ONLY WHEN MY WATCH TELLS ME that Willow’s been gone for ten minutes do I reluctantly pull myself from my seat. I’ll be damned if I’m losing my guide again.
I stumble forward, swayed by the motion of the moving train. When I reach the far end, I push against the closed door and step through.
There aren’t normal seats in this train car. Instead, the entire thing is lined with wooden pews. There’s also an organ at the far end, and as I step through the door, a dirge begins to play, though nobody’s sitting at the keys. Willow stands at the car’s far end, in front of a table and—
Ah. So that’s what this feeling is.
Behind the table rests a coffin.
I stumble again, though this has nothing to do with the train. I put a hand on each pew to steady myself, and claw my way closer to the front of the train.
Willow turns away from the table and gives me a sad smile, as if she understands what she couldn’t possibly understand. As if she is empathetic. Then she makes room for me, goes to stand between two pews and looks at the world passing by outside.
She’s placed her dead weeds in an empty vase on the table, and somehow they make sense now. I get why she carried them all this way. I never would’ve. It would never have occurred to me.
I take a shaky step forward. Then another. I stop.
“Read something,” Willow says softly, over her shoulder.
Mechanically, I comply. I pull out the piecemeal New Testament and flip to the book’s end. I begin to speak.
“Then I saw the lamb... looking as if....” I stop. No, not this. I put the book back in my pocket.
The table is bare, but for a facedown picture frame and Willow’s bouquet of crabgrass. I sluggishly make my way up to the space Willow vacated and set the tattered Bible down beside Willow’s offering. That feels more right, somehow.
I don’t lift the picture frame to see whose face is on the other side. I don’t approach the coffin.
Instead, I turn to Willow. She is pointing at something outside, and the hoarseness of my voice when I ask her, “What do you see?” surprises me.
Willow turns to face me. She is smiling now. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You’re almost there.” Then she bounds out from between the pews and throws her arms around me.
Despite myself, I hug her back. I realize that I’m crying.
Willow leads me to the window, which was bright and cheery one train car back. I’m surprised to see frost rimming the pane now, but not nearly as surprised as I am to see buildings flash by outside. “The city,” I croak. “What happened to the countryside?”
“In and out the window, as you have done before,” Willow says quietly. “I’d say welcome back, but that’s not exactly comforting, is it?”
I sit down on the wooden pew, but I look out of the window instead of facing forward. Willow takes the seat beside me. “We’re still in the maze,” I say and I feel Willow nod.
The streets outside look frozen. The sidewalks are frost-rimmed and snow sits atop the street lights. I point out of the window and I say, “Can we reach those streets?”
“Yes,” Willow answers. “For all the good it will do.”
“How do we get out?”
“One step left,” Willow says. “We find the forest.” I hear sorrow in her voice and I turn to look at her, but when she lifts her eyes to meet mine she still smiles. “Here,” she says, “breathe on the glass.”
I do as she asks. After I’ve fogged up the windowpane, Willow leans over my body and draws a circle in the fog. Then she scrapes a curved line into the circle’s centre and two dots for eyes. “A smiley face,” she says. I don’t comment on the sadness that still tinges her voice.
We sit in silence after that. It feels like hours, though perhaps only minutes pass. I look at Willow’s smiley face on the window and then I shut my eyes. I only open them again when a sound like bing-bong plays over the train car’s speakers, interrupting the soft dirgeful music to herald our arrival at a new station.
“Did you look in the coffin?” Willow asks, as the doors slide open.
I shake my head and stand to disembark.