by Sarah Fine
Leye frowns, an expression that looks odd on his face, which seems made for smiling. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Miss Wen, we strongly advise you to get off in Vuda.”
“Why, so you can take her for a walk, maybe buy her a drink?” says Anji, tart as a lemon.
“No,” says Leye, all serious now. His black brows knit in concern. “So you will not die.”
“I’ve heard the warnings,” I say, “and I understand it is dangerous. But I suspect they are exaggerated.”
Musa chuckles. “Maybe they are. That’s not why we’re concerned.”
Leye’s hand drops from his neck as he exchanges a hard gaze with Musa, who nods. Both boys reach up and unbutton the top few buttons of their coats, revealing the insignia of the national army. “We are not going to Vuda,” Musa says quietly, leaning so close that I smell the garlic and pork on his breath, that I see the faint red rash on his jaw where he shaved a bit too zealously. “We’re going to Kegu. All of us. And we’re going to take back the capital.”
“Oh my,” says Anji, looking them over as my heart flutters painfully. “So you are soldiers.”
Leye nods. “The rebels won’t expect us to come this way.” He lifts his coat, and I see why he looks so bulky. His rifle and knife are strapped to his body. “The conductor knows. There are two trains behind us as well.”
“And we are cover for you,” I say quietly. “Because this is a civilian train.”
Musa has the good grace to look ashamed. “You are in no danger now. Especially if you get off in Vuda.”
I look over his shoulder at the craggy mountainside hanging above us. We are headed into a pass carved between two high hills. “How far is it now?” My mind is spinning. Judging by what the ticket seller said, I am the only person apart from these soldiers who is going to Kegu, and now these boys know that. Can I make it to the capital and slip away to warn the rebels? Will I have to get off in Vuda and figure out how to travel the rest of the way? Will there be any other civilian trains, or has the military commandeered the rail line?
“We’re nearly at the peak of our journey,” Leye tells me, and from the way Musa rolls his eyes, I can tell this is something Leye is particularly interested in. “We are a mile from the highest altitude we will reach, and after that we’ll descend into the valley where Vuda lies. As the crow flies, we are not far from Yilat. Maybe thirty miles or so—if you want to trek over the high passes or descend to walk through the long canyon. But by train, once we leave Vuda, we skirt the mountains and enter Yilat from the northeast.” He touches my shoulder and winks. “Without civilians.”
I bite my lip and look ahead, at the high pass. There is snow crusted on either side of the rails. It’s odd, this soft beauty next to the hard metal snake of the rail. I wonder—
The world roars and a burst of fire flashes before my eyes. The entire dining car jerks and squeals, then flies up into the air, spinning like a child’s toy. I am crushed and tossed, turned upside down and inside out, punched and jabbed and smashed. As the lights go out and everything breaks and flies apart, my ears fill with pleas and shouts and screams, some of which are surely my own.
Chapter
Five
WHEN THE WORLD stops moving, I find myself staring up, not at the ceiling, but at the floor. On either side of me are shattered windows and bodies, bleeding and thrashing, groaning and crying. A hand clutches at my sleeve. Anji, bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head, pulls herself closer. “Help me,” she says in a rasping voice.
Within this dining car, amidst the spilled dumplings and overturned teacups and napkins that flutter like flags of surrender, some of the soldiers are pushing themselves to their knees, helping their brothers do the same. Others lie still and broken. I grab one of the napkins and press it to the side of Anji’s face. “Hold it there,” I say, hoarse and panting.
Someone grabs my hand. It’s Leye, his wide, friendly face a mask of pain. He’s lying next to me, with some of his comrades piled on top of his legs. “Are you all right?” he asks.
I do a quick inventory. My head hurts, but I am thinking, though not beyond the moment. My chest aches, but I can breathe, and my heart is beating fiercely. My ears are ringing as sharply as a shift whistle, but I heard what Leye asked. My limbs feel as if they have been pulled out of joint, but all of them are still attached, and I can move them. And my lips are buzzing with numbness and cold, but I can speak. “I’m fine. What happened?”
He slowly sits up, hissing as he tries to move the other men off him. “Derailment.”
“There was an explosion,” says Musa. “Could be an ambush.”
I glance over to see him on his feet. He moves carefully over to Leye and lifts the bodies of unconscious and dead friends to free his comrade’s legs. I move in the direction of a trickle of cold air, thinking to escape that way, but only a narrow gap remains between the crushed window frame and the roof of the car. Beyond the wreckage there is a wall of rock, some twisted rail, scattered debris, a few bodies, and a lot of smoke.
“How could this be an ambush?” Leye asks as Musa frees his legs. “We’re not even in Yilat yet.”
Musa shrugs, slinging his rifle onto his back. “Maybe it was an engine fire. Or maybe there was something on the rails? Colonel Boren was in the last car. We need to get everyone out, take roll, and get his orders. Maybe we can radio for help. There is supposed to be another train five hours behind ours.”
Leye nods, still holding my hand. I recognize the sweaty desperation in his grip—he is hurting and doesn’t want to cry out. “And the girls?”
Musa impatiently wipes a trickle of blood from his short ebony hair and searches the ground for his cap. He grabs the nearest one and jams it onto his head. “We don’t know how the other cars fared. We had one car of civilians and four carrying our men. First thing we have to do is get out.”
He wraps his arm around Anji and pulls her up. She leans on him gratefully, her slender fingers bunched in his coat. Her skin is pale, almost gray, beneath the mask of blood. “You’re going to be just fine, sister,” he says, his voice gentle. “Can you walk?”
She nods, but her grip on him doesn’t loosen. Musa looks down at Leye, who has pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Can you walk?” he asks his friend.
Leye grits his teeth as he moves his left foot. “It may be broken.”
“I’ll help you,” I say, getting clumsily to my feet, wrenching my overcoat and skirt from between two limp bodies. The upside-down car rocks as the weight of all its surviving occupants shifts this way and that. I have a brief flash of fear, picturing us rolling down the side of the mountain, but I push it away. I let Leye lean on me as he stands up, keeping the pressure off his left foot. I put my arm around his waist. We are standing in space of the aisle, the backs of the bench seats crowding our shoulders, several unmoving bodies complicating our path to the exit. I try not to think too hard about how many of those slack, bloody faces were smiling a few minutes ago.
“Let’s move out and see if we can’t get these girls with the other civilians, and then we can find the colonel and get our orders,” says Musa. He leads Anji through the cluttered mess, careful not to tread on limbs or bellies. We have to step around one fellow, obviously dead, whose body is caught between two benches that were crushed together. I turn my face away, but when we edge past his hanging head and arms, my stomach clenches. The exit is blocked by a grisly tangle of steel and flesh. “We’ll have to crawl out the window,” Musa says, gesturing to a few of his comrades who are moving toward us. “This one is the only opening that’s big enough.”
I help Leye lower himself onto a relatively clear patch of the metal ceiling before joining him. Musa guides Anji down too. The window frame here didn’t buckle, and we’ll be able to crawl out. Musa calls to the others, “Whoever can walk, we need you to help the wounded out and get them clear of the wreckage.” He sounds strong and assured, even as a stubborn trickle of blood escapes from beneath his ca
p. Like Anji, he’s hit his head, but he is paying it no mind at all. He puts his arm around Anji. She is crying, tears streaking through the blood on her cheeks. “You stay with me, okay?” he says, giving her a smile.
“Okay,” she whispers.
He strokes a tear from the corner of her mouth and holds her waist as she crawls out through the window, following close behind her. As the others scramble past us, I look over at Leye. Lines of strain bracket his mouth. “We have to find a way to get to lower altitude,” he says, watching the fog of the soldiers’ breath. “We’ll freeze if we’re caught out in the open.”
“We’ll think warm thoughts,” I say, trying to resurrect his smile. I need him to give me that, just like Musa smiled at Anji. Somehow, when things are shattered, one curve of the mouth can calm a thousand fears. But Leye can only wince and nod. “Shall we go?” I ask.
We are the last in the car, or at least, the last who can move. Leye is bracing himself to inch forward on hands and knees when the air is filled with a crack-crack-crack. Near, far, piercing and echoing. Leye’s eyes go wide, and I turn back to the window in time to see Musa fall with Anji in his arms. The others shout and reach for their rifles, but their blood mists the frosty air and they fall with crimson flowers blossoming on their chests and legs and faces and backs. I blink, unable to understand what I am seeing. I am huddled in this metal bubble as the people outside are cut down by an unseen force. My brain tells me we are under attack, but still I cannot comprehend.
Musa is staring at the sky, his reassuring smile gone.
Anji’s head is on his chest. She is not crying anymore.
“No, no, no,” Leye mutters, his voice breaking and hitching. The thick barrel of his rifle skims my shoulder as he yanks it from his coat. Beyond the window the soldiers who escaped the train have all been hit, though some of them are still alive. A few are trying to crawl back to our dining car. One of them looks right at me, his dark eyes full of pleading. My own eyes burn as I read his silent scream—he doesn’t want to die. It is wrong for him to die. He is barely a man. He has so much left to do.
But as I lunge, my hand outstretched, thoughtlessly desperate to get to him, Leye throws himself on top of me. “You can’t,” he huffs, crushing me to the metal ceiling.
A second later the boy outside is snuffed out, the bullets jerking his body to the side. I realize Leye is holding me down before I understand that I am fighting him. We both freeze as several men walk into our field of vision, their fingers on the triggers of their rifles. There are at least twenty of them. Their brown caps are low, and they are a scruffy bunch. Dirty faces, scraggly beards, filthy, torn jackets. But even so, they are unmistakable.
Leye curses. “The Noor,” he whispers, sitting up and dragging me deeper into the car. “How did they know? This is a civilian train!”
From outside there are a few more shots, one at a time instead of the rapid-fire clatter from before. “The bastards are killing the wounded.” Leye’s voice is high-pitched with terror and rage as he tries to maneuver us toward the back of the dining car, away from the windows.
My breaths come too fast and I am dizzy. My fingertips tingle and spots sparkle in my vision like snowflakes in the sun. The Noor. They killed Musa and Anji. They did something to the train. They are just outside, shooting wounded men.
Together, Leye and I wedge ourselves against the wall where the kitchen was, cutting our palms on broken pottery and glass. “Wen, I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“No,” I mouth. “I am.”
Disbelief laces my thoughts. I wanted to find the Noor, and so I have. I decided to betray my own people, and so I could. Right now. My heart is beating so hard that I cannot find space between the beats. I lean into Leye, who has tears running down his face as he tries to get his rifle loaded. But his hands are shaking too hard to allow him to fit the cartridge into the weapon. “If you point that at them, they will shoot you,” I say. And me, too. Look what they did to Anji.
“I’m not a coward,” Leye snaps, spittle flying from his lips. He wipes at his streaming nose and eyes with jerky, wrenching movements before returning his hands to his weapon.
Metal creaks and glass crunches as one of the Noor raiders slides into our car and stands in the aisle space. He is so tall that his head is level with the legs of the bench seats. He says something in Noor, his tone singsong, as he slowly walks up the length of the car, searching for survivors to kill, perhaps. I hold my breath and stay very still, but Leye jerks at the bullet cartridge, and it clatters to the floor. The Noor ducks around the hanging body in the aisle and sees us. He raises his weapon.
I put my hands up, and the Noor’s mud-colored eyes dart back and forth between me and Leye, who is now trying to draw his bayonet. The Noor sneers and aims, squeezing one eye shut and pressing his cheek to the rifle, peering at us through the sight. And I can’t. I can’t let him shoot this boy in front of me. I lean forward on my hands, blocking his way to Leye, and say one of the very few Noor phrases that I know, the first one that comes to mind: “Yorh zhaosteyardie.”
It means “I want to help.”
The Noor’s brow furrows and he raises his head from his rifle sight. He jabbers at me in Noor, questions I don’t understand.
I say, “Please.” I put my hand on my heart and extend my palm to him, which makes him blink with surprise. I grab Leye’s bullet cartridge and throw it toward the Noor’s feet as Leye curses again.
“What are you doing?” he cries, lunging forward. I knock his injured foot to the side, and he screams with the sudden agony.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m trying to keep us alive,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Leye.”
The Noor comes closer and pockets the bullet cartridge, never taking his eyes off me and the soldier I am shielding. He fires a few more questions at me, and all I can do is shake my head and repeat the Noor phrases I know, even though they are meaningless in this situation.
“I have tea. I have medicine. I want to help. I will not hurt you.”
I say them over and over again, offering him my heart, my gratitude, my open palm, all useless nonsense. The Noor kneels, shaking his head as if he wonders why he’s not shooting me, and calls out one of the shattered windows. He says a word I know—“kuchuksivengi”—the Noor word for “Itanyai,” which my father once told me translates as “small, dark-haired people.” The Noor turns back to me and says something else, but I shake my head. This is hopeless.
He points to his mouth and moves it without making a sound. He points to me, then jerks his thumb behind him. Boots crunch over stones just outside the car.
Leye clutches at my arm. “What are you saying?”
“I barely know,” I tell him as another Noor raider crawls into the car. He is tall too, and his shoulders are wide enough that he must turn his body to negotiate the narrow space between the benches.
The newcomer keeps his head down as he navigates through the debris. He uses the barrel of his weapon to poke at a few of the broken bodies, as if to verify that they are not a threat. He asks a question in Noor, and my stomach tightens. The first Noor laughs and replies, repeating the phrases I said, but slow and childlike, mispronouncing words like I did. In that singsong voice he says “I have medicine,” then chuckles.
The newcomer stops abruptly and repeats the phrase correctly, every syllable as sharp as a rifle shot and full of questioning demand. His voice . . .
The Noor closest to us says yes as his companion quickly ducks around the hanging soldier’s body. My heart stops when the newcomer raises his head. His skin is ruddy and chapped from the chill wind. His cheeks are covered in thick red gold stubble. I stare into his pale jade eyes. “Melik.”
Chapter
Six
MELIK’S MOUTH OPENS and closes a few times, the motion stiff with shock. And then he finds his voice again. “What are you doing here?” he shouts.
His tone is so rough that it wears away my joy in the space of a moment. “I—”
“Put that down,” Melik says to Leye, deadly quiet. “You are endangering the girl.”
I look over my shoulder to see Leye clutching his bayonet. “You’re going to kill us both anyway,” he says to the Noor, his eyes glittering with pain and hatred. “Like you killed everyone outside.”
The other Noor asks Melik a question, and he answers. I think he’s translating what we say. “If you surrender, we will not kill you,” Melik says. I turn back and look into pale eyes brimming with questions and anger. “Do it for her if not for yourself,” he says to Leye.
The bayonet clatters to the floor, and the other Noor reaches forward and snatches it. And then he grabs me by the arm and wrenches me to my feet.
“Bajram,” Melik snaps. He puts his hand out, gesturing at his comrade to hand me over.
Bajram tilts his head and says no, followed by several other things I have no hope of understanding. Melik’s mouth twists with frustration as he argues with the young man, their voices getting louder by the second. But finally Bajram says something that knocks Melik back a step. Melik’s eyes meet mine for a moment before he looks away. He steps around me to yank Leye up.
The Noor drag us the length of the destroyed dining car, and with each step my blood sings with fear. Was Melik lying? Are they about to shoot us? I twist in Bajram’s grip, trying to look back at Melik, but my captor’s fingers sink into the folds of my overcoat. I want to call out to Melik, to beg him to explain what is happening, but I fear that one wrong word will mean death not only for me, but for Leye. Bajram keeps a tight grasp on my waist as we crawl through the shattered dining car window and into the cold, smoky mountain air. The sun is high over the grasslands now, washing out the brown and white rock of the hills, illuminating a scene of carnage.
I have seen many terrible things in my life. I have witnessed metal spiders swarming onto the killing floor and feasting on the flesh of the slaughterhouse workers. I have seen torn skin and exposed bones. I have heard cries of agony.