7. The Storm

Weather in the Wastelands is unpredictable: in summer, snow clouds can gather in clear blue skies, rain can fall and hang suspended in midair, and if you look closely enough there are impossible patterns in the raindrops. Storms can whip themselves up into a frenzy and burst over the plains, only to vanish, as if the sky is suddenly wiped clean. Weiwei was born in a storm, the thunder drowning out her poor mother's cries, Anya Kasharina told her. "And you, it was as if you heard the thunder calling, and wanted to be out in this world though your mother was leaving it." The crew shakes their heads sadly when they speak of her mother. In their telling, she has become beautiful, brave, though no one has described her to Weiwei in a way that makes her seem real. She wonders if she should be sad too, but she can't seem to work up the proper feelings.

"That's because you've got oil in your veins, not blood," the Professor has always told her. "That's because you're the child of the train and the train doesn't weep or complain, it just gets on with it." She feels another stab of guilt. She has still not visited him, but she can't seem to force her feet to carry her to the infirmary. She can't bear to see him turn his back on his work, to face the possibility that this could be his last crossing. He has oil in his veins too. Oil and ink.

In the early hours she is woken up to go on watch duty; sent to the watchtower to provide support for the gunner. All night the storm has been at their back, a roiling mass of cloud, broken open by flashes of lightning.

No light burns in the tower, so Oleg is only a hunched figure in the silvery dimness. He nods to her briefly and hands her a pair of field glasses. Seen closer, the storm clouds look heavy with rain. They need to burst, she thinks, so they can drench the ground with cool water.

Thinking about water makes her aware of her dry throat, her unwashed skin. She touches her fingertips to her face. Is there Wastelands dust in her lungs? She tries to gauge whether she can feel a change beginning inside her, like the way she used to explore for a loose tooth as a child; feeling tentatively for a wrongness, for a part of her turning unfamiliar. Can she feel it? She's not sure anymore. Not sure she has felt normal since the last crossing, anyway; the lost memories as jarring as a missing limb.

She watches the clouds grow and twist, in an odd echo of the birds above the Cartographer's tower. They seem to scud closer, keeping up with the train.

"Not much a gun can do," says Oleg.

If only a gun could shoot them down so that rain would fall.

"Has the Captain been up?" she asks.

There's a fraction of a pause. "Briefly. An hour or so ago. Said she was going to the cab."

"How did she seem?"

The gunner grunts. "Like the captain of a train that's low on water and trying to outrun a storm."

In the morning the passengers are fretful with lack of sleep. The storm clouds are closer and the sky seems to flicker with bluish light, as if the flames of Valentin's Fire have been caught in the air. She thinks she feels the wind shake the train as well, as if testing its strength. If only it would rain. If it rains this terrible tension might ease. If it rains there would be water to help quench the train's thirst, to keep them going a bit longer, until they reach the well and one less fear will haunt them.

She avoids First, not wanting to explain yet again that there is nothing she can do, that she is sorry but the fans can't work any harder, that no, there is no iced water available. At least in Third they don't demand to speak to her superior, they just grumble and deliver some choice words of displeasure. Still, they are hot and tense and unhappy, curtains closed against the unnatural light outside. "It is normal," Weiwei tells them, again and again. "It's Wastelands weather, we are used to it."

But they know she is lying, she can see it in the way they turn away from her, angry at their helplessness.

A young boy runs up to her and her heart sinks. His hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes wide and watery. "My mama is all wrong, please come, please." He tugs on her hand and she follows, reluctantly, to find his mother sitting on her bottom bunk, the detritus of the journey all around her.

"What is it wanting?" she moans. "How does it expect us to know?" Her back is to the window, her hands over her ears. When the boy puts a tentative hand on her shoulder she pushes him away, and though he tries to hide it, Weiwei sees the anguish on his face.

"Leave her be," she says to him. "It happens like this, sometimes. She'll be fine again when the storm passes." Though, she will be a case for the doctor, Weiwei fears, if it goes on much longer.

"But what if it doesn't pass?"

"It will, don't worry. We'll outrun it." She tries to make her voice reassuring, but the truth is that she feels it too. A deliberateness, as if the storm is thinking. Another angry gust rocks the train and she thinks about Elena, crouched beneath the skylight, thirsty. She brought her more water last night, but it has been getting harder, the more carefully rationed it is.

"The walls are strong," she continues. "The train is strong, stronger than any train ever made." It is like an incantation. If you say it enough, it will be true. It is true.

"And the rails?" The boy looks up at her. "How strong are the rails?"

"Stronger than any others, anywhere else in the world." And then, "What's your name?"

"Jing Tang," he whispers, wiping his wet nose on his sleeve, making her recoil a little. She is always amazed by how leaky children are, yet how their parents seem willing to hold them all the same.

"What about your father, is he here?"

The little boy points to a group of men huddled around a game of cards and Weiwei is about to suggest, though without much confidence, that his father might look after him, when her eye is caught by a glimpse of blue cloth. Elena. Moving slowly through the carriage, looking from the windows to the passengers, rubbing at her arms as if she is cold.

"I'll come back later to check on your mother." Weiwei crouches down to speak to Jing Tang, trying not to look directly at Elena. "Don't worry." But the boy twists round, looking down the carriage then back at Weiwei, wrinkling his brow. He is not the only one. There is a stir of unease among the passengers, who are moving out of Elena's way. Not looking at her, but leaving a space around her. It is not working anymore, whatever trick she had played. They know she is here.

"Stay with your mother," Weiwei says quickly to Jing Tang.

A crack of thunder sends a shudder passing through the train, as though the rails themselves are charged with lightning. Someone begins to wail.

"It's my fault," whispers Elena, when Weiwei approaches.

"It's just a storm," she says, trying to guide her out of the carriage. Elena's hair hangs lank and lusterless and there are patches of discolored skin on her arms, greenish-brown. "Let's go back to the storage car, you can rest."

"No—look." Elena yanks open the thick curtain. From low, roiling clouds in a yellowing sky, lightning flashes earthwards in great zigzags. Weiwei leans closer then snatches her fingers from the window frame as a shock courses across her skin.

Beside her, Elena is vibrating with tension. "Not at the sky, at the ground."

A dark shape catches her eye.

"What is it?" Others have seen it too, those who have been unable to resist pulling open the curtains, and alarm ripples through the carriage. She looks closer, squinting in disbelief. "Trains?" Yes—shadow trains growing from the earth. They heave themselves out from the ground, sinuous and glistening, smoke breathed out from orifices beneath the armor of their skin. They keep pace with the train, effortlessly, sometimes diving back down into the earth, sometimes winding around obstacles in their way. They move with a smooth, rolling ease that she finds sickening. They are wrong, all wrong.

"It's as if they mock us," Weiwei says. Anything that moves with such purpose, she thinks, anything like that must have a mind of its own.

"No," whispers Elena. "They mock me."

Another crack of thunder, another shake of the train, and the shadow trains shake too, as if the ground is charged with electricity. Someone is praying, someone is crying.

"Close the damn curtains!" The steward barrels through.

She turns to Elena. "Come, let's—" But the stowaway is nowhere in sight.

Thunder crashes.

Weiwei remembers Elena when the birds came, pressed to the window, fear and longing on her face. Had she felt them calling her? Or pushing her away?