“The boarding car,” Lily said. “Stunning, isn’t it?”
“I thought the carriage we came from was the boarding car?” Raya glanced back at the frame they had just stepped through. A star-filled horizon stared back at her.
“We haven’t left it.” Lily patted the oak’s trunk. “But now you can view and appreciate the décor the boarding team meticulously prepared to welcome you on board. Do you like it?”
A force, the kind that pushed against you when you took a sharp turn, shoved Raya to the grass. The ground rumbled against her cheek. She sat up, her palms pressed to the vibrating soil. “We’re moving.”
“Like I said, the train never stops.”
Raya stood up and spat out dirt. “This isn’t a train.”
“Do you ride the subway often, Ms. Sia?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Good. That makes my job a lot easier. A stranger to trains would have a harder time understanding what the Elsewhere Express is. A regular rider such as yourself should be more than familiar with the vacant stares that fill a train car.”
The glazed stares of the subway passengers who had left their seats and disappeared into their daydreams flashed in Raya’s mind. “What if I am?”
“This means that you already know the truth about trains,” Lily said. “Every train, no matter how full, is—”
“Empty.” The word slipped from Raya’s lips so quietly that she wondered if she had said it out loud.
Lily nodded. “Thoughts carry people away. Once created, thoughts don’t just vanish into thin air. They can’t. They need a place to go.” Lily looked out at the meadow. “And so, those thoughts come here.”
Raya’s head throbbed.
“Some passengers find it easier to grasp what the Elsewhere Express is when it’s broken up into parts.” Lily gazed up at the canopy of glowing numbers. “This tree, for example, grew from the imagination of a young man pondering his math exam.”
“You’re telling me that this whole place is someone’s daydream?”
Lily shook her head. “No, that would be impossible. There aren’tany daydreams this large. This tree is from the young man, but the meadow is from a daydream of a passenger who was picturing the animal sanctuary she’s hoping to build one day. Mr. Nakamura, in my opinion, couldn’t have made a better choice. Many on the Elsewhere Express see the train as a kind of sanctuary too.”
Lily’s words screeched like fingernails down a chalkboard in Raya’s ears.
“Is something wrong, Ms. Sia?”
Bile churned in Raya’s stomach. “The Elsewhere Express is a sanctuary…”
Lily smiled. “That’s correct.”
“A place where the lost and helpless go.” The edges of Raya’s voice hardened and hissed like iron quenched in water.
Lily’s smile slipped off. “That’s not what I meant.”
Raya pulled her spine as straight as she could. “I didn’t ask to be rescued.”
“Neither did anyone force you to board this train, Ms. Sia. All the Elsewhere Express did was open its doors.” Lily refastened her smile, tugging it wider than before. “And speaking of doors, the boarding car’s exit is over there.” She gestured to an empty stretch of grass to the left of the tree.
Raya squinted at the fluttering leafy shadows. “There’s nothing there.”
“That’s why we brought the frame. Do you mind holding it up?”
Raya kept the frame firmly at her side. She had clung to the edge of reason from the moment she found herself inside a strange vintage train car. To do as Lily asked was to pry her fingers from this cliff and fall. “Then what? We step into another train car that looks nothing like a train car? I drown in more questions that you’ll continue to ignore?”
“The sooner we leave the boarding car, the sooner you’ll have your answers, Ms. Sia. I’ll tell you everything you need to know at the passenger orientation.”
Raya clenched and unclenched her jaw. If she was going to have any hope of finding her way home, she needed to know where she was. Her fingers trembled around the gilded frame. She lifted it tothe level of her eye, copying what she had seen Lily do. Blurry golden strings coiled, twisted, and twirled inside it.
