13

The Western Line

1891, June 23: 11-Hour 36

New Akan: member of New Occident as of 1810. After the Disruption, the rebellion in Haiti ignited similar rebellions through the slave-holding territories. Uprisings in the former southern colonies of the British empire culminated in a second revolution that, after eight years of intermittent warfare, put an end to slavery and made possible the formation of a large southern state, named by leaders of the rebellion “New Akan.”

—From Shadrack Elli’s Atlas of the New World

SOPHIA RUSHED TO the window. As she’d expected, Montaigne and the other men were on the platform, walking away. They had gotten what they wanted.

“That’s him, Sophia,” Theo said. “Montaigne. I saw him outside your house.”

Sophia seemed not to hear him. “We should be in Charleston by dinnertime. But will it be dark by the time we leave?”

Theo stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

“I have to check,” she said, diving for the folded paper schedule that she’d left on the seat. “The connecting train for New Akan departs Charleston station at seventeen in the evening. We get in at near sixteen-hour, so we have about an hour before the connection.” She sat down with a look of frustration. “That’s very close.”

“I’d much rather not,” Theo said slowly, “but don’t you want to follow them? We can still get off. They might lead you to your uncle, and at the very least you can get the map back.”

Sophia shook her head. “No. I don’t want to be anywhere near them when it gets dark.”

The whistle blew and the train lurched forward. “Well, there they go,” Theo said. “And there goes your chance to follow them.” He looked out through the open window, and then he leaned forward abruptly.

“Hey—!” he said. He closed and opened the small window closest to him. It was set in a metal frame no larger than a sheet of paper and it shut with a small latch. The metal frame of the window was empty; the windowpane had been removed. “Sophia,” he said, the truth slowly dawning on him, “you gave them the windowpane?”

Sophia nodded. “I thought of it when you went to the washroom. I put the windowpane in the pillowcase. The map is in my sketchbook.” She bit her lip. “But once it gets dark and they look at it in the moonlight, they’ll know.”

Theo raised his eyebrows and dropped down on the seat beside her. “Not bad,” he muttered, under his breath.

“Maybe they’ll be too far from Charleston by that time,” Sophia continued. “Since they got off here. They might stay here or go north. They must not be going to Charleston. So we have a little time—depending on where they are when the moon comes out.”

Theo looked at her admiringly. “That’s a pretty slick move.”

“Yes,” she said, without enthusiasm. Now that Montaigne and the Sandmen were gone, she was starting to feel the weight of what she’d done. She clenched her hands tightly; they were trembling. “They will not be happy when they figure it out.”

“No doubt,” Theo said, leaning back. “Well, there’s nothing we can do until we get to Charleston. And at least now we have the train to ourselves.”

Sophia nodded. She felt no relief. She was thinking of the hooks that the Sandmen had carried, trying not to imagine how they put them to use. She shivered.

—16-Hour 02: Charleston—

THEY SPENT THE day in dread of the approaching evening. The train reached Charleston late, pulling into the station at almost two past sixteen. They unloaded their trunks and had time to eat a quick dinner of bread and cheese and cold meat in the busy station before the train to New Akan starting boarding. Sophia had written a letter to Mrs. Clay on the train, and she posted it hurriedly. The last rays of sunlight streamed in through the high windows. Pigeons filled the vaulted ceiling of the station, and the sound of train whistles cut shrilly through their low, incessant cooing.

Sophia had seen no sign of Montaigne or the Sandmen. There were businessmen traveling alone and families traveling in large groups. A small party of nuns waited patiently in the station atrium. The train to New Akan was fully booked, and as they waited on the platform they saw why: a long chain of police officers stood beside a waiting crowd of foreigners, all of whom were departing by train.

Sophia was struck by the defeated look of these unwilling travelers. Some seemed indignant or outraged. But most seemed simply bereft, as did one couple with resigned faces whose child cried quietly and ceaselessly, gripping the skirt of an old woman beside him. In between cries, he pleaded, “Don’t go, Grandmother.” She placed a trembling hand on the little boy’s head and wiped at her own tears. For that moment, as she watched them, Sophia could not think about the approaching darkness and the threat that might come with it.

“All aboard!” the conductor called, and the passengers began to file onto the train. Sophia followed Theo to the last car, dragging her trunk behind her.

Once they had found their compartment and her luggage was stowed, Sophia watched the station platform. The Gulf Regional was an older train, with a rather bumpy leather seat and dim lamps. It took several minutes for everyone to board, and then at seventeen-hour the conductor blew the whistle. The train glided out of the station into the falling darkness.

Sophia sighed with relief. “Good thing it’s summer and the sun sets so late,” she said, eyeing the pale moon.

They settled in and Sophia opened her pack to distract herself. She held the glass map up to the window, but nothing happened; there was still not enough moonlight. As she returned the map to her notebook, she saw the two scraps of paper from Shadrack’s letter. There was little satisfaction in having tricked Montaigne, she thought despondently, when Montaigne had managed to trick her as well. They had clearly made Shadrack write the note for the very purpose of deceiving her.

But as Sophia stared at the note, she realized that there was something a little strange about Shadrack’s handwriting. His hand was clear and assured, as always, but it was broken in places by strange capitalizations:

dear sophia,

T H Ey have said alL i cAn plaCe on tHis papeR Is your naMe

—shAdrack

She wrote the capitalized letters one by one in her notebook, and as she finished she gasped. “Theo, look!”

After a moment, his face lit up. “The Lachrima,” he said softly. “Let me see that.” He read it over. “Why would he write that?”

“I don’t know.”

“He could just be warning you about them,” Theo said.

Sophia frowned. “Maybe. It seems strange, though. Why warn me about something that everyone’s already afraid of?”

“But he doesn’t know you know about them.”

“That’s true, though I heard Mrs. Clay telling him about what happened to her. It still seems strange.” She took back the note. “Theo, tell me what else you know about them.”

“I can tell you what I’ve heard,” he said, his voice warming. The Lachrima were clearly a favorite subject. “Like I said before, I’ve never seen one, but there’s a lot of them near the borders. They usually hide—they try to stay away from people.”

“Why do you think there are so many near the borders?” Sophia mused.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe there’s something about the borders—something that draws them there.”

“Maybe.” But he was clearly unconvinced.

“Have you ever heard one?”

“It’s hard to know. Sometimes when you hear someone crying, people say it’s a Lachrima, but that’s just because they’re afraid it might be one. I’ve heard crying, but supposedly the sound a Lachrima makes is different—much worse. It’s a sound you can’t get out of your mind.”

“Poor Mrs. Clay,” Sophia murmured.

“A trader I met once said he’d come across one in his house,” Theo went on enthusiastically. “He’d been gone for a week and when he got back, he could hear the Lachrima before he’d even reached the door. He walked in really quietly and just saw this tall person with long, long hair going through the whole house like a whirlwind, pulling things from the walls and wrecking everything. Then it suddenly turned around and looked at him with that faceless face. The trader said he ran right out and never went back.”

“Shadrack must know something about them.” The Lachrima, the glass map, Montaigne, and the Nihilismians, she thought; what do they have to do with one another? “Montaigne called the glass map a ‘tracing glass.’ I wonder what that means.”

“Maybe it’s just another way to describe a glass map?”

“Maybe,” Sophia considered. She tried another tack. “Do you know anything about the people he called ‘Sandmen’?”

Theo shook his head. “I’ve never even heard that name.”

“They were all Nihilismians.”

“How could you tell?”

“Their amulets,” Sophia said, surprised. “The open hand.”

Theo shrugged. “I know about Nihilismians, but I’ve never met one. There aren’t many in the Baldlands.”

“They’re everywhere in New Occident. They think our world isn’t real. They use The Chronicles of the Great Disruption to prove that the real world was lost at the time of the Disruption and this one—our world—shouldn’t exist. The open hand is the sign of the prophet Amitto, who wrote the Chronicles. It means ‘to let go.’”

“So you’ve never heard them called ‘Sandmen’?”

“Never. They must be somehow different. But I can’t tell how . . .” Her voice dropped off as her mind worked to connect the pieces. What had Shadrack said to her recently about Nihilismians? She could not remember. He had told her something, and it had to do with maps. Maybe I wrote it in my notebook, she thought. But it held no clues.

As the train rolled west, the sky darkened and a yellow moon emerged, hanging low behind the trees. Theo climbed up to his bunk to sleep, and Sophia sat watching the passing landscape, feeling anything but sleepy. Hills with crests topped by pines gave way to flatlands dotted with farmhouses. Every time the train pulled into one of the small, rural stations on the westward line, she felt certain that Montaigne and his men would board, but the people who stood under the flame-lamps were invariably sleepy, harried travelers on their way westward. So far, Sophia and Theo were in the clear.

—June 24: 1-Hour 18—

IT WAS PAST one in the morning when the train crossed the border between South Carolina and Georgia. Sophia took out her notebook. Men with scars, a cowering faceless creature with long hair, and a small sparrow came to life on the paper. Clockwork Cora sat hunched in the corner, brow furrowed, contemplating the problem. Sophia looked at the page for a long time. There was a riddle there; a riddle she had to solve. She drew a line, making a border around the Lachrima. Her mind whirled wearily over the sketched images like the wheels of the railcar.

Turning the page, she moved on to a more solvable riddle. She wrote, “Where did T learn to read? He has traveled where else in the Baldlands?” She glanced up at the bunk overhead where Theo was sleeping silently. “And why no longer cared for by Sue?” However much more commonplace, the riddle that was Theo eluded her also, and Sophia closed her notebook with a sigh.

They moved steadily across Georgia. At each stop, the whistle blew into the still night. At five, the train passed into New Akan. The sun had begun to lighten the edges of the horizon, but the sky above was still filled with stars. The flat fields spread out like calm waters on either side of the tracks. As they pulled into the first station in New Akan, Sophia leaned out the window. The humid air smelled of earth. Only a woman with two small children stood next to the station agent on the platform. The three passengers climbed aboard and the train sat idly for several minutes. Two of the ticket collectors walked onto the platform to stretch their legs. They shook hands with the station agent.

“Bill. Surprised to see you here. Thought the mosquitoes would have eaten you alive.”

“They come near me, they’re liable to drown in sweat,” the station agent said, mopping his brow. “Most humid June I can remember.”

“My clean shirt feels like I’ve been wearing it two days,” one of the ticket collectors said, fanning the flaps of his uniform jacket.

Then the whistle sounded and the ticket collectors went aboard. As the train pulled out, Sophia saw the pink light of dawn rising behind the platform.

They traveled another half hour into New Akan. The sky was beginning to lighten in earnest when the train suddenly lurched to a stop—but there was no platform. As far as Sophia could tell, they were in the middle of nowhere. Toward the front of the train, she saw what appeared to be a cluster of horses. She leaned farther out to get a better look, her belly pressed against the sill, and in the gray light of dawn she saw that the knot of horses was, in fact, a coach. A number of people were emerging from it right there, beside the tracks, and boarding at the front of the train. Two, three, four men.

The Sandmen had caught up with them.

SOPHIA DUCKED BACK into the compartment. “Theo! They’re here. They’re boarding the train. Get up!”

“What?” he mumbled from the top bunk.

“Wake up!” Sophia was almost shouting. “We have to get off, now!” She stuffed the notebook into her pack, shouldered her pack, and tied the lower straps securely around her waist. As she pulled on her shoes, the train began moving once again. “Oh, no! We’re too late.”

Theo, rumpled but alert, was already tying his boots. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in New Akan. Four men just got on the train. We weren’t even at a station.” Sophia could feel her heart pounding, but her mind was calm. All night she’d been preparing herself for the situation that lay ahead. Now it had arrived, and it was almost a relief. She opened the door and looked out into the corridor. There was no one in sight.

“You thinking we should hide?” Theo whispered.

“We’re going to jump off the train.” With Theo on her heels, she hurried to the rear end of the train and opened the door, stepping out onto the narrow railed platform at the back of the car. The tracks unfolded behind them, disappearing into the dawn sky as the train continued to pick up speed. Wind sucked at the sides of the platform and the wheels clanged against the rails in a quick, accelerating staccato.

“You sure about this?” Theo said into Sophia’s ear, over the noise. “I’m no expert on trains, but we’re going pretty fast.”

“If we don’t jump, they’ll find us. We should do it now before they notice we’ve gone.”

Sophia walked to the far end of the railing. Suddenly, Theo grabbed her arm. “Wait a second,” he hollered. He pointed to the narrow ladder that led up from the platform to the roof of the railcar. “Maybe we can just climb up there and wait them out. They’ll think we’ve jumped. We can watch from there and see when they leave.”

Sophia hesitated. She looked down at the blur of rocky ground beside the tracks and back at the ladder. “All right,” she called out. “I’ll go first.” Climbing deftly onto the railing, she swung around to grasp the ladder. The wind buffeted her, but she held onto the rungs and moved swiftly. When she reached the roof, she dropped onto her stomach and clung to the flat metal surface.

A moment later Theo appeared. They inched out carefully on hands and knees to the middle of the car and then lay flat, the slick metal vibrating against them. “This should do it,” Theo shouted over the wind. “Now we just wait them out.”

Help us escape them, please, Sophia implored the Fates.

For several minutes they lay silently, listening to the whir of the wheels against the rails. The metal roof was hard against her ribs and she palmed the surface desperately, feeling as though a sudden jolt or turn would toss her away like a crumb brushed from a sleeve.

Then she heard it, the sound she’d been dreading: the rear door of the railcar slamming shut. Someone had stepped out onto the balcony. A moment later, she heard the clang of boots. “They’re on the ladder!”

Theo braced himself. “We have to run.” He rose, stepped over Sophia, and put his hand out. “Come on!” She pulled herself up and tried to get her balance. Theo let go and began moving toward the next railcar.

Sophia took a few steps forward and then broke into a halting run. She turned to look over her shoulder, nearly toppling; Mortify was climbing onto the roof. “Run!” she shouted. “Keep running!”

Theo reached the edge and in one easy bound jumped to the next car. Though the distance between them was only a few feet, Sophia felt her knees buckle at the prospect of hanging in midair above the moving train. She looked over her shoulder again; Mortify was halfway across and he was somehow, despite the moving train, loosening the long rope of the grappling hook from his belt loop. Sophia crouched, her knees shaking, and then jumped.

Fly, Sophia, fly! A distant pair of voices reached her: the memory of her parents, holding her high above the ground. For a moment she did fly, or float, caught in midair by the wind. She looked down and saw the tracks, two long black smudges on a gray canvas, and then her feet landed on the other roof, as if the two hands that held her had let her down again gently, safely.

She ran haltingly across the whole length of the second car. The train moved under her each time she put her foot down, and every step threatened to pitch her sideways. She held her hands out rigidly, balancing herself. Mortify had jumped the gap between the first and second car, and he began closing the distance. He loosed the grappling hook and held it deftly in his right hand, readying himself to throw it.

Theo and Sophia jumped, one after another, onto the third car. The violent clang of metal striking metal sounded over the rushing of the wind. The grappling hook had struck the edge of the car and Mortify was hauling it back toward him like a fishing line. “We have to jump off,” Theo shouted.

“No, wait,” Sophia said. “Look!” A train heading in the opposite direction had stopped on its parallel tracks to allow their train to pass. In a few seconds it would be beside them.

“Perfect,” Theo shouted. “Get to the first car.” He took off, and Sophia ran with abandon now, her arms flailing at her sides, no longer looking to see where her feet landed. She kept her eye on the front of the train, covering three railcars, then a fourth, and then a fifth. They were almost at the front. The other train loomed, waiting.

“All right,” Theo yelled. “Let’s go!”

Then they were abreast of it. A burst of air shook the car. Theo quickly regained his footing; then he took a running start and jumped. Sophia glanced behind her. She had only a few seconds. She saw Mortify, a car-length away, launch the grappling hook. It seemed to hang in the air, suspended: a whirling shape that caught the light of the rising sun. The bright cluster of silver grew larger, swinging toward her, its sharp points glittering as they twirled.

Sophia yanked herself back to the present. Don’t lose track of time now! she told herself desperately.

She ran with all her might toward the edge. She jumped. A moment later she felt hard metal slam against her face, her back, her knees; she was rolling—rolling fast, like a marble over a table top. She could find nothing to hold onto, and the edge rose up before her. Suddenly something fell across her legs, pinning her down. She opened her eyes. Her head was hanging over the edge of the railcar, but she was safe. Theo had tackled her, and his weight was holding her in place.

She scrambled up just as the train jolted into motion, heading east. The other train was already far in the distance. “Where is he?” she cried. “Did he follow us?”

“He didn’t jump,” Theo said, raising his voice to be heard over the mounting noise. Sophia saw with surprise that he was smiling at her with frank admiration. “That was totally reckless, but it worked.”

“What?”

“Waiting until the last second so he couldn’t jump after you.” He pointed to the far edge of the roof. The grappling hook hung from the ladder like a snagged kite, its rope dangling.

“Right.” Sophia took a deep breath. The train began to pick up speed. “We have to get off.”

“Next station,” Theo shouted.

They lay against the cold roof as mile after mile of flat land passed by. Sunlight yellowed the fields around them, making fog of the humid air. The metal rattled painfully against Sophia’s chest, and the station seemed ages away.

Finally, the train began to slow. It rolled up alongside the platform of the station they had passed at dawn. ROUNDHILL, read the wooden sign swinging over the station door. Sophia and Theo crawled to the end of the car and made their way off the roof.