Alma Peregrine—Esmerelda Avocet

Miss Peregrine—Miss Avocet is both an educational bond and a relationship of mutual responsibility. Miss Avocet helped shape Miss Peregrine’s life as an ymbryne through her teaching; years later, when Miss Avocet reaches her former pupil in distress, Miss Peregrine tends to her and listens to a warning that places them both in danger.

Teacher and student

Miss Avocet occupies an exceptional place among peculiars: Miss Peregrine describes her as close to royalty, and says that for fifty years people tried to elect her leader of the Council of Ymbrynes. Miss Avocet repeatedly declined, unwilling to give up teaching at the academy she had founded with Miss Bunting. Her influence was consequently expressed less through formal leadership than through the generations of ymbrynes she educated. Miss Peregrine says that every ymbryne worth her wings had passed under Miss Avocet’s tutelage, herself included.

The relationship began when Miss Peregrine was among the youngest pupils Miss Avocet had accepted. In a photograph of women and children arranged around a paper moon, Miss Peregrine identifies herself as the little girl in glasses. The image supplies a concrete measure of the distance between the two women’s roles at different moments: the future guardian of a household appears there as a young student within Miss Avocet’s school community. Miss Peregrine recalls that beginning with pride, acknowledging the teacher’s lasting importance to her own formation.

Reunion and care

When Miss Avocet arrives at Miss Peregrine’s home in a severely weakened state, Miss Peregrine’s first response is not to treat her simply as a visitor or a source of information. She reprimands Emma Bloom for sneaking away, but sets punishment aside because Miss Avocet would not have left her wards to come there unless something dire had happened. The urgency of the visit overrides discipline: Miss Peregrine recognizes that her mentor’s presence signals a crisis.

Miss Peregrine prepares a tonic and urges Miss Avocet to drink it. After a few sips, the older woman emerges briefly from her stupor, coughs, and asks whether she has fallen asleep; she then recognizes Miss Peregrine as Alma. Miss Peregrine kneads her mentor’s bony hands and tells her that her unexpected arrival in the dead of night has made everyone anxious. The exchange reverses their former positions without erasing them: the former pupil now provides immediate physical care, while the teacher’s arrival carries knowledge that the younger woman urgently needs.

Warning and shared danger

Miss Avocet has come to warn Miss Peregrine that ymbrynes are being taken. She says that she herself was caught by surprise and cautions her former pupil not to suffer the same fate. When Miss Peregrine asks what happened, the news establishes that Miss Avocet was abducted rather than killed. Miss Wren and Miss Treecreeper have also been taken after their loops were invaded a fortnight earlier. Miss Avocet understands these incidents as a coordinated effort against ymbrynes, though she cannot imagine its purpose.

Miss Peregrine quietly concludes that the attackers will come for them too. Miss Avocet answers that her home is better hidden than most, but insists that she must be ready. The teacher’s warning therefore reaches beyond their personal bond: it gives Miss Peregrine direct knowledge of a wider threat to ymbrynes and to the children under their care. Yet the warning cannot undo what has already happened. Miss Avocet looks at her trembling hands, calls attention to the children left alone, and turns away weeping.

What the relationship reveals

The scenes place Miss Avocet’s authority and vulnerability side by side. In the photograph and Miss Peregrine’s recollection, she is the renowned educator whose pupils include the young Alma. In the nighttime reunion, she is exhausted and shaken, dependent on that former pupil for a tonic and consolation. Miss Peregrine’s care does not diminish the older woman’s authority: Miss Avocet remains the person who can interpret the abductions and warn the household. Their bond is sustained by an exchange of forms of care—education earlier in life, protection and listening in the present.

The relationship also makes the looming danger intimate. The abductions are not an abstract report from elsewhere: they have reached Miss Avocet herself, bringing a former teacher to her pupil’s door in the dead of night. Miss Peregrine’s response combines personal affection with the responsibilities of an ymbryne. She tends to the teacher who once formed her, hears the warning, and recognizes that her own household may be next.