Lily’s eyes bored into the man. “I’d like to see your ticket.”
“What ticket?” he said.
Raya spied a sliver of black paper sticking out from the man’s coat pocket. “That ticket.”
The man glanced down, raising his sharp brows. He pulled the paper out, gaping at the eternal knot twisting over it.
“May I see that?” Lily said.
The man handed the ticket to her, his eyes anchored on the moving knot.
Lily looked up from the ticket with a smile so broad and bright that it made Raya question if it had ever slipped off. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you aboard the Elsewhere Express, Mr. Philips. I’m Lily, the train’s conductor. I apologize for the confusion. We weren’t expecting you. This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of welcoming more than one passenger in one evening. I’ll have the manifest updated immediately.” She handed the ticket back to him. It melted into his palm, leaving a golden knot shimmering over his skin. “Luckily, you’re just in time for the orientation.”
Q
“Lucky” was not a word Q would ever use to describe himself. He was born in the Year of the Goat, the unluckiest of all the signs in the Chinese zodiac. His mother made sure he was never dressed in green, blue, or black, or accessories made of wood. Spicy and oily foods were harder to avoid, but Connie was determined to counter as much of the bad luck her only son was born with as she could. A part of Q always wondered if the reason she had shipped him off to boarding school was so that four years’ worth of bland dining hall fare would chase away whatever bad luck remained. A bigger part guessed that it was because he reminded her too much of his late father. Whatever the reason, anyone who followed Q’s career as one of the world’s most celebrated portraitists had to agree that Connie’s plan had worked. For a while.
Q had never introduced himself with a lie before, but when the woman who called herself Lily had asked him where he had come from, it had slipped off his tongue faster than the truth could. Truths were heavy and rough around the edges, and his truth was morecumbersome than most. Explaining where he had really come from was not something that he was prepared to admit to strangers. Or himself. And even if he were, he had neither the time nor the inclination to tell a story that began when he was a boy. The odd scene inside a giant Lotus flower was the kind of dream that he didn’t want to waste a second of. Dreams were the only places left where he could see.
Q was thirteen when the stars vanished, but the loss of his night vision wasn’t anything a flashlight and a good memory couldn’t fix. The biggest consequence of not being able to see in the dark was tripping over his easel and breaking his nose. His bridge had not healed straight, but he wasn’t concerned. Other people’s faces fascinated him infinitely more than his own. Lily’s face was no exception.
Lily, Q suspected, would be the type of client to fidget while sitting for him. As someone who had made a name for himself capturing a face’s truth, he was quick to spot masks. The one Lily wore seemed new and ill fitting, her neck’s taut sinews betraying the struggle she waged to keep it on. Q doubted that Lily was even her real name.
The young woman standing next to the woman who was claiming to be Lily, however, appeared to be her opposite. Her brown eyes didn’t bother to lie when they openly stared at him with an odd mix of confusion and relief. They were either not afraid to be honest or not used to being seen. The portraitist in him itched to discover which, but a more urgent question demanded an answer. He looked at Lily. “Sorry, but did you say that this was a train?”
“Finally.”The woman with naked eyes extended her hand. “I’m Raya, the only other person here who can see that this is anything but a train.”
“Q.” He shook her hand. Nothing in his dreams had ever felt this warm. He held it tighter. Dreams were fleeting and fragile and he had learned to scour them for anything that could keep the morning from dragging him back into the dark. No detail was too small. His eyes were starved and content with scraps. Once, he clung to a blade of grass and bought himself an extra ten minutes of sleep and thenwoke up profoundly regretting all the different shades of green he had taken for granted.
Raya winced.
“I’m sorry.” Q dropped her hand, realizing how hard he had been squeezing it. Dreaming did not give him permission to be rude.
“The Elsewhere Express is a train just like the one you departed from, Mr. Philips,” Lily said, “but also so much more. I’ll explain everything in more detail at the orientation. I just have to fetch a few things we’ll need.” Lily slipped through a curtain behind the granite counter.
Q smiled at the glowing jellyfish floating in the purple sky. “I’ve outdone myself.”
“Sorry?” Raya said.
“I’ve outdone myself with this dream.” A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “It reminds me of the ones I used to have as a boy. I thought that I had outgrown them, but I guess I was wrong.” Words slipped out easily when he didn’t have to worry if they made him look silly or made sense. When he woke up, nothing he said or did inside this giant flower was going to matter in the slightest. So he was going to steal as much imagined happiness as he could. He had the rest of his life to be angry.
“You aren’t dreaming,” Raya said.
Q smirked. “If only that were true.”
“Listen to me.” Raya gripped his arms. “This is real.I’mreal. I’m trapped here. And so are you.”
“Trapped?” Q choked on a chuckle, remembering his dark prison. “Hardly.”
“Lily told me that the train’s passengers are people who don’t have purpose. Without it, we become too light and float away.”
“I’m…um…sorry.” Q wrestled down a smile. “I know that this is my dream and it’s not your fault, but nothing you said makes anything clearer.”
Raya looked over her shoulder at the curtain to the back room. “We don’t have time for this, Q. I need to know if you remember anything else about how you boarded.” She leaned closer to his ear.“Anything at all. We need to find a way out of here before Lily comes back.”
Q caught the ghost of her perfume. Orange flowers, brown sugar, and notes of ripe pears. He blinked, forgetting what he had meant to say next. His heightened senses were a blessing when he was awake and blind. In a dream where he could see, they overwhelmed him. Without his walking stick to keep things at a safe distance, even an imaginary woman felt too close. He took a step back from her.
Lily returned carrying three bright orange life vests and a gold makgeolli kettle. She set the rice wine kettle on the counter and handed Q and Raya a vest each. “Make sure you fasten them securely and don’t take them off until I tell you to.”
