“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. Sia.”
“You will.” Raya stabbed the needle into Lily’s hand.
Earlier
Rasmus refolded the embroidered sheet and returned it to the shelf.
“That’s it?” Raya said. “You just put the truth back and forget about it?”
“It’s not my truth to remember. What Lily chooses to do with it is her decision. I can’t say that she hasn’t made the right choices. She’s kept the train safe. When I drink Mr. Goh’s tonic, that’s what I’ll remember. I’ll appreciate Lily’s service without loathing her.” Rasmus smoothed the sheet and turned to face Raya. “And so will you.”
“Just like every version of me that’s boarded the Elsewhere Express.” Raya heaved a sigh.
Rasmus let his eyes fall on the gold butterfly embroidered into the scarf in Raya’s hair. “I’ve lost track of all the times I’ve sent that away by gifting it to other passengers. But it always finds its way back. All secrets surface.”
“What are you talking about?” Raya said.
“The truth you’ve been wearing. Despite all my attempts to gift or hide it, it seems to know where it belongs and whom it belongs to. The train’s records are thoughts just like everything else on the Elsewhere Express. When Lily cut it, it needed a place to go. I sewed it into that scarf. I didn’t have enough thread to make a knot and soI—”
“—embroidered a song.” Raya pulled the scarf off, remembering with a shiver how Q’s fingers had combed through her hair to tie it.
“Thoughts know their owners, just as owners know their thoughts,” Rasmus said. “All the other Rayas chose to forget it, afraid of what they might learn about Q.”
Raya traced the embroidery. Though gold wings fluttered against her fingers, a dark swarm crawled under her skin. Raya dropped the scarf.
“You can do as all your other versions did.” Rasmus took the needle from the pincushion. “Or you can see how the stowaway really boarded the train.”
Passenger Manifest
Hiraya Sia
The First Raya
Q didn’t scream or flail. If Raya trusted her eyes and ears, she would have called it a peaceful death. But not all silence is calm. Q had said goodbye with two words that would live forever in all of Raya’s quiet places, moths in a dark closet, consuming the fabric of her peace.
“Let him go, Ms. Sia.” Rasmus pried the sake bottle from Raya’s hands and set the train’s back door on top of one of the Lotus’s tables.
How?Raya wanted to scream. It was Q who held her soul in a chokehold and not the other way around.
“Mr. Philips is gone.” Rasmus pressed a silver key into Raya’s hand. “Congratulations,” he said, speaking as though he was offering her his condolences. “The compartment is yours.”
Raya flung the key to the floor. “I don’t want it.”
“You didn’t want your train ticket either, but here you are.” Rasmus picked the key up.
“A ticket paid for by my brother and Q. People who mattered and who would have made a difference. I’m a monster, Rasmus.” Shegrabbed the sake bottle and stared into the darkness beyond its mouth. “I don’t belong here.”
“You think that hurling yourself after Q will fix things?”
“No, but it will make the pain stop.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and slid down the bottle’s neck.
Rasmus took a vial containing Mr. Goh’s serum from his satchel and gave it to Raya. “There are other ways.”
Remember me.It was all Q had asked of her, Raya thought, and she couldn’t even give him that. Forgetting Q was the only way she would not let the eternity he had bought for her go to waste. She swallowed the serum. It flowed inside her, washing her past away.
But Mr. Goh made his serums in single doses and Rasmus had given it to Raya without realizing that she required two: one for Jace, the other for Q. One dose was not enough for all the blame she hoarded. The blue serum flooded her locked rooms and drawers but could not banish the grief and guilt that called them home. They grew wings to keep themselves from being swept away and took flight to higher ground. A black moth circled the train’s back door.
Mary Beth, the nurse on the night shift whose finger Raya had once clung to tightly, had been right about the strength of her grip.
