“You’re all set.” Astrid held out a clipboard. “I’ll just need you to sign this waiver and you can be on your way.” She took a pen from behind her ear and tapped the paper attached to the board with it.
“A waiver for what?” Raya scanned the page.
“Just standard safety stuff.”
“I thought that using a star was supposed to be safe?” Q peered down at the stardust flickering in the sky.
“It is. The waiver isn’t for sliding down the star. It’s protocol for high-risk activities like painting. I should have made you sign this before you painted the star, but I honestly didn’t think that you were going to be able to do it. But the conductor is strict about admin stuff like this. Sorry.”
“How is painting a high-risk activity?” Raya said.
“You’re on a train made of thoughts and standing on a painted sky.” Astrid handed the waiver and pen to Q. “There are no limits to what our minds can create here. Q just made a star with a flick of his wrist. Can you imagine what someone with dark thoughts could conjure? On a train that brings thoughts to life”—Astrid’s gaze fell on Raya’s bag—“we need to be very careful about the thoughts that we bring on board.”
Raya lowered her eyes, grateful that she had no talent for painting. Jace died in her mind over and over again because an air freshener that smelled like rain or an ad for the brand of milk they had dunked their cookies in was a one-way ticket to her blackest night. On a spectrum of darkness, there was no bleaker shade than grief-tinted guilt.
But this was not something Raya felt that she needed to confess, as she had no intentions of ever picking up a paintbrush. She might have been more worried if she still wrote music. The last song she had ever written was for Jace. It was meant to be a quiet goodbye, but all it did was drown the lullaby inside her with tears until it decayed.
Raya was keenly aware that the shadows that lived in her songs were more of a danger to the Elsewhere Express than anything Q could ever paint. She kept her gaze on the floor, blinking back fresh tears.
If she had looked up, she would have seen that Q was hiding something too.
Q
Q did not consider himself a dangerous man unless vandalizing school property counted as a violent crime against walls. His career as a young vandal began on his first day at boarding school, with a tiny moth he drew in the corner of his desk. It ended months later with the swarm he painted by the school chapel’s largest window, their wings burning in the sun. It would have been more prudent to have kept his paintings hidden in the shadows, but as his vision worsened, he needed more light.
This was, at least, the standard answer Q gave whenever his school records came up during media interviews. In truth, he painted each burnt wing to remind himself that bad things happened when you wanted things you couldn’t have. Moths that chased fire got burned. Blind men who missed the light floundered and grew bitter in the dark. There was nothing he could do about going blind, and the sooner he taught himself not to long for the light, the less rage he needed to hide. His darkest thoughts would come later, in the hours before he boarded the Elsewhere Express. Astrid’s warning about the dangers of such thoughts made it clear that joining the train’s painting crew was never going to be an option. It was too easy to give a swarm of his old thoughts wings. No waiver, even if he signed it in blood, would be able to keep the train safe from his imaginings.
“Ready?” Raya crouched by a hole in the floor.
Q wiped his icy palms on his coat. “No.”
“Do you want me to go first?” Raya looked up at him.
Her eyes were just as naked as when Q first saw them. Their rims quivered, putting her fear on full display. Q would have offered her a robe if fear could be clothed, but the quiet courage that flickered behind her irises like a small flame told him that she didnot need it. This woman, he thought, was not a stranger to being selfless. Perhaps even to a fault. “I made the star. I should test it before you get on.”
“Are you sure? I can—”
Q jumped through the hole before he could change his mind. It seemed only right that the person who went first was the one who had more experience hurtling to their doom.
“Who do I call to make repairs in my compartment?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Raya
Had the trip down the stardust slide been a song, it would have tasted like fresh lychees and laughter. Raya landed feetfirst on the powdery, pale-pink sand wishing that the shimmering trail were longer.
“That was quite the ride.” Q smiled brighter than the spheres surfing the waves to shore. “I’m glad we decided not to use a ladder.”
The wind scattered the stardust, sprinkling it through Raya’s hair and making it sparkle. “Me too. It’s just sad that your painting’s gone.”
Q smiled at her twinkling hair. “Not entirely.”
“And I took photos in case you want something to remember it by.” A man with silver threaded through his dark hair strode over, a vintage Leica camera hanging from a strap around his neck. He extended his tanned hand and rough fingers. “I’m Dev.”
