Lily stuck her head out the window and squinted in the wind. There were no Echoes in sight. Lily reached for the ladder, glanced back at the song, and climbed up.
“Grab on to me.” Rasmus pulled her up to the roof.
An endless chain of crystal train cars snaked along the mountainside like a serpent. “Where are the Echoes?” Lily glanced around.
“That’s the advantage of climbing out of an unpopular train car,” Rasmus said. “The Echoes prefer to gather where passengers congregate. We’ll need to move quickly before they notice we’re here.” He led the way to the end of the train car, pausing every few steps to steady himself. He crouched at the edge of the car and pulled two unlit torches from his satchel. They ignited in blue flames. He handed one to Lily. “Whatever you see next, you need to stay calm.”
Lily nodded and looked over the edge of the car. Between the cars lay a metal statue of two naked bodies sleeping next to each other, locked in an embrace. One body’s back was fused to the train car Lily was on while the other’s was melded to the Lake’s. Their skin shone in the torches’ blue light like burnished steel. The metal lovers stirred, holding each other tighter. They smiled in their sleep. “Who are they?”
“Notwho.What,” Rasmus said. “That’s the coupler, the mechanism that links the train’s carriages. There’s a pair between every car. They’re thoughts, just like everything else on this train.”
“But why do they look like people?”
“Couplers keep the train together. They need to be incredibly strong. They’re melded from the solemn vows that people have made to themselves or others. The thoughts took on this form on their own, eternal words in the shape of eternal lovers.”
“How do we unlink them?” Lily’s chest tightened.
“The coupler is strong but not unbreakable. These torches are made from distrust and lies.”
Whispers swirled in the wind. The torches’ blue flames flickered.
“The Echoes. They’re coming. Decouple the train now.” Rasmus ran down the car, waving his torch in the air. “Over here!” Phantoms grabbed at his arms and legs, howling as they coiled around him.Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.
Lily forced herself to look at the coupler.They’re thoughts. Not people. They’re thoughts. Not people.She hurled the torch at the body that was attached to the Lake and struck its hip. It stirred. Blue flames engulfed it and rapidly spread to the rest of the train car. Metal melted, releasing the vows the statue was made of:Never again. Always. I swear, I won’t let this beat me.
The train car exploded into a galaxy of stars and for a moment, it was beautiful. In the next, it was gone. The remaining half of the coupler curled into a ball and cried metal tears. Lily wept with it.
The uncoupled train cars caught up to the Belvedere. A metal body, identical in every way to the one Lily had burned, lay on its side, fused to the front of the approaching car. It dried its tears andsmiled, extending its arms to its other half. The lovers pulled each other into an embrace, renewed their vows, and made the train whole.
Lily watched the pair fall back to sleep, her heart thundering over the train’s roar and the Echoes’ screeches. Between the carriages was a truth as terrifying as the cracks spreading across the Belvedere. Lily had given up her past to live forever without baggage, but now she saw that eternity was not a covenant that the Elsewhere Express could keep. No one could. Vows were as flimsy as wishful thinking, promises as breakable as the people who made them, fragile, just like everything else on the train.
I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in.
—Virginia Woolf
“Where can I borrow a map of the train?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Lily
A frothy scum blurred the memories bubbling to the surface of Lily’s mind. She tried to skim it off but could not keep up. Shapes, shadows, and sounds rose in a turbulent stream, obscuring the events that transpired after the Lake had been decoupled from the rest of the train. Lily hurled the serum’s empty vial into the fire. “It didn’t work.”
“Mr. Goh warned us that this could happen,” Rasmus said. “We knew retrieving a memory wouldn’t be as easy as getting rid of it. Serums are much better at washing things away than bringing them back.”
Lily sank into her chair. Every version of the pharmacist had hated the thought of breaking the train’s rules when Rasmus requested they make the serum. The passenger handbook clearly stated that retrieving lost luggage was strictly prohibited. Mr. Goh gulped down his excess baggage serum as soon as he had completed Rasmus’s order to rid himself of his guilt.
“How about you, Rasmus?” Raya leaned forward on the sofa. “Do you remember anything else?”
“No. I’ve told you all that I remember about that night.Everything that happened after we decoupled the Lake and regrouped at the Belvedere is a blur.”
“Are you going to ask the pharmacist to make more serum?” Q said.
Rasmus shook his head. “The poems Mr. Goh used to create the serum only blossomed at the Lake. We don’t have any left to make more doses.”
