The Desolations of Devil's Acre (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #6)

by Ransom Riggs

Sometimes an old photograph, an old friend, an old letter will remind you that you are not who you once were, for the person who dwelt among them, valued this, chose that, wrote thus, no longer exists. Without noticing it you have traversed a great distance; the strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange at least awkward or uncomfortable. —Rebecca Solnit “The Blue of Distance” A Field Guide to Getting Lost

there is only darkness and the sound of distant thunder and the hazy sensation of falling. Beyond that I have no self, no name. No memory. I am aware, dimly, that I used to have these things, but now they are gone and I am nearly nothing. A single photon of failing light circling a hungry void. It won’t be long now. I’ve lost my soul, I’m afraid, but I can’t remember how. All I can recall are slow, churning cracks of thunder, and within them the syllables of my name, whatever it used to be, drawn out until unrecognizable. That and the dark are all there is, for a long time, until another sound joins the thunder: wind. Then rain, too. There is wind, and thunder, and rain, and falling.

“As with any great endeavor,” she said. “Better to die trying. Better to burn out than fade away.”

Addison began to recite: “ ‘They sent forth men to battle, but no such men return. And home, to claim their welcome, come ashes in an urn.’ ” “Aeschylus,”

Every step was a calculation, a potential broken ankle. Shredded wood and shrapnel stippled the ground.

last words were a quote from Emerson: “Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.”