She put on the clothes, all except for the coat, and made her way back to the dining car. Or one of them, assuming there really were two.
A buffet was laid out for breakfast. She took scrambled eggs, granola and yogurt and some berries, bacon, toast with butter and peach jam—both bacon and toast were slightly charred, which happened to be how she liked them—plus a big glass of fresh orange juice. She felt kind of greedy taking all that, but it was made already, so she figured she might as well eat it.
She laid it all out on a table by a window, then she went back to the sleeper car and got a book from the little shelf over the bed. For a certain kind of person there is literally nothing nicer than eating breakfast by yourself on a moving train with a good book. Kate was one of those people.
She was feeling something—a new feeling. Not even a feeling exactly, more like she wasn’t feeling a lot of things that she was used to feeling. She wasn’t tired, or bored, or frustrated, or wishing she was somewhere else doing something else. All that was cleared away. She still had basically no idea what was going on, but she knew she was free to be herself, right here, right now, in the moment. She couldn’t wait to find out what she was going to feel next.
The train slowed down. They were almost back at the station from last night. Tom came in, yawning, still in his pajamas, chewing on a piece of bacon.
“You think we’re supposed to be doing something?” he said.
“Probably. Don’t know what, though.”
Click-bing !
There was another one of those scrolling pieces of paper in the dining car, right by the door. Kate hadn’t noticed it before.
YES, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING SOMETHING
“Well?” Tom said. “Do you want us to guess?”
THAT WOULD BE NICE BUT YOU’D ONLY GUESS WRONG
WE’RE COMING TO THE STATION
GO TO THE PASSENGER CARS AND TAKE THE PASSENGERS’ TICKETS
“Oh.”
That did make a certain kind of sense. And it didn’t sound that hard. At least in theory.
In an alcove by the door to the passenger cars they found two conductor’s hats, which somehow looked a lot less dorky now, and two of those mysterious metal hole-punchers that train conductors always have. Both hats had the words The Silver Arrow stitched on them in little letters.
Silently they placed the hats on their heads. Then they frowned and swapped hats. Better.
“Hey, how come you get a uniform?” Tom said.
If there was one thing Tom hated, it was when Kate got something and he didn’t. It was childish and selfish, and Kate felt exactly the same way.
“It was in the closet in the sleeper car. Didn’t you look?”
“No!”
Brakes squealed and the train stopped.
“Well, too late,” she said. “You’ll have to do it in your pajamas.”
“Ugh!”
The doors opened. The platform was still full of animals, patiently waiting. She wondered if they’d been there all night. Maybe animals didn’t get bored.
They began to file into the train.
Even by human standards they were incredibly polite. There was no pushing or shoving. No one barked or growled or squawked or tried to eat any of their fellow travelers, though Kate did notice that the larger and more predatory animals—a wolf, a bear, a couple of large owls—tended to sit in the forward carriage, and the smaller, fluffier, more vulnerable animals kept to the rear. They all had a light dusting of snow on their fur or feathers.
These weren’t pets, or farm animals, or animals in a zoo, which always looked so dull and downcast and desperate. These were wild animals, and there was nothing between her and them—no fence, no glass, nothing. She could’ve reached out and touched them if she dared. It was almost like she was one of them.
As before, each animal held a single paper ticket in its mouth.
The cars were divided into old-fashioned train compartments, and one by one the animals settled into them. The foxes curled up neatly on the seats with their tails under their chins. The birds perched on the luggage racks and seat backs. The bigger animals had to sort of squash themselves in. Some of the very small, shy animals, like possums and rabbits, hid under the seats. Everybody kept well clear of a large, slow-moving porcupine.
A lot of cold air came in with them, and Kate shivered in her conductor’s blazer—should’ve gone back for the winter coat, but too late now. She waited till the train was moving again, then opened the door to the first compartment. It was occupied by a family of deer—a doe and a stag and a fawn—plus a somber, tattered-looking gray hawk. A crowd of mice huddled under the seat.
They all looked at her. Kate cleared her throat. She wished somebody had explained exactly what she was supposed to do and how to do it.
But what’s the worst that could happen? They had tickets. She was going to take them.
“Tickets, please,” Kate said.
The doe stretched her neck elegantly forward with all three of her family’s tickets in her mouth. They had deer tooth marks on them, and the words HOWLAND FOREST were printed on them. She fumbled with the hole-puncher before she figured out how to work it, then she punched the tickets and handed them back.
It was actually very satisfying. She guessed the train must be going to Howland Forest. Wherever that was. She hoped the Silver Arrow knew.
9
Porcupine vs. Bird: Fight!
THE NEXT COMPARTMENT HELD MORE BIRDS, TWO TURTLES and something long and slinky and furry that she supposed was probably a weasel or something. A gigantic black bear had the compartment after that all to itself. The next one held a fat black-striped badger—the one she’d met earlier—and a family of spotted skunks, which were small but looked like they were afraid of literally nothing in the universe. Also a whole row of sleepy bats.
The tickets had all kinds of destinations printed on them: ISLE OF WIGHT, LOWER SILESIAN WILDERNESS, SAGANO BAMBOO FOREST.… They sounded like they were from all over the world. Kate wondered why they could possibly be going to all those different places, and how they expected to get there on a steam train, but she didn’t feel like she could ask. Her job was to punch the tickets, and she punched them. She accepted a ticket from a largish feline—not a house cat or quite a big cat, but something in between. Its fur was partly spotted and partly striped, and it was a funny color, gray with a hint of olive green.
“Thanks,” it said.
“You’re welcome.”
Was it a bobcat? A lynx? Kate hadn’t studied for this.
“It was brave of you to come,” the something-cat said. “After what happened last time.”
Kate gave it a funny look. Or she? She sounded like a she. And if animals were going to talk to her, she supposed she shouldn’t think of them as its. Kate wanted to say that it wasn’t really that brave, since she didn’t know what had happened last time, and wait-a-minute what are you even talking about?! But she had a lot of tickets to take.
The last compartment contained more weasels—or were they minks? stoats?—that wouldn’t or couldn’t stop chasing each other in circles. There was also a big wild turkey and more bats and a wolf who looked like a demon in wolf form but was probably perfectly nice when you got to know her.