W

e rowed out t hrough the harbor , past bobbing boats weeping rust from their seams, past silent juries of seabirds roosting atop the barnacled remains of sunken docks, past fishermen who lowered their nets to stare as we slipped by , uncertain whet her we were real or imagined; a proces sion of waterborne ghosts, or ghosts soon to be. We were ten children and one bird in three small and unsteady boats, rowing with quiet in- tensity straight out to sea, the only safe harbor for miles receding quickly behind us, craggy and magica l in the blue-gold light of dawn. Our goal, the rutted coast of mainla nd W ales, was somewhere befor e us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon. We rowed past the old lighthouse, tranquil in the distance, which had just last night been the scene of so many traumas. It was there that, with bombs exploding aroun d us, we had nearly drowned, nearly been torn apart by bullets; that I had taken a gun and pulled its trigger and killed a man, an act still incomprehensible to me; that we had lost Miss Peregrine and got her back again — snatched from the steel jaws of a submarine —though the Miss Peregrine who was returned to us was damaged, in need of help we don’t know how to give. She perched now on the stern of our boat, feathered head bowed in something like mourning, watching the sanctuary she’d created slip away , a little more lost with every oar stroke. Finally we rowed past the breakwater and into the great blank