by K.N. Lee
There was no other plan: We go to them.
Mathilde reached down to where Fritz sat below her.
“Vav,” she whispered. “Look away,” she demanded.
Fritz sat there, smashed against the edge of the cushioned seat and the covered window for the long train ride. And then, he disappeared.
No one noticed except the sobbing woman nearby, who kept mumbling incoherencies like, “We must obey. We must not resist. Everything will be fine if we just do what they say. Help is coming. You’ll see. Help is coming. I’m too important.”
Her dirty baby cried on her bare shoulder as she repeated those words over and over in a broken lullabye. It was her eyes that flew open wide as Fritz disappeared from the next aisle over.
“The boy is gone. Where did he go? Where do you think?” She sung her questions to the crying baby.
Mathilde knew crazy when she saw it. And desperation wrapped around that woman along with a heavy dose of self-importance.
She is unstable, dangerous. Mathilde knew it. But her red hair proclaimed her vidaya. Was madness and paranoia reason enough to turn vidartan magic towards any of the believers? No matter what they did?
What was the limit of vidayan magic if not to protect and defend the vidayans? Mathilde would not ask the magic to harm the scowling woman who glared at the space where her brother had been stuffed.
No matter what the crazy woman said, she did nothing.
Mathilde acted.
Fritz floated out of his smashed area by the train wall and rose up to the ceiling. Mathilde could see his face, full of wonder, transcendent in hope and joy. His eyes sparked with the glory of the priests’ ancient spells. With the pure faith of a child, Fritz opened his heart to the call of the magic.
Johan? Mathilde could feel him calling his brother. Joahn? Is that you?
Fritz… Fritz? The distant voice answered. Mathilde felt joy for the first time in a long, long while. And then her distant brother’s voice changed.
Within the magic, she could feel the deep fear and a terrible lie. Something hidden? Something the magic could not see.
Don’t come. Johan whispered. It isn’t safe… She took ma-
Mathilde heard the fear and danger in both of her brothers’ voices. But she wouldn’t let it stop her. I came here for my family, Mathilde thought, her stubborn streak glowing.
We will not leave without you.
“Something’s just touched me!” A startled woman exclaimed, clutching her worn hat. Fritz’s foot had grazed the very tip, hard enough that it registered to her shocked senses.
“Who’s there?” the woman demanded, waving her hands in the air. Mathilde pulled Fritz toward her with enough speed that his body, shoes, and dragging scarf cleared the surprised captives questioning hands.
“Did you feel that? Who’s there?” Another man called, squinting his eyes.
“Ghosts. I see ghosts.” Another man called out. More and more of the prisoners looked to the luggage racks. More people focused on the empty silver bars along the top of the compartment.
“Look Away,” Mathilde whispered again. And then somewhat louder repeated.
But it did no good….
“A girl. There’s a girl!”
“Do you see her?”
So many voices talked at once. “Where? What are you talking about?”
“And, look, there’s a boy, too!”
“Demons! They’re demons come to carry us off!”
“No, dear, the Hollyoaken dogs have already done that,” another passenger scolded the screeching woman. “‘Don’t be ridiculous. Angels. They are angels, come to guide us home.”
Mathilde and Fritz zoomed forward, past the soldiers, over the heads and reaching arms of most of the captives. Rough hands grabbed at their skin, tearing off their shoes. Any chance of escape, any glimpse of a miracle—the desperate prisoners jumped to grab on.
Once they made it to the door, Mathilde spoke simply, “Vahagn,” and the sliding gate of a door exploded outward, smashing against the second compartment before falling away, over the edge of the railroad tracks.
“Vahagn,” Mathilde spoke again, looking back. “Gaoda.”
Not to harm, she thought, qualifying the spell. Protect the innocent. Silence the crazies. Though how the magic would know the difference, Mathilde couldn’t guess. A bright fire burned in the doorway, emitting no smoke… a magic spell that warded off any followers. Although, the fire scorched the metal doorway.
Behind them, the train compartment was full of screams and shouted arguments. “Who were they?”
“We are all sinners! It’s only right we should die.”
“I am not going off the rails of these train tracks, not like that. We have to make a break for it!”
“What ghosts? I see no ghosts.”
A hundred other exclamations fired off. Their panic is just as loud as the ammunition pile exploding in Norwava, she realized.
No one knew what was happening. The burning patch of magic stopped anyone from walking through the open door as the train link broke. Abruptly, the entire first compartment drifted away from the front of the train. The double engines fired their heaters at an approaching mountain, pouring in the coal, speeding up for the oncoming incline.
The rest of the train drifted farther and farther behind until Mathilde could not see the long line of wagon goods anymore. It was all she and Fritz could do to hold tight to the balcony of the second compartment.
Relieved to touch his little body again, she gathered her brother in her arms and hugged him tight.
“You are so brave!” she cried. “So brave. I have never been more proud of you.” Fritz glowed from the power of the vidartan magic, but he shone from her praise.
Clutching each other and the balcony railing, the two of them did not dare open the train car door. Too much risk.
“Some of them saw us, didn’t they? “ Fritz asked.
“Yep,” Mathilde thought the same thing, and she said so. “I guess the vidartan blood isn’t all gone… there’s still some magic left in this wreckage of a country.”
“Going through the second train car would be a disaster… We barely escaped that first one.” They both shuddered. “How do we get to Johan, then?”
As they planned the impossible, the train reached the top of a crest and plunged down into a mountain valley. Up ahead, there was a collection of houses.
As they got closer, Mathilde could see a train station.
“Just hold on to me, Fritz. I’ve got you. We’ll wait until the train slows and walk around the next car. That’ll work.”
Fritz nodded while he hugged her, his head warm on her chest. Captain perched on her shoulder, digging his claws in for balance, and started purring.
Rumbling from his chest, the sound of contentment surprised Mathilde.
“I guess we all learned something today,” she marvelled.
Vidartan or not, she knew the real battle for her family was just beginning. Rescuing one was hard enough. Two more would mean everything.
Mathilde set her mind, will, and faith all on that one idea: Rescue.
Softly, she whispered to the magic that swirled around her. “Can you help me? I have to save them all. They are trapped. These tracks are long and unforgiving. The end is uncertainty, lost to all we know.”
“We need a miracle.”
If I can rescue Johan.
If I can rescue Mama...
It would take a series of good luck that her family had not experienced for years. Finding them was one thing. Taking them off the train wasn’t the core problem. The real obstacle was keeping them off the train once they escaped. Evading recapture in the starkness of the unforgiving mountains was almost doomed to fail.
But it didn’t matter that the barren ground and the frozen mountains stood against her.
Mathilde made a promise. For Fritz. For my family, I will try. What is life without the ones I love?
Taking Mama and Johan would r
aise the alarms. Fritz’s disappearance would be a minor curiosity. But two more captives vanishing from the death trains—that would be flagged. Officers would notice. Disappearing trash could not go unanswered.
Escaping would be difficult. The official Hollyoaken government did not allow prisoners to run. That’s why they hired and thoroughly trained their skilled trackers. The legendary ability those units had to find any escapee, that was exactly why the soldiers were called the Dogs of War.
No one ever escaped.
No one.
Ever.
Belting steam, the train approached Malines.
‘Welcome to Malines’ the battered and worn sign declared. Doesn’t feel like any welcome I’ve ever heard of, Mathilde thought The scowls of the townspeople spoke volumes. Don’t dump your trash on our doorstep, their faces were clearly marked with disdain. Each child and every adult glared at the slowing transport.
On the side tracks, the train pulled in. Engineers and the conductor came back to look at the broken coupler and the shortened line of compartments.
“How the hell did we lose eighteen cars?” Mathilde heard one of them ask, completely disgusted.
“Must’ve happened over the last ridge. They were with us in the valley. They’re probably still there—all the treasure and one of the trash compartments.”
“Well, there is no fix for this except to send the engines back. The rest of the train will have to wait here in Malines.” Someone issued commands.
Mathilde couldn’t see their faces.
“Take the extra fuel you need. Go quickly. I’d like this last run to be over sooner rather than later,” mumbled one of the engineers.
Mathilde and Fritz waited until he passed and then walked the length of the second compartment. There was no trace of their footsteps.
Mathilde was wary of every noise. Even the tiniest clue would end the rescue. Fritz and she held on tightly to each other’s hands. They both wore the vidartan shirts. The back of Mathilde’s was marked with patches of her blood where the cat claws had pierced her skin.
Captain sat on her shoulder like he owned it. Like he owned her.
Maybe he does. She felt like the ship’s mast, the tallest point on the sailboats that flocked into the harbor of her childhood. The cat saw everything from high up on her shoulder and refused to give up the post.
Unbalanced by his weight, Mathilde’s shoulders ached.
Captain didn’t care. He hissed. His ears laid flat back the one time she tried to put him down. “At least, let’s alternate shoulders, okay?” she muttered.
And then she insisted. Captain stalked across her neck and sat on the other side of her body, completely disgruntled.
Any other time, Mathilde would have laughed. But no one was laughing now. There was no time for humor.
Finally, Mathilde stood at the balcony railing of the third vidayan train car.
Magic flowed from her heart and will into the interior and back out again. The vidayan in the second compartment could feel her presence. She knew they could, sixty strangers she had never met, huddled in the dark of a prison train. Every one of them connected through the magic of their ancestors.
Stronger together. Mathilde thought.
Calling the magic, “Kubonera, Rodak, Gaoda.” Find. Use the light to find my family. Magic went forth under her direction from the combined hearts of sixty-two of her people. Inside the third car, the ancient spells lit another twelve hearts, uniting them in the search for Johan.
Seventy four heartfires called to him.
But his fire had vanished. He isn’t there. Johan? Mathilde called along the magic’s reach. “Johan, my brother? Where are you?”
A horrible, curious blankness met her search. All seventy-four mouths asked the same question, speaking as one. But there was no answer. Not where Johan had been.
“Kubonera.” Mathilde declared. “Kubonera. Pneuma. Find. Light of the world. Family.” Like drops of black ink across a wet white paper, the magic spread. Her will eclipsed every single heart in the third car.
Johan was not within those horrible, cramped walls.
“Where is my brother?” She cried in the magic. “Tell me? Where have you put him?”
None of the captive vidaya knew how to answer her. They were all strangers.
As the two engines steamed away, back over the mountain ridge to retrieve the missing eighteen wagons, Mathilde said, “Vahagn. Gaoda.” And blew the door of the third train car wide open.
Dogs jumped.
The few inhabitants of Malines ran for water.
Mathilde walked straight through the burning flames. “Look away,” she commanded the prisoners. And some of them did.
But not, not all.
“Who are you?” An old woman cried. “What do you want? Why have the ghosts come for us? What are our sins?”
One little girl, her tiny voice clear as a flute, piped up: “Can you save us?” One simple direct question.
It broke her heart.
Mathilde had never thought to answer a baby. Never thought about who else was on the death trains. Afterall, what could she do? I’m just one girl, even with the magic, I can never be enough.
It became startlingly clear though: she could not hide from all the vidaya. These were her people. They might be strangers to her mind but not to her blood. They had a claim to the vidartan magic. A pull so strong that Mathilde gasped at its clutch.
She walked in the middle of the train car, searching for her little brother Johan and her mother. Face after face, she saw only strangers looking back at her gaze. Strangers though filled with hope, for the first time in a long while. They looked like drowning men seeing a boat on the horizon.
Like she could save them.
“Johan? Mama?” Mathilde cried out, her focus becoming erratic as face after face remained unfamiliar.
She walked through the entire train car and found no one she knew. But they were right there? She had talked to Johan. He had answered.
“What happened to my brother? Where is my mother?” She asked the stunned passengers. “Have you seen them?”
The little girl who had spoken so simply, asking for help. Asking Mathilde for more than she could give, that same little girl answered her now. “The Dogs took them. The boy and his mama. As soon as the train stopped. They were taken forward.”
“Where…” Mathilde started to ask.
Through the top of the train car, more than ten ball-shaped canisters dropped. Hitting the floor, the seats, and many passengers on the head and shoulders, they rolled around the train car like speeding pinecones. And then a strange black gas billowed out of their cores, filling the entire train interior.
“Fritz, hold my hand,” she cried. Trying desperately to think of the word she needed for wind.
Mathilde held his hand as they both stumbled to the ground, unconscious.
14
Blood Trace
“Can you hear me?”
A stranger whispered near her face.
Everything was distorted.
“Come on, rise and shine,” someone encouraged her. “We have to get out of here. Shake off the poison. We have to try.”
Mathilde woke up.
Her eyelids felt like a monkey sat on each one. They were so heavy. She struggled to think straight. Her tongue was thick between her teeth. She tried to make sense of where she was.
She could barely make out the details of the room. In the dark of a small closet, a few cracks around a high window let in a tiny amount of light. The whole compartment shook with the familiar rhythm of a moving train.
She tried to ask, tried to speak to the voice that had awoken her, but Mathilde’s mouth was gagged with a filthy bandana.
All that came out was a crude grunt.
The last thing she remembered was holding Fritz’s hand. Fritz.
“Fritz! Where’s my brother?” She tried to scream. Alarm ran through her body like fire, scorching her into full, painful awareness.
“Hold on,” the unfamiliar voice said softly. “Hold on, I’ll help.” Hot breath against her cheek made her flinch away. The stranger followed her recoil. Leaning in, he used his teeth to pull down the gag around her mouth. Mathilde was completely unsettled and grateful at the same time.
The magnitude of her loss smashed down on her confusion.
When the gag finally was pulled free, the first thing she blurted out was the desire of her heart. “Where are they? Where’s my family?” Panic seethed under every hard-won word.
“Your little brother is there, beside you. Look.”
Mathilde swung her hips and torso in a half circle to catch a glimpse of Fritz bound, still asleep from the whatever drug had been in the smoke bombs.
Fritz.
“What have they done?” Mathilde was frantic. Guilt weighed heavy on her heart. “I dragged him into this. I should have never let him come. I am so sorry, levav.”
She couldn’t even use her hands to help her brother. Strong ropes held her tight. Trussed up like a caterpillar in a cocoon, she thought glumly.
“Sorry about the bindings. I haven’t been able to escape even one rope, yet.” Again the stranger spoke conversationally.
Mathilde could hear an accent. “You aren’t Hollyoaken are you?” She asked, trying to make sense of the trouble she had landed in.
“No, I’m afraid not.” He shook his head glumly. “I’m from across the pond. Frankly,” he shuddered for a moment, “not really sure why I am here. Got drunk one night. Woke up here. Nothing about this makes sense.”
A thump on the ground near Mathilde’s bound wrists made her jump. Startled, she almost screamed. “What? Who’s there?” she whispered fiercely.
In the shadows, it was impossible to see clearly.
But two yellow eyes lit up, even with the tiny amount of sunlight in the train car. Captain blinked, looking at her. His gaze confirmed her own foolish plan had massively failed.
“You?” she mumbled. “I would have thought you would be off celebrating my failure with your great friends. Here to gloat at my stupidity?”