4. The Game, Again

Weiwei forces her feet to carry her forward, into the storage carriage, though it is changing around her—the flowers of mold on the window have come inside, they are patterning the walls, etching themselves onto the branches that are growing before her eyes. "Elena!" she calls, but she hears only the rustling of leaves. Now that the train has stopped, there is only an empty, echoing space where its heartbeat had been. Every step is an effort, and the corridors seem to be lengthening, the greener they grow, and she feels a terrible tiredness weighing her down, and her confidence ebbing away. She tries not to think of the water clock in the Vigil yard, already dripping away the minutes.

But then a figure emerges, stumbling toward her—Henry Grey, leaves caught in his hair and soil on his jacket, as if he has just risen up from the land itself. Weiwei feels a hot burst of fury. How dare he think that he could possibly trap Elena and take her for himself? How dare he hurt the train, her train? She feels her hands twitch with the urge to hurt him back, to wrench his silly gun from his grasp, to push him back down into the soil and hold him there with a strength she is suddenly sure she has.

But he is bent over, an arm wrapped around his stomach. When he raises his head she sees that his face is glistening and sickly white, and she takes hold of him not to push him back down but to hold him up. He is frail and ill. There is no harm that he can do to anyone now.

"Can't you see her?" he gasps. "There—up ahead. Beckoning to me."

Weiwei turns, but sees only the narrowing tunnel of greenery behind her. Grey squeezes her arm. "Thank you," he says, his eyes red and watery, fixed on the carriage ahead. "Thank you." Then he lurches away, holding on to drooping branches as he goes.

"We should follow him," says a voice in her ear.

Weiwei closes her eyes. She feels Elena's breath on her cheek. "What's wrong with him?" she asks.

Elena emerges into the greenish light. "He's dying," she says, and there is a sadness in her voice that Weiwei hadn't expected. "There is a wound inside him. It can't be healed."

"Elena," she whispers, "you have to go. The train won't pass the Vigil, not after all this. It will be sealed up. Do you understand? You're the only one who can slip out of the skylight without being seen. We don't have time to follow Grey, there's nothing you can do for him. You have to leave now."

The stowaway's eyes gleam in the dim light, as though she is underwater. "Not yet," she says. "Not yet. Just a little longer." She takes Weiwei's hand and pulls.

"No," says Weiwei.

"But the train will help us."

The vines around them shift and curl.

"We will look for Henry Grey," says Elena. "We will play our game."

The rules of the game are different now. It is a test of speed, and observation. They twist their way back through the ferns and the hanging branches. They creep through the broken web of threads across the door to the infirmary. The changes have spread through every carriage. There are shapes in the darkness that do not seem human; women with wings and men with antlers on their heads. There is a figure with a crown of twigs and leaves who holds out their hand to Weiwei, and resting on their palm are little white mushrooms, juicy and plump.

"I wouldn't eat them," says a voice at her side. Alexei, his pupils huge and black. "Not if you want to keep your feet on the ground."

"You lose a point," says Elena, appearing out of the undergrowth. "Two points."

"Did you find Grey?" asks Alexei, as he escorts them through the Third Class sleeping carriages, making a channel for them through the undergrowth; past a priest counting off shining berries through his fingers like prayer beads; past the boy Jing Tang, leaping from bunk to bunk.

"We are still looking," says Weiwei. Alexei doesn't ask anything else, but joins them, wordlessly.

Passengers have spilled out into the next carriages, and she sees stewards and porters and passengers from First, all distinctions blurring. Dima stalks beside them, a gray shadow, his eyes like lanterns. "Perhaps he is remembering his ancestors," says Elena, crouching down to run her fingers through his fur. "Perhaps he is walking through their dreams."

They see a stumbling figure in the distance, then lose him again. They plunge deeper into the rustling green.