The boats stopped in the shallows. Bella and her friends staggered out of them. Fiona grabbed a handful of pebbles and rolled them around on her tongue. Bronwyn groaned and sank to the ground, utterly exhausted. Emma and the boys reeled Olive down from the clouds.

"You're positively blue!" Emma exclaimed as Olive appeared from the fog, and she leapt up to pull the little girl into her arms. Olive was soaked and frozen, teeth chattering. Emma ran her hot hands over Olive's body until the shivers subsided, then sent Fiona and Horace to get driftwood for a fire. As they waited for them to return, Bella and the rest of them gathered by the boats to take note of what they lost.

All they had left were the clothes on their backs, a little bit of food, and Bronwyn's extremely heavy steamer trunk. They tore open its latches, hoping to find something useful or edible, but all it held were the Tales of the Peculiar and a bath mat embroidered with ALP, Miss Peregrine's initials.

"Oh, thank heavens! Someone remembered the bath mat," Enoch deadpanned. "We are saved."

Everything else was gone, including Emma's map and Millard's Map of Days. When Millard realized it was gone he started hyperventilating. "That was one of only five extant copies!" he moaned. "It was of incalculable value! Not to mention it contained years of my personal notes and annotations!"

"At least we still have the Tales of the Peculiar," said Claire, wringing seawater out of her hair. "I can't get to sleep at night without hearing one."

"What good are fairy tales if we can't even find our way?" Millard asked.

Bella looked around. All she could see was wilderness, wilderness, and more wilderness. She looked at Miss Peregrine. They needed her. The real her. Not the one sitting on a boulder, fanning her feathers dry. It pained Bella to see her like this. The Miss Peregrine she saw now was as broken as her wing, aimed downward in a horrific V. Her eyes were black and full of sorrow as she looked out to the sea. They seemed to say: I failed you.

Horace and Fiona arced toward them through the sand, the wind poofing Fiona's hair and Horace bouncing with his hand on the sides of his head to keep his top hat on. Their arms were empty.

"There's no wood anywhere!" Horace said as they reached them.

"Did you look in the woods?" Emma pointed to a dark line of trees behind the dunes.

"Too scary," Horace replied. "We heard an owl."

"Since when were you afraid of birds?"

Horace shrugged and looked at the sand. Then Fiona elbowed him and he said, "We found something else, though."

"Shelter?" asked Bella.

"A road?" asked Millard.

"A goose to cook for supper?" asked Claire.

"No," Horace replied. "Balloons."

There was a brief, puzzled silence.

"What do you mean, balloons?" said Emma.

"Big ones in the sky, with men inside."

Bella's face darkened. "Show us."

They followed Fiona and Horace back the way the pair had come. Bella looked up and stifled a gasp. Two miniature zeppelins, big black egg-shaped sacs of gas with skeletal cages, hung below them, each containing a single pilot. Emma herded the children into tall grass.

"They're submarine hunters," Enoch said. Millard might've been the authority when it came to maps and books, but Enoch was an expert on all things military. "The best way to spot enemy subs is from the sky," he explained.

"Then why are they flying so close to the ground?" Jacob asked. "And why aren't they farther out to sea?"

"That I don't know."

"Do you think they could be looking for...us?" Horace ventured.

"If you mean could they be wights," said Hugh, "don't be daft. The wights are with the Germans. They're on that German sub."

"The wights are allied with whomever it suits their interests to be allied with," Millard said. "There's no reason to think they haven't infiltrated organizations on both sides of the war."

"I don't like the way they're flying," Enoch said. "They're searching the coastline, not the sea."

"Searching for what?" asked Bronwyn. No one answered her. Bella knew the answer.

They were searching for them.

Okay, that's the end of chapter three! Hope you enjoyed it! Please review!