“You’ve spoken to Rasmus, I see. I was wondering when we were going to have this conversation again.”
“Again?”
“Every version of us has gone straight to my office after speaking with him. We’ve had this talk as many times as Dev has shown my photograph to you. I’ll have to pay him a visit to make sure he takes his latest dose of Mr. Goh’s tonic.” Lily strode to the floor cushions arranged in the middle of the room. “Have a seat while I make us some tea. I imagine there are quite a few things that you’d like to discuss.”
Raya’s tea sat ignored on a low table but did not grow cold. Like the Elsewhere Express, it cared little about change or time.
“Would you like to start with small talk?” Lily picked up her cup. “You’ve found it helpful in the past.”
Raya tried to imagine how all her previous conversations with Lily had gone. No matter how pleasantly this talk began, she could not think of any circumstances where it would end well. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Lily took a sip of her tea. “Our other selves were rather curious about why the pantry was flooded with tears. Astridand Isla were surprised to learn that this lake is where sad thoughts board the Elsewhere Express.”
Raya’s jaw grew slack. “Astrid and Isla are—”
“Us? Yes. And there are quite a few others too. They all go by different names. No one wants to use the one we boarded the train with. Every version of us is disappointed that no matter what we do or what department we join, we can’t stop Q from bringing his darkness on board with him. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. Once Q boards, the stowaway follows. When he leaves, the stowaway departs too.”
“Is that how you remember it?” Raya said.
“How else would I remember it?” Lily frowned. “What did Rasmus tell you?”
“Rasmus didn’t tell me anything. I saw the train’s records.”
“He showed them to you?” The wrinkle between her eyes deepened into a well that seemed to catch all the shadows in the room.
“Yes. He told me that he wanted to do things differently this time. He’s tired of seeing Q die.”
“And you think I’m not?” Lily’s eyes, Raya thought, quivered in a way that made her both unrecognizable and familiar. The face of the woman who welcomed her on board had never showed such pain. The face that greeted her in her compartment’s bathroom mirror each morning did. “Respectfully, Ms. Sia, looking at one train record doesn’t mean that you know me. You and I are no longer the same person.”
“You’re absolutely right.” Raya lifted her chin. “You stopped being me a long time ago. I would never ask Q to sacrifice himself the way you have.”
“That’s because you don’t have to, Ms. Sia. You aren’t the conductor. You don’t have to make the hard decisions to keep this train safe. If you did, you wouldn’t be able to conveniently ignore Mr. Philips’s past and how he’s repeatedly threatened to destroy everything and everyone on the Elsewhere Express. Mr. Philips carries an anger inside him, whether you admit it or not, a rage that swarms the train and turns everything to rot.”
“And yet there was no sign of the stowaway the first time Q boarded the train, was there, Lily? Not one hint of rot or even the slightest sign of rain. This person you call a monster is, in fact, the very reason why you’re standing here. Q threw himself from the train to save you and you couldn’t even allow the train to remember him. Why?”
“If you have to ask me that, then you and I really are completely different people now,” Lily said. “How could I possibly spend an eternity on this train or even a second in a compartment that Q paid for with his life? Nothing good would come from anyone finding out about what happened that night. Breaking one of the train’s most important rules was as good as breaking all of them. The only way I could make sure Q’s sacrifice wasn’t wasted on me was to make sure that what I did here mattered. I didn’t want to be as purposeless as—” Lily bit her lip.
“Go ahead,” Raya said. “You can say it. It’s the truth. You didn’t want to be as purposeless as me. That’s why you wanted to be the conductor.”
“And I couldn’t be a good one if I carried my grief and guilt with me the way you do. I had to let Q go.”
“But don’t you see? That isn’t what you did. You didn’t let go of him.”
“Of course I did. I took Mr. Goh’s serum. The only reason I remember any of this is because of Manon’s perfume.” Lily took two vials of ocean-blue serum from the tea tray. “But after tonight, neither of us ever have to think about this again.”
“Until the next time the stowaway shows up,” Raya said.
“Maybe this time it will be different.” Lily watched the gauzy curtains ripple in the breeze. “Maybe it won’t come back.”
“It will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Raya said. “In fact, I guarantee it. You can throw Q off the train a thousand times and it won’t make a difference. The stowaway is still on board the Elsewhere Express. It’s never left.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lily scoffed. “You saw the stowaway scatter into nothing with your own eyes.”
“I did. But I also saw what you’ve cut out from the train’s records. Just because you’ve taken great care to keep that part of your memory buried beyond any serum or fragrance’s reach doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” Raya took a needle threaded with gold from her bag.
