On the Train Read online

  Rinatta’s lower lip trembled. She wasn’t sure what Sela meant. Her arms crossed rebelliously, but she didn’t respond.

  Another conductor entered the dining car. He held a plastic cone to his mouth, shouting in several languages. Finally, Eli caught the Sao Lindros dialect. She could just make it out. “Elduran!” he was calling. “Next stop is Elduran! Come out and stretch your legs, folks!”

  The other passengers sighed in relief and many began to get up from the table. This was welcome news after the last announcement.

  Pria leaned across the table and put her hand on Eli’s shoulder, using The Traintalk word for “Come!”

  Eli unbuckled the children from their booster seats. “Will you come too, Sela?” she asked.

  The older woman shook her head. “No, the Baroness needs me.” Eli had hoped she would stay to help her with Traintalk. “You can take the children out onto the platform. Don’t stray too far,” Sela told her. “It will be fun for them to see some new place.”

  “All right. Come on, you two. Let’s go with Pria!” Eli ushered the children after the plump woman.

  The Train was beginning to slow down. Eli could hear gears grinding squeakily to break its speed. They pulled into the station moments later.

  Conductors hopped down, opening the side doors and unfolding boxes into the portable steps. Then they cleared the way for the passengers to get down.

  As they came out, Eli heard Willin gasp. Stepping onto the platform, she looked where he was pointing.

  The Train itself had changed. It was more streamlined now, its sides covered in steel plating. Red and blue stripes ran along the cars. The morning sun blazed down on The Train, making it shine against a tremendous blue sky.

  But the weather was pleasantly mild, warmth without the nasty humidity that she would have felt on a day like this in Ugara.

  Beyond the station, a great valley opened before them. Mountains loomed high in the east, gray and absolute, against the green of Elduran. It was a beautiful city, buildings sprawling close along stone roads, but with big squares of land for the trees to grow together. Eli didn’t see any patches cleared for cows or goats. Eldurans had to make their living from something other than livestock.

  Metal spyglasses were mounted at the edge of the platform. People lined up to take a look. A yellow sign posted on the railing showed a monkey in a tree. Eli took Rinatta and Willin over and waited for a turn at monkey-spotting. Pria showed the children how to close one eye and peep through the end. Rinatta was better at it than her brother.

  “Ooh, I see one!” she yelled gleefully, aiming her spyglass at a tree at the bottom of the platform.

  Eli managed to keep Willin from either shoving his sister out of the way in his impatience or climbing over the railing for a better look himself. She didn’t want his impersonation of a monkey to get too realistic.

  Pria’s laughter was honey-gold. She began chattering in Traintalk, acting out her words to help Eli understand. She pointed to herself and pantomimed rocking a baby. Then she raised her arms high, marking the air above her head, to show her children were now grown taller than her.

  Eli laughed too, enjoying the woman’s easy manner and trying to speak more and more Traintalk, hoping to make it stick.

  Pria pointed at Eli and the children, who were still monkey-spotting. “You all,” she said. “Bad place?”

  She seemed to be asking if they had come from a bad place. Perhaps Ugara would seem terrible to a Train rider, but Eli could only shrug. “Bou bad. But also bou good.”

  “Ah!” Pria shook her head and waved in the direction of the valley. Her hand swept back and forth to show the vastness of it all. “Bad land. Bad Lands.”

  “Bad Lands?” Eli repeated.

  “Sim!” Pria confirmed. “No good magic.” She grinned and twinkled her fingers as if casting a spell. “No good smarts.” She pointed to her head, to her brain. Then, frowning, she held her palms close together, small and narrow. “Bad Lands. In between.”

  Seeing Eli still looking confused, she flapped the fingers on one hand off to the side of her dumpy body. “Here. Good magics lands.” She then waved the opposite hand. “Over here. Good smart lands.” Her hands went back to the middle. “Here the Bad Lands. Nothing good. Nothing strong.” She made muscles, causing Eli to giggle again.

  “Yes, that’s Ugara all right, too.” Eli spoke in Ugaran, nodding to show she agreed. She knew Ugara and the areas around it were a nothing-spot with no stations. Now she saw why. The Train had no reason to stop in a place with so little magic and so little technology. Sure, they had a few charms and enough conveniences to get by. But nothing that compared to smart sinks and toilets! She wondered what she would see in a place where magic was strong.

  “The Train,” Pria touched her smiling lips, “always good place.”

  A conductor began calling for them to re-board The Train. Eli showed him her ticket, but he barely glanced at it before waving them aboard. She supposed she could not be suspected of slinking, not with two little ones in tow. They’d be impossible to hide.

  As they went back to their seats in their compartment, Eli felt The Train begin to move. Its wheels clenched tight against the tracks, rolling round and round, faster and faster. Her eyes got used to the blur of trees outside their window. But she could feel the Railroad sloping upward, carrying them closer to the mountains on the far side of Elduran.

  After a few hours, The Train stopped again, at a station called Winitar. It waited there just long enough for passengers to get on or off. After that, The Train stopped every few hours. They seemed to be in a busy stretch of the Railroad.

  They passed through a long tunnel and the night-lighting came on for a little while. On the other side, the trees grew farther from each other, while the earth yellowed and turned rocky and hard. By evening they came into the mountains. The Railroad cut into their side, going up and up. Thinking of the workers back home, Eli tried to imagine the mountain men coming out from their homes to lay the tracks.

  After dinner, Eli took the children to get clean. All the shower stalls were being used, so they had to wait. Willin and Rinatta usually took baths. They didn’t enjoy getting blasted with water from above. She had better luck adjusting the temperature this time, but Willin flailed and cried when soap got in his eyes. She ended up having to take off her clothes and get in the stall with them—it was crowded, but she had more control. She gave her own hair a quick rinse so she wouldn’t have to shower again in the morning.

  She bundled the children into bed. The Train slowed down for another stop. Conductors called out. Before she knew it, she was asleep again.

  The days passed, swift as The Train’s motion. Beyond the mountains were low hills, then fields. After these came new jungles, broken up into stretches between busy towns.

  Eli, who was good at deciphering Toddlertalk, found that she followed the flow of Traintalk with similar ease. She had supposed it would be too hard for the children to learn a new language—surely, they were too little. To her amazement, they soaked it up even faster. She soon found herself chattering back and forth with them in a broken mixture of Ugaran grammar with as many Traintalk words thrown in as they could think of.

  Most of Eli’s time was spent with the children in the compartment or taking them on walks around The Train. She tried to get them to leave other travelers alone, but didn’t mind letting them wander through the passenger and dining cars.

  The mossy green carpeting ran through first-class, but after that became a swirly flowered print. Second-class did not have private compartments. Instead, the passengers had to sit in rows and rows of seats that didn’t even face each other. At least the chairs looked comfortable, with individual armrests and backs that reclined. There were a lot more families in second-class, even women with babies. Parents tended to stay in their seats, while letting their children gather in little gangs to scamper among the rows and play spotting games out the windows.

  Eli tried to re
lax her need to keep an eye on her charges every second and let Rinatta go over to a small group of kids. But after a short time the girl came back, angrily tossing her braids.

  “They’re just a bunch of babies,” she reported, and made no more attempts to join them.

  Eli didn’t dare go down to third-class with the children. Her Traintalk wasn’t good enough yet, and she was worried they would stand out too much.

  Indeed, despite her best efforts, having the only youngsters in first-class drew plenty of attention. In the carriage, it was easier to keep them reined in, but meal times were another matter. With a dining car’s worth of noise to compete against, Rinatta and Willin defaulted to their own top volume. The other passengers exchanged sympathetic looks with Eli and then whispered to each other when her back was turned.

  Occasionally, Eli spared herself the daily embarrassment by ordering meals from one of the snack-sellers who went up and down the aisles. Some pushed carts, while others carried trays of delicious treats. They cheerfully accepted small chunks of salt crystal from her, and she could eat in the privacy of their own compartment.

  Sela usually joined them in the dining car, but that didn’t help much. As usual, she left the childcare up to Eli and spent her time in making small talk with the other passengers. Eli’s rapidly growing Traintalk wasn’t enough for adult conversation.

  Of the Baroness, Eli saw little. After breakfast, Sela had Eli bring the children into compartment seventeen, where she gave them their lessons. Sometimes the Baroness was there, but more often it was just Sela and the children. Strangely, no other passengers shared that compartment. Eli wondered if this was a stroke of good luck for the reclusive older women, or if it had been planned. She hadn’t noticed the Baroness making any special demands when she bought their tickets, but who knew?

  During their morning lessons, Sela made the children practice Traintalk with her and showed them maps of the Railroad. She made them study the names of the families that belonged to the Great Houses that founded the Railroad, sang songs and rhymes about its construction and made them chant the names of stations they were coming up on: Kambok, Pingaspor, Namila, Liho…

  That hour of lessons was Eli’s only official time off. She could sit in, if she chose, but no matter how interesting she found Sela’s knowledge of The Train, she often needed the break. She found she learned as much exploring by herself in that hour. She enjoyed going on walks or practicing her own Traintalk with Pria. The plump woman and her husband were both retired professors, who had given up their homeland to travel round the world. They’d been going round and round for several years now, Eli learned, and had no intention of getting off.

  It was interesting that some passengers had a set destination in mind, while others rode for the sake of riding. But for all those who traveled, it was more than a means of transportation, more than a home: it was a way of life. Every day, moving forward, moving on.

  Servers bustled up and down the aisle, heading to the dining car to set out the midday meal. Eli, having spent her free hour wandering The Train, made her way back to their compartments.

  Standing outside the door, she could hear Willin’s voice ringing out, high and shrill. “When’s lunch? When’s Eli going to be here?”

  “Sela, I’m bored now. Can we be done?” Rinatta whined.

  Chuckling, Eli reached for the handle to relieve them of their tiny misery.

  Suddenly, the doors at the back of the car opened. The Baroness Vasri came in and stalked up the aisle toward her compartment.

  Funny, thought Eli. I can hardly remember seeing her out and about on The Train before. She never wants to have anything to do with the other riders. What does she do when she’s not with Sela? Where does she go? Where has she been?

  Then the car doors closer to her banged open. Three conductors rushed into the narrow corridor. The rat-faced man stood out in front. He carried a short, black stick. “Sim,” he breathed. “That’s definitely her.”

  The men were looking down the aisle, right at the Baroness Vasri.

  Eli had never seen the Baroness lose her cool, collected manner. But for a moment, when she saw the conductors, a gray, haunted look passed over her face. Then the Baroness looked angry, very angry. She turned around and began to walk back up the aisle, the way she’d come.

  “Stop right there!” yelled the conductor.

  Three more blue-coated men burst in through the back doors. They blocked the Baroness’ path. Slowly, she turned around again to face the rat-man.

  “Very well,” she said. “We can do this the hard way.” As she spoke, she didn’t meet his eyes. She seemed to look past him, at the wall. Not looking at Eli. But somehow the not-looking, Eli felt, was directed right at her.

  Eli pressed herself up against the compartment’s wall. The conductors were so intent on the Baroness, none of them seemed to care about her.

  “Anya Vashani?” the conductor asked. The Baroness nodded, once. “You are a known partner of that great traitor, Director Mehra. By the judgment of the Railroad Barons, you are charged with treason against the Railroad and for the crime of re-boarding after Exile from The Train.”

  Eli couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The Baroness made no attempt to deny his accusations.

  “You must come with us now.” The conductor pushed her shoulder to get her to start walking.

  “Where will you take me?” asked the Baroness, coolly, still not-looking right at Eli.

  “This is still The Train,” the conductor said, his eyes sharp and suspicious. “We abide by the law. You will wait in the holding car until we arrive in Dongorland.” He jerked his arm stiffly. “This way.”

  The conductors marched the Baroness out the back of the car.

  Shaking, Eli opened the door to compartment seventeen.

  “You’re here—” Eli stopped Rinatta and Willin’s cheers with a sharp gesture. She was sure her face looked ghastly. She could barely contain her shock.

  “What’s the matter, child?” asked Sela, concerned.

  “The Baroness.” Eli gulped. “Didn’t you hear? The conductors took her.” She didn’t want to alarm the children, but this was too serious to hide.

  A calculating look crossed Sela’s face. “I see. Go on.”

  “Just now, outside in the aisle. They took her. The man said she committed treason against the Railroad Barons.” Eli repeated the charges as best as she could remember. “They took her to a holding car.”

  Sela snorted. “That fool! I told her it was too dangerous for her to go out. People on The Train have long memories.”

  “Is Mama in jail?” demanded Rinatta.

  “Only because she is a useless idiot,” sighed the old woman. Eli had never heard Sela speak ill of her mistress before. “It won’t take them long to realize I was helping her. They’ll come for me next, and whoever else she traveled with. Children, Eli, listen to me very carefully. I won’t be able to help you. You’ll have to be on your own. Those men, those conductors, must not find you. You must keep riding The Train until we reach Dongorland.”

  “We have to hide?” gasped Rinatta.

  “Hide and seek?” queried Willin, looking scared.

  “No, stupid!” Rinatta shot back.

  “Shut up,” snapped Sela, and they fell silent. “Children, stay with Eli and do exactly what she tells you. Do not trust anyone else. It’s not safe on The Train for you anymore.”

  “Where should we go?” faltered Eli, scared almost spitless.

  “You need to get the children to the Dongor station,” repeated Sela. “Rinatta, Willin, you will find friends there. The new director of the Rassa House will meet you at the station. Then you will have the power to free us.” She sighed in frustration. “We were so close, it’s within five days’ journey. You have to keep away from the conductors. Don’t let them see you. Don’t let them check your tickets—they’ll be looking for you. Try and move down to second or third-class—it’ll be more crowded, but it’s easier to
be overlooked, even with these two. I guess that’s a place to start, but keep moving. You’re a clever girl, Eli. You’ll find a way.”

  Sela’s face was grave, her voice low. The old woman’s hands shook, but she stood up and rummaged in one of her bags.

  She drew out a cloth pouch. “I hoped that we might complete our journey unnoticed, but I knew this was a possibility. I put a little money, a few supplies together for you. There’s some food—not much, I’m afraid, but it could last you a few days.”

  She squeezed Rinatta’s hand, then grabbed Willin’s and brought it to her lips for a kiss. “Be brave, be good, little ones.” Looking over at Eli, she tried to smile. “Go. Now. They are coming.”

  Eli’s heart hammered, but she fought down the spiraling feeling of horror. “Come on, children,” she heard herself saying as she opened the door.

  “What about lunch?” squeaked Willin.

  “Shut up!” hissed Rinatta, and he fell silent.

  They stepped out into the aisle. Eli hesitated, then led the children down through the accordion doors.

  She started to shove the doors to open the way to the next car, but froze. A team of conductors were making their way up through the car’s aisle.

  “Never mind,” Eli muttered. “Let’s not go this way.” Gritting her teeth, she hustled them back the way they had come, back through their own car. Where now? She doubted she could get all the way down the long aisle to the doors on the other end. Not before those conductors burst in and spotted them.

  Thinking fast, Eli decided to duck into her own compartment. Maybe they’d stop for Sela first and give her a chance to slip out while they were distracted.

  “Come on in here. Just for a minute.” Eli got the children through and closed the door as quickly as she could. I’m panicking. Don’t panic. There’s no time for it.

  Pria and Nassan were in the compartment. Nassan had gone over onto Eli’s side again, to have more space for his long legs. He quickly got up, bowing an apology.