He brought it to us. “How can we tell if it’s peculiar?” he said, flipping the bird over to inspect its bottom, as if expecting to find a label there.
“Show it to Miss Peregrine,” Emma said. “She’ll know.”
So we opened Bronwyn’s trunk, shoved the pigeon inside with Miss Peregrine, and slammed down the lid. The pigeon screeched like it was being torn apart.
I winced and shouted, “Go easy, Miss P!”
When Bronwyn opened the trunk again, a poof of pigeon feathers fluttered into the air, but the pigeon itself was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, no—she’s ate it!” cried Bronwyn.
“No she hasn’t,” said Emma. “Look beneath her!”
Miss Peregrine lifted up and stepped aside, and there underneath her was the pigeon, alive but dazed.
“Well?” said Enoch. “Is it or isn’t it one of Miss Wren’s?”
Miss Peregrine nudged the bird with her beak and it flew away. Then she leapt out of the trunk, hobbled into the square, and with one loud squawk scattered the rest of the pigeons. Her message was clear: not only was Horace’s pigeon not peculiar, none of them were. We’d have to keep looking.
Miss Peregrine hopped toward the cathedral and flapped her wing impatiently. We caught up to her on the cathedral steps. The building loomed above us, soaring bell towers framing its giant dome. An army of soot-stained angels glared down at us from marble reliefs.
“How are we ever going to search this whole place?” I wondered aloud.
“One room at a time,” Emma said.
A strange noise stopped us at the door. It sounded like a faraway car alarm, the note pitching up and down in long, slow arcs. But there were no car alarms in 1940, of course. It was an air-raid siren.
Horace cringed. “The Germans are coming!” he cried. “Death from the skies!”
“We don’t know what it means,” Emma said. “Could be a false alarm, or a test.”
But the streets and the square were emptying fast; the old men were folding up their newspapers and vacating their benches.
“They don’t seem to think it’s a test,” Horace said.
“Since when are we afraid of a few bombs?” Enoch said. “Quit talking like a Nancy Normal!”
“Need I remind you,” said Millard, “these are not the sort of bombs we’re accustomed to. Unlike the ones that fall on Cairnholm, we don’t know where they’re going to land!”
“All the more reason to get what we came for, and quickly!” Emma said, and she led us inside.
*
The cathedral’s interior was massive—it seemed, impossibly, even larger than the outside—and though damaged, a few hardy believers knelt here and there in silent prayer. The altar was buried under a midden of debris. Where a bomb had pierced the roof, sunlight fell down in broad beams. A lone soldier sat on a fallen pillar, gazing at the sky through the broken ceiling.
We wandered, necks craned, bits of concrete and broken tile crunching beneath our feet.
“I don’t see anything,” Horace complained. “There are enough hiding places here for ten thousand pigeons!”
“Don’t look,” Hugh said. “Listen.”
We stopped, straining to hear the telltale coo of pigeons. But there was only the ceaseless whine of air-raid sirens, and below that a series of dull cracks like rolling thunder. I told myself to stay calm, but my heart thrummed like a drum machine.
Bombs were falling.
“We need to go,” I said, panic choking me. “There has to be a shelter nearby. Somewhere safe we can hide.”
“But we’re so close!” said Bronwyn. “We can’t quit now!”
There was another crack, closer this time, and the others started to get nervous, too.
“Maybe Jacob’s right,” said Horace. “Let’s find somewhere safe to hide until the bombing’s through. We can search more when it’s over.”
“Nowhere is truly safe,” said Enoch. “Those bombs can penetrate even a deep shelter.”
“They can’t penetrate a loop,” Emma said. “And if there’s a tale about this cathedral, there’s probably a loop entrance here, too.”
“Perhaps,” said Millard, “perhaps, perhaps. Hand me the book and I shall investigate.”
Bronwyn opened her trunk and handed Millard the book.
“Let me see now,” he said, turning its pages until he reached “The Pigeons of St. Paul’s.”
Bombs are falling and we’re reading stories, I thought. I have entered the realm of the insane.
“Listen closely!” Millard said. “If there’s a loop entrance nearby, this tale may tell us how to find it. It’s a short one, luckily.”
A bomb fell outside. The floor shook and plaster rained from the ceiling. I clenched my teeth and tried to focus on my breathing.
Unfazed, Millard cleared his throat. “The Pigeons of St. Paul’s!” he began, reading in a big, booming voice.
“We know the title already!” said Enoch.
“Read faster, please!” said Bronwyn.