“Well, it sure seems like it sometimes.”
“Well, it sure seems to grown-ups like you spend all your time watching TV and playing video games instead of paying attention to real life.”
Adults always said scoldy stuff like that, but Kate was surprised to hear it coming from Uncle Herbert. She’d been starting to hope he wasn’t like that—but of course he was. All grown-ups were.
“Why should I pay attention to real life?” she said. “Real life is boring!”
“How do you know it’s boring if you don’t pay attention to it?”
“Well, maybe real life should pay attention to me sometime!”
“Perhaps,” Uncle Herbert said quietly, like he was trying to sound all mysterious, “the world is more interesting than it appears.”
“Well, that would be great.” Kate crossed her arms. “Because it appears really boring!”
“What about that mysterious fire in the train. Is that boring? That is why you snuck out here, isn’t it?”
“Oh, right,” Kate said, brought up slightly short. “I guess it is.”
She took a step toward the train, then turned back and gave Uncle Herbert a look.
“This isn’t over, though.”
“No,” Uncle Herbert agreed. “It isn’t.”
4
It Really Wasn’t Over
NOW THAT KATE WAS RIGHT UP CLOSE TO THE TRAIN, she noticed something else: White steam was floating out of a pipe on top of it and swirling around its wheels.
Suddenly she felt a bit nervous.
“Go on,” Uncle Herbert said. “This is it. Real life is being interesting for a change. It’s paying attention to you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Kate didn’t especially like having her own words quoted back at her, so without answering she climbed up into the cab, the metal rungs hard under her bare feet. Inside the cab was all lit up by glowing firelight. That cold, sooty box they’d found before was actually a little fireplace, and somebody had built a fire in it. She could feel the heat coming off it in the night air.
Something else, too: Before, the tender was empty, but now it was full of coal, a huge heap of it. Tom climbed up behind her.
“Cool,” he said. “It’s like camping. We could sleep out here.”
“It’s like that cabin with the woodstove,” Kate said. “That time we went skiing and Dad hurt his knee on the first day and was in a bad mood the whole rest of the week. You were little.”
“I remember, though.” Tom perched on one of the seats. “That was when I lost Foxy.”
Foxy, full name Foxy Jones, had been Tom’s stuffed fox from when he was a baby. It broke Tom’s little heart when he lost him—he still couldn’t read Fantastic Mr. Fox without crying. Weird how boys had feelings, too, but pretended they didn’t.
Kate could see into the house, where her father was setting the table for her birthday dinner. He looked a thousand miles away.
“I wish it were a real train,” she said quietly. “I mean I wish it could really go somewhere. Like on an adventure.”
“Yeah.”
Just then a big lever shifted forward with a clunk.
Kate frowned at it.
“That was weird. Did you do that?”
“No,” said Tom.
She stuck her head out the window.
“Uncle Herbert? Something just moved in here.”
Uncle Herbert looked up at her.
“What do you mean, moved?”
“Like by itself.”
He frowned. “Couldn’t have.”
But now a couple of the brass wheels were spinning, too, and some of the needles and gauges were stirring and twitching. A couple of switches flipped.
“Uncle Herbert, really! Things are moving! Like, a lot!”
It was the first time Kate had seen her uncle look unsure of himself.
“Right. You might just think about climbing down from there.” He was using that cautious tone you use when you’re trying to reason with a cat. “Both of you. Maybe quite quickly actually.”
“Kate,” Tom said. “Maybe we should.”
“But what is this? Is it a game?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Uncle Herbert said. “Just get out of the train!”
Tom went to the door, but Kate stayed where she was.
“You can go,” she said. “It’s okay. But I want to see what happens.”
Tom thought about it.
“I’m going to stay too,” he said finally, in his most serious, solemn voice.
Now white steam was leaking and poofing out of the train everywhere and drifting across the lawn. A knob turned and a pure, bright white light stabbed forward from the nose of the train, lighting up the grass and the trees and the side of the house next door. From somewhere below came a sharp, satisfying crack. Not like something breaking, more like something that had been stuck for ages finally being released.
“That was the brakes!” Uncle Herbert yelled. “Come on! Get out!”
Chuff.
The engine made a deep, hoarse sound like an ancient beast waking up from a very long sleep and snuffing the air.
“Wait—is this pretend or real?” Kate yelled.
“It’s magic!” Uncle Herbert yelled over the hissing of steam. “You didn’t think I got rich by working hard, did you?”
Kate very much doubted that this was true, because unlike in books, in real life magic did not in fact exist. But right now it wasn’t like she had another explanation.
Chuff…
Chuff…
Chuff…
Hissing and clanking sounds came from all over the train. The whole thing, all 102.36 tons of it, started rolling forward along the tracks as smoothly as a boat across a still pond. With something that heavy, you just knew there was no stopping it once it got going.
Uncle Herbert started running alongside the train muttering no no no no no to himself and trying to jump onto it like they do in movies. But somehow Kate didn’t feel scared. Instead she felt as happy as she ever had in her life.
Like something in her was being released, too. Like her brakes were finally coming unstuck. This was it. This was the something she’d been waiting for.
Uncle Herbert seemed to be finding out that jumping onto a moving train is harder than it looks in movies.
“Come on, Uncle Herbert!” she called.
“I can’t! Jump down!”
“I don’t think so. It’s like you said: Life’s being interesting.”
“But this is too interesting! Like way too interesting!” Uncle Herbert stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. “You’re not ready!”
“Ready for what?”
Kate felt ready for anything. Wind was whipping her hair around. She didn’t know if she was doing something very smart or very stupid, but in that moment she didn’t care, because the thrill of it made her heart want to burst.
This was so much better than Vanimals.
Chuff.
Chuff.
Chuff, chuff…
Chuff, chuff…
Uncle Herbert tried to run after them again, but he stopped almost immediately. He really wasn’t in very good shape. They were leaving him behind.