Miss Peregrine and I were pushed through the opening together, and there was a moment, tangled in the vines, when I was able to whisper to her unnoticed.
“What should I do when we get inside?”
“Anything he asks,” she whispered back. “If we don’t anger him, we may yet survive.”
Survive, yes—but at what cost?
And then we were parting the vines and stumbling into a strange new space: a stone room open to the sky. For an instant my breath abandoned me, so shocked was I by the giant, misshapen face staring back at us from opposite wall. A wall—that’s all it was—but one with a gaping mouth for a door, two warped eyes for windows, a pair of holes for nostrils, and grown over with long grass that resembled hair and an unruly beard. The moaning wind was louder than ever here, as if the mouth-shaped door were trying to warn us away in some ancient language made of vowels a week long.
Caul indicated the door. “The library awaits.”
Bentham removed his hat. “Extraordinary,” he said, hushed and reverent. “It almost seems to be singing to us. Like all the resting souls here are coming awake to welcome us.”
“Welcoming,” said Emma. “I doubt that.”
The guards pushed us toward the door. We ducked through the low opening and into another cavelike room. Like the others we’d seen in Abaton, it had been dug by hand from soft rock, untold ages ago. It was low-ceilinged and bare, empty but for some scattered straw and broken shards of pottery. Its most unique feature was the walls, into which had been dug many dozens of small coves. They were oval-topped and flat on the bottom, large enough to hold a bottle or a candle. At the back of the room, several doors forked away into darkness.
“Well, boy?” said Caul. “Can you see any?”
I looked around. “Any what?”
“Don’t trifle with me. Soul jars.” He stepped to a wall and swept his hand inside one of the coves. “Go and pick one up.”
I turned slowly, scanning the walls. Every cove appeared to be empty. “I don’t see anything,” I said. “Maybe there aren’t any.”
“You’re lying.”
Caul nodded to my guard. The guard punched me in the stomach.
Emma and Miss Peregrine shouted as I fell to my knees, groaning. Looking down at myself, I saw blood trickling through my shirt—not from the punch, but from my hollow bite.
“Please, Jack!” cried Miss Peregrine. “He’s just a boy!”
“Just a boy, just a boy!” Caul said mockingly. “That’s the very heart of the problem! You’ve got to punish them like men, water them with a bit of blood, and then the shoot begins to spring up, the plant to grow.” He strode toward me while spinning the barrel of his odd, antique pistol. “Straighten his leg. I want a clean shot at the knee.”
The guard shoved me to the ground and grabbed ahold of my calf. My cheek ground into the dirt, my face aimed at the wall.
I heard the gun’s hammer pull back. And then, as the women begged Caul for mercy, I saw something in one the coves in the wall. A shape I hadn’t noticed before—
“Wait!” I shouted. “I see something!”
The guard flipped me over.
“Come to your senses, have you?” Caul was standing over me, looking down. “What do you see?”
I looked again, blinking. Forced myself to be calm, my vision to focus.
There in the wall, coming gradually into view like a Polaroid photo, was the faint image of a stone jar. It was a simple, unadorned thing, cylindrical in shape with a tapered neck and a cork plugging its top, its stone the same reddish color as the strange hills of Abaton.
“It’s a jar,” I said. “Just one. It was tipped over, that’s why I didn’t notice it at first.”
“Stand,” Caul said. “I want to see you pick it up.”
I drew my knees to my chest, rocked forward onto my feet, and stood, pain rioting through my midsection. I shuffled across the room and reached slowly into the cove. I slid my fingers around the jar, then got a shock and pulled my hand away.
“What is it?” Caul said.
“It’s freezing,” I replied. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Fascinating,” murmured Bentham. He’d been lingering near the door, as if reconsidering this whole endeavor, but now he took a step closer.
I reached into the cove again, ready for the cold this time, and removed the jar.
“This is wrong,” Miss Peregrine said. “There’s a peculiar soul in there, and it should be treated with respect.”
“To be eaten by me would be the greatest respect a soul could be paid,” Caul said. He came and stood next to me. “Describe the jar.”
“It’s very simple. Made of stone.” It was starting to freeze my right hand, so I passed it to my left, and then I saw, written across the back in tall, spidery letters, a word.
Aswindan.
I wasn’t going to mention it, but Caul was watching me like a hawk and had seen me notice something. “What is it?” he demanded. “I warn you, hold nothing back!”
“It’s a word,” I said. “Aswindan.”
“Spell it.”
“A-s-w-i-n-d-a-n.”
“Aswindan,” Caul said, his brow furrowing. “That’s Old Peculiar, isn’t it?”
“Obviously,” Bentham said. “Don’t you remember your lessons?”
“Of course I do! I was a quicker study than you, remember? Aswindan. The root is wind. Which doesn’t refer to the weather but denotes quickness, as in quickening—as in strengthening, invigoration!”
“I’m not so sure about that, brother.”
“Oh you’re not,” Caul said sarcastically. “I think you want it for yourself!”
Caul reached out and tried to snatch the jar from me. He managed to get his fingers around it, but as soon as the jar left my hand his fingers closed on themselves, as if there were suddenly nothing between them, and the jar dropped to the floor and smashed.
Caul swore and looked down, dumbfounded, as blue and brightly glowing liquid puddled at our feet.
“I can see it now!” he said excitedly, pointing at the blue puddle. “That, I can see!”
“Yes—yes, me too,” said Bentham, and the guards concurred. They could all see the liquid, but not the jars that contained and protected it.
One of the guards bent down to graze the blue liquid with his finger. The moment he touched it he cried out and jumped back, flapping his hand to shake the stuff off. If the jar was freezing, I could only imagine how cold the blue stuff was.
“What a waste,” Caul said. “I would have liked to combine that with a few other choice souls.”
“Aswindan,” Bentham recited. “Root word swind. Meaning shrink. Be glad you didn’t take that one, brother.”
Caul frowned. “No. No, I’m certain I was right.”
“You’re not,” said Miss Peregrine.
His gaze darted between them, paranoid, as if he were weighing the possibility they might somehow be in league against him. Then he seemed to let it go. “This is just the first room,” he said. “The better souls are deeper in, I’m sure.”
“I agree,” said Bentham. “The farther we go, the older the souls will be, and the older the soul, the more powerful.”
“Then we shall plumb the very heart of this mountain,” said Caul, “and eat it.”
*
We were prodded through one of the black doors, pistols at our ribs. The next room was much like the first, with coves combing its walls and doors leading into the dark. There were no windows, though, and just a single blade of afternoon sun slicing down the dusty floor. We were leaving daylight behind us.
Caul ordered Emma to make a flame. He ordered me to inventory the contents of the walls. I duly reported three jars, but my word wasn’t enough; he made me tap each one with my fingernail to prove it was there, and pass my hand through dozens of empty coves to prove they were vacant.
Next he made me read them. Heolstor. Unge-sewen. Meagan-wundor. The words were meaningless to me, unsatisfactory to him. “The souls of piddling slaves,” he complained to Bentham. “If we’re to be kings, we need the souls of kings.”