by Neil Enock
“Switches are unpredictable, Addy. Dangerous.” The Train rocked. The enormous blue Siren flashed by again. “See? There’s a reason we keep them apart. Controlled. Move, Addy. Get behind me. Let me take her, and I won’t mention any of this to Central. They might even let you stay on the Train.”
“I needed an Engineer. I found you. Any other Train…” She trailed off, met my eyes in the window. “It’s not the Sirens. I never wanted to hurt you, or him.” She lay her free hand on the control panel, patted it gently. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know if she was apologizing to me or my Train.
The Sirens’ songs were irresistible, I had told her. Odysseus in the ancient epics had his sailors stop up their ears with wax so they wouldn’t go mad and jump into the sea, but Odysseus wanted to hear it for himself. My father had never denied the pull of the Sirens’ song. It was part of the traveling life, part of the Train. Whether or not he had finally succumbed, as UG said, I still don’t know. Maybe he had, or maybe he had just missed my mother that much. A melody wrapped in perfume and tied to your heart.
Four steps took me from the Engineer’s chair to the door of the cab. I kept myself between Staas and Stena the whole time.
I looked at Staas a long, long moment. Staas, my near-brother, my friend.
“Go. If you hurry,” I told him, “you can power up the tail. Take the Train back to Resupply. You’ve got thirty seconds to get to the next car and decouple.” And I slapped the panel, shutting the door between us. Staas looked at me wide-eyed, then turned and bolted down the corridor.
I watched him go, counting under my breath.
Five.
Five steps back to the control panel.
Ten.
I was ten years old when I met Staas.
Fifteen.
I was fifteen when my father went off the rails.
Twenty.
I was twenty years old when Stena kissed me.
Twenty-five.
My Train had twenty-five passenger cars. The first one behind the locomotive had been my father’s, until it was mine.
Thirty.
Stena pulled the brake.
The Train shuddered and jolted; worse, he screamed. Trains weren’t meant to stop in the Undertow. Trains drowned here. I felt his aversion in the pit of my belly, a nauseating twist that had nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with the utter wrongness of what was happening.
I lost my grip on the chair back, lost my footing, too, and slid into the opposite wall. I sat there, dazed, as the engine fell silent and the floorboards grew still under my palms.
The light of the force-rails wavered and diffused into sparks as I watched. Blinking, I scanned the depths for something to latch my gaze onto, some sort of anchor or buoy, but there was none. Just the slow rolling waves of pale light that told me we were still in the Undertow. In the Undertow and stilled.
Lost, I thought. There were no rails. There was no path out of the Undertow. Panic bubbled up, and I shoved it back down, covered it with something not unlike wonder.
“You really are. You’re a Switch.”
“And you’re an Engineer,” she said. Her teeth were bared; it was not a smile. “Or you could be. Your Train will die if you can’t get him moving again. Or the Sirens will take us.” Outside, an enormous shape slid by the window, followed by another. The Train lurched. Something scraped against the hull.
“I can’t see the rails.” The air in the cab felt close, stale. My words scratched against my throat.
“An Engineer doesn’t need rails. Don’t you know anything?”
I bristled. “I know that you can’t get back on the rails once you’ve gone off.”
“You don’t need them,” she insisted. “You just need to get him moving again. I’ll do the rest.” She stroked the control panel again. The hair on my arms stood up as the cab filled with the scent of ozone.
Trains are not living ships; they do not breathe, think, move independently. Still, they are more than machines, or I have always thought so. A stalled Train is little more than a corpse. And my Train, right now, was dying.
“Move,” I said, and she did, sliding out of the chair to stand at my elbow as I took her place. The instrument panel glowed faintly; various displays blinked and flashed. This wasn’t my job; I wasn’t an Engineer, had never trained for this. But I had watched my father often enough, spent enough time in the cab with him and without him. I knew what to do. I released the brake and started adjusting dials.
Had Staas reached the tail before the Sirens caught up to the severed body of the Train? I couldn’t be sure. I could only hope. The rear camera feed showed only static.
The engine began to spin up, a hum that started at the crown of my head and vibrated through my bones until it steadied and faded into the background. I checked each dial twice before I realized I was missing the thrum of the mag-wheels against the rails.
“Where are we going?” A question I had never needed to ask before. Envara to Andalus Minor via Kazimir. My pulse quickened.
“Wherever we want,” she said, and smiled. Her fingers crackled with static, and the Undertow flashed in response.
—— «» ——
The Train is in our blood, or the traveling is. Our Train is seven cars long now, including the residence-coupé that Staas had left us — a kindness, that. We take passengers, sometimes, and goods. If the authorities ever seize us, if Union Galactic manages to track us down, we’ll be grounded. Worse, they’ll collar Stena again, make sure I quietly disappear. Went off the rails, they’ll say, like her father, and it would be true. I won’t let that happen.
“Steady,” I tell my daughter as we prepare to punch through. “Trust the Train.” And I cover her tiny fingers with mine so we can release the brake together. The Train is in her blood, too.
—— « o » ——
Christine Hanolsy
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She serves on the editorial staff of the online writing community YeahWrite, where her main portfolio includes microprose, flash fiction, and poetry. She completed her first novel—The Copper Dragon, a post-technological pseudo-steampunk sci-fi adventure—in 2018, and is currently writing its sequel. Christine lives in the Pacific Northwest with her wife and their two sons. She blogs at christinehanolsy.com and can be found on Facebook (facebook.com/hanolsy) and Twitter (@hanolsy).
One Way Journey
by Peter Hargraves
The end of another work week, the boss in his face every five minutes, angry as hell most of the time. It couldn’t end soon enough. However, the thought of the walk to the diner in the blizzard had filled him with dread. But here he was now, almost.
Cold, so cold. The wind was biting, the snow in his face. He stumbled on. With a numbed hand shielding his eyes, he spied the narrow diner. It stood with curtains drawn, showing only chinks of light hinting at the life inside. He stepped forward, opened the door at the end and blinked in the sudden brightness. The occupants looked at him in friendly silence. He nodded at a couple of people he knew. There was nowhere to sit so he ordered a coffee over the heads of those at the counter.
The diner lurched slightly. He grabbed the edge of the counter between two people, just in case. Gradually people got up and made their way to the exit. He sat down on a vacated stool and drank his coffee while the diner swayed gently to and fro. The crush of people had left the curved-roofed car overly warm. He took his coat off and slung it over his shoulder before following the others to the exit.
Here came a moment of fear. He stepped onto the vibrating steel plates, afraid — as always — that there might be nothing but the snowy ground outside. Then he relaxed as he saw the narrow corridor of the sleeping car beyond. True, large patches of nothing partly obscured the walls and the floor, like a pa
inting that hadn’t been finished. But these quirks were always there at the beginning. He grabbed a handhold for support, before it vanished for a moment, leaving him lurching. Gradually everything flickered into life, leaving everything solid; the sleeping car stood complete unto itself. Dreaming car. Through the windows, the night went by: a parade of streetlights, the lights of the occasional farmhouse that were there for a moment and then were gone.
A steward led him to a cabin. Hanging up his coat inside he walked on, through several more sleeping cars, through a car where earlier arrivals played board games, past the bar car, to one where a folk circle had assembled. A young woman about his age in a plaid skirt and knitted wool tights sat cross-legged on the beige carpet and played guitar and sang. He took one of the few seats left and listened.
When she finished, to applause and calls of “Bravo!”, her face lit up. She moved her arms around herself just slightly, unseen unless you watched carefully. Protective, shy.
He got up and asked her what it was she had just played.
“Oh, I know that singer,” he exclaimed, after her answer. “Just never that song before.”
“Do you play?”
When he nodded, she handed him the instrument. He was self-conscious of his voice and he fluffed some of the finger-picking, but got some polite applause at the end of his song. Taking back the guitar, she whispered in his ear, “Your voice is full of emotion.”
“Dreadful technically, though.”
“Divinely emotional. Like the song might last an eternity.” She laughed. “I mean that in a good way.”
The circle progressed several more times around, guitars interspersed with banjos and ukuleles, until it was very late. They shared her guitar. Out of the corner of his eye he caught her looking at him a few times. At some point after many people drifted off to bed, he found her on the seat beside him. He placed a hand on her knee. A hand appeared on top of his in affirmation and she leaned into him.
“I’m tired,” she said. He helped her up. She didn’t let go of his hand as they headed together, by unspoken agreement, for the sleeping cars.
The sleeping cars started to sway and they placed their hands on the walls once in a while to steady themselves. A young man, as small-boned as a woman, with coiffed hair dyed purple, yellow pants, and a bright floral shirt, blocked the aisle as he fiddled with the latch to a cabin. He turned and the three of them smiled at each other and gave nods of recognition. When the young man had disappeared into his cabin, they continued on down the corridors, through two more sleeping cars until she indicated that they were at her cabin. Once she had unlatched the door and they were inside, she leaned the guitar against the wall.
“You’ve met him before?” she said, a slight tension showing on her face.
“Yes. I’ve shared a table with him in the dining car. And I always see him around. Looks as if he rides the train all the time, as if he’s reluctant to leave.”
“You like him?”
“Yes.”
The tension on her face melted away and her eyes lit up. She reached forward and kissed him on the lips. They kissed and cuddled on the bed like high school sweethearts. She pulled him close, the tiredness she’d complained of earlier seemingly gone. Anyone who saw them wouldn’t have believed this might well be just a one-night stand. He feared for a moment she might not be real, might disappear like parts of the sleeping car had at the beginning. When the knitted tights and plaid skirt came off, he found her thighs were considerably more substantial than those of a fashion model’s. His pants and shirt fell to the floor; he fumbled with the buttons to her blouse, and then the clasp of her bra. Then they were intertwined, he with his hands all over her torso. She writhed and moaned, climaxed with an out-of-control shriek. She laughed at her own loud passion and he laughed with her. They slept well, he without dreaming, as if the evening had been enough in itself. He woke up once on the narrow bed as she jerked to and fro, moaning, trying to escape a nightmare. He held her until she calmed.
—— «» ——
It was late morning when they woke. The tracks were better laid here and the train didn’t sway or lurch. She pulled up the blind to a cold sunny day with snow-covered trees. Snow drifts lay sculpted on the roads, visible whenever the train broke from the forest. He walked down to the diner. He supposed he should call it the dining car now, since a locomotive pulled it at considerable speed behind the rest of the train. It turned out they’d missed breakfast, but there was space at the first lunch sitting. He took two lunch tickets from the waiter, loaded up with muffins and coffee to tide them over, and headed back to the cabin.
The train came to a halt at a major station as they were finishing lunch. He said, “I usually get off here and catch the next train back home.”
“So do I.”
A question hung in the air unasked. Go back, as always, or keep going. Given that a romance might be budding … that might last forever, or fizzle in just a few days… He looked at her over their empty plates.
As if she had read his thoughts she said, “Someone once told me that further ahead you go through spectacular mountains. Snow-capped ones, often with cotton ball clouds low enough that the train goes through them and disappears into the fog.”
They got their coats, stepped down from the train and took a walk along the platform. The return train wasn’t due for an hour. The sun warmed them and no wind blew.
They walked past car after car until they reached the locomotive. In preparation for the next leg of the journey, the fireman shoveled coal into the open firebox that revealed the orange-yellow glow within. A little steam issued from the cylinders. Smoke wafted from the chimney.
“Can you live here all the time?” he asked. “On the train, I mean.”
Her head jerked up just slightly, as if the question had been hanging there, perhaps just below normal awareness, now surfaced like a buried memory.
“I mean,” he said, “what about money and stores to buy clothes in, and stuff like that.” Some distance off, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the young man they had run into the previous night walking away from them, still in his bright clothes. She looked around to see what had grabbed his attention and, without saying a word, ran after the man — the man who, as far as he knew, rode the rails all the time, reluctant to leave. A reluctance he was now discovering in himself.
The train whistle sounded, shrill and loud. She reached the other man and he turned to her. A lively conversation took place. With a second shriek of the whistle, the loco chuffed and its wheels did a half rotation, sliding on the rails.
The wheels came around again, this time gaining some adhesion; the train inched forward. She was a bit too far away for him to see the look on her face as she ran back toward him, but she leaped up, fists punching the air above her head, for a moment, an eternity. The coal tender traveled past him, and he climbed aboard the first car. She climbed onto a car farther back, leaning out, hanging on by one hand, the other waving free, her face visible now, radiant as a sunburst.
Back in her cabin they lay on the bunk in each other’s arms. Her thigh disappeared into nothingness as did his calf. He stroked her side, having to stop each time he reached her vanished thigh, until finally she became whole again.
“Do you think all this … is real?” she said finally.
A long pause. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
—— « o » ——
Peter Hargraves
Peter Hargraves has a Ph.D. in Physics and has spent most of his working life in the high tech sector of Ottawa, Canada. Somewhere along the line he decided he preferred writing to Physics and turned to corporate writing and (in his spare time) to fiction.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.hargraves.35
The Horn of Winter
by Jason Lane
It was in the wind moaning over the steppes. It was in the
howls of the wolves echoing through the woods. Singing through the Siberian night. Clear. Pure.
The Horn.
Anya heard it. Felt it. A tremble through her. A song, calling to her. Calling to her as she was forced out of the cabin with her father, her mother, her sisters and brother, and into the fresh fallen snow.
The scream of the train’s whistle wrenched her from her dreams. She sat up sharply, blinking. The world closed around her and took the shape of the cramped rail car. Peasants swaddled in heavy clothes filled the seats, a number clustered around the stove in the corner.
Captain Berlitz looked at her from the seat opposite. Broad, with a drooping mustache and bristling salt and pepper beard, he wore a heavy winter overcoat with a wolf fur collar.
“Something the matter?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He maintained his stare. She looked away. It was so beastly hot in the train. All the bodies crammed together. The smell of them was near overpowering. And dark. So dark with the winter night outside, the wind howling. The train swaying and beating the tracks with a shakka shakka sound.
She reached up and touched the locket around her neck. She popped it open and looked at the people within. A man with a swooping mustache in a fine red military coat and a blue sash. A woman, stiff and proud but with eyes of deepest compassion and pain. Children gathered before them. Girls and a boy, all smiling up at the camera.
“Put it away,” Captain Berlitz said. He was glancing about the car. Some of the peasants had raised their heads.
She scowled at them, but snapped it shut with a sound like a steel trap and tucked it under her heavy coat. A few looked over, but at the sight of Berlitz in his military jacket they wisely turned away.
“You should not bring that out,” Berlitz said.
“Why not? I don’t care if they see. They should see what they did.”
“Anya…”
“Don’t call me that.”
She looked out the window. She had seen the other name on his lips. She huddled into her thick woolen coat, the fabric itching and rough. She remembered the softness of silk and the smoothness of a carriage ride, bells tinkling along the sled.