Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

not kill them outright.”
“That’s awful.”
“Extremely. Something had to be done, so people
like myself created places where young peculiars
could live apart from common folk—physically and
temporally isolated enclaves like this one, of which I
am enormously proud.”
“People like yourself?”
“We peculiars are blessed with skills that common
people lack, as infinite in combination and variety as
others are in the pigmentation of their skin or the
appearance of their facial features. That said, some
skills are common, like reading thoughts, and others
are rare, such as the way I can manipulate time.”
“Time? I thought you turned into a bird.”
“To be sure, and therein lies the key to my skill. Only
birds can manipulate time. Therefore, all time
manipulators must be able to take the form of a bird.”
She said this so seriously, so matter-of-factly, that it
took me a moment to process. “Birds … are time
travelers?” I felt a goofy smile spread across my face.
Miss Peregrine nodded soberly. “Most, however,
slip back and forth only occasionally, by accident. We
who can manipulate time fields consciously—and not
only for ourselves, but for others—are known as
ymbrynes. We create temporal loops in which
peculiar folk can live indefinitely.”
“A loop,” I repeated, remembering my grandfather’s
command: find the bird, in the loop. “Is that what this
place is?”
“Yes. Though you may better know it as the third of
September, 1940.”
I leaned toward her over the little desk. “What do
you mean? It’s only the one day? It repeats?”
“Over and over, though our experience of it is
continuous. Otherwise we would have no memory of