“—will be stopped,” Lily said. “But first, you need to get your strength back.”
“I’m remembering things.” He bent his head, cradling it over his desk. “So many things.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Too many.”
“How about you, Lily?” Raya said. “What happened to you? Did you smell Manon’s perfume? Is your memory coming back too?”
Lily looked away. “You should never have gone to Manon’s perfumery.”
“What?”Raya frowned. “Rasmus would still be lying on that cot if it weren’t for Manon. Her fragrance brought him back.”
“Did it?” Lily said.
Raya looked at Rasmus. He sat in silence with his head bowed, wringing his hands. She chewed the corner of her mouth. “He just needs more time to—”
“I have to go.” Lily buttoned up her blazer. “I need to make sure that maintenance locks all the doors to the gallery car and make an announcement about the car’s ‘renovation.’ And I must speak with Han. The last thing we need is rumors.” She set her cap on her head, tucking her hair into it. “Can you stay with Rasmus?”
Raya nodded. “Of course.”
“Thank you, Ms. Sia.” Lily smoothed her features into the pleasant face that had greeted Raya when she boarded. “I’ll be back soon.”
Water splashed over the rim of the tall glass Raya was carrying back to Rasmus. She stopped and steadied her fingers. The seeds that Lily had planted were tiny, but it was the smallest things that found their way into the deepest cracks. Doubt was no exception. It sprouted swiftly, creeping over Raya’s memory of Manon and Olly like the stowaway’s rotting vines. She had been convinced that they had been telling the truth. Now, she wasn’t so sure. She set the half-empty glass in front of Rasmus. “You should drink this.”
“Thank you.” Rasmus drained the water in one gulp.
“You’re looking a lot better,” Raya said. “How are you feeling?”
“Embarrassed.” He avoided Q’s eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Q said. “You were swarmed by Echoes and lost your memory. Anyone would have been disoriented.”
Raya took a seat across the desk from Rasmus. As much as she wanted to ask him about the Missed and Misplaced Department, this was not the time. Discovering what really happened to Olly could wait. Surviving the night was a more pressing concern. “We’re just glad you’re all right.”
“Thanks to you,” Rasmus said. “It felt like I had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Everything was muffled and dark. And then I saw a light. Felt it. Smelled it. It flowed inside me like a breath, buoying me home.”
“Manon’s perfume,” Q said.
Rasmus nodded. “But my memories are jumbled up, mixed in with the memories the Echoes took. They’re like hundreds of old and faded photographs strewn over the floor. I’m still trying to sort through them.”
“You shouldn’t strain yourself,” Raya said. “Take your time.”
“I can’t.” Rasmus shook his head. “I remember the cracks spreading quickly from the Belvedere. That’s the one thing I do recall very clearly. We need to catch the stowaway as soon as possible.” He closed his good eye, his forehead wrinkling as though he were trying to wring memories from it. “The cracks were everywhere. And moths. So many moths. We were overwhelmed. Lily and I came up with the idea to—” He gripped his desk.
“Rasmus?” Raya said.
Rasmus tore through the desk’s drawers, tossing out crumpled pieces of paper, broken pencils, and pens missing their caps. He tugged the last drawer. It was locked. He searched his pockets and pulled out a ring of keys. He shoved a gold key into the drawer and twisted it, flicking his tongue over his dry lips. The lock clicked. He slid the drawer open, holding his breath. A dusty jar, the same kind he used to keep his flares, rolled inside it. He picked it up and wiped it on his sleeve. A round metal object clinked against the glass.
“What is that?” Q said.
Rasmus tapped the jar’s lid. The object inside it stirred, unfolding eight silver legs. “Q and Raya, I’d like you to meet Abbie, the Archivist of the Elsewhere Express.”
Rasmus
Rasmus was tending bar at the Lotus when he made Abbie, along with countless numbers of her kin. Crafting spiders from thethoughts that gurgled out of the bar’s back room sink had been a hobby to pass the time during the bar’s slow hours and a way to keep the sink from overflowing. He soldered worries and grudges into eight little legs and hammered them into tiny heads and eyes. Before long, he had large clusters of them, the worries multiplying on their own as worries often do.
In the beginning, the spiders helped tidy up the bar. Later, they ventured outside, building bridges to places they wanted to explore. Only Abbie stayed behind, preferring the warmth of Rasmus’s pocket. She enjoyed his trips to the Archive during his days off, going on her own adventures between the pages of books and scrolls. No one was surprised when she was chosen as the train’s new Archivist when its old Archivist retired. She meticulously inspected each layer of the jade sphere, making sure that thoughts carved into them were well-preserved and keeping a detailed catalog of every idea that boarded the train. Abbie consumed so many morsels of knowledge that she may as well have been the Archive itself. But her real gift was assisting the Archive’s visitors, never tiring of helping them navigate the train’s trove of information, a twinkle in all of her eyes.
Abbie was so well loved that every version of Mr. Goh needed to work overtime to make enough serum to erase her from passengers’ minds. Rasmus had required twice as many doses as everyone else. The first dose to forget who she was, the second to forget what he had done to her.
The metal spider crawled up the onyx pedestal and disappeared through a hole carved into the model of the Archive.
