She was about to show Tom what she’d found—but he’d found something, too. He was holding a small, tattered stuffed fox, orange with a brown tail. He was hugging it with tears running down his face.
Kate knew that fox. His name was Foxy, full name Foxy Jones. He was the one that Tom had lost on that skiing trip all those years ago—the one he’d had since he was a baby, the one he’d thought he’d lost forever. And now Foxy Jones was back for good.
19
The Twilight Star
THEN ONE DAY, AS THE TRAIN WAS PUFFING ACROSS A plain of scrub so flat that it looked like somebody had made it with a ruler, and the little pangolin had graduated to eating bits of raw hamburger from the dining car—which they were all very proud of him for—Kate strolled back through the passenger cars and noticed they were looking emptier than usual. Fewer animals were getting on, and more were getting off.
A few days after that they were down to just the animals from the library: the fishing cat, the white-bellied heron, the green mamba, and the porcupine.
Plus the sleeping polar bear. And the baby pangolin. That was when they started what was in some ways the hardest part of the whole trip.
They crossed into a frozen desert, mile after mile of empty sand dunes covered in thin tiger stripes of frost and snow. They steamed across it for days. Dry powdery snow and sand whispered and rattled against the windowpanes when the wind blew. The porcupine was grumpier than usual and complained that he wasn’t getting his fair share of time with the pangolin. Once they came to a tunnel with a sign outside that said DANGER! FALLING ROCKS! and Kate and Tom had to get a squeaky old handcar out of one of the boxcars and pump it along ahead of the train all the way through the tunnel, in the freezing cold, to make sure the tracks were clear.
Another time the Silver Arrow almost ran out of water, till Tom remembered that they had a whole swimming pool car full of it.
At night either Kate or Tom would sit up with the Silver Arrow while the other one slept curled up in their cozy bunk in the sleeper car. They kept an eye out for dangerous curves and warning signals and steep slopes and anything that might be blocking the tracks. More than once they had to stop and shovel away drifts of windblown sand.
It went on for so long that Kate started to wonder how much more she could take. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and when she closed them, all she saw was more track scrolling past her. She was so tired she kept bumping into hot brass pipes in the cab and burning herself. At the same time the bitter chill of the desert spread deeper into the train, so they could see their breath inside, and even when Kate huddled right up next to the firebox she still couldn’t seem to get warm.
Where am I? Kate thought. What am I doing out here? It felt like she’d been on the Silver Arrow forever. It was the adventure of a lifetime, but it was a whole lot of work, too. And it was taking a really long time.
Then one morning, very early, in the still, frozen hour right before dawn, the train slowed down again. She looked out the window, but they weren’t at a station.
Click-bing.
LOOK UP AHEAD
Kate yawned, stretched, and stuck her head out the window. She saw what it meant.
“What the heck is that?”
I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE HECK THAT IS
It was hard to be sure, but up ahead in the darkness it looked like the land dropped away in a sheer cliff. But the tracks didn’t stop at the cliff. They kept on going, right out over the cliff, into thin air.
Kate got out of the train and walked ahead, in the glow of the Silver Arrow’s headlight. At first the tracks kept going straight, but as her eyes got more used to the darkness Kate saw that farther on they curved upward like roller-coaster tracks, steeper and steeper, until they ran straight up into the dark, cloudy sky.
Kate chewed her lip, thinking. She walked back to the train.
“How are we going to get up that?” she said. “You can’t go up that, can you?”
NO
Kate thought for a while.
“Is there another way round?” Kate said.
I DON’T THINK SO
“Can you go backward?”
YES
The train followed up this admirably brief answer with a not-at-all-brief lecture about the wonders of the reverser and something called the Walschaerts valve gear, which was invented by the heroic but unsung Belgian engineer Egide Walschaerts (1820–1901) and which made it easier for steam locomotives to go in reverse. But I’m going to leave that part out. You’re welcome.
“Then maybe we should go back,” Kate said.
MAYBE WE SHOULD
Kate didn’t say anything. She pressed her icy hands against her face. She was so tired and so cold. All she could think about was running into her house and diving into her warm, old bed and sleeping for a week. But that would mean abandoning her job, which was to get these animals to where they were going. And they weren’t just animals, they were her friends.
But what else could she do? It was impossible. It was out of her hands. The idea of quitting made her sad, but it also—she hated to admit it—filled her with infinite relief. Maybe this job was just too big for her. She was only eleven, after all.
“I don’t want to give up,” she said. But her voice sounded hollow. She really, really wanted to give up.
NO ONE WOULD BLAME YOU
“Could I still keep the glasses?” Her voice was very small. “Grace Hopper’s glasses? Even if we don’t really finish the job?”
YOU COULD EVEN KEEP THE GLASSES
But they wouldn’t have finished. That bothered Kate. It felt like the kind of thing the old Kate would’ve done, the person she was back before all this started. Being on the train had taught her to take responsibility for things, not just play things but real things. But some things were simply impossible. That was reality, too.
WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A WALK
“How’s that going to help?”
DON’T ASK ME, I DON’T EVEN HAVE LEGS
BUT HUMANS ALWAYS SEEM TO DO IT WHEN THEY NEED INSPIRATION
So she took a walk. If nothing else it might warm her up.
She didn’t leave the train. Instead she did something that everybody always wants to do but hardly anybody ever gets to, which is to walk along the roof of a train. Whenever you take a train you can clearly see there are ladders to get up there, but for some ridiculous reason nobody’s ever allowed to use them except train conductors and people having fistfights in action movies.
Now was her chance. She climbed up a ladder onto the roof of a passenger car and set off. It wasn’t even hard: The roof was about ten feet wide, though it did curve slightly upward in the middle, and there was a gap between the cars that was just wide enough to make her heart flutter a little. She wondered if she could do this when the train was moving. How cool would that be?
But she was just distracting herself. That was something the animals never did, she realized. People looked down on animals, but animals never made excuses or felt sorry for themselves. It would never occur to them. They always looked problems in the face.