Hey guys! Sorry it took me so long to post another chapter, I was caught up in school and whatnot. Joshua comes in during this one! Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Guest: Do you mean Caul/Jack? If you do, he's coming in around the end if I only do Hollow City, and around the middle if I continue on to Library of Souls.
Emma and Jacob yelled at the peculiars to run, but they didn't need to, Bella and her friends were already on their feet, all except Bronwyn, that is, who had fallen asleep against the cave wall. They tried to shake her awake, but it was no use, she just brushed them out of the way. They ended up having to carry her, which was like carrying a tower made of bricks, until her feet touched the ground and she took on her own weight.
They quickly grabbed their things, Bella now thanking the birds they were so small and few. Emma scooped up Miss Peregrine as they ran outside the cave. Bella noticed men behind them as they ran toward the dunes, three of them with guns raised above their heads. The other one looked younger, and was sprinting toward the children as he looked behind him at the others.
After what seemed like hours, they finally stopped for a rest in the woods. A hand gripped Bella's shoulder. She screamed ant teleported out of his reach. She'd forgotten about the boy who had caught up to them. Emma lit a fire in her hand and stalked close to him. Claire and Olive cowered behind Bella.
"Who are you, wight? Show me your eyes! Take those ridiculous things off!" she snarled.
The boy held up his hands. "I am not a wight," he started.
"Ha! Lies!"
"Let me finish. I am the son of a wight. But I am not one."
"Who are you then? Who is your mother? Who is your father?" Emma demanded.
"My name is Joshua Benthem."
The children all gasped except for Jacob, who looked confused.
"G-go on," Emma stammered.
"I am the son of the wight Jack Benthem, and the ymbryne Lysana Robin."
"Ha!" Emma scoffed. "Like an ymbryne would have a child with a wight!"
"You don't believe me?" Joshua didn't look surprised. "Well then, I have proof." He pulled up one of his sleeves. "See those scars? One of them was from my father, who thought of me as a failure. The other is from my mother, who scratched me as a child as punishment for my father, who had me with her when she was sleeping.
"I was supposed to be some kind of secret weapon, but of course that didn't turn out right. I left home and my father sends troops of wights out looking for me. Those wights were chasing me."
"So they weren't looking for us!" said Bella, relieved.
Emma was still trying to process what he'd said. "How do we know you're telling the truth? Are you a peculiar?"
"I am," he replied.
"What can you do?"
"Telekinesis. That means I can - "
"I know what telekinesis is," Emma snapped. "Prove it. Move something with your mind."
"Alright."
Bella floated up into the air, Joshua's eyes following her. She teleported back down and glared at him. "She said something, not someone."
"Sorry, miss," he bowed and winked at her.
Bella tried to control her blush.
"Alright. You can stay with us for now. But I promise you, if you make one wrong move - " Emma lit a fire on her index finger and held it an inch away from his face. He didn't flinch. "I promise you, you will sorry." She put her finger in her mouth to extinguish the fire. "Is Fiona done with the shelter?" she called back to Jacob, walking towards him and leaving Bella and Joshua alone.
"So," Joshua said, "you can teleport."
"I can." Bella teleported to his other side and flashed him a smile. He chuckled.
"Can you teleport other people?" he asked.
"I don't know," she answered. "I've never really tried before."
"Well, now's your chance." He grabbed her hands. Bella blushed and imagined the two of them standing beside a small pond about a hundred feet away. A second later, Bella was the only one there.
Joshua jogged over, looking slightly disappointed.
It started to rain so the two of them ran back to the shelter Fiona had made by coaxing some trees to join together. They climbed in just as Claire started to cry.
"Get ahold of yourself!" Enoch said. "They'll hear you - and then we'll all have something to cry about!"
"They're going to feed us to their dogs!" Claire said. "They're going to shoot holes in us and take Miss Peregrine away!"
Joshua's eyes widened. "Miss Peregrine? My father's sister?"
Emma glared at him and ignored his question.
Bella scooted beside Claire and wrapped her in a hug. "Please Claire! You've got to think about something else!"
"I'm tr-trying!" she wailed.
"Try harder!" Bronwyn said, moving next to them.
Claire closed her eyes, let in a deep breath, and then let out the loudest sob yet.
Enoch put his hands over both of her mouths. "Shhhhhhh!"
"I'm s-s-sorry!" she blubbered. "M-maybe if I could hear a story...one of the T-Tales?"
"Not this again," said Millard. "I'm beginning to wish we'd lost those darned books at sea!"
Miss Peregrine hopped on top of Bronwyn's trunk, which held the Tales, and tapped it with her beak.
"I'm with Miss P," said Enoch. "It's worth a try - anything to stop her bawling!"
"Alright then, little one," Bella said, "but just one tale, and you've got to promise to stop crying!"
"I pr-promise," Claire sniffled.
Bronwyn pulled out a volume of Tales of the Peculiar. Emma crawled next to her and lit a flame on her finger as a reading light. Then Miss Peregrine turned the page with her beak to a chapter.
"Once upon a peculiar time, in a forest deep and ancient, there roamed a great many animals. There were rabbits and deer and foxes, just as there are in every forest, but there were animals of a less common sort, too, like stilt-legged grimbears and two-headed lynxes and talking emu-raffes. These peculiar animals were a favorite target of hunters, who loved to shoot them and mount them on walls and show them off to their hunter friends, but loved even more to sell them to zookeepers, who would lock them in cages and charge money to view them. Now, you might think it would be far better to be locked in a cage than to be shot and mounted upon a wall, but peculiar creatures must roam free to be happy, and after a while the spirits of caged ones whither, and they begin to envy their wall-mounted friends."
"This is a sad story," Claire groused. "Tell a different one."
"I like it," said Enoch. "Tell more about the shooting and mounting."
Bronwyn ignored them. "Now this was an age when giants still roamed the Earth," she went on, "as they did in the long-ago Aldinn times, though they were few in number and diminishing. And it just so happened that one of these giants lived near the forest, and he was very kind and spoke very softly and ate only plants and his name was Cuthbert. One day Cuthbert came into the forest to gather berries, and there saw a hunter hunting an emu-raffe. Being the kindly giant that he was, Cuthbert picked up the little 'raffe by the scruff of its long neck, and by standing up to his full height, on tiptoe, which he rarely did because it made all his old bones crackle, Cuthbert was able to reach up very high and deposit the emu-raffe on a mountaintop, well out of danger. Then, just for good measure, he squashed the hunter to jelly between his toes.
"Word of Cuthbert's kindness spread throughout the forest, and soon peculiar animals were coming to him every day, asking to be lifted up to the mountaintop and out of danger. And Cuthbert said, 'I'll protect you, little brothers and sisters. All I ask in return is that you talk to me and keep me company. There aren't many giants left in the world, and I get lonely from time to time.'
"And they said, 'Of course, Cuthbert, we will.'
"So every day Cuthbert saved more peculiar animals from the hunters, lifting them up to the mountain by the scruffs of their necks, until there was a whole peculiar menagerie up there. And the animals were happy there because they could finally live in peace, and Cuthbert was happy, too, because if he stood on his tiptoes and rested his chin on the top of the mountain he could talk to his new friends all he liked. Then one morning a witch came to see Cuthbert. He was bathing in a little lake in the shadow of the mountain when she said to him, 'I'm terribly sorry, but I have to turn you into stone now.'
"'Why would you do something like that?' asked the giant. 'I'm very kindly. I'm a helping sort of giant.'
"And she said, 'I was hired by the family of the hunter you squashed.'
"'Ah,' he replied. 'Forgot about him.'
"'I'm terribly sorry,' the witch said again, and then she waved a birch branch at him and poor Cuthbert turned to stone.
"All of the sudden Cuthbert became very heavy - so heavy that he began to sink into the lake. He sank and sank and didn't stop sinking until he was covered in water all the way up to his neck. His animal friends saw what was happening, and though they felt terrible about it, they decided they could do nothing to help him.
"'I know you can't save me,' Cuthbert shouted up to his friends, 'but at least come and talk to me! I'm stuck down here, and so very lonely!'
"'But if we come down there the hunters will shoot us!' they called back.
"Cuthbert knew they were right, but still he pleaded with them. 'Talk to me!' he cried. 'Please come and talk to me!'
"The animals tried singing and shouting to poor Cuthbert from the safety of their mountaintop, but they were too distant and their voices too small, so that even to Cuthbert and his giant ears they sounded quieter than the whispers of leaves in the wind.
"'Talk to me!' he begged. 'Come and talk to me!'
"But they never did. And he was still crying when his throat turned to stone like to stone like the rest of him. The end."
Bronwyn closed the book.
Claire looked appalled. "That's it?"
Enoch started laughing.
"That's it," Bella said.
"That's a terrible story," said Claire. "Tell another one!"
"A story's a story," said Emma, "and now it's time for bed."
Claire pouted, but she had stopped crying, so the tale had served its purpose.
"Tomorrow's not likely to be any easier than today was," said Millard. "We need all the rest we can get."
They settled down for bed, and most of them were asleep almost instantly. Bella stayed awake. "Can you get to sleep?" she whispered to Joshua.
"No," he whispered back.
"Me neither."
"Do you want to go back down to the pond?"
"Sure."
They climbed over the sleeping peculiars and ran down to the pond they had gone to earlier. They sat down the edge and stayed silent, each peculiar lost in their own thoughts. Bella eventually got tired and fell asleep, her head falling onto Joshua's shoulder. They stayed there until morning.
Okee dokee, that is the end of Chapter Six! Yay! I want to give a shoutout to one of my awesome friends, who's always been there for me and supports me in everything I do. Thanks Demogirl!
