The Silver Arrow

by Lev Grossman

  “What, automatically?”

  He nodded. “Everybody finds one thing.”

  “Like gold and silver?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “I don’t think it’s that kind of treasure. But the train said it’s different for everybody.”

  They didn’t dig right away. First they walked up and down the beach a couple of times, surveying the area, sometimes skipping away from the waves that slid up the sand, sometimes letting them wash over their bare feet. They found some shells, beautiful candy-striped pink-and-white cones. The water was warm and as clear as glass—you could see fish darting around in it, just out of reach.

  Kate and Tom debated where they should dig. They weren’t sure whether the location mattered, if you automatically found something anyway, but you never knew. Kate wondered what kind of treasure could possibly be there in the absolute middle of nowhere. Eventually Tom chose a spot well up the beach, above the tidemarks, near where the dunes started. Kate ended up walking all the way back to where they’d first sat down, where the mamba was still sunning himself blissfully in the powdery sand. She plopped down on the picnic blanket and started scooping out a hole with her hands right next to it.

  She quickly got down past the sun-warmed upper layer and into the cold, coarse, wet sand underneath. She dug farther and farther, as deep as her elbows and then even farther, till she’d reached the water level and her fingers were getting raw and she had to lean her whole arm down into the hole up to her shoulder.

  She wondered if Tom could’ve been pranking her—but no, he was still digging away at his own hole. Maybe the island had decided she wasn’t worthy.

  Just then her fingers brushed something hard and smooth.

  It was so far down she could barely scrabble at it with her fingertips, but she stretched and stretched, and finally she managed to hook her fingers under it. It was stuck fast in the sand, but she tugged and heaved at it till it finally pulled free.

  It was a small, flat metal box, closed tight with a clasp. Kate wondered what kind of treasure could possibly come in a box that small. She undid the latch and opened it. Inside the box was a little case, and inside the case, which was lined with deep blue velvet, was a pair of tortoise-shell glasses.

  There was a neat handwritten tag tied to the glasses with string. It said:

  These are the glasses that Grace Hopper wore

  when she first learned to program a computer

  They just looked like ordinary glasses—but to Kate they were more precious than a diamond-studded tiara. Grace Hopper’s eyes looked through these same lenses, she thought. Through these frames Grace Hopper read the things that her furiously smart brain told her furiously smart fingers to type. Things that had changed history.

  And they were kind of cool-looking, too, in a retro-vintage way.

  Kate carefully placed the glasses back in their case and closed it. She would keep them forever. Her vision was perfect, but she decided that as soon as possible she would ruin it by reading too much and writing too much brilliant code, and then she would wear these glasses for the rest of her life.

  She was about to show Tom what she’d found—but he’d found something, too. He was holding a small, tattered stuffed fox, orange with a brown tail. He was hugging it with tears running down his face.

  Kate knew that fox. His name was Foxy, full name Foxy Jones. He was the one that Tom had lost on that skiing trip all those years ago—the one he’d had since he was a baby, the one he’d thought he’d lost forever. And now Foxy Jones was back for good.

  19

  The Twilight Star

  THEN ONE DAY, AS THE TRAIN WAS PUFFING ACROSS A plain of scrub so flat that it looked like somebody had made it with a ruler, and the little pangolin had graduated to eating bits of raw hamburger from the dining car—which they were all very proud of him for—Kate strolled back through the passenger cars and noticed they were looking emptier than usual. Fewer animals were getting on, and more were getting off.

  A few days after that they were down to just the animals from the library: the fishing cat, the white-bellied heron, the green mamba, and the porcupine.

  Plus the sleeping polar bear. And the baby pangolin. That was when they started what was in some ways the hardest part of the whole trip.

  They crossed into a frozen desert, mile after mile of empty sand dunes covered in thin tiger stripes of frost and snow. They steamed across it for days. Dry powdery snow and sand whispered and rattled against the windowpanes when the wind blew. The porcupine was grumpier than usual and complained that he wasn’t getting his fair share of time with the pangolin. Once they came to a tunnel with a sign outside that said DANGER! FALLING ROCKS! and Kate and Tom had to get a squeaky old handcar out of one of the boxcars and pump it along ahead of the train all the way through the tunnel, in the freezing cold, to make sure the tracks were clear.

  Another time the Silver Arrow almost ran out of water, till Tom remembered that they had a whole swimming pool car full of it.

  At night either Kate or Tom would sit up with the Silver Arrow while the other one slept curled up in their cozy bunk in the sleeper car. They kept an eye out for dangerous curves and warning signals and steep slopes and anything that might be blocking the tracks. More than once they had to stop and shovel away drifts of windblown sand.

  It went on for so long that Kate started to wonder how much more she could take. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and when she closed them, all she saw was more track scrolling past her. She was so tired she kept bumping into hot brass pipes in the cab and burning herself. At the same time the bitter chill of the desert spread deeper into the train, so they could see their breath inside, and even when Kate huddled right up next to the firebox she still couldn’t seem to get warm.

  Where am I? Kate thought. What am I doing out here? It felt like she’d been on the Silver Arrow forever. It was the adventure of a lifetime, but it was a whole lot of work, too. And it was taking a really long time.

  Then one morning, very early, in the still, frozen hour right before dawn, the train slowed down again. She looked out the window, but they weren’t at a station.

  Click-bing.

  LOOK UP AHEAD

  Kate yawned, stretched, and stuck her head out the window. She saw what it meant.

  “What the heck is that?”

  I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE HECK THAT IS

  It was hard to be sure, but up ahead in the darkness it looked like the land dropped away in a sheer cliff. But the tracks didn’t stop at the cliff. They kept on going, right out over the cliff, into thin air.

  Kate got out of the train and walked ahead, in the glow of the Silver Arrow’s headlight. At first the tracks kept going straight, but as her eyes got more used to the darkness Kate saw that farther on they curved upward like roller-coaster tracks, steeper and steeper, until they ran straight up into the dark, cloudy sky.

  Kate chewed her lip, thinking. She walked back to the train.

  “How are we going to get up that?” she said. “You can’t go up that, can you?”

  NO

  Kate thought for a while.

  “Is there another way round?” Kate said.

  I DON’T THINK SO

  “Can you go backward?”

  YES

  The train followed up this admirably brief answer with a not-at-all-brief lecture about the wonders of the reverser and something called the Walschaerts valve gear, which was invented by the heroic but unsung Belgian engineer Egide Walschaerts (1820–1901) and which made it easier for steam locomotives to go in reverse. But I’m going to leave that part out. You’re welcome.

  “Then maybe we should go back,” Kate said.

  MAYBE WE SHOULD

  Kate didn’t say anything. She pressed her icy hands against her face. She was so tired and so cold. All she could think about was running into her house and diving into her warm, old bed and sleeping for a week. But that would mean abandoning her job, which was to get the
se animals to where they were going. And they weren’t just animals, they were her friends.

  But what else could she do? It was impossible. It was out of her hands. The idea of quitting made her sad, but it also—she hated to admit it—filled her with infinite relief. Maybe this job was just too big for her. She was only eleven, after all.

  “I don’t want to give up,” she said. But her voice sounded hollow. She really, really wanted to give up.

  NO ONE WOULD BLAME YOU

  “Could I still keep the glasses?” Her voice was very small. “Grace Hopper’s glasses? Even if we don’t really finish the job?”

  YOU COULD EVEN KEEP THE GLASSES

  But they wouldn’t have finished. That bothered Kate. It felt like the kind of thing the old Kate would’ve done, the person she was back before all this started. Being on the train had taught her to take responsibility for things, not just play things but real things. But some things were simply impossible. That was reality, too.

  WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A WALK

  “How’s that going to help?”

  DON’T ASK ME, I DON’T EVEN HAVE LEGS

  BUT HUMANS ALWAYS SEEM TO DO IT WHEN THEY NEED INSPIRATION

  So she took a walk. If nothing else it might warm her up.

  She didn’t leave the train. Instead she did something that everybody always wants to do but hardly anybody ever gets to, which is to walk along the roof of a train. Whenever you take a train you can clearly see there are ladders to get up there, but for some ridiculous reason nobody’s ever allowed to use them except train conductors and people having fistfights in action movies.

  Now was her chance. She climbed up a ladder onto the roof of a passenger car and set off. It wasn’t even hard: The roof was about ten feet wide, though it did curve slightly upward in the middle, and there was a gap between the cars that was just wide enough to make her heart flutter a little. She wondered if she could do this when the train was moving. How cool would that be?

  But she was just distracting herself. That was something the animals never did, she realized. People looked down on animals, but animals never made excuses or felt sorry for themselves. It would never occur to them. They always looked problems in the face.

  Kate walked all the way back to the caboose, which she’d never even visited before. It was painted red, and there was a small stove inside, and bunks, and a desk. It was like a clubhouse. At the very back there was a balcony where you could sit and watch the track reel out behind you. She made a mental note to come back here later. Though then she remembered there probably wouldn’t be a later.

  It was when she was walking back that Kate noticed a very old set of rusty-brown train tracks leading off through the grass and into a grove of trees. They were as old and rusty as the ones behind her house used to be. She climbed down and followed them.

  It was still bitter cold, but at least the sun was rising now. She stepped from one thick old wooden tie to the next till she reached the trees.

  She didn’t exactly find inspiration there. But she did find another steam engine.

  It was just standing there on a siding, which Kate now knew was a piece of track where you stored trains that nobody was using. Nobody had used this steam train for a long time.

  Its paint was gone, and rust had turned the train completely brick red. In places it had eaten right through the metal, and you could see into the darkness of the big boiler, where the steam used to be. All the glass in the windows was gone. Grass and weeds had grown up through the spokes of the rusty wheels, which would never turn again.

  Once it must have been as fast and proud and powerful as the Silver Arrow. It had thundered down tracks snorting steam and hauling long strings of cars. But those days were gone. You could never fix this train, it was way past that.

  But you could still make out its name in very, very faint faded paint:

  THE TWILIGHT STAR

  Kate reached out and touched the brittle, flaking metal.

  “I’m sorry, Twilight Star,” she said. “I bet you were a great train.”

  This was it, this was what Uncle Herbert had asked them to look out for. Well, she’d found it. It wasn’t a real star, it was a train. She wondered who’d left it there. Did they know it was forever when they left? Did they tell it they’d come back but then never did? A robin flitted out through the train’s window and off into the brightening air. It must have a nest in there, Kate thought. So at least it had the birds to keep it company.

  Kate walked back to the Silver Arrow with her head full of thoughts.

  “I found something,” Kate said. “An old train called the Twilight Star.”

  OH

  “Have you heard of it?”

  THAT WAS THE NAME OF THE TRAIN BEFORE ME

  THE ONE THAT DIDN’T COME BACK

  So that’s what had happened to it.

  “This must have been as far as it got.”

  IT MUST HAVE BROKEN DOWN HERE

  AND ITS CONDUCTORS MUST HAVE GIVEN UP AND GONE HOME

  “Oh. But then what would’ve happened to them?”

  NOTHING

  THAT WAS THE END OF THEIR ADVENTURE

  “What about the animals?”

  I GUESS THEY HAD TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES

  IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN EASY. BUT THEY’RE USED TO IT

  Kate didn’t say anything more for a while. She sat and looked around at the Silver Arrow’s cab, which had seemed so weird when she’d first seen it and which now felt so much like home. She imagined it old and rusty and ruined like the Twilight Star. Sitting all by itself in the wind and rain and snow, alone and abandoned.

  “I would never leave you here,” she said quietly. But the Silver Arrow didn’t answer. Maybe it didn’t believe her. Maybe it was right.

  She couldn’t go back, but she didn’t know how to go forward, either. She knew it was wrong to give up, but when people said you should never give up, they never talked about how hard it was to keep going! Maybe part of being an adventurer was knowing when the adventure was over. Maybe that was another one of those life lessons she was supposed to be learning.

  But then she thought about the animals. And the Silver Arrow. She closed her eyes, and a tear squeezed out. She wiped it away and walked back to the library car.

  20

  Chins

  THE HERON HAD FOUND AN OLD BOOK FULL OF PAINTINGS of birds and was leafing through it, turning the pages with the tip of her long beak. The fishing cat had gone for a chilly swim in the swimming pool car and was drying her fur by the woodstove, fast asleep. The mamba was hanging from the overhead lamp, looking like a piece of loose green electrical cable. Kate could never figure out how he got up there.

  The baby pangolin was curled into a ball, which the porcupine rolled back and forth along the carpeted floor. The pangolin seemed to enjoy this.

  “So,” Kate said. “There’s a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” the heron said.

  Kate explained. The animals all thought for a minute.

  “If quills would help with this situation in any way,” the porcupine said, “just say the word.”

  “Thank you.” Though Kate was pretty sure it wasn’t that kind of problem.

  There was another long silence, in the middle of which the fishing cat woke up and asked what was going on and Kate had to explain everything all over again.

  The heron closed her big book.

  “Do you remember,” she said, “when we talked about invader species and why they’re bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was one invasive species we didn’t mention. An especially bad one, a kind of ape. They have weirdly enlarged heads and hardly any fur.”

  “Oh, they’re the worst,” the porcupine said.

  “I think I see where you’re going with this,” Kate said.

  “Also they have chins,” said the cat. “It’s the strangest thing: a bony spur right under the lower jaw. No other animal on the planet has them.”

&n
bsp; “Okay,” Kate said. “Okay. I get it.”

  “They’re not just an invasive species; they’re the original invasive species that created all the other ones. We get mad at starlings, but if you think about it, it’s not really their fault. They never asked to be released in North America. They don’t care about Shakespeare. Without those hairless chinny apes, there might not be any invasive species at all.

  “And that’s just the beginning. They create all kinds of other problems, too. Building everywhere, cutting down trees, damming rivers, changing the atmosphere, heating up the oceans—I mean, forget about squirrels; those apes are making a dozen species extinct every single day. They’re making pangolins extinct by catching them and grinding them up into medicine. And the medicine doesn’t even work!”

  “I get it.” Kate sat down in an armchair glumly. “You’re talking about humans.”

  “What I still don’t understand,” the porcupine said, “is how you did it all without quills.”

  “Or venom,” said the snake.

  “Or wings.”

  “You know what I could go for right now?” the cat said. “A nice fish.”

  “You asked before where we were all going,” the heron said, “and I think nobody wanted to say it, but the truth is that we’re running away from you.”

  Kate looked around at the animals. She’d become so fond of them.

  “I didn’t realize,” she said in a small voice.

  “Green mambas aren’t endangered,” the snake said. “I’d like to see you humans endanger a mamba! But you’re tearing down my forest, so I’m going to Mozambique. The fishing cats are in real trouble, though.”

  “It’s true.” The cat began washing her face as casually as if she were talking about the weather. “There aren’t many of us left. People hunt us and trap us and poison us. They’re paving over our lovely marshes. I’m here because they’re draining my mangrove swamp to build a hotel. But the white-bellied herons are even worse off.”