5. The Skylight

When the birds arrive, Weiwei and Elena are stalking the Crows. They have tried to follow the Captain, but even Elena has found it hard to get close to her, locked away in her quarters. The Crows, though, flit from carriage to carriage. The Crows listen at doors. They know the names of all the passengers, they keep their sharp eyes on the crew. Wherever Weiwei and Elena go, they hear the clink of buckles, see the flapping of black coats.

Elena has already taken against them. "They do not say what they really mean. Their faces do not match their mouths." She has seen them taking water for themselves, far more than the rations allow, and Weiwei has had to stop her entering their cabin to steal it back, as much as she would like to herself.

"Why do you call them this name?" Elena demands. They are in the vestibule near the Captain's quarters, waiting vainly, once again, to catch a glimpse of the Captain.

"Crows? Because they bring bad luck. And how they dress… because their suits are like black feathers, like crows." It feels foolish, saying it out loud to Elena.

"Bad luck?"

"Well, yes. Crows are… bad…" Weiwei trails off, scuffing a heel on the floor.

"Crows are just themselves. These men are bad."

They are about to give up their waiting when Elena turns to the window. Birds. Swirling patterns in the sky, a mass of feathers and wings, of darkness and streaks of light. You could fall right into it, thinks Weiwei, and never emerge. But when she turns to Elena the stowaway has her hands pressed to the glass and a look on her face that could have been fear or yearning, as the roiling cloud of birds comes closer and closer until it is right above the train, and the mass of wings blocks out the light.

Now Weiwei and Alexei are in the crew mess, avoiding the passengers and eating dry crackers and cheese. Soup, the cook informs them, is off the menu for the time being, and drinking water is strictly rationed. Tots of stomach-churning liquor are passed around, however, even though it is barely past midday. Weiwei pours hers discreetly into the vase of wilting flowers in the middle of the table. The cloud of birds seems to have broken the uneasy balance in which the train had been held; now the trickle of grumblings and complaints about the rationing of water and the slowness of the journey has become a wave, and in both Third and First the sight of a crew uniform is likely to release a deluge of angry, raised voices.

"The Captain needs to come out," says Alexei, in a low voice. "The passengers aren't completely stupid, they know something's wrong, and they don't trust the Crows any more than we do."

Weiwei grunts. She is only half concentrating on what Alexei is saying, her mind on Elena. Since the appearance of the birds she has seemed unsure of herself, withdrawn, not even tempted by the promise of another trip to look at the furnace. Weiwei eyes the ceiling fans, balefully. The heat makes her mind feel sluggish. "Can't you get these to work better?"

"We are trying." He rubs his eyes. "We're not miracle workers. We just need to get to the well, it'll be better then."

But there are still many miles of crossing to go before the well.

She asks him, "Have you spoken to Marya Petrovna?"

"The widow? No, why would I?"

"I don't know, it's just… I heard she was in the tower when the birds came. And she's always asking questions. The Crows are noticing."

"The Crows think everyone is secretly working for the Society. She's probably lonely, bored. Just because you stick your nose into everyone's business doesn't mean that other people do."

She tries to look innocent. "I just thought that you might know what's going on in First, as you're such friends with Dr. Grey…"

Alexei chokes on the cracker he's eating. "I'm no friendlier with him than you are."

"I saw you talking with him, and thought you seemed—"

"You thought wrong." He holds her gaze. "For someone so concerned about everyone else, you don't seem to have visited the Professor yet."

"The doctor's not letting anyone see him."

"Really? I heard that Anya took him some soup this morning, and the doctor was more than happy to let her in."

She is about to give a sharp reply when a group of porters enter.

"Good to see the First Engineer working hard on our water problem." They drape themselves over the benches at the next table, and smirk.

"Don't let us rush you, we know the engineers need time to rest their brains."

Alexei fixes his eyes on the table, but Weiwei can see him gripping his mug.

"Just ignore them," she says.

"Or is he too busy making sweet talk?"

A roar of laughter, and Alexei stands up so quickly his plate clatters to the floor. The carriage goes silent as he strides out.

"Proud of yourselves?" says Weiwei, but not loudly, because she doesn't like the reddened faces of the porters, the smell of liquor on their breath. She doesn't like the tense, anxious feeling in the air.

For the rest of the afternoon and evening she is kept busy with chores and with answering the passengers' increasingly fractious demands. There is always something about this region that sets the passengers' teeth on edge—something to do with its dryness, Weiwei thinks; with the towering stacks of lichen, in queasy yellow and burned orange. So it is dark by the time she finally manages to return to the roof space.

Elena grimaces at the small cup of water Weiwei has brought. "It tastes wrong."

"It's gone around the pipes too many times," says Weiwei. She can taste it in her own mouth. Metallic, stagnant.

"There's something outside." Elena looks up, suddenly. "Can you feel it?" She takes Weiwei's hand and presses it to the wall. "There…"

Weiwei can't feel anything but the rhythm of the train. "Is it the birds again?" she asks, tensing as if they might suddenly hear the sound of thousands of beating wings.

"No." Elena seems puzzled. "Something else." She tilts her head, listening. Then she starts to scrabble at the roof, and Weiwei realizes she is reaching for the skylight.

"Elena, no!" She grabs her hand as it searches for the opening mechanism. "It's dangerous, you'll be seen."

There is power in the stowaway's hand, in the tension in her limbs. She could fling me away, thinks Weiwei, and there is nothing I could do. She is far stronger.

But Elena waits, watching her. "It won't hurt you," she says, softly.

"What?"

"Breathing the air outside. It won't hurt you."

"It did hurt us." More accusingly than she intended. "On the last crossing."

"But you are still here. Unchanged."

Nothing has changed."Do you know what happened? If you were watching, if everything is connected, do you know why we can't remember?"

The stowaway purses her lips. Then, to Weiwei's surprise, she takes her face in her hands, as if she wants to look at her as closely as possible. "I don't know," she says. "But why do you want to? Why does it matter?"

Her eyes aren't just one color,thinks Weiwei, but a swirl of blue and green and brown.

"Why does it matter?" Because everything has changed. Because she wants to understand why.

"Has it not made you more curious?" says Elena. "Isn't that why you have helped me?"

And she lets go of Weiwei and pulls down the trapdoor and the Wastelands air floods in.

The noise fills Weiwei's ears. The rush of wind whips away the words at her lips and she gasps in panic, her lungs burning, she struggles backward, covering her face, knocking over the lamp she had set down on the floor.

"The air cannot hurt you." Elena is beside her. "Do you trust me? Look. Look up."

And Weiwei slowly unfurls herself, looking up into the square of sky revealed in the roof, into a kaleidoscope of stars. The stowaway's skin is almost translucent in the light from above.

"You have shown me the train, let me show you this." She is about to stand up when Weiwei pulls her back.

"Be careful. They might see us from the watchtowers."

They raise themselves slowly out of the skylight and Weiwei is amazed by the feeling of speed—so much faster, it feels, than from inside the train. The towers are dark but their windows glint, caught by lights from the carriages below. She imagines Oleg, the gunner, training his sights along the roof of the train, catching a glimpse of something moving that should not be there, holding them in the crosshairs.

It is dizzying, feeling the wind rush across her skin and tug at her hair; feeling such terror, freedom, speed. Her breath catches in her throat and her chest tightens at the thought of Wastelands air in her lungs, but as she feels her panic rising Elena places a hand on hers.

"Look."

She follows Elena's gaze and if the wind hadn't stolen her voice she would have cried out, because there on the horizon are huge pale shapes, moving slowly, ponderously, lifting their antlers into the air. Shapes that seem lit by moonlight from within. There are eight, nine of them, taller than the silhouettes of the trees. She has never seen them before, never known that there are creatures like this, going about their slow, secret lives as the train passes by, and above the roar of the rails they hear a sound, mournful and low, and Weiwei thinks—they are singing. And she realizes that she had never thought about what the Wastelands might sound like, and even if she had, she is sure that she would not have thought that it would sound like a song.

"Can you understand them?"

Elena doesn't reply, she is listening, her expression rapt. But Weiwei sees it—the tiny change, the slight drawing in of her brows. "No," says Elena, after a while.

They watch the creatures for a long time, until the train finally leaves them behind. Clouds have begun to cover the stars, and the landscape dims, but she doesn't want it to end, this feeling of flying. They lean their chins on their arms on the rooftop, and she could stay here all night, the two of them caught between the earth and the sky, carried weightless through the air.

Here and there she sees tiny flickers of light, as if a match has been lit, burning blue before being eaten up by the wind. But Elena is looking skywards. She holds her palms up then licks her fingers.

"Something is changing," she says.

Weiwei looks up. "Is rain coming? We've been praying for rain, to fill up the water tanks. Perhaps there will be a storm."

Elena doesn't answer, but keeps her face tilted upward.

Weiwei can feel it through her scalp and down to her fingers. A crackle in the air, as if it is charged with energy. As if the sky is waiting to burst into life around them.