Maud Hawksbill is an ymbryne who runs a menagerie loop in France.
Biography[]
Miss Hawksbill is the sister of Miss Tern. When she completed her training with Miss Avocet, she established a loop on November 12, 1916, near her sister's just like they planned. She meant to collect a group of peculiar children, but before she had the chance and only a week after her house was completed, a hollowgast killed her sister.
It took a day or two for Miss Hawkbill to find out about her sister's death in which time the loop slipped. Miss Tern's loop sat near a battlefield, and several bombs hit her house. Multiple of Miss Terns animals were killed, and some were severally wounded. Miss Hawkbill took in the survivors, and she managed to find a talented taxidermist who was able to preserve these animals' lives and voices within their heads. Miss Hawksbill brought them to her house and they became her wards. She visited her sister in Miss Tern's now-collapsed loop now and then, although later she tells Jacob that she is thinking of packing up the animal heads and joining the ymbrynes in Devil's Acre.
The Desolations of Devil's Acre[]
Jacob Portman, Noor Pradesh, Emma Bloom, Bronwyn Bruntley and Addison MacHenry arrive at Miss Hawksbill's loop and look for her. They come across a shuttered cottage with a sign that reads "KEEP OFF GRASS" in three languages. Bronwyn calls for Miss Hawksbill and tells her they need to talk to her. Miss Hawksbill is at first unwilling to let them in, using a French idiom to tell them to go away, but once she realizes that they are peculiar, she allows them in. Once everyone is in, she yells to protect their ears as a bomb falls, sending dirt flying in through her window and causing her to swear in French. As her animal heads speak up and start spewing French insults, the peculiars realize that she doesn't have human wards. Miss Hawksbill explains how she ended up with the animal heads, and agrees to lead the peculiars to her sister's loop. She and the heads exchange two last insults with each other before she leads the peculiars across the World War I battlefield.
Miss Hawksbill warns the peculiars to watch her every move closely and follow exactly. She becomes briefly frustrated when a troop transport is nine-and-one-quarter seconds late, and says that she is afraid she has let her loop shift a tiny bit due to her wards sometimes allowing her to sleep late. However, she makes a mathematical compensation and everything happens as she is used to. While they are on the side of the British and French, one soldier walks up to them to shout "No women and children!" but Miss Hawksbill quickly memory-wipes him in one of the fastest wipes Jacob has ever seen.
Entering the trenches, Miss Hawksbill finds everyone gas masks. They come to a row of ladders leaned against sandbags, and tells everyone to be ready in four minutes and seven seconds. In response to Horace asking if she is sure which ladder, she says that one of the other crossings gets you shot, another gets you blown up, and another involves waiting for several hours for a German scout to get drunk, swimming through choleric corpsewater, and taking refuge inside the remains of a horse. Noor asks Miss Hawksbill what the seven prophesied peculiars are supposed to do in order to stop Caul, but Miss Hawksbill doesn't know. A bullet strikes one of the sandbags, and Miss Hawksbill has everyone put on their gas masks and start crossing.
She stops them at one point and waves them down in order to not get killed by a shell landing nearby. Taking seemingly random turns, she gets the peculiars out of being shot or getting hit by mortar shells. She has them hide once from two soldiers in a bunker, and fifty paces down the line knocks a soldier unconscious with a wooden board. Once they are out of the trenches, they go into a crumbling town and to the entrance of Miss Tern's loop, which was in the town zoo's bear pit.
After the changeover into 1916, Miss Hawksbill greets her sister's grimbear, Jacques, saying that she has brought guests to visit her sister. They soon see Miss Tern, who is surprised at the appearance of Miss Hawksbill looking so old and with a broken arm, but Miss Hawksbill kisses and hugs her before Miss Tern can say anythiing. After making excuses about her appearance, Miss Hawksbill tells her sister that the peculiars are on a grand tour of the Continental loops and wanted to see Miss Tern's menagerie.
Miss Hawksbill asks her sister to show the way to the meeting place of the prophesied peculiars, and they speak quietly together in French, walking in front of the other peculiars. When Miss Tern tries to follow them into the room where Julius Purcell and Sebbie Mayfield are waiting, Miss Hawksbill holds her back and says to sit and talk with her awhile.
Later, when everyone has formed a plan to get back to London, Miss Hawksbill says that she is planning to join the ymbrynes of Devil's Acre, and that she needs to let go of the broken shard of her looped sister. After the peculiars gather their things, a wight and a hollow (along with Horatio in disguise) finds them and tries to kill them. When the door of the house bursts off its hinges, it knocks Miss Hawksbill to the ground. After Horatio kills the other wight and sends the hollow away, Miss Hawksbill and Miss Petrel join Miss Tern to guide the peculiars to a tear in the loop's membrane that leads into the present.
Miss Hawksbill does not follow the peculiars into the present. Jacob speculates that she either couldn't, or perhaps needed to retrieve what was left of Miss Petrel, who had been killed by Murnau.
Description[]
Physical Appearance[]
Miss Hawksbill is physically in her 70s, though Jacob thinks that her actual age must be twice that, if not older. She keeps her gray hair in a painful-looking tight bun, and wears a long, blanketlike dress the color of dried blood. Her right hand is broken, and is wrapped in a cast hanging from a sling around her neck.
Peculiarity[]
Miss Hawksbill is an ymbryne, meaning she can manipulate time and make loops. She can also turn into a hawksbill bird.
Trivia[]
- Hawksbill is the name of a species of sea turtle that has a unique beak-like mouth that resembles a hawk's. A bird by this name may not actually exist.
Gallery[]
