9. Shadows

Weiwei's day is a whirl of chores and shouted demands. There is always another task to be done, a floor to be cleaned, brass to be polished, lost belongings to be found, passengers to wake and harry. Unlike the stewards and porters, the stokers and drivers and guards, the boundaries of her role on the train have never been well-defined, which can be irksome, when the tasks are never-ending, but useful too, allowing her to slip in and out of any part of the train, and to always be able to claim that she is running an errand for someone else. Her mind wanders. What had she seen last night? Nothing. A trick of the light, a symptom of the passengers' jumpiness. Or a trick of her own mind? There are more trays to be carried to First, more dirty dishes to be cleaned. Eyes in the darkness. She crashes into a steward in the dining car and spills tea on her uniform and forgets to pick up the clean linen from the service carriage. The stewards curse her and even Anya Kasharina scolds her for her lack of care, chasing her out of the kitchen with a ladle.

A large poster hangs in the crew quarters, a picture of a cheerful young man in the uniform of the Company saying, "Do you feel strange? Are you having difficulty remembering? See the doctor!" Weiwei hurries past it with her head down. "Oh, be quiet," she tells the poster. But Marya Petrovna's words from that morning echo in her head: "Do you really remember nothing?"

There have been other crossings where her memories were muddled and unreliable. Once a sleeping sickness came over the whole train; passengers laying down their heads on their dinner plates, crew members asleep at their posts. For days it was only the stokers who stayed awake, feeding the insatiable engine. The doctor hypothesized to the Captain that the heat protected them from whatever afflicted the rest of the train. But the rumors among the crew were that the Wastelands knew. It kept the stokers awake because they fed the train, and the train is as hungry as the Wastelands. Like knows like. "An affinity, that's what it is," said Anya Kasharina, who inclines toward the mystical—though she would never say it within earshot of the Crows. The sleepers on that journey had all shared the same dreams. They had walked in the snow without leaving tracks behind them. They had been watched by eyes in the dark. On another crossing, the inhabitants of the train had been taken over by odd compulsions, drawing pictures on the walls of remarkable creatures that they swore they had never seen. The Company had worked hard to ensure the stories did not get out. They dealt swiftly with crew members found to be speaking out of turn.

But this last crossing had been different. Do you really remember nothing?

Only an absence where the memories should be. And then, as if waking up from a dreamless sleep, to find they had arrived at the Wall and the Vigil yard; to find every mirror on the train shattered, the polished wood of the walls scored into spirals and lines. She rubs at the raised scar on the palm of her right hand. Some of the passengers never recovered—their minds fragmented, like the kaleidoscope the glassmaker once made her, its shifting patterns impossible to hold in the mind's eye. By the time they had reached Beijing, three passengers in Third had died.

She stops in her tracks and glares at the smiling figure on the poster. No. There is nothing wrong with her mind. There had been something there in the storage car, something hidden and out of place. Someone.

On other crossings, she would have gone to find the Professor at times like this, knowing that even late at night he would be awake, bent over his books beneath the last lamp still lit in his carriage. Knowing that he would give her his whole attention; listen without interrupting her or sighing or looking at the clock, and as she spoke, whatever it was that was worrying her would evaporate like incense smoke. He would not tell her, she thinks, that there is nothing hiding in the roof space—he would offer to go with her and make sure of it.

But she doesn't go to find him, not this time. If he is leaving her then she needs to get used to it, to prepare herself for when he is no longer there.

Shaking the thought from her mind, she takes a flask from the crew mess and fills it with water. Just in case. She grabs a piece of bread left out on one of the tables and slips it into her jacket pocket. As she does so, she feels a pressure at her ankles, and looks down to see Dima, staring up at her hopefully with wide amber eyes.

"Cats don't like bread," she says to him, though she knows he will happily try to eat anything. She crouches down to stroke his thick gray fur and feels the reassuring rumble of his purring beneath her hand. Our stowaway, she thinks. They had found him here in the crew dining car, five years ago, just after they had left Moscow. He had been all skin and bones, gobbling up food left on the floor. It had been a difficult crossing—storms on the line, shadows on the horizon, but the cat had padded calmly through the train, unconcerned and quite at home. And although the Captain had not been pleased that an animal had been allowed to come aboard, even she seemed taken with him, and his habit of chasing lights down the corridor. One of the cooks named him Dmitry—Dima—after her great-uncle, saying the greedy look in his eyes reminded her of him.

"Do you want to make yourself useful?" Weiwei asks him, and he rubs his cheek into her knuckles.

The Captain—at least, the Captain they had all known—is careful about stowaways. There had been those, in the past, who were desperate enough to take their chances, though the penalties were so high. Those who thought the risk was worth it. Once, when Weiwei was only five or six, she had been playing in the luggage car at the beginning of the journey, before the train had reached the Wall. It was a winter crossing, snow freezing the tracks, ice making patterns on the windows.

There had been a man in the luggage car, crouched beneath a pile of tarpaulins. The man had smelled of liquor and sweat, which was how she had found him, rummaging beneath the layers of cloth to get to the thing that was different, that she knew, even at that age, didn't belong. She remembers his fingers curled around her wrist, she remembers the stink of his breath. "I'm not here," he had whispered. "You understand? I'm not here." And he had opened his jacket and tucked there she had seen the glint of a blade.

She had run straight to the Professor. She might have only been small but she knew when a person was there and when they weren't. She knew that a knife couldn't make a man invisible. The Professor had picked her up and stormed to the Captain's quarters, demanding to know why a child had been put in such danger.

The crew had made a fuss of her, after that. The stewards had told her she was a brave girl; the cooks had given her extra helpings of sweet custard. Anya Kasharina had enfolded her in her arms and told her she had to learn not to take risks.

They didn't want to tell her what happened next. He was a bad man, they said. Hiding away on the train, not paying for a ticket, was as good as stealing. He was nothing more than a thief.

It was only a long time later that she learned the truth. They had not waited to reach the Wall, but had pushed the man out into the snow. It was Belev and Yang, the smugglers, who told her, one evening when they were between crossings, their bellies full of liquor, when the waiting made them boastful and nostalgic. They told how they had opened the carriage door just to scare him, to teach him a lesson. In winter the train moves slowly, shoveling aside the snow as it goes.

"But how did you open the door?" She was never sure how much of the stories to believe. "No one else has the keys."

Belev laughed. "Little sister, you know better than anyone that you can get anything you want on the train. If you want keys there are ways to get them."

She looked from one to another. "What happened?"

"We saved time and effort. We administered train justice," said Yang, wiping his mouth. Belev grunted. "The Captain knew about it."

And that was that. It was train justice that sent the man with the knife out into the snow in the dark, miles from anywhere. And it was train justice that made him vanish from the logbooks and reports, vanish as completely as if he had never boarded the train at all. She shivers to think of him, out there in the snow with only his patched jacket. She has thought of him on every crossing since.

Dima is not usually allowed in the main area of the storage car, so it is several minutes before she can coax him away from all the new smells and hiding places, and in the end she picks him up and carries him awkwardly up the makeshift ladder to the roof space. She puts down her lamp, and waits. There is a damp feel to the air, despite the heat. Gone is the customary stillness, replaced by the feeling that movement has just stopped, that something is waiting to happen. Her muscles tense. She feels Dima go still, his claws digging through her uniform into her skin. His ears flick back and his nose twitches. And then he begins to growl; a deep, warning noise that seems to rise up from his belly.

Slowly, she sets the cat down. "What's that?" she whispers to him. "What do you smell?" All the fur on his arched back is standing up, and his ears are flattened against his head. He is as disinclined as she is to go further into the shadows.

She is the child of the train—she is not frightened of anything. She doesn't need to run to the Professor like she did when she was small. If there is a bandit here she will expose him. A stowaway is no better than a thief. A stowaway must face train justice. She moves forward, slowly, holding the lamp in front of her, watching the pool of light grow.

There is definitely something there, at the far end of the carriage, where a few old barrels still sit. There is a darker shadow that holds itself poised, a tension in its bearing just like Dima's, as if it were a cornered animal.

"You can come out," she says in Chinese. "I… have bread, and water. If you're hungry… I can help…"

Silence. She repeats the words, in Russian this time.

"It's got seeds in it, the bread… It was made fresh yesterday."

The shadows are still, they are nothing more than shadows. Weiwei lets out a sigh. She is thankful that she has said nothing to Alexei. He would never let her forget this. She leans forward to retrieve her lamp—

—and the shadows move. A slithering sound, a smell of damp and rot, and the picture she has held in her mind of a bandit, of a knife in the dark, warps and shatters, but she cannot put the pieces back together in a way that makes sense, she cannot convince her legs to move, though Dima has begun a steady, high-pitched keening, a noise she has never heard him make before; she can only crouch helpless as it readies itself to pounce, her breath catching and coming out as a whimper—

—and the shadows rearrange themselves into arms and legs, the face into high cheekbones and watchful eyes, the slithering sound into the rustle of silk.

Not a bandit nor a wild animal but a girl. Dressed in blue silk, her hair loose and tangled around her shoulders. A vision so unexpected, so far from anything Weiwei had imagined that she stumbles backward and hits the floor.

With a hiss, Dima vanishes down the trapdoor. Weiwei and the stowaway stare at each other. Her dress makes her seem older, but when Weiwei looks closer she thinks she must be about her own age, though it is hard to tell. She tries to focus on her face but it is surprisingly difficult—there is something in the way the girl is regarding her that makes Weiwei's skin itch beneath her collar. She is not used to such close attention; she is used to watching, not being watched back.

The stowaway says, in Russian, "Are you going to run away too?"

Weiwei says, more defensively than she means to, "Why should I run away? I belong here. You're on my train."

The girl nods, solemnly, and touches the floor with the palm of her hand, as if to acknowledge Weiwei's right to it. "You have brought water," she says. Not a question, a statement. As if she had expected nothing less.

Weiwei hands her the flask, which she grabs with both hands and drinks noisily. "You should have thought about this before you stowed away," says Weiwei, after a moment.

The girl regards her, unblinking, and Weiwei has to admit to being a little impressed—she has never been out-stared before. Finally, she takes the bread out and the girl snatches it from her hand then scrambles further back into the roof space. When Weiwei raises the lantern she sees a kind of nest.

"Are you alone?" It is the first thing she can think of to ask. All the other questions will not put themselves into words in her head.

The stowaway nods, the expression on her face unreadable.

"Are you—" She stops. It is all too far removed from her expectations to make sense. A man with a knife and threats on his tongue can be understood. Danger that comes dressed in a blade and a snarl can be faced and fought. But this—a girl, alone, this is a different kind of danger. There is a line here that she must not cross.

"How did you get onto the train?" she asks, instead. "How did no one see you?"

The girl hesitates. Then she says, "Because I am careful and quiet and still. Because I was not what they were looking for."

There is something odd about her Russian. A little stiff and old-fashioned, as if she is searching for words that are hard to reach. "But you need food, and water," says Weiwei. "You'll have to find them somehow. You must know how long the journey is. Didn't you think about the danger? What will happen if someone finds you?"

The girl shrugs, a gesture that Weiwei finds unsettling, though she cannot say why. "You can help me."

Weiwei folds her arms. "And if I don't?"

The stowaway gives a sudden, unexpected smile. "I think you want to help. I think you are good at lying and I think you are clever, because you brought a cat to find out what I was. Those men, they would not think of that."

"Those men—" Weiwei stops. The stowaway has been watching, she is not as unprepared as she seems. She doesn't take her eyes from Weiwei's face.

This is madness. She should run straight to the Captain. She shouldn't even be thinking about it—they all know the rules, they know the punishment for any crew member found aiding a stowaway—confinement to quarters, then immediate dismissal upon reaching their destination. Absolute loyalty to the train—to the Company—that's what the rules demand. But where is the Captain's loyalty to the train now? Why should Weiwei run to her when she has closed her door to the crew? When she is vanishing, absent?

"I can bring more water," Weiwei says, slowly. "And more food, but I will have to be careful not to bring too much, or someone will notice. And you have to stay here, hidden. You have to promise."

The stowaway tilts her head to one side, as though she is considering. "I will stay here," she says.

Weiwei nods, as all the other questions she wants to ask crowd into her head. So she chooses the most simple one. "Will you tell me your name?"

The stowaway doesn't reply.

"It doesn't have to be your real name, not if you don't want. I'm Weiwei," she says, putting a hand to her chest, as she has seen adults do when they speak to children, as adults have spoken to her, many times.

The girl looks away. "Elena," she says, eventually, and Weiwei thinks, That is a lie.

She leaves the lamp behind when she goes back down the trapdoor. "I'll come back soon," she says, and the girl nods, watching her go, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Weiwei walks back to the crew quarters quickly, certain that her guilt must show on her face. The stowaway is not dangerous, she tells herself, she is just a girl. She is frightened and alone. And surely she would not run the risk of hiding on the train unless there were some terrible circumstances compelling her. No, there is no disloyalty here—just as Weiwei herself has been sheltered by the train, so she will help in her turn. She will give the girl time to tell her story, to reveal what she is running from or to.

She is so deep in thought that a thump at the window beside her makes her spit out a train curse and jump backward, colliding with a passing kitchen boy.

"Crawlers!" he yells, pointing to the window, where a creature the size of a dining plate clings to the iron bars, its legs tapping wildly at the glass. A shell covers its body but not its pale-pink underside, from which mouths gape, opening and closing at irregular intervals. The kitchen boy grabs Weiwei's arm as another one falls onto the bars, and another, until the whole window is a mass of tapping legs and gaping mouths.

"They must be on the roof…" Though they are usually only on the wrecks, never on the train itself.

"I'll call for the gunner!" the kitchen boy shouts gleefully, scampering away toward the speaking apparatus.

Weiwei takes a step closer but the sheer number of creatures has caused them to lose their grip on the bars and they are spinning away from the train, their legs curled into their shells. Moments later she hears gunshot and other pale bodies fall from the roof, clattering against the glass. By the time she reaches the sleeping carriage the under-stewards are betting noisily on the numbers falling from each of the windows.

"Want to take your chances, Zhang?" one calls to her, but she shakes her head and clambers up to her bunk. It is the image of the creatures at the windows making her uneasy, she thinks, not the stowaway in her space beneath the roof. But she can't helping thinking of Rostov's words: What else is hidden from our view? She is already taking her chances, she thinks, though she is aware of it only in a distant way, like a change in the weather, the importance of which is only understood much later.