Blue liquid soaked into the freshly cut grass. She could not erase Q. Yet. He deserved to be mourned. Raya lay down and pulled the covers to her chin. Lily had told her that her compartment would know if she was feeling warm or cold. She wondered if it would also know if she was drowning. She closed her eyes. Two knocks on her door pulled her from the edge of a dream. Raya rolled to her side, pretending she wasn’t there. She was not in a rush to have housekeeping teach her how to dim the moon or adjust the height of the carpet’s blades of grass.
The knocking grew louder.
“Can we do this tomorrow?” Raya mumbled into her pillow.
“I’m sorry,” a soft-spoken voice said through the door. “It can’t wait.”
“Rasmus?” Raya got up.
“I have something I need to give you.”
Raya took her time walking to the door, trying to come up with a polite way to decline another welcome gift. She had received three so far: a basket of bananas from Alain, a box of official Elsewhere Express stationery from Lily, and a voucher for painting lessons from Astrid. Raya drew a breath and opened the door.
“Hello, Raya.” Rasmus stood at the door empty-handed. “Have you drunk Mr. Goh’s remedy?”
Raya shook her head. “No, not yet. Why?”
“Good. May I come in?”
“I’m sorry, Rasmus, but I’m exhausted. You said that you had something for me?”
“It’s not from me. It’s from Q.”
Raya’s heart jumped to her throat. “Come in.”
Rasmus tucked his chin and stepped inside, grazing the top of his head on the doorway.
“Would you like to sit down?” Raya said.
“Thank you.” Rasmus took a seat in the compartment’s small dining area.
Raya sat across from him, laying her hands on the table.
Rasmus pulled a black envelope from his pocket. “Q asked me to give this to you in case he—”
Raya took the envelope from him, unwilling to hear what he was going to say next. She ran her thumb over a gold wax seal in the shape of the train’s eternal knot. “Thank you.”
“I’m not sure I deserve your gratitude. Actually, I’m certain that I don’t. I told Q not to look for you. It wasn’t personal. I just thought that it was fair. I read the passenger manifests. Q wanted to be on this train. You didn’t. He deserved a second chance.”
“And I don’t.”
“I didn’t say that. You have every right to be here too. You have a ticket. You have a compartment.”
A compartment, Raya thought, that would always feel like she had stolen it. In a way, that made her and Q even. Q was a thief too. Deciding who got the compartment’s sole key was a decision they were supposed to make together. Q robbed her of that choice.
“You’ll do great things here,” Rasmus said. “I’m sure of it.”
“But that’s not what you told Q.”
“No, it wasn’t. I knew that if he went looking for you, he wasn’t coming back.”
“You were right.” Raya’s spine hardened like cement against the back of the chair. “And so was Lily. Q had brought the stowaway on board with him.”
“It seems that way, doesn’t it?” Rasmus said. “Anyway, that’s all behind us now. Once we drink the serum and rid ourselves of thisbaggage we’ll move on and never have to think about what happened on this night ever again. Who knows? The two of us might even turn out to be great friends.”
Raya gave up on sleep.
Instead, she stepped through every door she could find, moving from train car to train car, trying to stay ahead of her thoughts. If those thoughts caught up with her, they were only going to try and convince her to read Q’s letter. But she refused to open it. As long as the wax sealed his words, they were in the middle of a conversation and this moment was just a pause, and she would drag that moment out for as long as she could. Q would just have to be patient and wait his turn to speak.
