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With everyone thus distracted, we picked ourselves up, bolted for the turnstiles, and ran out into a bustling London afternoon

We became lost in the chaos of the streets It felt like we’d been plunged into a jar of stirred liquid, racing with particles: gentlears all rushing purposefully in every direction, weaving around tiny, sputtering cars and cart vendors crying their wares and buskers blowing horns and buses blowing horns and shuddering to stops to spillall this was a canyon of colu down a street half in shadow, the afternoon sun low and low, a lantern winking through fog

Dizzy fro while with lass ofMy phone was a useless relic of the future but an object which retained so, thin filanizable one I’d once belonged to; a thing that said to me as I touched it, You are here and this is real and you are not drea around me vibrate a little less quickly

Enoch had spent his formative years in London and claimed to still know its streets, so he led We stuck mostly to alleys and back lanes, which utter pipes, its grandness revealed in glimpses as we dashed across wide boulevards and back to the safety of shadows Weone another between alleys Horace pretended to trip over a curb, then bounced up nihed like iddy, half in disbelief that we’d h the woods, past snarling hollows and death squads of wights, all the way to London

We put a good long way between us and the train station and then stopped in an alley by some trash cans to catch our breath Bronwyn set down her trunk and lifted Miss Peregrine out, and she wobbled drunkenly across the cobblestones Horace and Millard broke out laughing

"What’s so funny?" said Bronwyn "It ain’t Miss P’s fault she’s dizzy"

Horace swept his arrandly "Welcorander than you described it, Enoch And oh, did you describe it! For seventy-five years: London, London, London! The greatest city on Earth!"

Millard picked up a trash-can lid "London! The finest refuse available anywhere!"

Horace doffed his hat "London! Where even the rats wear top hats!"

"Oh, I didn’t go on about it that much," Enoch said

"You did!" said Olive " ‘Well, that’s not how they do things in London,’ you’d say Or, ‘In London, the food is rand tour of the city right now!" Enoch said defensively "Would you rather walk through alleys or be spotted by wights?"

Horace ignored him "London: where every day’s a holiday … for the trash hter was infectious Soon nearly all of us were giggling--even Enoch "I suppose I did glamorize it a bit," he ad about London," Olive said with a frown "It’s dirty and smelly and full of cruel, nasty people who make children cry and I hate it!" She scrunched her face into a scowl and added, "And I’h harder

"Those people in the station were nasty," said Millard "But they got what they deserved! I’ll never forget that man’s face when Bronwyn stuffed hiot stung in the buain"

I glanced at Hugh, expecting hi