Abe left them the very next morning, after breakfast. They all gathered on the front lawn to say goodbye to him. Hugh gave him a going-away present — a little jar of honey made by his own bees, and tied to it with a ribbon were a few forget-me-nots that Fiona had grown herself. Honey, like nearly everything else, was rationed and hard to get because of the war, so Abe made a big show out of thanking them for it. Emma felt a vague surprise when Hugh gave him the honey, for she'd never known before that Hugh's bees could actually make honey. How exactly did that work?
If Miss Peregrine was at all sad about Abe leaving, she hid it very well on the lawn that morning. She even sent Abe packing herself, literally packing a few more things into his knapsack with her usual motherly bustle — a bottle of vitamins, a tin of mints, an extra pair of socks. "And I'm putting a few books of stamps in here, too, Abe," she said lightly, as if Abe were just leaving for a holiday, not leaving for a raging war that had already killed hundreds of soldiers. "I do hope you'll write to us whenever you can."
Emma thought that she saw a flicker of fear in Abe's eyes as he shouldered his knapsack... but when Miss Peregrine smiled at him, he smiled back and said, "I will, Miss P. I promise. I-I'll miss all of you."
Then Claire began to cry from both her mouths — a high-pitched wail from her normal one, and a deep, unnatural moan from her backmouth. Then Bronwyn flung herself at Abe and hugged him so hard that he winced, and Miss Peregrine had to pull her off him, saying, "Now, Bronwyn, let's not forget how strong you are." The twins made sad noises behind their masks and hugged Abe around his knees.
Emma stood in the back of the group, one arm wrapped around herself, and said little because whenever she tried to talk, her throat closed up with emotion. She barely spoke, but she forced herself to watch as Abe took a deep breath, turned around, and walked away from them, his knapsack slung over his shoulder. He walked down the road to village at at the harbor, where he would take the ferry to the mainland and the war. Emma watched him growing smaller and smaller down the road, until he disappeared and was gone, and then she turned and went inside, straight up to Abe's room on the top floor.
Upstairs, in Abe's newly-empty room, Emma flung herself down onto his bed, breathing in the familiar smell of him, and cried herself to sleep. She had barely slept at all the night before, but as tired as she was, she still slept poorly now. The first time that she woke up, she wondered why she was in Abe's room, and then she remembered that he was gone and cried even more. Later, she woke up again to hear Olive knocking on the locked bedroom door, trying to coax her out. But Emma didn't answer her, and after a moment, she heard Miss Peregrine approach and say gently, "Olive, I think she needs some time alone right now." Emma fell asleep again and dreamed a strange dream that Abe had her peculiarity and was floating away. She ran after him, trying to catch him, but her arms only grabbed the empty air.
The next time that Emma woke up, she could tell from the sunlight slanting through the window that it was the afternoon, though she didn't know exactly what time. As she sat up in bed, her eyes fell upon Abe's desk, where he'd left a few books. Emma recognized one of them, The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, as Abe's favorite book, but the larger one, which lay open in the middle of the desk, was less familiar to her. She'd seen Abe reading it once or twice before, and when she'd asked him what it was, and he told her it was the Torah, the Jewish Bible.
Emma got out of bed and walked slowly over to the desk. Abe had left the book open to some pages near the beginning, and Emma's eyes fell on a sentence that he had underlined.
The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, from your people and your father's household, to the land I will show you."
Emma sat down in the desk chair and stared at those underlined words for a long time, thinking and turning them over in her mind. She pictured Abe's back growing smaller and smaller as he walked away this morning, and she wondered if these words were what had spurred him into leaving them.
Then Emma flipped through the book, looking for other bits that Abe might've underlined, and to her surprise, she found that he'd written a strange name on the inside cover.
Abraham Podgórny
She had to stare at it for a moment before she understood, and when she finally did, she felt foolish. It had never even occurred to her before that Abe Portman couldn't possibly have been Abe's name in Poland. He must've taken it when he came to England — or perhaps more likely, it had been given to him by someone in the refugee camp where Miss Peregrine had found him.
So Abe Portman wasn't even his real name, and Emma hadn't even known it until now — just like she'd never known that Hugh's bees could make honey until this morning. What else didn't she know about her own family?
Abe had answered a different name before he met Emma, just as he'd lived a different life, spoken a different language, and been a member of a different family. And Emma knew nothing about any of it. She stared at that unfamiliar name in Abe's familiar handwriting, and she supposed that now, at last, perhaps she could understand why he'd had to leave to fight the war.
When Emma finally emerged from Abe's room and went downstairs that night, the household was quiet and the parlor was nearly dark. The only light in the room was the gentle, flickering orange glow of Abe's candlesticks. Miss Peregrine had lit them and set them both on the windowsill, and she was sitting silently on the sofa, watching them burn and smoking her pipe. Through the dim light and the faint curtain of gray smoke, Emma could see that her ymbryne's eyes were red from crying, and that made her anger vanish. It left only a black abyss of sadness in its wake.
"I'm sorry about what I said, Miss P," Emma whispered, stepping closer to Miss Peregrine in her lead shoes that suddenly felt heavier than ever. "I don't really hate you."
Miss Peregrine looked up at her and gave her a sad smile. "I know you don't, Emma," she said gently, and she moved over on the sofa and held one arm out to Emma. "Come sit and watch the candles with me," and Emma did.
The children all liked having time alone with Miss Peregrine. There were so many of them that it was always hard to come by. Abe had said that the candlesticks had been in his family for years, and as Emma looked at them, she imagined old Polish women with gray hair and wrinkled hands bending over these same candlesticks. She looked down at her own smooth, pale hands and wondered — not for the first time — what it might feel like to grow old.
Miss Peregrine suddenly put down her pipe and sat up straight, alert. "What is it?" Emma asked.
"It's Bronwyn," Miss Peregrine said, getting up. "She must've had a bad dream again, she's crying."
Emma blinked and listened. She didn't hear anything, but she knew that Miss Peregrine had very keen senses when it came to her and the other children. That was how she always seemed to be one step ahead of them. Miss Peregrine went upstairs and returned several minutes later holding Bronwyn, who was still red-eyed and sniffling. For as petite as she was, Miss Peregrine was stronger than she looked and carried Bronwyn easily against her hip with just one arm.
"Did you have a bad dream too, Emma?" Bronwyn asked, when she saw Emma awake on the sofa. Her brown curls were tousled from sleep, and her nightdress had bunched up, so that her skinny bare legs hung down on either side of Miss Peregrine's waist.
"No, Miss Peregrine and I were just watching Abe's candlesticks," Emma said, as Miss Peregrine settled on the sofa with Bronwyn in her lap. "See, aren't they pretty?"
Bronwyn turned and looked, and the sight of the little flames dancing seemed to calm her. "You should always put on them on the windowsill when you light them, Miss Peregrine," she said, curling one arm around her ymbryne's shoulders. "That way, if Abe comes back at nighttime, he'll see them."
Miss Peregrine smiled. "That's a good idea, Bronwyn. That's just what we'll do."
Bronwyn snuggled down on the sofa between them and soon fell asleep with her head in Miss Peregrine's lap. Emma ran one hand through her soft curls, and she and Miss Peregrine watched the candles until they had burned down to nothing.