“What’s it doing?” Raya peered inside the jade sphere.
“Ithas a name,” Rasmus said, his tone as sharp as the edges he filed on Abbie’s legs. “Abbie is reacquainting herself with the Archive’s collection. It’s changed quite a bit since I trapped her in that jar.”
“Youput her in the jar?” Q jerked his head. “Why?”
“For the same reason Lily and I erased the stowaway from our memory. Abbie helped us catch the stowaway, so I trapped her to keep cracks from spreading through the train. But unlike the passengers, we couldn’t erase her memory. She wouldn’t be a very goodArchivist if it were that easy to clear her mind. She’s the repository of all the knowledge the Elsewhere Express has accumulated.”
“I’m shocked she’s forgiven you so quickly after what you did to her.” Q watched Abbie through the sphere’s holes.
“It’s because the train’s spiders don’t hold grudges. Theyaregrudges. And a whole slew of other stubborn thoughts. They build all the bridges on the Elsewhere Express. Nothing is stronger than their webs. We wouldn’t have been able to catch the stowaway without her.”
“Now that Abbie’s back, stopping the stowaway shouldn’t be a problem.” Raya breathed easier. “Right?”
“Not quite.” Rasmus watched the metal spider crawl around the model’s innermost sphere. “Abbie wasn’t the only one who helped us.”
“Then we should find whoever helped you and get them to do it again,” Raya said.
“We can’t.” Rasmus’s dark pupil constricted, sinking into the sea of his iris as though unwilling to hear what he was going to say next. “They’re dead.”
Raya
There are limits to how far a mind can stretch. Raya pushed beyond those limits to comprehend the sacrifice Rasmus and Lily had asked of the train’s songs.
“We asked the dragonflies for help to find the stowaway first. They refused.” Rasmus sighed. “They weren’t always that stubborn, but I suppose, over time, you can’t help but become the thoughts you carry.”
Raya shifted her weight on her feet and hiked her bag higher over her shoulder.
“When the dragonflies turned us down, we turned to the songs for help. Lily asked as many songs as she could to change back from palm leaves and plumbing and whatever else they had fixed orreplaced on the train and grow back their wings. They flew off and scoured the train for us. Only one of them made it back.” Tears dampened Rasmus’s voice.
“Can’t we just gather more songs?” Q said. “Raya and I were at the maintenance department. The beach was filled with them.”
“Those won’t be enough.” Rasmus shook his head. “Not if we want to search the whole train. That’s why we needed the other songs to grow back their wings.”
“How did Lily do it?” Raya said.
“She was different then.” Rasmus’s tone, Raya thought, was like a note in one of Manon’s perfumes, a more bitter than sweet mingling of lilac and loss. “Lily didn’t just hear the train’s songs. She spoke to them. Not just in the way the maintenance crew gives them simple directions and points them to the things that need to be fixed. Lily conversed with them. Deeply. After we decoupled the Lake, Lily, with the help of the song that had survived the Lake, convinced more songs to help us find the stowaway. She can’t do that anymore.”
Raya glanced down at the purple notebook peeking from her bag. Inside it was a dead language she could no longer speak either. “I’m sure if she practiced…” Her voice trailed off, unable to commit to the lie.
“It won’t make any difference,” Rasmus said. “This isn’t a skill that Lily’s forgotten. Her love of music is a part of her that she threw off the train.”
Q frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“The stowaway destroyed the songs that Lily sent after it. When they died, Lily felt their pain. She couldn’t bear to keep the part of herself that she believed was responsible for their deaths. And so now, while she can still hear the songs on the train, they no longer share the same language.”
Raya understood that kind of guilt. It picked at grief’s scabs, refusing to let them heal.
Q looked up at the jade ceiling. “We’re surrounded by an unimaginable amount of knowledge. There must be something in this Archive that can help us track the stowaway.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t track the stowaway down,” Raya said, her eyes on her purple notebook.
Q shook his head. “We can’t just give up.”
“I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is that we should do things differently this time around.” Not once in all the evenings that Raya had tried to run after songs had she been able to catch one. She learned it was better to keep a notebook at the ready and wait for the songs to come to her. “Instead of chasing the stowaway, what if we stayed ahead of it?”
“How?” Q said. “We can’t read its mind, assuming it even has one.”
“We may not be able to read its thoughts, but I’m pretty sure that we can read the weather. If we can predict where and when it will rain next, maybe we’ll have enough time to set a trap before the stowaway shows up.” Raya turned to Rasmus. “If my brother could construct a working barometer as a child, it shouldn’t be difficult for someone who can build tiny crystal trains and mechanical spiders from thoughts to come up with a way to find a brewing storm.”
