Credibility- A Miss Peregrine's Fanfiction

Chapter I

After just three hours on the water, we had gotten almost nowhere, and I was sea-sick. It didn't usually happen, so I was incredibly annoyed. I leaned over the side of the boat to empty my stomach one more time. Fiona tapped me on the shoulder and held her hands out, as if to take the oars from me. "Oh, no, Fee. You just took a turn." I brushed her off. She didn't need to know that the reason why I continued to row was so that I wasn't left along to my thoughts for too long. Behind us, Cairnholm got smaller and smaller. Someday, I really wanted to get back there.

Pretty much running alongside ours, Jacob and Emma's boat held our map, and they were our navigators. "Look! The island's disappearing!" Enoch called out, and when I turned back, the fog began covering up the island like it had a kind of it's own.

"Do you suppose it'll be harder for the wights to track us down, now that they can't see us?" Horace asked tiredly from Bronwyn and Olive's boat. Both he and Bronwyn rowed, Olive was lifted back up into the sky every time she turned the paddles. Bronwyn did most of the work.

"Certainly." Millard said. "They don't have much means of navigational equipment, do they?" He laughed halfheartedly. Nobody else seemed to think it was funny.

Our hopes to get to the mainland were slowly sinking as the sky lost its friendly robin's egg blue color and took on a more pearly gray. The waves got higher, and higher, and higher, until Jacob shouted, "look out!" And pointed past Horace, Bronwyn, and Olive's boat to a wave bigger than all the rest. They couldn't get out of the way in time and were enveloped in water.

Bronwyn resurfaced first, and paddled around frantically. "Where's Olive? We've got to get her!" Horace's head made contact with the side of our boat, and he called, "she was in front of me when the boat tipped!"

"She's up there!" Jacob pointed to where a thick length of rope was coming out of the water and into the sky. Olive started flying down, and as she descended, she said, "I saw the mainland when I was up there, it's not too far!"

Bronwyn flipped her boat right side up, and lashed all the rest of them together. Horace pulled his soggy hat out of the water, dumped the water out, and put it back on. Bronwyn took up the oars, and followed Olive's directions. "Left, a little to the right. No! Too much right."
~*~
Night was upon us when we got to the beach. Bronwyn fell on the sand, exhausted. "Bronwyn, you are our savior!" I exclaimed.

"Well, I guess you owe me now. Only kidding." She grinned when she saw my expression. I walked further up to where the woods bordered the beach. Jacob started giving orders. We didn't have many possessions anymore. We had the clothes on our backs, Bronwyn's big steamer trunk, and some cans of food.

"Go get some firewood." Jacob told Fiona and Horace.

"But Jacob, I'm cold, and wet, and I don't want to." Horace said.

"Well, walking ought to keep you warm, won't it?" Enoch said, watching from a distance when Bronwyn opened the latches of her trunk. Inside were three water-soaked copies of Tales of the Peculiar, and a bathmat with the initials A.P. On the corner.

"Oh, thank heavens someone found the bathmat. We are saved!" Enoch declared, arms folded.

"Dear God!" Millard moaned. "We've lost the Map of Days. It was one of only five extant copies! Incalculable value!" He cried.

"Hey, man, at least we have our singular map." Jacob said. "That's all we need."

"Actually, that's gone." Emma said. "It was during the wave, I couldn't keep a hold of it, and the wind blew it out of my hands! I'm so sorry, Jacob."

"Well, at least it's not raining." I said. Horace and Fiona came back from the woods, empty handed.

"There's no wood for a fire anywhere!" He declared, taking his top hat off and trying to smooth it out. I wondered briefly if it would start to deteriorate, just like our house.

"Did you look in the woods?" Emma asked. She was annoyed and tired, not in the mood for any nonsense answer that he would provide.

"Too scary. We heard an owl. But we did find something else. Balloons. Big ones in the sky."

"You should take us to them." Jacob said worriedly. All of us followed Horace and Fiona back to where they found the balloons. Way up in the sky hovered two large Zeppelin-like war balloons.

"Those aren't any party balloons. Those are the real deal. I mean, the best way to spot enemy subs is from the sky." Enoch remarked. He was so smart. But, no. I shouldn't think like that anymore. We were over and done with. Forever.

"But they're not after us, right?" Hugh said. "These are Americans, yes?"

"There's no reason to think they haven't infiltrated both sides of the war. Wights are crafty, they're not just allied with the Germans." Millard said.

"Well, it's fine and dandy you know these things about 'em, but they're not even searching the sea. They're trained on the coastline." Enoch frowned. "That's not their purpose."

"They're searching for us!" Jacob replied, dumbstruck.