1. Elena

They stand, frozen in place, Elena still facing the window so that her features half vanish into the landscape outside. But her eyes are fixed on Weiwei's, and the moment draws out, into its own, suspended time, as the rattle and crack of the rails seems to fade, and now Elena is letting go of her clever disguise, she is stepping out of the role she's been playing, simply by holding herself in a different way—a way that makes her limbs seem stronger, more angular, her gaze more wary and piercing. Everything about her is poised to flee, and if Weiwei makes a move, if she speaks, the moment will crack open and whatever remains between them will be lost. She doesn't move. No hiding now. No pretending. Outside, the reeds have given way to swaying forests of ferns, with eel-like creatures slipping through the leaves, trailing silvery paths behind them, and Elena's gaze leaves Weiwei's and follows them, and she is not just a curious passenger anymore—there is recognition there; she is not looking at an alien landscape but at her home. Weiwei can't stop herself from an audible intake of breath at the thought of it, and Elena's attention—vivid and forceful—crashes back into her.

Weiwei still doesn't move.

Elena says, "I thought you would be afraid."

Weiwei says, "Are you going to hurt me?"

"No."

"Then I am not afraid." Although she is, and she is sure that Elena knows it, but after all, they are both good at pretending.

Elena turns to face her, and looks, for the first time since Weiwei met her, unsure of herself. She keeps one hand on the brass of the handrail behind her, the other flat against the wooden panels of the wall, as if she is holding on to the train for support.

"It must feel strange to you," Weiwei ventures, nodding at the wall.

"Alive and not alive," says Elena.

Yes, it is a good description of the train, one that Alexei would recognize,she thinks. She has caught him and the other engineers speaking to the train, sometimes; other times swearing at it, or coaxing it on, as if they secretly knew that it was alive in a way that goes beyond mechanical ingenuity.

"Is that why you wanted to ride on it?" There are so many questions she wants to ask: What are you? Why are you here? But she is horribly aware of how stilted she sounds, as if she is being forced to make polite conversation with someone she barely knows.

Elena, though, seems to hold herself a little more easily, the tension in her limbs easing. She is not going to flee, thinks Weiwei. Not now. Not yet. But still, there is a new wariness in her expression. She must keep her talking.

"I wanted to know what it was," Elena says. "Why it made the ground tremble and the air taste wrong. I wanted to know where it was going and why it kept coming back, why its breath was a dark-gray cloud and why it needed so many eyes."

"Eyes?" Then she realizes—the windows. The eyes of the train. "So what did you do?"

"I followed the iron road to where a wall higher than a forest swallowed it up. I lived in the reeds beside a pool. I watched the men who came out of the wall. I learned from them about the train, how they feared it and worshipped it. I learned that they did not want to ride on the train, because they were afraid. But I wanted to know what it felt like, to be carried over the earth so quickly. I wanted to know where it went. I learned that there was a way into the train—a secret way."

"You saw the smugglers—you saw them use the skylight."

"They were very clever, very quick. You could only see them if you were watching carefully. A soldier would be on the roof, tapping and testing and saying yes, it is all safe and sound, and then, when no one was looking, he would use his stick to open a door and up came parcels and down went bags that clinked."

"So that was how they always had so much money," mutters Weiwei.

"I thought—this is how I can get in, how I can make it carry me to wherever it is going. But I was scared—"

"You?" Weiwei exclaims.

Elena wafts a hand in front of her face in an exact copy of the dismissive gesture that the Third Class steward uses, and Weiwei smothers a laugh.

"I was scared at first but I watched and I learned and I knew I was ready. But then the train stopped coming, and the soldiers started to speak of leaving, they said it was never coming back."

She stops, and Weiwei thinks there is something she isn't saying. "Then it came back after all," Weiwei says. "And here you are."

"Here I am," echoes the stowaway.

"And is it…" She thinks about what to ask, "Is it what you expected?"

Elena purses her lips. "I did not expect it to be so loud, as if the train is in your head."

Weiwei nods. "I don't really notice it until we stop." And then its absence makes her feel hollow and exposed, as if she is not wearing enough clothes. "And out there?" she asks, though it gives her a jittery, anxious feeling. "What does it feel like out there?"

Again, Elena thinks for a moment, then she takes Weiwei's hand and places it on the window, holding her own hand on top. "Like this," she says, and Weiwei feels the familiar hum of the rails beneath her palm, running through her bones; feels the rhythm of the train below her feet; remembers Anton's words, "There is a certain point where they all breathe together—the iron and the wood and the glass." A point he was always looking for, where he knew the glass would hold. She hadn't really understood, not then. But now, between the movement of the train and Elena's cool touch on her skin, she thinks she can feel what he meant.

"It is beating," Elena says, "like a heart. That is how it feels. But not just one thing—many things. Everything, together."

"Everything connected," says Weiwei. Isn't that what Anton had said? And she can feel it; the train and the rails and Elena and her own small hand, she can feel them all, beating together.

At that moment the clock on the wall behind them strikes the hour, and Elena snatches her hand away. "You have work to do," she says. "You should be in the dining car."

Weiwei opens her mouth to demand how Elena knows this, then thinks better of it. I watched and I learned.

"You should be hidden," she says, instead.

Time turns to liquid. Though she winds the clocks in all the carriages, Weiwei cannot seem to keep the minutes and hours from stretching and contracting, she does not trust the rails to keep her anchored to the ground. At each window she passes she seems to see the stowaway, flickering at the edge of her vision. In the face of each crew member she thinks she can see suspicion, fear—you, they seem to say, their brows wrinkling, we can sense something on you, the taint of the outside. What have you done now? they seem to say.

What has she done?She had told Elena that she wasn't afraid, but it isn't true. She is terribly, terribly afraid.

She is sent to Third Class, to help the stewards oversee the rationing of the water. They tell the passengers that the train's slowing is normal, that water rationing is just a precautionary measure. Most are afraid enough to want to believe them, and there is a meek acceptance of the meager cups doled out for drinking, of the shared bowls for washing, despite the layer of grime that soon builds up on the water's surface.

The more she tells the passengers that there is no need to worry, the more her own throat itches with dryness. And all the time, as she works and cajoles and reassures, she is thinking of the stowaway, she is thinking about how to ask the question, What are you?

There are some questions that are easier to ask in the dark.

"What am I?"

Past midnight, and they are lying in the roof space, the lantern blown out. Weiwei thinks she can hear Elena turning over the words in her head. "What I was," she says, "belonged to the marshes and the reeds, the water and the soil. But no, before that… Before I was anything, there were humans who were drawn to the water. When the land began to stir, they heard it calling. They changed. They started to talk in clicks and gasps. Their skin silvered and gills opened on their necks. They thrived."

She is quiet for so long that Weiwei wonders if she has fallen asleep, but then she says, very quietly, "They had all that they wanted. But I wanted more."

"More than the Wastelands? But it is so big." Weiwei tries to imagine what it would be like, out there, amidst all that space, that huge sky.

She hears Elena turn over. "Why do you call it this?"

"What?"

"This name you have given to it. As if there is nothing out there. As if it has been emptied, left behind, when it is full of living, thinking things."

"Well, because…" Weiwei begins, then trails off. She has never questioned it before.

"Everything out there is alive," Elena says, "everything is hungry, everything is growing, changing. We feel it like this." She reaches out to find Weiwei's hand again, to lie it flat on the floor, so that the rail travels through them both.

Weiwei lies there, her eyes open in the dark, thinking about what Elena has said, feeling the beating heart of the train, though it is slower than it should be, more careful, since the tides. "But what are you now?" she says.

She feels Elena shrug. "I don't know," says the stowaway.