7. In the Wilderness

The child of the train, stumbling toward the trees, her suit weighing her down, her steps clumsy. She looks backward at the train. She has never seen it from this distance before, never seen it out of the station, and it has always seemed impossibly huge, dwarfing everything around it. Yet now she sees it diminished beneath the Wastelands sky. Glints of light from the watchtowers—they watch her through their lenses, through their sights. They watch for movement around her.

She turns, keeps walking, trying to ignore the pull of it, the wrongness of walking away. But once it is out of sight, she pulls off her helmet, gasping in relief then recoiling at the assault of sounds and smells. She should be afraid. She is afraid. But in spite of it all she can't help but feel a burst of sheer exhilaration. The freedom, the space. And the colors—brighter than they seemed from behind glass, more vivid, more here. She could drink them up with her eyes; the clear blue, the extravagant green, the flitting, buzzing, darting life; flying creatures like delicate jewels, their wings like the glass in Moscow churches.

Elena would go straight toward the water. What about Grey? Surely he would be trying to avoid the Captain, keeping away from where the rails meet the water, where the Captain would be gauging the depth, collecting samples for Suzuki to test. No, they would both be leaving the rails behind, keeping themselves hidden within the trees, where other pools glisten. Weiwei looks around, helplessly. In the heat and the noise her clarity of purpose is leaking away. It had seemed simple, when she was watching from the windows. Find Grey. Keep him away from Elena, to give her time to find water; to regain her strength. But that isn't all, is it? Now, outside, that other, selfish desire asserts itself. You just don't want her to leave you. She feels a sudden dizziness and puts her hand out to the tree, then recoils at the sight of its red sap.

She feels as if the landscape is watching her, reaching out to touch her skin, curious, hungry. She feels each blade of grass as if it is humming.

Further into the trees, her feet sinking into the ground as it dips down toward the water. Branches arch overhead like a high, vaulted ceiling, light filtering through the leaves to become green and gold, and the water turns it all into motion, the world wavering, never still.

She can already feel herself losing track of the minutes that have passed. It seems that her life has always been driven by chimes and clocks and timetables but not now, not out here. Here she has lost the certainty of time.

She tucks her helmet under her arm and looks more closely at the boggy ground. What she had taken to be white twigs scattered all around beneath the trees are not twigs at all but bones. Big bones and small bones and things that could only be teeth. Her first instinct is to run but she forces herself to steady her breathing, to stay rooted to the ground. Insects drone around her, bumping into her face. There is a sweet, sickly smell mixing with her own sweat. She has always liked being small. Being small lets you slip through the world unnoticed, lets you hide and sneak and stay safe. But here in the trees she feels far too small to be safe. She has never been alone and here she is very alone, surrounded by so much of everything else. So many insects and bones and buzzings, so many trees, rising above her too high, and she is too small and too human, too out of place.

Howls from somewhere close by. She hears them and thinks, Something is being consumed—and it fills her with the mindless, primitive urge to flee. The howls come from further into the trees and she runs in the opposite direction because whatever Alexei says of her, she has not completely taken leave of her senses. She runs until she is forced to stop, her lungs burning. Around her, the trees have changed. They are misshapen, strangely colored, covered in growths that seem to glisten and drip, turquoise and yellow and orange. They are hard to look at, like something from a fever dream. She edges closer and sees that the growths are not the trees themselves, but lichen, bigger and brighter than anything she has seen before. Lichen that seems to be growing before her eyes, pulsing and multiplying, growth upon growth. She blinks, rapidly. It reminds her of the colored glass on the train, but as hard and bright as if the glass had suddenly come to life, begun to move of its own accord. Watching it makes her head swim. She tears her gaze away but realizes that she has lost sight of the rail. She's not sure how it happened. It had been there, on her right, but she had got turned around somehow and now it is gone. Where had the howls come from? Her legs are aching and her breath is ragged in her chest. How did she ever think she could simply walk into the unknown? What right did she have?

But then she glimpses familiar shapes through the trees; human shapes, and though she knows she can't trust her own eyes, she starts to run toward them and as she draws nearer and their forms shift into meaning she stumbles, stops.

Elena is leaning over the prone form of Henry Grey. Her hair hangs down around his face, obscuring her own, and her posture makes Weiwei think about predators, and prey, about that first meeting in the dark of the storage car. She had felt it then, the presence of something watchful, hungry, strong. Inhuman. She had felt it in the hand pulling her down toward the bath water, seen it in the reflection of the not-quite-girl in the glass.

Weiwei takes a step back. She looks at Grey, his skin very pale, his eyes closed. Around him, thin white stalks are emerging out of the soil, questing toward him, and Elena is leaning closer and Weiwei can't stop herself from saying, "Don't—"

Elena jerks her head up, her eyes wide, her pupils dilated. Weiwei takes another step backward, opening her mouth to say Elena's name but the word dies on her lips. The stowaway's gaze has not left her face.

The birds have gone silent. Insects hover in the air, noiseless. There is no wind to move the branches of the trees. Even the white threads around Henry Grey seem to have slowed their movement. Everything here is waiting.

"Don't?" Elena rises slowly to her feet, her eyes fixed on Weiwei's face.

And Weiwei can read it in Elena's expression—realization; betrayal.

"I didn't mean—"

"He will be quite well, shortly. You can take him back to the train."

"Elena, please—"

"He was attacked by birds," Elena goes on, her voice hard. "They saw that he was neither prey nor predator. They saw he was a thief."

A thief. With his nets and collecting jars.

"I thought that he would see you, that he would try and catch you. That's why I followed him. I thought he would catch you in his nets." Weiwei's voice breaks.

Elena gives a sad smile. "He couldn't catch me. The weeds would hold him fast, the birds would peck out his eyes, the water would drown him." She stops, and twists her head to one side like Weiwei has seen owls do. Listening. In the distance, another scream, inhuman.

Where is the Captain? She must be back on the train by now,Weiwei tells herself. She is protected by the gunner, she has not ventured far from the rails. She is safe.

"You shouldn't be here," says Elena, "neither of you should be here."

"But…" Now that she is in front of her again, she has forgotten all the things she wanted to say. It is different here, seeing the way that Elena is part of the landscape, how she walks confidently, barefoot across the ground. She had wanted to save her. She does not need saving.

"Come back with me." She can't bear it, the thought of losing her, but even as she says the words they sound weak. "Please. There is so much you wanted to see."

Elena looks her in the eye. "I don't belong there," she says. "You were scared. You thought I was harming him."

"No—"

"Yes." Then, gently, "And I understand it. I do."

"Then I could stay." The words are out of her mouth before she has had time to consider them. "I could stay here. You could teach me how to live here. I could learn."

Elena doesn't reply. She crouches down and puts her hands flat on the wet grass. Then she says, without looking up, "We killed him, your Rostov."

Weiwei can hear the wind in the branches of the trees, the hum of insects. The blood pounding in her ears.

"He came back," Elena goes on. "He was older. He came past the Wall and the guards. He wanted the wide-open spaces, he wanted the soil and the grass and the stone. He couldn't sleep, you see. He said that we called to him in his dreams, that we would not let him rest. He knelt in the grass and wept."

"I don't understand—"

"We killed him. His bones lie in the earth. He didn't belong here."

"No, no, he lost his reason, he fell into the river, he… No one can get past the Wall."

"There are ways, if a person is determined. But no ways to survive. Not here." She looks up. "So you see, you cannot stay."

"I don't believe you."

Grey stirs. "Come back," he mumbles, and coughs, wetly. "Please…"

Elena backs away. "You must help him return. There is something else out here."

"It's the Captain, she's checking the depth of the water…"

"No, another." Elena is utterly still. That familiar stance, poised, alert, every part of her listening. "It knows you are here."

Weiwei follows her gaze. Is that movement in the trees? A rotting smell on the air? Is this what Rostov sensed, when he knelt in the grass and wept? Did he wait for the earth to embrace him? Was he afraid?

"I will lead it away," says Elena. "You must get him back to the train." She looks at Grey. "He must not take anything. It is not his to take."

"Wait—"

"There is something coming, Weiwei." There is fear on her face, and she begins to run. "Go!"

Weiwei is rooted to the ground. Now that Elena has gone, the noises around her are growing more urgent, but she can't make herself move. The trees seem to be growing around her, their branches lengthening, reaching out, there is water bubbling up from the soil; a ring of tiny mushrooms, bone white, have fruited on the toe of her boot—

Grey's retching brings her back.

She shakes her foot with a yelp and jumps away from the marshy ground.

"She was here…" He is on his hands and knees. He tries to look around but slumps back down. He doesn't seem to question what Weiwei is doing out here, as if he were taking it for granted that a crew member would be waiting to serve him, even after he has broken every rule of the train. "Did you see her? You have to help me find her… She is the proof I have needed…"

She feels a wave of revulsion for him. How dare he speak of Elena as proof? How dare he speak of her at all? As if she is something he could possess, as if he had any right to her. She pictures herself leaving him here—"He ran into the forest alone, there was nothing I could do"—and letting the Wastelands creatures have him. She feels the pull of it, how easy it would be. His vanishing would let Elena vanish too. It would keep her safe from all the other curious men who might come later.

"Please," he begs. Curled on the ground, mud on his face.

She grabs his arm and pulls. "We have to go. There was no one here. You fell in the water."

"No, she saved me, a creature like… Some kind of… She was extraordinary." He heaves himself up.

"They say the Wastelands make you imagine strange things, sir," she says. "Don't they? It makes your mind play tricks on you." She looks around for her helmet, puts it back on.

"You don't understand," says Grey, "I was drowning—no, they were attacking me, the birds, I was in the water—"

"Sir," she says, crouching down beside him. "You've had a bad shock but we have to get back to the train, it's not safe."

He scrabbles around on the ground, his fingers pulling at the fruiting bodies.

"We need to go," she says, more loudly, but he clutches at her arm.

"There are things here, wonderful things. Don't you want them to be saved?" She tries to pull away but he holds her tight. "You understand, don't you? Don't you want to hold it in your hands? We have a duty to study it… to make sense of it."

She wants to get away from him, from his desperate need; from the kinship he seems to feel with her.

"It's already tried to kill you," she whispers. "Everything here is hungry."

But he is hungry himself, starving. She can see it in his eyes, the same light that Elena had when she stared at the water from the train, and despite herself, she understands it.

He heaves himself to his feet, patting his pockets and bringing out a bunch of little muslin bags. "I won't collect anything large, there won't be anything that can bring harm to the train."

"It is not his to take."

She hesitates. Her eyes rest on the lichen on the trees. There is a piece that looks just like a lady's fan, in colors that remind her of Elena; the blues and the greens, the way your eyes can't quite decide what they're seeing. An ornament so beautiful you can't tear your eyes away. And she is overwhelmed by a feeling of need, a conviction that if she could only possess it, only keep it with her always, then she will have a way of filling the emptiness of Elena's absence.

Grey is breaking off pieces of the lichen and wrapping them in the bags. He takes out a box that she realizes must be a kind of trap. He waits on all fours on the ground, crouching above it. Despite his wet clothes, his mud-streaked face, despite the danger all around him, he has the air of a man who has all the time in the world.

She should stop him, but she stands back instead. And while his back is turned, she breaks off the piece of blue-green lichen, and she slips it into her pocket.

There is a roar in the distance. Something large and inhuman, in the trees. She spins to look at Grey but he is already crouching, staring up at the sky, and she realizes that she has no idea how to return to the train. She lost the path long ago, and the ground seems to have eaten up their footprints.

"Which way?" There is fear in Grey's voice.

She doesn't know. Nothing is familiar. Every time she looks in a different direction it appears new again, as if it is changing in front of their eyes. Another shriek, hoarse and high-pitched, and then they hear it—the long whistle of the train, as if in answer.

They follow the sound of the train, though it seems a long way back, their feet sinking into the boggy earth, each step like the kind of dream where the ground is too soft, where it sucks you down to stop you ever getting where you want to go.

Finally, they emerge from the trees onto firmer ground, and there is the train, so utterly out of place that it brings them to a stop.

An insect lands on the glass of Weiwei's helmet and she flicks it off, catching only a glimpse of a long greenish body and delicate wings. A dragonfly. Another arrives, and she flicks it away, and then another, and despite the helmet she can hear a chime in the air, many, many chimes, as if someone had struck the rim of one glass after another, each filled with different amounts of water, until the air is full of ringing. Beside her she feels Grey doubling up, trying to protect his head with his arms, and she sees, to one side of the train, that the dragonflies are gathering together—hundreds of them, thousands, and the sound is like a separate being, relentless.

"Quickly," she shouts at Grey, though her voice is lost in the din. They try to hurry their steps, though not before she has glimpsed patches of red on the ground beneath the dragonflies, and seen them darting down, landing for a moment in the red then taking off again. More sap from the trees? No. They are out in the open now, away from the trees. This is blood, spilled blood, and as the dragonflies rise up they seem to shiver and vanish in and out of sight, as if the beating of their wings lets them hover not just in this air, but somewhere else as well. Whose blood? The chiming hurts her head, the ground is not where she expects it to be; at each step it comes toward her faster than she expects, or is further away, jarring the bones in her legs.

Another roar, much closer this time. "You have to run faster," she yells, but Grey is slowing, stumbling every few steps, and it is harder and harder to pull him along with her and she is beginning to wish she could just leave him here to fend for himself, when a suited figure bursts from the train and runs toward them, grabbing Grey's other arm and putting it over their shoulder. The Captain. Weiwei feels her own legs turn weak with relief. They start to move faster, and despite their clumsy, six-legged pace, they begin to cover the ground toward the train.

Weiwei can see faces at the windows now, eyes moving between them and the growing spiral of insects. She can see Alexei gesturing at them to run faster, and others beside him, increasingly frantic, and then the door is opening and the Captain is pushing them onboard, before pulling herself up and slamming the door closed behind them.

It is too much to take in. Everyone is talking at once, and Weiwei struggles out of her helmet and stares at the Captain. As contained and unreadable as ever but finally, miraculously present. She puts her hand on Weiwei's arm and gives her an inquiring look.

"All fine," says Weiwei, her voice cracking, though there is so much more she wants to say, and she is afraid to look away in case the Captain vanishes again. But shouts of alarm make her turn back to the window, though she can't at first understand what she's seeing. It is made up of too many disparate parts to make sense, to exist at all. It is too big, too much. Skin like a lizard, tongue flicking out from a mouth with too many teeth. A mouth opening and swallowing dragonflies by the hundreds, rearing up on its hind legs to catch the very highest ones. White shells glint on its back, like the barnacles she has seen in the seafood markets in Beijing. Tears roll down her cheeks. She can't understand it, this physical reaction. She is furious at her weakness.

Grey presses his face to the glass. No tears for Henry Grey, only wonder, fascination. She is suddenly, incandescently jealous. She wants it—this wonder. She wants it bestowed on her, like a gift, like the gift Henry Grey received so lightly, but all she can feel is a terrible, rushing incomprehension. She could drown in it, as the eyes of the creature turn toward the train then turn back to the insects, dismissing the train as trivial, unimportant to its own business of feeding, surviving. She wraps her arms around herself and feels the sharp angles of the lichen fan in her suit pocket, its odd, smooth surface. It is deep blue and emerald green. It is the colors Elena would be, if she were here.

"It just appeared from the forest," says Alexei, and she sees that his face is pale, with a sickly sheen. "Just as you were getting closer." The Captain moves over to the speaking apparatus and speaks into the brass mouthpiece and seconds later Weiwei feels the rumble of the engine. The stokers must have been ready, waiting, keeping the train on the edge of waking. The creature turns its head toward the front of the train, where smoke is rising. It opens its jaws wider as if to taste the unfamiliar flavors on the air.

"More," says the Captain, into the speaking apparatus, and they feel the creak and strain of the acceleration, and the creature roars as they pass it, raising its head high so that she is sure it will crash down upon them. Water splashes up at the windows and the birches press in closer, obscuring their view of its claws and scales.

"Is it following?"

They are tense, all of them. Waiting for the crash, for the weight of that enormous jaw, for a devastating blow from that thick, armored tail. But the train plunges on through the water, unimpeded, and Weiwei can't tear her eyes away, watching for a flash of dark hair, of muddy blue cloth.