Scorched Earth: The Prequel to Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children (editing)

Chapter Fourteen

July 2, 1933

"You can lift all of the furniture in this room. I believe you," Miss Peregrine encouraged me as I sat cross legged on the floor. We had been going at this for at least an hour now. My training had massively improved over the past few months but lately I've found it rather difficult to carry out the tasks she asks me to complete. She kept insisting that it was vitally important and that I needed to know everything about my Peculiarity because some day in some situation, the knowledge of how it works would come in handy.

I didn't like trying to expand the possibilities of what I could do. I liked lifting things and hurling them across the room. I liked messing with people and freaking them out by levitating things and making them think it was magic or a ghost or something. Just two weeks ago Miss Peregrine got mad at me for doing just that. We were going to a movie, about to watch one of those American films that came out early in the year and were now showing in our theaters. Joanne and I wanted to see the romantic one with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable but Miss Peregrine said absolutely not and we ended up seeing Alice in Wonderland instead. It wasn't bad, but I still wanted to see the romance one. Mostly because Thomas had bragged in his letters that he went to go see it while his mother was at the Peculiar Archives and he said he knew all about love and women. I didn't think it was fair that he got to know this stuff and I didn't. Well anyway I was hungry and I just started secretly stealing food and people were losing their minds over where it went. Miss Peregrine went mad and told me if I ever did that again we would never come back to the theater, and so I promised her I wouldn't.

She stood in front of me now, in a long floor length dress that was a deep purple color. It was less fashionable than the current trend and she looked like some snob aristocratic wife that walked right out of the year 1864. She had been dressing like this lately and I didn't understand where these large dresses came from or why she felt the need to wear them. Other than it being a little weird, I thought it was okay because at least no one dared to approach us when we walked to the market to buy groceries for a week. Although it did make us stand out and I didn't like that because I thought the point of us living under a fake name was to blend in, and when one dresses way out of style in one of the biggest cities in England, of course we stood out. Joanne tried telling her to not dress like a middle aged Duchess parading through the streets of Londontown with her ladies maid and tiny child, but Miss Peregrine shut her up real quick with a snarky comment and something along the lines of 'You're a middle aged woman, put that in your pipe and smoke it'.

I didn't really understand how she could wear something so thick when it was so hot outside. Summer was here and bared down upon us as we swept through the streets and slipped into hidden cities in search of Miss Sparrow. We knew she was alive, but not where she was.

"Amelia," Miss Peregrine's voice snapped me into reality once again. "You're distracted."

"I'm sorry, Miss Peregrine," I responded.

"Clear your mind. I don't know what you're thinking about, but it's keeping you from training," she frowned. I didn't say anything, just bowed my head and pretended that I found the carpet more interesting.

"Feel everything around you, feel the energy of everything," she instructed.

I closed my eyes and my mind bounced from myself, to the ground, the ceiling, then Miss Peregrine and the curtains and the couch and the lamps. It went as far as to feeling the heavy force of an incoming storm fifty kilometers away. I could feel the people walking on the streets below and the newspaper publishing chief in the building across the street coughing from a chunk of lemon in his tea. I focused back on the content in the room and opened my eyes to see Miss Peregrine watching me. My fists were clenched and the room went dead silent. It was as if the world was waiting for me to do something, to move something. Miss Peregrine waited.