“What is it?” Raya said.
“I…I’ve seen those spheres before.”
“You have?When?”
“Remember when I told you that I used to have strange dreams as a boy?”
“Yes. You mentioned it at the Lotus.”
“This sounds mad.” Q gnawed his lower lip. “But I think I dreamt about this place. And those spheres.”
“That’s not as crazy as you think it sounds.” Astrid retied her bandanna. “The Elsewhere Express has a very strict baggage policy.”
“What does the baggage policy have to do with Q’s dreams?” Raya said.
“The train can only carry so much.” Astrid looked over a hole and watched the spheres roll over the painted waves. “Just look at the water. Can you imagine how much an ocean of thoughts weighs? And this isn’t the only ocean on the train. There are seas, rivers, lakes, and fjords too.”
Astrid straightened. “Every thought has weight, and night dreams—the thoughts we have in our sleep—are no exception. To keep the train light, we take a draft from the pharmacy before going to bed to cast our night dreams off before we wake up. It tastes like cough syrup, but housekeeping gives everyone warm brown-butter cookies, so we don’t complain. Much.” Astrid chuckled.
“Night dreams need to go somewhere after they’re sent away from the train in the same way wandering daydreams board the Elsewhere Express from the world off it. It’s almost like an exchange.” Astrid looked at Q. “The dreams you had as a boy most likely belong to a passenger on this train, someone who dreamt about this ocean and those spheres. Once a night dream finds you, it leaves a trail for others to find. The dreams that visit you will always come from the same passenger. People outside the train call it inspiration. We call it excess weight.”
Q gazed down at the water. “In my dreams, the spheres weren’t just balls of light.”
Sixteen Years Ago
The words that spilled out of the phone’s receiver made no sense. Connie Chen Philips told the voice on the other end of the line that it had the wrong number and set the phone down. Surely, the caller could not have said that her husband had gotten struck by a train and was dead. Either the line must have been garbled or if the news was true, it was meant for someone else.
The phone rang again.
“Hello?” Connie answered, arranging fresh pink peonies in her favorite crystal vase. This time around, the police officer spoke slower, pounding each syllable into her skull like a long, rusty nail. Connie dropped the phone and collapsed next to it. She curled up on the Italian marble, staring at the painting hanging above a tufted, cream sofa.
Her son was seven when he had given the painting to her on her birthday. Critics praised his pieces as mature and complex, even as he insisted that each piece was only a means to remember the strange world he visited in his dreams. Before he switched to canvas, he used to jump out of bed first thing in the morning to sketch on the nearest surface he could find. Walls always happened to be close by. Connie wasn’t too happy when he ruined them.
Connie’s husband, an artist himself, was more understanding. He sat Quentin down on his knee with a smile that crinkled the corners of his gray eyes and suggested that Quentin might be able to remember his impossible world better if he used canvases that weren’t constantly scrubbed clean. The painting above the sofa was the first one Q had made after his father convinced him to make the change.
According to the brass label Connie had made for the piece, the painting was calledSky filled with stars. It was not the most creative title in the world, but she admitted that her son was more articulatewith his brush than with words. She blamed herself for this, having insisted that he be raised trilingual. Quentin Sr. spoke to him in English, while she spoke to him in Math and Mandarin. When he was younger, Quentin often mixed the three languages up.
So when he told her that her birthday present was of water singing, she assumed that he meant to say “xingxing,” the word for stars. And since stars were not found in the sea, she taught Quentin the correct word for “sky,” making him repeat it until he got it right. Tiankong. Tiankong. Tiankong. Names, she reminded him, were important. The perfect title could make a painting sell for twice the price.
Now, as she viewed the painting with her cheek pressed against cold marble and hot tears streaming down her face, she realized that Quentin had been right about the painting’s original title. From this angle, she gazed upon an ocean, watching little moons shimmer over painted waves. Her son’s gentle brushstrokes strummed her soul, playing a silent song that even shattered hearts could feel. Connie closed her eyes and let the music ferry its silent wish inside her.
Live. Breathe. Be.
Connie told herself that after she buried her husband she would have the painting’s correct title etched on a new brass plate.
“Why do I need to sign safety waivers?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Raya
According to Astrid, there were only two ways to get down from the painted sky, and Raya did not like either of them. Ladders made her knees hurt and Raya couldn’t even begin to imagine how a star would take her to the island below. But as the only door leading out of the train car was located on the island, she was forced to choose. “Stars,” Raya said, trusting her fate to the unknown.
“Good choice.” Astrid nodded. “That’s what most passengers pick. The ladders are terrifying. I avoid them as much as I can. I hate it when they creak or when a rung gives way. There’s just one problem. We’re all out of stars. Everything we painted today is already hanging in the night sky.”
