“What?”
Rasmus pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I’ll need your help finding it.”
“It?” Lily tilted her head.
“We don’t know exactly what’s boarded the train. No one has seen it.”
Lily frowned. “Then how do you know it’s here?”
“The rain.”
There was still a long list of things about the Elsewhere Expressthat Lily did not understand, but she had not expected that she would need to add the weather to it.
“I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we need to find the stowaway. Get dressed. I’ll wait outside.”
“Shouldn’t we just wait until morning? It will be easier to search the train cars then.”
Rasmus stopped at the door and turned around to face her. “Do you know how many dining cars the Elsewhere Express has?”
Lily nodded. “Four. The Dragonfly, the Lantern, the River, and the Lake.”
“Not anymore,” Rasmus said. “Now it has three. The Lake’s gone. The stowaway destroyed it.”
Lily gasped. The Lake was a wonder on the Elsewhere Express, a dining car where passengers picnicked on lily pads floating on a clear lake and dined on fine plates painted with flowers that danced in the breeze. Tiered fountains dotted the water, serenading passengers with their gentle gurgle.
Lily had not been surprised to learn that the Lake had been crafted from the most inspired thoughts that found their way on board. The latest addition to the dining car was a crystal fountain that spouted stars. It had taken the Elsewhere Express’s craftspeople three revolutions of the train to collect the thoughts that made up the crystal the fountain was carved from. The thoughts had all come from a single person, a cleaning lady who had been working on a book of poetry every night on her train ride home. Her words flowed slower than a trickle, but their syllables tasted like sea salt and dark chocolate, each as rich as it was bittersweet.
“Only a handful of people know about what happened to the Lake, and we need to keep it that way,” Rasmus said. “We don’t want to cause a panic. I’ve just sent a memo out to tell the passengers that the Lake’s under maintenance.”
“How long will it take?”
“To what?”
“To repair the Lake.”
Rasmus shook his head. “It can’t be repaired.”
“Of course it can. It might take some time, but I’m sure themaintenance crew will be able to gather enough songs to patch it up. It will be as good as new. Everything on this train can be fixed.”
“Everything”—Rasmus slipped his conductor’s cap on—“except this.”
Rasmus helped Lily through the Lake’s door and they emerged from a jade snuff bottle lying on the ground. A sickly sweet, putrid smell tainted the air. Lily grimaced, covering her nose and mouth. The once-clear lake festered like an abscess, bubbling with reeking, dark pus. No trace of its fountains or lily pads remained. Rotting vines crawled out of the lake to strangle withered trees. Beneath the choked branches, the songs that had been used to repair the train car over its immeasurable lifetime decayed into inky black pools. The foul soup soaked the ground, turning it into a sludge of mud and rot. Lily vomited over her shoes.
“Are you all right?” Thunder rumbled over Rasmus’s voice.
Lily wiped her mouth on her sleeve and managed to nod.
“Luckily, there weren’t many people around when the stowaway struck.” Rasmus surveyed the car. “The few that were here managed to escape.”
“And no one saw the stowaway?”
Rasmus shook his head. “That’s why we’re here. Hopefully, we can find clues before we have to decouple the Lake from the rest of the train.”
“Decouple?” Lily choked. “There has to be another way.”
“Nothing can save this place. Not all the songs in the world. Let’s get to work. I think we should—”
The black sludge gave way under Lily’s left foot, swallowing it up to her ankle. Lily grabbed on to Rasmus and yanked her foot out, leaving her boot behind. Decay consumed it. Lily screamed.
