miss Avocet had actually sent Miss Peregrine to fetch a peculiar child by herself. It was—in a word—terrifying. And it only served to compound the already present worries in Miss Peregrine's heart.
What if the peculiar child doesn't believe me? What if they refuse to come? What if they run away? What if they laugh in my face? What if I can't bring them back? What if they're already gone when I arrive?
It wasn't difficult to understand why Miss Avocet wouldn't normally have sent Miss Peregrine on such a mission. Miss Peregrine was nervous, and normally, Miss Avocet would be the one handling this case, but things were rather complicated. If this had been a typical day, Miss Peregrine would be at home studying loop resets while Miss Avocet would be strolling through northern England in muddy boots, but like many peculiar days, this one was far from normal.
Miss Peregrine reflected on that moment as she trotted through England. It had started with a surprise. Miss Avocet and Miss Peregrine had been sipping lemon and ginger tea together on a typical Wednesday afternoon, when old Miss Oriole burst into the room.
"It's disastrous!" Miss Oriole exclaimed before falling to her knees in front of an awe-struck Miss Avocet and equally confused Miss Peregrine. "Utterly disastrous!"
It had taken awhile for Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet to coax the devastating truth out of Miss Oriole, but even with the amount of platitudes and consoling Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet had given her, they were utterly unprepared for the actual truth.
Apparently, Miss Oriole had been neglecting a key part of her ymbrine job. She had obtained and then promptly forgotten about a map that held the locations of five peculiar children in England. Miss Oriole had been given the map in the hopes that she could track down and assist the five children, but she had misplaced it and an entire year had passed with the ymbrine world in ignorance of these five peculiars out fending for themselves.
It wasn't often that a peculiar flew under the ymbrine radar, and even Miss Avocet was left speechless at the magnitude of this error.
"They could be gone by now," she mused. "Worse, even."
Injury, malnourishment, death all crossed the three ymbrines minds, but none of them dared speak until Miss Avocet began angrily shouting, her normally clear and soft voice maimed by coldness.
"We ymbrines have known about these peculiar children for an entire year and yet we have not made contact?" Miss Avocet had fumed. Miss Peregrine had never seen her so angry before. "This is no time for lollygagging. Alma, you are closest to graduation and your abilities are needed."
It was decided. Miss Avocet would rush to help two of the peculiar children from the southern region of the map, and Miss Oriole, despite her misgivings, would help two others toward the west. This left an odd northern peculiar out, and thus, Miss Peregrine was needed to answer the call before her training was complete.
Alma was terrified. Her doubts circled her mind like sped-up vultures, threatening to dissolve any sense of peace she could comprise. Miss Avocet's words echoed in her mind, though.
"Sometimes when things go wrong, it is no longer a matter of do or don't anymore. It's a matter of must. You must," she had said. "I trust you, Alma."
The peculiar case she was given had seemed straightforward enough. In recognition of her junior status, Miss Peregrine had been assigned the clearest cut of peculiar cases, a seemingly easy one. As she strolled along the fallen leaves and slightly chilled weather of the northern England dirt road she walked, she pulled out a folded paper from her pocket to review the notes of the case.
Peculiar location: Tevlev's Circus for Strange and Extraordinary Creatures
Peculiar name: Emma
Peculiar appearance: Blonde. No other details.
Peculiar ability: Not yet known. Levitation?
Dangers: Possibly lethal peculiar ability. Also of note: Circus advertises for a "wilderness man" that eats animals—do not turn into a bird around this non-peculiar creature.
Miss Peregrine was particularly concerned about a small note at the bottom of this case's details—a note about a "wilderness man" of sorts, who would eat animals of all kinds. The thought made her shudder. She also wondered if a levitation peculiar was really who she was about to encounter. It seemed as if the original author of the case file hadn't been sure, but thought to include the note anyway.
As she mused over the unfolded paper in her hand, a clearing finally began to open up between the trees, and Alma saw the fruit of her long walk. At first, Miss Peregrine could only see a dusty dirt circle with what looked like trash strewn about it, but as she walked closer and folded the note back into her pocket, it became clear that this was indeed the site of a circus. Or, more accurately, the site of what was once a circus.
Old flyers dated months ago still hung to tree bark surrounding the clearing. A "Tevlev's Circus" sign welcoming visitors was bent slightly to one side, giving the impression that a hurricane had taken place. Alma squinted her eyes and could still see a few old tents in the foreground of the site, but mostly what she saw was what looked like an abandoned circus strewn with old popcorn boxes.
Miss Peregrine hoped she wasn't too late after all. She began to search the grounds calling out a tentative "hello" every once and awhile.
"Is anyone here?" she asked to the empty grounds. "I'm looking for a girl named Emma."
She poked through the back of what was once the ticket booth, avoiding the cobwebs that had sprouted over every surface. When that didn't prove useful, she climbed back out and searched the concessions stand with similar bad luck.
At this rate, it was going to take her all day to search the entire site, and with each second that ticked by, Miss Peregrine was getting more and more nervous about the fate of the forgotten peculiar.
If only I had a better view, she thought. Glancing to the sky, she cursed herself for not thinking of it earlier. I can take an aerial view and see if I see anyone that could help!
She didn't think twice about it before turning into a bird and soaring upwards. It would give her the best chance of seeing the circus grounds (or what was left of it) in its entirety, so she didn't pay any mind to the risks. As she soared into the sky in her bird form and relished in the freedom she felt, she used her precise bird-like vision to zero in on movement. It took a few minutes before she saw what looked like a person dash into a tent in the western part of the campground, and she immediately dove toward the movement.
Hopefully it's a person, she thought, maybe even the peculiar girl Emma.
She landed in her bird form and looked cautiously around before flying into a large red and white striped tent that she saw the figure jump into. She was still in bird form and frustratingly couldn't detect any movement. The thought crossed her mind to change back into a human so she could shout and make her presence known, but before she understood what was happening, she felt a heavy weight on her head, and she fell to the ground in a heap.
At first, her thoughts were only full of confusion and pain. The paralyzing sting crept up on her before she knew it, and Miss P suddenly felt like a train had hit her and she was immobile.
A large figure loomed above her, hammer in hand.
"Perfect," it hissed, before picking up the prone bird lady.
What's happening, Miss Peregrine thought before making eye contact with the person above her. Her head was in great pain, and through her blistering headache and weak limbs, she recognized his eyes from the earlier poster—the wilderness man.
Her last thought before tumbling into darkness wasn't her circumstance or Miss Avocet like it normally was. It was of the peculiar girl Emma, who still remained missing.
I've failed, she thought as she fainted into complete blackness. I've completely failed.