Rotting vines broke through the onyx ceiling. Shards rained down on the train car, cutting and slicing Q’s face and hands. Blood coated his fingers. Raya slipped from their grasp. The stowaway hoisted Raya to the ceiling, coiling its vines around her like a cocoon. Wind wailed through the painted door.
“Why, Lily?” Q clenched his bloody fists. “Why didn’t you help her?”
Lily’s hair twisted in the wind. “Because the stowaway would only steal her away again. There’s only one way to end this and it’s through this door. It’s morning. The map and your tether have released you. You can leave this train without crushing Raya.”
“Give me a reason to believe you, Lily. Give me the smallest reason and I will jump off this train right now. I swear to you that I didn’t bring the stowaway on board. I would never hurt anyone.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Lily narrowed her gaze at the pocket containing Q’s drawing.
Q pressed his hand over it, crumpling his sketched threat. It grew heavier as though filling up with rocks.
“You boarded this train from a dark place, Mr. Philips. And you brought this darkness with you.” Lily turned to face the stowaway, her eyes on the fluttering moths that made up its body. “A conductor likes to know their passengers. I read the passenger manifest. I know the anger you’ve been trying to keep inside you. You’ve failed.”
An objection raced over Q’s tongue and rammed against the back of his teeth. He could not deny Lily’s words. Nothing she had said about him was a lie. He wondered if she was right about him bringing the stowaway on board too. He stared at the stowaway, remembering what Raya had told him about how it wore his face at the Missed and Misplaced Department.
But eyes were laughably easy to trick. They could be shut and opened, forced to look closely or away, ordered to steal a glance or linger. They saw only what their owners wanted, blinding themselves to everything else.
Other senses were not as quick to be fooled. You smelled what you smelled and heard what you heard, and there was no way to convince a tongue it liked something it did not. But there was nothing more honest than touch. Fire was hot, ice was cold, lips were soft, and knives, dull or sharp, could make you scream. Out of all his senses, Q trusted touch the most. He ran to the stowaway.
“No!” Raya squirmed within the stowaway’s vines.
The stowaway met Q halfway. Q extended his hand toward it.
“Mr. Philips?” Lily yelled over the howling wind. “What are you doing?”
Q squeezed his eyelids shut and shoved his hand into the teeming moths that made up the stowaway’s chest, intent on grasping what his other senses could not. The insects crawled around his fingers and over his palm, their wings fluttering like whispers across his skin. They spoke as one, revealing a truth that was a secret only because no one listened.
Q yanked his hand out and staggered back, teetering on the edgeof his painted doorway. He stared down a cliff. It would be quick, he thought, over before he felt any pain. It was a small price to pay to keep an entire train safe.
He glanced back at Raya. He didn’t need to say goodbye. Soon, he would be discarded along with the rest of her excess baggage. He imagined her eyes growing wide at the sight of her compartment for the second first time, unburdened by memories of the stowaway or the dilemma of deciding who got to keep the compartment and stay. Raya would smile when the grass carpet tickled the soles of her feet and breathe a sigh when her bed gave her a hug. A stick of incense would tell her any bedtime story she liked. She would drift into sleep and maybe dream about the train, gifting a young boy with a glimpse of glowing spheres and magic.
Q smiled at the thought and threw himself out the door, taking the stowaway’s secret with him.
The Elsewhere Express
Loudspeaker Announcement
Greetings, passengers. We apologize for the interruption at this hour. We would like to inform you that the cloakroom and the boarding car will be undergoing renovations and will not be accessible during this time. We would like to let you know that the furry and finned friends who were displaced from the boarding car are in need of a new home. Please contact Mr. Nakamura if you are interested in adopting them.
You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
—James Allen
Day One
From the Passenger Records of Hiraya Sia
Raya
The silver words inlaid on the wall behind Raya’s bed swam behind her eyelids like carp in a very small pond.
I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
Raya wondered who she would be when she woke up the next day. Though the “next day” had come, the train’s painters had yet to paint over her compartment’s ceiling. Until they did, the longest night of her life had yet to end. She stared up at the painted stars, clutching a bottle of blue tonic to her heart. Once she drank it, she could be whoever she wanted to be, and wear whatever face made it easiest to smile.
Lily had promised that Mr. Goh’s concoction would give her the best sleep of her life. Raya could only hope this was not another of Lily’s lies. If the serum failed to sweep away every trace of Q, she would live in this night for the rest of her endless journey. Q had paid for her ticket with his life, and she was not going to waste her fare. She sat up and brought the bottle to her lips. The tiny ocean inside it washed a memory of a stroll on the beach she had nevertaken to her mind’s shore. On a sampan sailing down a river of fleeting thoughts, she had dared to imagine a future on the train, days of collecting songs that had washed onto pink sand while Q painted stars above her. She chose to pretend that he was in the sky now, preparing the paints he would need for the most magical sunrise the Elsewhere Express had ever seen. Later, they would meet up at the Lotus for happy hour and watch the whales. Q would smile at her from across the table, his gray eyes crinkling over his Sakura Surprise. She reached out to touch his cheek, tracing the remembrance of his warmth in the air.
Raya threw the tonic on the floor.
