Abraham Portman

"Mother, when will we get London, mother?" The whinny voice of a little girl called out, and Abe cocked his head, glancing at the blonde haired girl in the blue dress. The mother beside her, dressed in a once-expensive pink coat and dirtied white gloves, looked quite tired as she pulled in her curious little daughter for a tight hug, quieting her by kissing her on the head. As opposed to the girl, the mother was dark haired and dark eyed, looking almost as he remembered his own mother to have, and seeing her sitting there, he subqounsciously reached out to touch his own hair.

He was dark haired too. A thirteen year old boy in a dirty, threadbare coat and equally threadbare shirt and pants. None of the clothes were quite correctly fitted, and his shoes were too big, but he was happy to be dressed at all. His parents had put on him the best clothes they owned for the journey ahead of him.

He'd grown up in Polen, in Warsava, and back home he'd had a large family of people who looked just like him and were Jewish, just like him. But lately, there had been people who'd been saying that it wasn't okay to look like them or believe in their relgion. They said they were devils, and made life dangeorus for them.

His parents were poor already before these mean people decided to make this life even harder, and as much as they would have liked to send all eight of their little children across the sea to the land, from where his mother had once come, they only had the money to save one fo them.

Abe had been chosen to carry on hsi families legacy, and to stay safe and hidden in the unknown country until the day his parents would come to get him. Because they promise they would, telling him they'd meet again soon enough.

Abe is no fool, though, and he knows better. He knows that what is going on is much more dangerous than his parents are telling him, and his knows that he is never going to return to Polen, ever.

He doesn't know how he knwos the last part, but he can feel it, burried deep iwhtin his heart like a thorn that refused to come otu and allow the wound to heal. From the moment he stepped on the train he was lost, to hsi country, to his family, to everyone.

Well, maybe not to everyone

He think the woman. The woman who is supposed to meet him at the train station in London and take care of him from now on. His mother had told him of her, of how her sister had taken care of mother when she was a child. She had assured him, that if there was any place in this world considered safe, it would be with her.

Before Abe left, he'd been given a picture, that the lady had sent, which showed herself. In the picture he could see that she was old, but not too old, dressed in dark clothing and with a very stern face.

She didn't look like someone who would take care of him, and the flicker of concern on his mother's face showed that she didn't, either. But as soon as she noticed him looking, she'd smiled, told him it would be okay and acted as though she believed it.

"Next station, London! Everyone leave the train!"

A man in a red uniform appeared in the door to the cart, perfectly calm but still screaming. It took Jacob a few moment worth of time to put toghther what he had said in his own shacky, faulting English, but once he did, he suddenly had a hole lot to do.

Quickly standing uo from his seat, he watched as the girl and the mother were packing up their things, too, and he qiickly grabbed his quilt and pillow and stuffed them into the tiny bag that contained everything he owned. Beside his quilt and pillow, that was only a photo of him and his siblings and a photo of the headmisstres.

After a second of indecision, Abe took the last photoand put it in his clenched fist, holding onto it as tight as he could and knowing that it was his only ticket to survival. His only hope in a world where there didn't seem to be any.

Cautious and scarred, he carefully stepped out on the train platform, trying to separate from the other children filling up the train station platform, some of them waiting to enter a train, and some of them leaving the same train as he.

The crowd that filled the station oulled him in and tried to force him to move woth them, but he fought back. He couldn't go with with them, if he did he'd never find the woman who promised to take care of him, and his entire future would pan out as nothing at all.

"Hey! You there!" Just as Abe was about to sit down on a bench, a good place to wait to keep a look out, someone called out for him. "All children need to get in line!"

The man who called for him was huge, a gigant in blue uniform who looked more than a little miffed that Abe wasn't getting in line with all the other children, even though he couldn't possibly know if Abe was supposed to.

"I'm not supposed to...to stand in line. No." It took Abe many valuable seconds before he remebered to sue his English, trying to sound like his momma used to when she spoke with him in it, beatiful and melodic. It came out choppy and rough. "I'm waiting. Woman goong to pick me up."

The man looked a little less miffed at this, his facial features softening as he took in the boy before him properly. "Oh, I see. What woman, your mom? Your auntie? Maybe your big sister?" He smiled, making Abe feel safe and a bit more confident.

"No." He said quickly, shacking his head from side to side. The woman wasn't his mom, or aunt, or even his sister. "She's a woman who take care of kids. She's gonna take care me!" Abe would have loved to have elaborated, explained more exactly what he was talking of, but in thirteen years he had only had time to learn so much of his mother's native language, and the basic explanation would have to do.

"So she's a headmisstres? She's gonna take you to children's home?" he asked, his face turning into one of pity.

Abe thought about this. A headmistress? Yes, he thought mom had called her that. And she was going to take him to a house full of a children, a children's houde. "Yes" He nodded.

The man smiled. "And she was going to pick you up right here on the station? Because children aren't allowed to be here alone, so you'll have to come with me" The man explained, and though he was smiling, Abe was terrified, because the man wanted to take him away, and how would he then find the headmisstres? Would she be able to find him? Abe didn't know, and he didn't want to have to risk it.

"No! " He explained, within the moment standing on his feet with his bag clutched in one hand, and the photo in the other. "You can't take me away! She's not going to find me!"

He start running. On short, skinny legs he began racing along the now almost empty station, heart beating fast in his chest as he did what every thirteen year old with their hole future put at risk by a stranger would do.

Behind him, the man id screaming for him, following him on legs that were much taller and was quickly catching up, prompting Abe to exceed his own limitations as he tried desperately to keep going.

Finally, what took him out, was not the man catching up, but the fact that he ran straight into someone.

"Oh my dear bird!" A aged female voice, shrill with surprise, called out as Abe skidded across the floor and right into her legs. Momentarily having forgotten about the angry train station emplyee chasing him, Abe took a quick peek upwards t the woman he hit, and what he saw was enough to stun him into complete silence, both voice and body frozen with shock.

She was dark haired, black hair pulled up in a toght bun with a few loose strands framing her sharp angeled face. She was dressed inna blacl dress and had a pare of circular glasses balancing on the brim of her nose, hawk like eyes peering at him over them.

It was the woman from the wrinkled photo contained within his sweaty palm.

"Miss! Miss, it's me!" He shouted, following it with a long exclamation in Polish before he once more remembered his English. "I'm Abe Portman! Your going to take care of me!"

Abe didn't have time to say anything more, not did the woman have time to ask any questions, because roght then the man who'd beene chasing Abe reached them, looking triumfant as he noticed that Abe had stopped running at long last.

"Now I got you! I'm going to take you to office and turn you in for breaking rules!" The man grinned manically, reaching for Abe, but as he tried to grab his shirt the eoman stepped in between, his hand ending up pressed against her abdomen.

"You most certainly will not! This boy, Abraham Portman, is under my protection. I have been tasked by his mother to take care of him and so help me I will!" She stretched her body, straightening her back and almost tiptoeing and in the end she was standing surely ten centimeters taller than the man, glaring at him with cold anger.

She looked lethal, like an assasin ready to kill the man who still had his hands firmly pressed against her abdomen for a single wrong answer. As fearful as Abe himeself of the woman who he didn't know but seemed to know all of him.

"I'm...I...I suppose now that you're here he's accompanied, so I don't need to bring him anywhere." Quick and clumsy, he bowed. "Good day, Ma'am." And with that, he was gone. Ran away from them faster than he'd ran to them and quickly disappearing out of sight.

Once he disappeared, the woman laughed. She smiled and she laughed and he eyes twinkled like little stars. Abe felt as though he was staring at the sun, smiling him too as he took in all the beauty and grace that rested in the expresionate face of the woman before him. Sure, she was older, probably somewhere in her forties and fifties, and there was little scars and wrinkles in her face, but it didn't change his assessment of her beauty.

He decided right then and there that he always wanted her to smile, and that he'd alway try to make her smile.

"You're beautiful. You should always smile and laugh, it suits you." The words slip out of his mouth before he know it, his becoming beat red out of pure embaressement as he realised what he said.

The woman, on the other hand, only laughed more, smile wider and eyes bigger. "Between you and me, I think I can do that, . If I do it in front of the other children, they will surely lose all respect for me." She smiled, seeing his smile still there on his face as he listened intently. "But only if you behave, of course."

Behaving, something he normally did without complains, seemed like too little of a price for something so beautiful, but Abe accepted the offer without a second thought.

"Yes, of course, that'll be good Miss…" He tried to remember her name, only to discover that he never learnt it. His mom had been taken care of by a Miss Finch, and this was her sister, but it was all that had been said on the matter.

Seeing the boy's struggles, she looked at him sympathetically. She didn't know how much the boy did know, but her name was obviously not on the list. "My name is Alma LeFay Peregrine, but I'd like for you to refer to me as headmistress, or Miss Peregrine."

Abe nodded at the woman's explanation, figuring someone with authority over children like him was in all right to expect their referal to her to reflect that. Besides, she was his only hope and an excedingly pleasent one, at that. Abe almost thought he could come to lvoe this woman and her beatiful smile, if he was lucky.

"Yes, Miss Peregrine." He tried out the name. It sounded good, fitting even, and he thought he could get used to it.

Miss Peregrine smiled even more, a slightly mad glint in her eyes as she said the words that he could never forget, even as he left the loop and grew old in Florida, America, so far away from Great Britain and Wales.

"Welcome to the peculiar capitol of the peculiar world, Abraham."