7. In the Morning

Marya wakes up to a discreet knock on the door, and a steward enters carrying a tray with a silver pot of coffee and a plate of warm rolls. He places the tray on the table beside her bed, then opens the curtains and withdraws. She closes her eyes. The smell of the coffee reminds her of mornings at home—her old home, in St. Petersburg, the call of the seabirds outside the window, the pale northern light reflecting off the water. Her father would have left already, he would be in his workshop, the heat of the furnaces reddening his skin. Her mother would not stir for another hour or so. If she listened carefully she would hear the maids going about their secret business, the rustle of mice beneath the floorboards.

Now she hears the clatter of the rails, footsteps outside in the corridor, the insistent voice of the Countess next door. It is strange to feel movement; to be lying in bed and knowing the miles are slipping away beneath her.

She is struck by the thought that, in a different reality, she would be travelling home now with her parents. That had been the deal her mother struck, when the Company had asked her father to open up a Fyodorov Glassworks in Beijing. As more crossings were being made, so the many windows of the train needed to be replaced more often, with the strongest glass that could be manufactured. "It is an honor, for our family," her father had said, and her mother had replied that she would give him five years. Five years and then Marya would have reached her majority and must be shown to St. Petersburg society. The years had gone by slowly, in the foreigners' enclave where her mother insisted they must live, far from the sound of the rails. Having taken the slow, southern route to reach China (almost as dangerous in its own way, though the dangers came from more human sources, and were therefore more acceptable), she could ignore the railway and the Godless Wastelands entirely. In her mother's eyes, the deal was binding. Marya had always wondered, though, if her father took it to be so. He would be evasive about his plans for their return. He would ask her if she wasn't happy here, among such cosmopolitan society. But her mother would purse her lips and tell her maid to close the shutters. "Our daughter is so pale and thin," she would say. "The air is quite spoiling her complexion." And her father would raise his eyebrows at Marya, and feign a coughing fit to hide his smile.

Though her mother forbade her to go near the railyard, Marya would find ways to sneak away, to stand at the railings and observe the huge beast as it returned from another crossing, pockmarked and scratched, as if the claws of great creatures had slashed at the carriages; as if unseen hands had etched patterns and spirals in the glass. She would watch for her father disembarking, watch him stare up at the windows, as if to assess the damage done. And she would watch too his expression change when he saw her, as if drawing a curtain over his worry and exhaustion. But she knew they were there, growing ever heavier as the years passed, and he spent longer and longer at the railyard, and made more crossings on the train.

Now hunger finally tempts her from her bed, and she falls upon the rolls and butter with more enthusiasm than manners. She stops herself from wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, then realizes—it doesn't matter. For the first time in her life, she is breakfasting alone. No family around her, no chaperone, no maid hovering at the door. Although she had kept on their small staff after her parents' deaths, she had bid them farewell the previous day, the housekeeper weeping, demanding to know how a young woman could think of travelling so far alone, on such a dangerous journey, and what was she going to do upon arrival in Moscow, and what would her blessed parents think, to see her so reduced? She picks up her cup. True, she will no longer have the life she has become accustomed to, nor the inheritance she had been brought up to expect. Fyodorov Glass collapsed, after her father's firing by the Company, its reputation in ruins. But still, after all the debts have been paid, she has some modest means. More modest now, she thinks, after the purchase of a First Class ticket. She will not have long before she must find a way of earning her own living. She takes too big a gulp of coffee and burns her mouth, putting the cup back down on its saucer with a clatter. Those thoughts would have to wait. She has no need for anyone else, not for the task ahead of her. It is better to be alone, with only Rostov to accompany her, as solitary in his travels as she is in hers.

Outside, beneath a pale-blue sky, the grasslands are unfurling into a shimmering, uncertain horizon. They look innocent, empty of everything, even shadows. Be careful, Rostov warns the cautious traveller; no landscape is innocent. If your mind begins to wander, turn away from the window.

But his own mind had wandered in the end, hadn't it? He had become an embarrassment, a man living in twilight. His family had tried to take the book out of circulation, but of course this had only cemented its popularity. Poor Valentin Pavlovich, where did you end up? Drowned in the Neva, some of the stories say, or in a poor house, or drunk in the gutter, still travelling the Wastelands in his mind.

"Madam, excuse me…" Someone is touching her shoulder. She starts, looks up, confused. A young Chinese man is standing beside her, his hair a little long, poking out messily from beneath his cap. "I knocked," he says in Russian, "but no one answered, and then I saw you were disappearing."

No, not a man, a young woman, a girl. She stands back and rubs her nose, and Marya wonders if she has fallen asleep and into one of those dreams where meanings slip away. "Disappearing?"

"It's what we say when someone… when they look like their mind is wandering. We have to bring them back." The young woman's tone is abrupt, though it might be down to her Russian, which is rough-edged and unplaceable and much older than she is, and as Marya starts to gather together her thoughts she realizes who this must be—the girl she has read about, the famous child born on the train; no longer a child, though she can barely be older than sixteen. Zhang Weiwei.

"I was just day-dreaming," says Marya, but she can't remember what she was dreaming of, can't remember thinking at all, and her thoughts now are clumsy and slow. She glances at the clock on the wall and is shocked to see that two hours have passed.

The girl follows her gaze. "It happens like that," she says. "It's like falling asleep but you are awake. It's why we have to watch carefully. People think it won't happen to them. You shouldn't stay in your cabin alone too long. It's best to be with other people."

She has an appraising look that Marya finds rather uncomfortable. "I have read the guidebooks," she says, and is annoyed by the defensiveness in her voice.

The girl shrugs. "They don't prepare you for what it's like. Not even Rostov, and he's quite good on most things. The rest of them are charlatans." She rolls the word around in her mouth in a satisfied way. "It's more dangerous if you've read their books than if you haven't."

Marya laughs, she can't help it. But the girl is still staring at her, and there is concern in her expression but something else as well, as if she can read the recognition in Marya's face and is wondering where it comes from.

"Thank you for your concern," Marya says, careful to keep her expression blank. "I will be more aware from now on." Though the old Marya has disappeared already, of course. A careful, deliberate vanishing. Perhaps this new Marya will find it too easy now to disappear, while she is still new, unfinished. While she is untethered from the present.

"There is a trick," the girl goes on, rather diffidently. "If you want to know it. It's better than the things they tell you in the guidebooks."

"Yes, please," replies Marya. "I would be most grateful."

"You should keep something bright with you," says Weiwei. "Something bright and hard that catches the light, like a piece of glass." If she notices Marya tense she makes no sign of it, but takes out a small marble from her pocket and holds it up to the window. The sun catches a swirl of blue glass caught inside it. "It's the brightness that matters. People say that you should take something sharp and prick yourself with it, but I think what you really need is something that's sharp on your eye." She moves the marble and the light dances across and through it and Marya feels her chest clench. The aching familiarity of it.

"It brings you back," says the girl. "I don't know why."

"Glass is alchemy made solid. It is sand and heat and patience," her father would say, when he was feeling poetic. "Glass can trap light, use it, shatter it."

"But not everyone agrees with me. Lots of people don't." Weiwei purses her lips. "They say iron is better but I think that's just superstition." She looks at Marya as if she is daring her to challenge this assertion.

"People don't realize how strong glass can be," Marya replies.

Weiwei holds the marble out to her. "You can take this. If you want it. I have others."

She hesitates, then reaches out her hand. This is her father's work, she is sure, though she hasn't seen one since she was a child, crouched on the floor over her games. There was a certain technique he used, to make the twist of color inside seem to be always in motion. "Thank you," she says, and perhaps it is simply the power of suggestion but as she closes her fingers around it she thinks she feels her wits returning.

The girl is fidgeting again. "I was sent to see if you needed anything, because you're not travelling with a maid."

Marya bites the inside of her lip; tries not to let her expression change. She had known it would seem unusual for a woman like her to be travelling unaccompanied, but she had not expected it to be remarked upon so openly. She thinks of the Countess's shrewd eyes; of the stewards gossiping among themselves. Do they pity her, perhaps, or is there something more behind this gesture? Suspicion. Doubt.

"How kind," she says, carefully. "Was it the two Company gentlemen who thought of this?"

"It's what we always do, when guests are travelling alone." Another scratch of the leg, a rub of the nose. "Do you need anything, madam?"

Marya lets herself relax a little. She reflects with some amusement that she cannot see this girl making the most able of maids, with her crumpled uniform and hair escaping from her cap. "Thank you, but…" She is about to refuse when she thinks that surely there is nothing that this girl, this child of the train, does not see. She may come to be useful to her. "I have no need of anything at present. But if I may require your assistance later…?"

"Please ask, madam," the girl replies, without much enthusiasm, and turns to leave.

"I wonder if I can ask you a question," Marya says, suddenly, and Weiwei turns back, but perhaps there is something in Marya's tone that puts the girl on guard, because she thinks she sees alarm flit across her face. She tries to keep her voice light. "Were you on the previous crossing? One has heard so many stories, you see, and of course, it is hard not to be curious… Is it true what they say, that you really remember nothing?" Though she says it with a little smile, this time there is no mistaking Weiwei's look of anxiety.

"If you'd like to ask any questions, please speak to the Company representatives, who will be happy to speak to you," says the girl, in the manner of someone reading from memorized instructions.

"Of course," says Marya. "I understand."

But before she leaves, the girl hesitates. "I'm sorry," she says, in a voice that sounds more her own. "I… I just can't remember."

When she is gone Marya sighs and rests her elbows on the table. She will have to be more circumspect in her questioning. She will be sly, and watchful, and all the things her mother taught her not to be. "Don't stare, child, your eyes will fall out of your head… A lady doesn't listen at keyholes… A lady doesn't ask so many questions." But Marya has always watched, and listened. She takes out her journal. As a young girl she had filled her pages with observations of the people around her; her family's unguarded words, the sparks of her grandmother's wit, the looks passed between adults. She had begun to understand that what people said and what they meant were not always the same thing. Over the past years, she has turned to writing about her new city, observing its quirks and novelties, the rhythms of its everyday life. When her mother thought her to be safe in her room, or visiting other young ladies in the foreigners' quarter, she had been pacing the streets to find those places Rostov's Cautious Guides did not deem worthy of mention. Now she will put it to good use, this habit of observation. She opens the journal to where a sheet of writing paper is slipped between two of the pages. The paper is blank but for the address of their home in Beijing, and the words, in English, Dear Artemis, in her father's handwriting. For the thousandth time, she smooths it out. Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt—the name of the anonymous writer whose column in the Wastelands Society's journal has become so famous. While the journal prints articles and letters on all manner of matters relating to the Wastelands and its history, geography, flora and fauna, this column is the reason that she—like so many people—waits eagerly for new editions. The column relates gossip about famous passengers, descriptions of outlandish sights, and rumors or scandals within the Company itself. It is said that the Company is desperate to find the identity of Artemis; that the criticism he—or she—aims has the power to make their stock rise or fall; that his columns have been debated in the Houses of Parliament in England.

What, then, did her father want to tell this mysterious Artemis?

She runs her fingers across her father's writing. This is all she owns of him. She found it, fallen behind his desk, missed by the Company men when they took the rest of his work. She feels the familiar flush of shame and anger at herself. She searched the house but found nothing more; none of the reports he had spent long nights writing; none of the notes he had always been scribbling, when struck at the dinner table by an idea, despite her mother's disapproval. She failed him. Failed to protect his legacy.

He had wanted to share the truth with Artemis, she is sure of it. Or had he written to him already? She wants to shout at him—at this scrap of him, this shade. "Why could you not tell it to me instead? What were you hiding?"

The answers must be here.

She will do what she has always done; she will watch, she will listen, she will record. This Artemis is a ghost, and perhaps he has vanished for good. But she might still find his traces—traces of what really happened on that last crossing—here on the train.

She rolls the marble around and around between her fingers. It will not shatter, this marble, even if you drop it from a great height. It is stronger than it looks.

She stands up so quickly that the unfamiliar rocking of the train almost makes her stumble. She is stronger than she looks. Stronger than she feels. She remembers the furnaces in the glassworks, the way her father plunged the glass into the burning heart of them. There, that is what she needs: the burning in her chest, her own furnace that she is carrying with her. She needs to hold her hand close to its flame, to feel the power that drove her to cast her old life off, that guided her toward this train.