CHAPTER 3

THE TRAVEL-LOVERS OF CAR NINE

The seat closest to the aisle, facing the back of the train.

From this spot, which had been firmly established as hers at some point without them ever talking about it, Kieli kept a sharp eye on the copper-haired man sitting kitty-corner from her, in the seat by the window facing the front of the train. He was casually letting his eyes roam the scenery outside, chin propped in his hand and head leaning on the window-pane. He hadn’t moved from that position in a while. After a few minutes, he abruptly lifted his head from the glass, easily rearranged his long legs, and reached a hand into his coat pocket.

He got a cigarette out and into his mouth, movements easy and familiar even with only one hand now, and as soon as it was in position Kieli promptly held out a lighter in front of him.

“Here. Go ahead,” she said with deliberate nonchalance. Harvey pulled back for a moment, shocked. But when Kieli calmly clicked the lighter and brought the fire to life without moving, he brought the tip of his cigarette in close and accepted the light with an extremely conflicted expression on his face. Kieli grinned to herself. That’s payback for before.

“Well, look at that! You’re finally starting to get thoughtful.”

At this tolerably impressed assessment from the radio by the window, Kieli shrugged lightly and smiled. “Aren’t I just?”

It was the fourth day of their journey. At first she’d reacted every time the radio had tried to order her around, but once she’d started humoring it, things had gotten reasonably fun. She actually thought this might be fun, as long as it lasted only until they got to their destination. When you got right down to it, the Corporal was the Corporal, and he and Kieli were on the same wavelength a lot of the time, particularly about things to do with Harvey.

Harvey himself was the only one out of step with things, in fact. He took the next puff on his cigarette with an expression on his face as though he’d just bitten a lemon.

“You don’t have to be thoughtful about this. Why do you even know how to do it, anyway?”

“Because I helped out a little bit at a bar Beatrix worked at,” Kieli answered easily. For some reason Harvey inhaled the wrong way and choked on his smoke.

“…You’re kidding, right?” he pressed in a weirdly raw voice after he’d rescued his fallen cigarette.

“No, it’s true. It was only a little bit, though. It was pretty interesting,” Kieli said as she pocketed the lighter she’d bought at the station. Harvey clicked his tongue in a really pissed-off way and then started mumbling invectives under his breath. She caught only a few snatches, including one that sounded like When I find that woman, she’s dead meat.

Kieli almost never saw Harvey react like this; it was so entertaining she couldn’t help laughing—which made his coppery eyes narrow and look even more disgruntled. She stifled the laugh when he glared at her.

She felt a little better now, somehow. When they’d left the parish border she’d been so uneasy, and she’d prepared herself for a more heavy-hearted journey, but whatever the circumstances might be, the three of them were still together. Being depressed won’t help anything. I’ll just do what I can, as well as I can. Once she put her doubts behind her like that, the somewhat out-of-the-ordinary relationships between the three of them seemed like a new, fresh experience, and she started to feel strangely as though she was redoing that fall two years ago when she’d met Harvey and the Corporal for the first time. The old days when Kieli was at the boarding school, and Becca was still with her. She’d met Harvey at Easterbury station, and she’d boarded his train thinking she’d tag along with him just for the length of the Colonization Days holiday, but that had been the beginning of a long, long journey. She and the Corporal had opened up to each other relatively quickly, but she and Harvey had gotten along awkwardly at first; he wouldn’t talk to her much, and they didn’t know each other very well yet…but she’d felt as if each discovery she made about him brought them a bit closer.

Every little thing had sparkled for her, every little thing had excited her, and she’d wished their journey would never end.

She was certain that feeling hadn’t changed, even now.

As Kieli stepped out of the restroom car and out onto the deck, she remembered that reaction of Harvey’s and started laughing to herself all over again. She happened to meet the eye of a male passenger she’d come across on the deck at just that moment, so she tried to smooth it over with a polite smile and nod, but the smile came out strange and stiff. The man did return her greeting, but he gave her a funny look.

This is really embarrassing…

Kieli hurried away, flushing. However, when she was about to step through the connecting door into the next car, she heard something like a moan behind her. She took her hand off the lever and turned back to the deck, only to see that same man curled into a ball on the floor where he’d stood.

“Um…”

Kieli hesitated a little, but she couldn’t just leave him there, so she walked back up to him. When she stooped over to check on him, she saw that his bent back was heaving and his breathing sounded strained.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing, I’m just a little train-sick…” the man answered in a feeble voice, lifting one hand a little. He didn’t look up. Kieli scratched her head for a few moments, unable to decide whether she should tell a conductor or try to find someone in his party to help him. Hesitantly, she reached out to at least rub his back for him, but he cut her off with a wave. “I’m fine now. Thanks.”

Then he stood up under his own power, although he didn’t look too steady on his feet.

“What car are you in? I can walk you back there, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, I’m in the same car as you.”

Kieli couldn’t quite understand what he meant right away.

“…Um, do you mean Car Nine?” She and Harvey were in Car Nine.

“Right, exactly. That one.” The man nodded, so Kieli ended up just sort of naturally accompanying him back to Car Nine.

“Are you on a trip?” the man asked her amiably as they walked down the aisle of Car Eight. He’d been quite sick just a minute ago, but now he seemed all better.

Wondering what had been the matter with him, Kieli nodded with a vague smile and an “I suppose so.” They were on a trip, technically, but it wasn’t for the sort of lighthearted reasons that come to mind when you think of a “trip.”

“I see,” said the man, beaming. “So am I. I’m here with my daughter. You see, we both love going on trips.”

“Right…”

“Do you like to travel?”

It was a casual question. Kieli thought about her answer a little before she gave it. “…Yes, I do. Sometimes I even think it’d be nice if I could ride the trains forever.”

She found herself smiling, just a teeny bit wryly, but honestly, nonetheless.

Their conversation brought them all the way to Car Nine. When she pulled the lever and opened the door, a funny feeling gripped her for just a moment, as if she’d stumbled into the wrong car. She checked the plate over the door, but it clearly said Car Nine. Kieli tilted her head in confusion.

“Papa!” cried a bright soprano voice as a girl ran up to them from a set of facing seats near the middle of the car. She flung herself at the man, who greeted her with a smile. “Here we are. Thank you very much,” the man told her, taking a seat with his daughter. They were in the set of seats just behind Kieli’s. Apparently they’d been sitting right nearby the whole time.

“Thanks!” called the girl, waving with her father. She looked to be a few years younger than Kieli. As Kieli waved back and smiled, she thought that the bright hair divided into two pigtails on either side of this girl’s head reminded her of Becca somehow. She went back to her own seat feeling satisfied at having helped someone, even if she hadn’t done too much.

Harvey was smoking with his elbow propped on the windowsill. He glanced up at her and said, “Took you long enough. What were you doing?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing much,” Kieli answered vaguely, taking her usual place kitty-corner from him. Harvey returned his gaze to the window, not looking particularly interested. She hunched her shoulders, feeling just a little bit miffed that he’d asked her what she was doing and then not bothered to press her when she didn’t answer.

“Herbie,” called the radio by the window.

“Harvey,” Harvey corrected as usual, glaring peevishly at it.

“History homework is right up your alley. Even more so if it’s Church history—you could tell her more than she’d ever want to know. You should just help her already.”

“You’re kidding. Why should I?” Harvey retorted immediately, scowling. Listening to them, Kieli thought Oh, right. Technically I’m on this trip to write my Church history report. Considering that this fact directly concerned her, she should really have realized it before the other two did.

Reports are such a pain… When she thought about when Colonization Days would end and she’d have to go back to the boarding school, she started to feel a little gloomy.

Damn the woman, making Kieli work a job like that…

Cursing mentally, Harvey jabbed the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray by the window with uncalled-for force. It made him seriously want to track her down and give her a piece of his mind. Though at the same time, since he couldn’t imagine he had a chance against her in a verbal argument, he also got the feeling that his “piece of his mind” would end with her getting the last word.

He’d just put out his cigarette, but a long sigh escaped him like exhaling smoke.

He’d considered, as one of his options, leaving Kieli in Beatrix’s care again when they found her and setting out for the capital on his own. As a pretty attractive option, in fact. But since they hadn’t gotten a single lead on Beatrix’s whereabouts, he hadn’t been able to really make a move since they’d come back from Westerbury, so the trip to the capital was on hold. It made him impatient, but on the other hand he suspected he was half-relieved that he wouldn’t have to leave Kieli behind until then. Am I using Beatrix as a convenient excuse to put off dealing with my problems…? When he thought about that, he felt himself sinking subtly into self-loathing.

“Master, you keep sighing lately. Is something weighing on your mind?” asked the radio propped more or less right above the train’s fixed ashtray. Stupid question, asked in a stupid voice. Feeling a migraine coming on, Harvey gave an even deeper sigh.

“Right now what’s weighing on my mind is you.”

“What?! I’m making you worry, Master? This is horrible—I have no choice but to atone with my death…!”

“Seriously, you’re already dead.” The offhand jibe was all Harvey had in him; he didn’t have the energy to deal with the Corporal anymore. He leaned his head heavily on the windowpane. He was so used to the view of the gently sloping wilderness that it just slid past his eyes without making any claim on his brain. The scenery practically looked static, and the more he stared at the boring sight, the more all his synapses threatened to come to a halt, too.

And then far off in the distance, at the very edge of his field of vision, he saw a great swaying shadow in the sky above the northern fault line.

Harvey lifted his chin from his hand and squinted. His right eye went out of focus and blurred the image, so he concentrated on the vision out of his left and looked closely.

What is that, a tower…?

Something that looked like a man-made, spired structure was gently wavering in the sand-colored smog that drifted through the air. He was fairly certain there wasn’t a town there. Gradually other passengers in their car noticed it too, until a group of them were plastering their faces into the window glass and peering excitedly. Was it a mirage…?

Fzzsh…

Suddenly he heard an alien static crackle from the radio’s speaker.

“…Did you just say something, Corporal?”

“Hmm?”

The radio’s blank response was infused with a static Harvey hadn’t heard until now. When he focused his attention and listened, although it was almost too faint to make out, he realized the static had a fluctuation to it like a new wavelength. A fluctuation with dynamics that sounded like some sort of music. “Where is that signal coming from?”

“Huh? I’m only picking up the same frequency as usual…”

Harvey didn’t quite trust the radio’s response, but evidently a different signal was interfering slightly with the guerrilla station’s frequency.

Something struck him. He returned his attention to the shape above the fault. The other passengers were still gazing at it, whispering excitedly. A towerlike building, radio waves broadcasting music on the guerrilla station’s frequency— radio—tower— Strings of words ran through his head, tugging at his mind.

From this car the angle was all wrong for him to see the tracks ahead of them, but he was pretty sure they were getting close to the next station. Maybe I’ll try getting off for a while…

It was then that he realized something.

“Hey, where’s Kieli?”

“She never came back from the toilet, did she? For goodness’ sake, where could that stupid girl have wandered off to?”

Harvey was already standing up by the time the radio finished its invective (which was exactly the type that normally would have been directed at him). “Are you going to search the bathroom for her, Master?” Ah, good point, he thought, sitting back down. There was still some time, and she’d probably be back by the time they pulled into the station.

Harvey leaned against the window again and gazed at the faraway floating tower. It would mean an abrupt change in their travel plans, but if his instincts were right (and for better or worse, his gut feelings were hardly ever wrong), it was probably worth spending a little time looking into that thing.

“Um, hey. Harvey, have you noticed that there’s no God in the Church?”

“What are you talking about? Have I noticed…?”

As Harvey brought the lighter to his cigarette, he gave her a funny look. He didn’t deny it, though; rather, he seemed to be wondering why she would be asking about something so obvious. Kieli automatically brightened.

She continued enthusiastically. “Do you know why that is? I think this planet was too far away, so He went back home…”

Before she could get very far, someone was standing by her seat. She looked up to see a man in a high-collared dark blue uniform standing in the aisle. “Oh.” She hurriedly pulled a ticket out of her school uniform pocket and offered it to the conductor. The conductor leaned over and peered at the ticket, then smiled as if to say “You’re okay.” Kieli smiled bashfully back at him. Come to think of it, wasn’t it my childhood dream to be a conductor?

For some reason she felt nostalgic all of a sudden, and her eyes started to sting with oncoming tears. She couldn’t think what had brought the feeling on, though.

“Want a cookie?” said an innocent voice, and someone held out a paper bag to her from overhead with a little rustling noise. When Kieli cut off her train of thought and looked up, the girl from before who’d been sitting in the seats behind them was leaning out over the backrest, peeking into their seats. The girl in twin pigtails, who looked a little like Becca.

She was holding the bag of cookies in both hands and grinning, so Kieli smiled at her and took a cookie. “Thanks.”

She could hear the girl’s father’s voice from the other side of the backrest saying “Stop it, that’s dangerous,” but the girl paid no attention to him, happily seesawing back and forth on her stomach. “You want some too, Mister?” she asked Harvey, untroubled.

“No,” Harvey refused flatly, without even lifting his head to look at her.

“Grumpy! No fun!” the girl declared with extreme bluntness, and then stuck her hand into the bag and fished out her own cookie. Kieli couldn’t stifle a giggle. She really was like Becca. Before she could help it, her thoughts turned to a future that had never happened: she was sure if Becca had come with them on the trip, it would have been lively in just this way.

“I love traveling! I’ve been traveling with Papa forever,” the girl informed her as she munched on her cookie.

“Yeah, I like it too,” Kieli answered with a smile, and brought her own cookie to her mouth.

“How long have you been on the train?”

“Huh? Um…”

She’d been about to give an offhand answer, but for some reason only fuzzy numbers were coming to her, and she couldn’t reply right away. Wait, when did I get on? Kieli racked her brain for several seconds, but by then the girl had changed the subject to herself without listening to Kieli’s answer.

“I’ve been riding it for about ten years, I think.”

“Huh,” murmured Kieli, but she was privately impressed. The girl couldn’t be more than a few years past ten from the looks of her, so she must have started traveling when she was really little.

“Hey, will you be my friend?”

“Sure, if that’s all right with you.”

They’d probably end up being friends only until they got off the train, but Kieli’d felt drawn to this girl who looked like Becca, so she agreed gladly. The girl screamed a delighted “Yes!”

“All these people are my friends, too. We all get along.”

The passengers in the other seats started to gather around them too, bringing all different sorts of refreshments. They struck up conversations with good-natured smiles. It was sort of cozy, like they were all old acquaintances.

“I love traveling, too. I’ve been riding for just about fifteen years now.”

“Well, I’ve been traveling for over twenty years.”

“Trains are just wonderful, aren’t they? I could ride for decades and not get tired of it.”

Kieli looked around at all the passengers falling over one another to brag about their travel experiences (actually, it seemed more as though they were just saying how long they’d been on the train), and though she smiled back at them, she was starting to feel a little spooked.

She shot a diagonal glance at Harvey that said Aren’t these people a little strange?, but Harvey actually spoke up and said, “Me, I’ve been traveling for eighty years,” looking perfectly at home. Kieli knew that, of course, but…It felt as if she was being left out of the group, with nothing to do with herself. This time she darted a quick look toward the radio at the window for help.

Outside the window, a white platform and a station house were coming into view. She felt somewhat relieved that they were reaching a station, until—

Huh?

—instead of slowing down, it felt as if the train was speeding up, and they shot past the platform in no time. It was no abandoned station; she’d seen people ready to greet arriving passengers, and people who looked as if they were waiting for the train…

Something was definitely strange here. Kieli got up and started to step into the aisle, but the girl grabbed her by the shirt. “Where are you going?”

“What’s the matter? I thought you liked traveling, too. So you can just keep riding forever.”

“Traveling is so much fun. It makes you wish the journey would never end.”

“If you stay here, you can stay on this fun trip forever.”

“Come on. You won’t go anywhere, will you? You said you’d be my friend!”

More passengers came up to her, clamoring one and all for her to stay. By this point every single passenger in the car was surrounding Kieli in a throng. Behind the smiles of the people she’d thought were so cheerful, Kieli glimpsed madmen. “Harvey!” she cried, turning back to their seats for help, but Harvey was serenely smoking his cigarette as he regarded her distress. If anything, he looked confused.

“What’s wrong? Stay on the train. Don’t you want to travel with me forever?”

Kieli shuddered. Before, she’d thought something was off, but now she knew. Harvey would never say something like that—and for that matter, this Harvey had a right arm. Why hadn’t she questioned that until now? This wasn’t the Harvey of now. This was Harvey from when she’d met him two years ago in Easterbury. She should have known from the fact that she was wearing her school uniform that something funny was going on, but until this moment it had seemed only natural.

“You can’t get off now. We were sucked into this place ten years ago. Come on, stay with us. We’re not lonely if we’re all together…”

The train hurtled faster and faster, and each patch of scenery out the window was gone almost before it appeared. The girl and the other passengers grabbed at her clothes and hands, and Kieli lurched this way and that as they pulled, calling with all her might for someone who wasn’t here.

“HARVEY!”

Where did she go?

Harvey was at a total loss. He hadn’t figured she could get lost inside the train. As he looked left and right, standing stock-still in the center of the platform where he was in pretty much everyone’s way, the hurried flow of passengers disem-barking and passengers boarding branched in two around him like a river hitting a sandbar, and then merged together again once it was past.

Kieli still hadn’t come back when they started approaching the station, so he’d searched every car from front to back for her, but he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere. Meanwhile the train had pulled into the station, so he’d grabbed their belongings and gone outside, just in case she’d gotten off the train before him. But no matter how hard he scoured the platform and the ticket gate with his eyes, she was nowhere in sight. The train parked alongside the platform was restlessly belching out steam as if it couldn’t wait to depart.

Guess I’ll search inside one more time…

He got back on board, taking just the radio with him, and started walking back from the front-most car just as he had last time, but somewhere around halfway through the train he started to feel as if maybe this wasn’t the way to find her after all. Still, if “this way” wasn’t right, he naturally had zero idea what else to do. He was so far at his wit’s end he was starting to actually feel impressed—how could anyone possibly get so neatly lost on a train, where there was nowhere to go but in a straight line?

“You know, Master, the train’s going to leave pretty soon.”

“I know, but…”

When he came through the rear deck of Car Eight and into Car Nine something suddenly caught his attention at the edge of his field of vision, and he came to a stop.

“……?” Harvey walked a couple of steps backward, coming back out onto the deck again to stand in front of the connecting door. For just a split second, he felt something off, as if he was seeing double. His right eye had taken a beat to catch up with his left and let their two images overlap, so at first he thought maybe that was what was causing the feeling, but no; the quality of this “offness” seemed different.

He squinted intently up at the door, but the harder he looked, the more it seemed to elude him, slipping out of his peripheral vision so that it was impossible to grasp what it really was.

“Sometimes the clearest way to see the unseen is with the unseeing, huh?”

A voice piped up behind him out of nowhere. A boy’s voice, a bit on the high side, with intonation that betrayed an accent he’d never heard before. Sensing something like malicious hostility, Harvey’s brain automatically kicked into high alert.

He spun around only just in time for his peripheral vision to catch a shadowy form fleeing nimbly out of sight. Immediately, he launched himself half-over the railing of the deck, but it had already disappeared without a trace into the gap between the train and the platform. What was that…?

Whoo-oo-oo!

The piercing scream of the train whistle started up, heralding their imminent departure. Light gray steam belched out of the exhaust pipe as if to tell him he was out of time. Harvey tore his attention away from the suspicious figure and turned back to face the connecting door again, but he was at just as much of an impasse as before; he still couldn’t figure out what had felt so off.

The clearest way to see the unseen is with the unseeing…?

After a moment’s thought, he experimentally covered his left eye with his hand. With his good eye blocked, everything in eyeshot abruptly turned sketchy. He looked up at the door again using only the unreliable vision of his right eye.

There before him loomed a door so old-looking it was uncanny. Every last inch of it was covered in red rust. The stench of rotting flesh began to waft toward him and mingle with the thick smell of rust, leaving Harvey momentarily transfixed. He gulped. When he looked up to the top of the door, he saw the words “Car Nine” engraved in a scratchy, antique font on a metal plate as horribly rusted as the door itself. It was the door to a car that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Can you see that, Corporal…?”

“Yes, Master. I just saw the same thing you did.”

Quit it with the damn “Master” thing, Harvey grumbled internally, winding the radio’s cord around his wrist before setting his hand on the lever of the door, which was coated not only with rust, but also with some viscous, sticky substance he couldn’t identify. He paused for just a moment, and then with no further hesitation pulled the door open with one yank.

For all he’d imagined exactly this, he still sucked in a little startled breath when he laid eyes on the interior of the car. The walls and ceiling and even the seats were crawling with the same dense red rust as the door. In any normal circumstances, the long car stretching before him would have been rotting in a corner of some dump for decommissioned vehicles long ago. He didn’t see anyone sitting in any of the seats; instead a crowd of people had concentrated together in one section of the aisle. Looking around above the heads of the shorter passengers, he caught sight of the girl he was looking for in the center of the throng.

“Kieli!”

Within the group, every member of which turned toward him in concert, he glimpsed a certain face that shocked him to the core. Me—? Yet even as he stood gaping at it, the face crumbled apart until the figure looked like a poorly made clay doll.

Pestered and pulled at from all directions, Kieli turned a near-tearful face at him. Harvey forced his way through the outer circle of the crowd and reached out his hand. Kieli reached out too with all her might from in between the people surrounding her. When her hand brushed his, he gripped it and pulled her forcibly out of the middle of the mob.

“Harveeyyyy!”

Kieli leaped at him; he caught her to his chest and, for lack of any better ideas, launched into stream of abuse.

“What’s wrong with you, just wandering into another weird dimension again—?!”

“No, you can’t take her away!”

A little girl clutched at Kieli’s clothes—at least, you could call her a girl, but her face was plainly that of a corpse. Half-rotten skin darkened to an earthy brown, all the flesh gone from its cheeks, no eyes in either socket, and a void yawning black as night behind the round eyeholes and the gaping oral cavity.

“She’s going to stay here forever. She said she wanted to ride the train forever!”

All around the girl, the other passengers stretched out their hands toward Kieli. Harvey turned around to face the exit, careful to shield Kieli, but the moment he laid eyes on the connecting door, it melted as though it had been doused with acid, fusing with the rusty wall.

The passengers began to flock around them, all entreating them in dull, monotone voices and wearing vacant smiles on faces the color of dirt. Maybe the lingering sentiments of the ghosts had gathered together to carve out a niche for themselves within some tear in the fabric of reality; whatever was going on, it seemed that inside this space that should have been impossible, they could manifest physically. In short, they were being mobbed by a pack of dead people, and it was making Harvey himself shrink away now. “Do something, Corporal!” he yelled to the radio in his hand. But no, even this radio that would’ve blasted a shock wave at them any other time was panicking. All Harvey got was a squawking clamor of “Gah, stop it. Stay away from me. You’re creepy! Get away!” Had the Corporal forgotten about his shock waves along with everything else—? Now was definitely not the time for it, but Harvey found himself getting dizzy. You’re so useless…

The train careened onward at an unnatural speed. Harvey darted a sidelong glance at the scenery shooting past out the windows and cursed. But then:

Whoo…

His ears picked up a faint, faint sound just barely in hearing range, and intuition kicked in.

He reached out his arm as far as it would stretch through a gap in the horde to open the closest window. The outside wind whipping by stirred the hair on his head and the stale air inside the train car.

“Kieli, Corporal, we’re jumping!”

“Huh?”

“Huh?!”

Before the other two could grasp what he was about to do, Harvey lifted Kieli up by the torso onto the window frame and flung himself out the window, half-pushing her along ahead of him.

The wilderness scenery had been tearing by at breakneck speed; tossed right into it, Kieli screamed, and the radio screamed right along with her. Harvey gathered them both into his arms in midair. After only the briefest of flights he was slammed into the ground; he made a controlled landing and rolled a few times. The hard concrete did bang up his shoulders and back some, but the impact was nothing compared to what it would have been at the speed his sight had gauged.

The walls of the train cars glided by bare centimeters from where they lay. When Harvey heaved himself into a sitting position with a sigh, the last car was just clearing the end of the platform, and the train pulled away from the station with one last loud whistle.

“…Hmm?”

Kieli, who had been clinging to him with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, hesitantly raised her face and started looking around them in openmouthed bewilderment. A group of people in the middle of the platform were watching them, wondering what the matter was. Harvey also heard a few whispers of “Where did they just come from?”

“Sir, you must know that’s dangerous!” bellowed a pale-faced man, running up to them. He looked to be the stationmaster.

Harvey’s eyes met Kieli’s—she was obviously still dazed— and they sighed and shrugged in defeat.

The two of them (plus the radio) had been sitting on the very edge of the platform.

They got a harsh tongue-lashing from the stationmaster, but fortunately the train had departed on schedule anyway, so they were released after about half an hour with no more punishment than that, and with a series of apologetic bows (from Kieli; Harvey just looked moodily off to one side and refused to apologize at all), they put the station office behind them.

“I got royally chewed out. I got unjustly chewed out when I didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s your fault.”

As soon as they left the station house with their belongings, Harvey immediately lit the cigarette he’d been holding off on during their chewing-out (his one concession) and started complaining. When Harvey was really mad he was more likely to stop talking altogether, so Kieli didn’t think he was that angry, but her “I’m sorry” was contrite anyway. “Ugh, and the Corporal is completely useless.” “I’m a-ashamed of myself, Master…” The radio sounded crestfallen, too.

There was a high fence that started next to the station house and ran along the train tracks. Leaning her hands lightly on the chain links, still a little groggy, Kieli looked through the fence toward where the tracks disappeared on the horizon. She couldn’t even see a trace of the train’s belching trail of steam now, let alone the train itself. The ghost car carrying the dead was probably riding along with it, in some chink of reality on that train.

Never, ever stopping, no one able to get off, no choice but to continue their never-ending journey…For decades, for centuries, maybe even for eternity.

The girl’s face sprang up in the back of Kieli’s mind. I couldn’t be friends with you after all. I’m sorry. I can’t afford to ride in that train car with you forever. Because we still have a destination to get to on our trip.

But if we didn’t have a destination, if it were okay to go on a carefree trip forever…

“…Were you thinking you didn’t want the trip to end?” Harvey murmured out of the blue. He was leaning against the fence and smoking, still looking disgruntled. Kieli kept her eyes on the tracks and didn’t answer. But she didn’t deny it either, which went a good way toward confirming it in the end.

She liked to travel. She liked riding on trains, and visiting all kinds of cities and places, and absorbing the feel of different atmospheres dyed with the emotions of the people who lived there, or of the people who had once been there. And most importantly of all, as long as this journey lasted, they could stay together—that’s how she’d always thought about it. Unconsciously she was always worried that something would be lost when the journey ended.

If we didn’t have a destination, if it were okay to go on a carefree trip forever… Could that train car have been reflecting a warped version of her own desires?

“Never-ending journeys aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, you know,” she heard Harvey mutter quietly next to her. That familiar low, gravelly voice that rumbled in his throat a little, speaking in unemotional, offhand tones.

Kieli tore her gaze away from the tracks and turned to look up at the tall man standing beside her. But Harvey ended his speech there; now he was gazing beyond the fence with an I didn’t say anything expression on his face. Whenever he made that face it meant he was 100 percent uninterested in continuing a conversation, so Kieli turned back to the tracks too, and made no response.

Maybe the train Kieli wanted to ride on forever was a train Harvey was sick of and wanted to get off. She could so easily picture him not even waiting until they reached a station, just jumping out the window all by himself instead, and that terrified her.

Even if I can’t make it to the final stop with him, please let me ride with him for as many moments as I can…

The wind blowing along the tracks hit the fence and changed angle, whipping Harvey’s coppery hair and Kieli’s black hair in two different directions. They gazed off in the distance where the train tracks met the sky, each with their own thoughts…thoughts Kieli was sure didn’t quite meet.