by Lev Grossman
“Library car.” The porcupine considered it. Then he sighed, as if library cars were an indignity that he suffered on a daily basis. “Oh, all right. If we must!”
The porcupine’s white-tipped quills swayed stiffly from side to side as he waddled past Kate and out into the corridor. She followed him. Though not too closely. On their way they passed Tom, still in his pajamas.
“Why don’t you head on up to the engine,” she said. “See if the train needs more coal.”
She had no idea if Tom was going to do what she said. Most of the time when she told Tom to do something, he either did nothing or the exact opposite. But now he just nodded and headed forward.
Look at that. She could get used to this conducting business.
Kate and the porcupine walked back along the swaying, rumbling, chuff-chuff ing train, through the sleeper car, then the dining car, then the kitchen car, then the other kitchen car, then the other dining car. Kate was starting to get a little nervous when they finally opened the door to the library car.
All credit to Uncle Herbert: It was not a disappointment.
This was the extra-tall indigo-colored car she’d seen earlier. Every square inch of its walls was crammed with books—the shelves ran all the way up to the ceiling, which must have been fifteen feet high. There were even bookshelves over the doors and windows. The floor was covered in thick red oriental rugs, and there were two overstuffed leather armchairs and a big, long, comfy couch. It even smelled like a library.
OMG, Kate thought. I am awesome at inventing train cars!
The porcupine looked around.
“It’ll do.”
He climbed up onto one of the armchairs, settled down, and closed his eyes.
“I’m mostly nocturnal,” he explained.
Then he went to sleep.
Kate walked the length of the library car, running her fingertips over the spines of the books. Each bookshelf had a wooden bar along it to keep the books from falling off when the train swayed; you could unlatch it and swing it open to get a book out. It was exactly what she’d imagined, only more so.
She skimmed a few titles. It was an incredibly random bunch of books: fat, dignified old hardcovers; big, skinny picture books; cheap paperbacks with spines so worn that you couldn’t read the titles anymore. There were guides to identifying moths in distant parts of the world, and multivolume sets of the complete letters of people with long, unpronounceable names, and romance novels with heroines spilling out of their gowns and heroes busting out of their shirts, and thrillers and horror stories with creepy one-word titles like The Trees and The Leaves, and important grown-up novels that she mentally reminded herself to skim later for interesting and/or bad words.
And every once in a while, like a friendly face in a crowd, there were the kinds of books that Kate liked, which fell into two general categories: books about science and books about ordinary people who find out that magic is real.
Kate took down a promising-looking book from the second category and sat on the couch with it. Twenty minutes later, when the hero of the novel was just at the point of discovering that the horrible, abusive private school he’d been transferred to after the unexplained deaths of his parents had a secret school underneath it, accessible via the locker of that one kid who had mysteriously disappeared last year, something alerted her to the fact that she was being watched.
It was the cat—the one she’d met before, who was neither a big cat nor a small cat. She must have come in without Kate hearing. Her head had dramatic black stripes, almost like a badger’s. Kate really wanted to know what kind of cat she was.
“Sorry,” Kate said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I saw you there,” the cat said.
“For a second I thought you were a pillow.”
“For a second I thought you were a large, defenseless rodent.”
Kate wondered if she should be a little worried. She was definitely bigger than the cat, but she wouldn’t have wanted to get into a fight with her.
“I guess I was really caught up in this book I’m reading,” Kate said carefully.
“It must be very good.”
“It’s all right. There’s a lot of description. I’ve been skimming a little. Have you read it?”
“No,” the cat said. “I’m not here for the books.”
“Oh. Why are you here?”
“To be alone. We’re not social animals.”
Kate wondered if that was a hint that she should leave. But she was here first. And it was her train. She tried to keep things going instead.
“What kind of cat are you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t mind. I’m a fishing cat.”
“Sorry, but does that mean you’re a cat who likes to fish? Or is there an actual kind of cat called a fishing cat?”
“The second one.” She began licking a large paw. “I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of us. There aren’t many of us, and we don’t get as much attention as the big cats. We’re related to the rusty-spotted cats and the flat-headed cats—unfortunate name that, although it’s true, they have very flat heads. And they eat fruit, if you can believe it. A cat that eats fruit! Also the leopard cats.”
“Oh. Are leopard cats the same as leopards?”
“No.”
There was another lull. Kate tried to think of something more to say. It was hard to tell what the cat was thinking. Though she guessed that was true of every cat ever.
“So—what’s it like being a fishing cat?”
“Oh, you know. We live in swamps and mangrove forests. We hunt. We swim. And we fish, obviously.”
“Wait, you swim? Like, in water?”
“Absolutely!” It was the first topic the fishing cat sounded really enthusiastic about. “We love it. Other cats think it’s weird, but we don’t care. I mean, it’s not like we eat fruit!”
“I can’t believe you swim!”
“Well, I don’t like to boast about it. Tigers do it, too. But fishing cats probably do it the most. We have waterproof fur. And look.” She held up a paw. “Our toes are even a little bit webbed.”
“That is so amazing!”
The cat seemed pleased.
“You said something before, about what happened last time,” Kate said. “With the train. What did you mean?”
“Oh, I thought they would’ve told you about that,” the cat said. “As part of your training.”
“But that’s the thing, I didn’t get trained! At all!”
Maybe she shouldn’t have admitted that, but it just came out.
“Is that right? How extraordinary.” The fishing cat flopped her heavy tail from side to side like a velvet rope. “Well, it was before my time—we live only ten or fifteen years, you know. But I do know that before this train there was another one, and it left one day and never came back. I don’t know what happened to it, but I doubt it was anything good.”
Just then the door opened and two more animals came in.
One was a very long, very thin snake with large, alert black eyes and skin so bright green it was almost fluorescent. Kate felt a powerful instinctive urge to run away from it very, very fast. The other was some kind of large wading bird with long legs and a curvy neck. If pressed Kate might’ve said it was a stork. Or a heron. Or a crane? Or were they all the same thing? You think you know something about animals, and then you have to conduct a whole train full of them. Anyway, it was a big fancy bird. Not the kind you see every day.
“Mind if we join you?” the bird said. She had a lot of long, elegant gray feathers.
“Yes,” said the cat.
“That’sssssssss too bad,” the snake said, sliding smoothly inside. “It’ssssssss because I’m venomoussssss, I know.”
He slithered up onto a chair.
“It’ssssss a common prejudiccccccce.”
(I’m not going to keep typing all the extra s’s, so just keep in mind that the snake hisses a lot when he talks.)
&n
bsp; “A library car,” the heron said. “This is fantastic. Who would’ve thought?”
Kate glowed quietly inside: She would’ve thought!
With two beats of her enormous wings the heron flew up to perch on a lamp.
“You always say things are fantastic,” the snake scoffed.
“Well, you never do,” she said, “so I have to do it twice as much. And anyway, it is!” She turned to Kate. “Are there any cars with fish in them?”
“I was wondering that, too,” the fishing cat said.
“There’s no fish car,” Kate said. Like she would have a fish car! “But they might serve fish in one of the dining cars.”
The porcupine woke up and squinted sleepily at the cat, the bird, the snake, and the human.
“I thought I would be alone in here,” he said.
“And now we’re here!” the heron said. “Isn’t it fantastic?”
“I would like everybody to be clear,” the porcupine said, “that I have approximately thirty thousand quills on my body. They’re mostly for defense, but believe me, they can be lethal.”
The other animals looked at one another.
“I don’t know about all of you, but I’m very frightened.” The fishing cat rolled onto her back on the couch, paws in the air, and stretched exactly like a house cat would. She didn’t look very frightened.
“Me too,” the snake said. “I would shut my eyes in terror, but I don’t have any eyelids.”
“Really?” Kate said. “How is that possible?”
“I have a transparent scale over each eye. Much more elegant than eyelids.”
“But don’t you ever want to close your eyes?”
“Not really,” the snake said. “I do like licking them, though.”
“I don’t want to brag,” the heron said, “but I have three eyelids.”
“Wait, what?!” Kate said.
“It’s true! Upper eyelid, lower eyelid, plus a nictitating membrane.”
“I’m not even listening,” said the snake. “Because I also don’t have any ears. Or a nose. I smell with my tongue.”
Animals were a lot weirder than Kate had realized.
“I am very much wishing that I had never evolved ears right now,” the porcupine said.
“Maybe you could read a book,” Kate said brightly. “Lots of good books here in the library car!”
“That would be nice,” the cat said, “but we can’t read.”
Click-bing.
SORRY TO INTERRUPT THIS FASCINATING CONVERSATION
BUT DUTY CALLS
The train was slowing down again. They were coming to another station.
“I’d better go.” Kate stood up, kind of relieved. “It was nice meeting you all.”
She slipped out. Though honestly she was worried that they would all kill one another if they weren’t supervised.
As an afterthought, she wondered who would win if they did all have a fight. She thought it would probably be the porcupine.
11
The Baby That Looked Like a Pine Cone
THE LANDSCAPE OUTSIDE WAS CHANGING. THEY’D LEFT the winter forest behind and entered what looked more like a tropical jungle. When Kate opened a door and looked out—which was kind of awesome all on its own, sticking your head out the open door of a moving train without getting yelled at by the conductor because the conductor was you—the air was warm and humid and smelled like an incredible wealth of green life.
The station platform was overgrown with vines and ferns and littered with giant leaves. Palm trees crowded around it, and green shoots pushed up between the railroad ties. Waiting on the platform were an iguana, two large snakes, a couple of amazing golden-haired monkeys that looked like they’d had their faces spray-painted pink, and something like a small hippo with a big nose that she thought might be a tapir. Plus some colorful glossy frogs that looked like pieces of candy.
The air was full of burbling, shrieking birdsong, and a gorgeous translucent-green light showered down through the trees. The sign on the platform read TUMUCUMAQUE, which much later Kate would figure out was in the Amazon.
Kate thought she’d better announce the name of the station, the way they did on regular trains, though she had no idea how to pronounce it. She said it several times in different ways just to be sure. She must’ve gotten it right at least once because a few animals quietly left their compartments and trotted and slithered and fluttered out into the heat of the jungle.
Kate grabbed a banana from the dining car before the next stop, which was in a bamboo grove. The station after that was giant redwoods, and after that was a dusty plain where a brutal sun beat down. It was so hot she had to take off her blazer.
Only two hardy wild dogs got on there, and one very small tortoise that took what seemed like half an hour to cross the platform. Kate felt like she was starting to get the hang of this, whatever this was, enough that she had some spare energy to start wondering about the big picture. As soon as she did, a million questions started asking themselves in her head. How could a giant steam train go to all these places? Why did nobody else know about this? Was the train invisible? And who put down all these tracks? Who sold all these animals their tickets? And so on. In a way she didn’t want to ask, because she was afraid that doing so might disturb some fragile enchantment, and it would all turn out to be a dream and evaporate as mysteriously as it had arrived.
She just wanted it to keep on going. But at the same time she knew that sooner or later those questions would need answering.
The next stop was another rain forest. When all the other animals had gotten on and off the train, there was one left on the platform all by itself.
At first Kate wasn’t completely sure it was an animal. It looked more like a pine cone. It was tiny and brown and round, with pointy overlapping scales. But when she looked closer, she saw that it had four legs and a tail and a little face. It was curled up tightly, its eyes shut, fast asleep.
Touching unidentified wild animals with her bare hands was not a thing Kate was completely comfortable with. But she could also see that, clutched tightly to the creature’s little belly, in its two clawed front paws, was a ticket.
And it looked so helpless. It was just a baby, and it was all alone.
She sighed. She even said the word out loud:
“Sigh.”
She picked up the little animal, cupping it gently in her two hands, praying it wouldn’t bite her or scratch her or go to the bathroom on her, and quickly carried it inside. Its scales were dry and scratchy. The train started up again.
Kate took it back to the library. She couldn’t think what else to do with it. The porcupine, the cat, the heron, and the snake were all still arguing, but they stopped when she came in.
“Okay,” she said. “Does anybody know what this is?”
The cat peered at it. “It looks like a pine cone.”
“That’s what I thought,” Kate said.
“Or an artichoke,” the cat said.
“It’s not. It’s some kind of animal.”
“That,” the heron said, “is a baby pangolin.”
“I don’t know everything,” Kate said, “but I think I know what a penguin looks like.”
“Not a penguin, a pangolin. It’s the only mammal in the world with scales. Pangolins are incredibly rare.”
“Awesome.” Kate placed it carefully on a cushion on the couch. “Congratulations on your new baby pangolin. Take good care of it.”
She left before anybody could object. Then she went forward to check on Tom and the engine.
Tom was alive and well, but extremely sweaty and almost completely covered in coal dust.
“Might be time to hit the swimming pool car,” Kate said.
“Click,” he said. “Bing.”
Click-bing !
IT’S GOING WELL THANK YOU
BUT I’M A LITTLE LOW ON FUEL
She’d almost forgotten that the train could talk. There’s a lot going on in your life w
hen you have more urgent things to think about than a talking train.
“Low on fuel. Okay, that sounds important.” She seemed to remember Uncle Herbert saying something about that. “Can I help?”
NOT YET
WE’LL HAVE TO STOP FOR IT SOMEWHERE SOON THOUGH
One of the things Kate was learning on the train was what to do when you saw a problem, which was that you tried to solve it. At home her usual approach to a problem was to ignore it till her parents noticed it, at which point they would solve it for her—but here on the train there were no parents. She was in charge.
Not solving problems was way easier than solving them, obviously. But left to their own devices, problems usually only got worse. Better to get it over with.
In the meantime they had their next train lesson. The Silver Arrow talked Kate and Tom through the process of getting the engine going from a standing start. The train was right about one thing: It was a good teacher. It taught them how to read the steam pressure gauge and the little glass tube that showed the water level in the boiler. They went over the brakes and the throttle again, and it introduced them to a mysterious but important device called a reversing lever, which controlled how much steam power went to the pistons.
Or something like that.
“I thought that’s what the throttle did,” Kate said.
IT’S—WELL—THINK OF IT LIKE THE GEARBOX ON A CAR
“I don’t know how that works either.”
OKAY, THE GEARS ON A BICYCLE—WAIT
HMMM
“Hmmm?” Tom said. “What’s ‘hmmm’?”
THERE’S A STATION COMING UP
“Okay…”
BUT IT’S NOT ON THE SCHEDULE
“Can I actually see the schedule?” Kate said.
NO
“Well, what should we do?”
DON’T ASK ME. YOU’RE THE CONDUCTOR
Kate thought of saying, Well, you’re the train! or How am I supposed to know? or maybe But Tom’s a conductor, too! But she didn’t. She couldn’t, really. She hadn’t asked to be the conductor of a magic steam train, or not exactly, but deep down she knew she kind of had. She’d wanted something real, something that wasn’t kid stuff. Something that mattered. And looky here, this was it.