“I’m going to sleep,” he says.
“I’ll stay up all night, watching you.”
“Suit yourself,” he says, and turns to face the wall. He has no intention of falling asleep. He’ll wait her out. But he can no longer fight his exhaustion, and before long he’s fast asleep.
* * *
Guided by lantern light, Brogan, Mackie, and Chisholm make their sure-footed way, single file, atop the Boundless.
On either side of the track stretches the Shield, a crust of ancient rock broken only by huge swaths of bottomless muskeg. Wizened trees crouch, rocking like old crones trying to stay warm against the cutting wind. The water glints restlessly, as though it wants to rise and spread. Brogan has seen this landscape in daylight and moonlight, in lightning and in blinding sun—and nothing improves it. It’s the most godforsaken waste he can imagine.
“We shouldn’t be out here,” he hears Chisholm say behind him. “The hag.”
Brogan glances back with a sneer. “What about the hag?”
Chisholm’s cheeks are sunken in shadow. “Just that they say she’s more active in moonlight.”
“There ain’t no hag,” Brogan says. “And if there is, I’ll give her a thumping she won’t forget. If you’d recognized that boy when you seen him, we wouldn’t need to be out here at all.”
“Had that giant with him anyway,” says Chisholm.
“Not anymore,” says Brogan, turning.
If that half-breed magician thinks he can spirit away the boy, he’s sadly mistaken. A bit of face paint might fool the likes of Chisholm, but Brogan will know if he sees him. He should’ve suspected something when Dorian called him by his real name back in the circus cars. Who’d told him that? If it was the boy, that meant he was still alive and on the train.
And if he’s on the train, he’ll be in third class. There’s not too many places they could put three circus performers for the night. They’ll be sleeping by now, and the butt of Brogan’s pistol will keep the ringmaster and the girl that way.
And for the boy, nice and quiet—the knife.
From the locomotive comes the long hard blast of the whistle. There is no more urgent sound to a brakeman. Sudden stop.
“Get back to your cars!” Brogan shouts to Chisholm and Mackie.
Down the length of the Boundless, lantern lights flicker as men rush to the rooftops, hustling for the brake wheels. Another long desperate whistle blast fills the night—and then another. It’s an emergency, maybe something up ahead blocking the tracks. . . .
As he bolts back to his own station, Brogan already feels the train slowing. He glances down and sees the water nearly at the tracks, and lapping higher still. He knows what’s happened.
Muskeg.
* * *
Will dreams there is a woman standing at the foot of his bed, screaming. She looks directly at him and, with a quick jerk of her hand, drags the covers off his body.
When he wakes, the screaming has become the frantic blast of a steam whistle and the shriek of brakes. His body presses hard against the bunk’s safety rail as the train comes to a nervous standstill. A tremor runs through her steel skin, like a horse eager to bolt. Beyond the walls of their tiny compartment, Will hears the rumblings of surprised passengers. A baby’s thin-edged cry wells up from a distant berth.
When he tries to sit up, he realizes he’s been handcuffed to the bunk.
“Hey!” he says, yanking against the manacles.
“She’s locked you up,” Mr. Dorian says quietly from the darkness. “No doubt for your own protection.” He’s sitting on the bench, and appears to be already dressed.
“My own protection?” Will exclaims.
“You were thinking of running,” the ringmaster says. “You might’ve been caught.”
“You can’t keep me locked up!”
“William, your voice, please.”
“I could holler for help!”
Mr. Dorian is suddenly beside the bunk, his face fierce in the shadows. “You could, but you won’t. Because if you do, a porter will eventually come. Questions will be asked. While they’re trying to figure out what to do with you, news will spread quickly through the brakemen. Before you even reach second class, Brogan will visit you, and his knife will find the soft place between your ribs.”
Will says nothing for a moment, breathing hard. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“I was just going to find out. There might’ve been an accident.”
He thinks instantly of his father. “What kind of accident?”
“Stay here.”
Will jangles the handcuffs defiantly. “I can’t go anywhere else, can I?”
Mr. Dorian slips out the door and closes it behind him.
“Maren!” Will says, thumping the bottom of her bunk.
She mumbles something that sounds like “No,” and turns over, deep asleep. He kicks at the underside of her bunk and only succeeds in hurting his toes.
Outside the door he hears some footsteps and then someone, maybe a porter, saying, “Part of the track’s been flooded. They’re working to lay new rails . . . nothing to worry about. Shouldn’t be too long . . . used to this kind of thing . . .”
Will twists himself around in the bunk and parts the curtains. The muskeg is barren, yet strangely beautiful, in the moon’s silver light. There is scrub and black spruce and darkly lustrous pools of water. Because the train tracks curve gently to the left, he can see the entire length of the Boundless and, far, far in the distance, the silhouette of the locomotive. It’s like a small mountain on the flat horizon. Pinpricks of light twinkle from the cab. It looks undamaged. His father is most likely fine.
In that moment he feels an almost smothering sense of longing. It is a big distance, but he could run it. He wouldn’t have to bother with porters and passports. He could just run along open ground, right to the locomotive. He could jump aboard and be with his father. And he would’ve rescued himself—without anyone’s help.
With a gasp he spots a woman standing at the side of the track, looking in at him. Their eyes meet. A chill sweeps over Will’s body, and he realizes she’s the woman from his dream.
He lets the curtains fall back, presses his hand against them, as if he can erase what he’s just seen.
What have I done, what have I done?
He blinks, trying to flush the image from his mind. But he can’t.
A wind blows outside the carriage, carrying with it the faint whinny of horses and the rusty moan of cattle. Will doesn’t want to turn his head, because he is afraid—no, he is certain—that there is someone beside him on the bunk. In vain he tries to trace the wavery lines of the curtains, but his eyes won’t cooperate. They want to slide away. He feels his head turning, as though some brutish schoolmaster has a hand on his skull.
She is crouched beside him, her limbs unnaturally folded, looking at him in terrible ecstasy.
He wants to scream, but his terror is bottled inside him, like in a nightmare, and the only sound he hears from himself is a dull grunt.
The hag reaches out and touches his handcuffs. They spring open.
You wanted an adventure, she says without speaking.
His heart races. Yes.
Come have an adventure, then. You can run to the locomotive. You can be with your father.
His legs swing themselves over the bunk, and he slides down to the floor, trembling like a marionette. In his long johns and vest, he jerks over to the door, opens it, and steps into the corridor. He stares straight ahead. He doesn’t need to turn his head to know she’s right there beside him, tied to him like a shadow. He can feel her clawlike grip on his forearm.
In another moment he has reached the door to the car. There’s no porter here, and he steps outside onto the platform. Four steps take him down to the side. Thick murky water laps against the rail bed
like an oily tide.
Just look, she says inside his head. The locomotive’s so close.
He starts toward it. If he can only keep his eyes fixed on the smokestack, and not look at the woman beside him, he will get there.
But his route is taking him away from the track, and he splashes into the wet muck. It flows over his feet. He doesn’t notice until it’s up to his ankles.
Keep going, the voice in his ear tells him helpfully. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
The bottom is mossy, sucking at his feet as he lifts them with each slow step.
He keeps going, up to his knees now. The cold clench of water moves up his thighs. Then the bottom drops away and he flounders up to his neck.
“Help!” he cries from his wordless mouth.
He lifts his chin high, trying to tread water without swallowing any. He flails out for something firm, but every bit of earth dissolves instantly the moment he touches it. He kicks out, trying to find purchase. The water sucks at him hungrily, and he knows it isn’t normal water. It wants to pull him under. It wants to fill his lungs.
Not five feet away there is a blighted tree, and he thrashes toward it, spluttering, getting nowhere. The muskeg hag is crouched there amongst the gnarled roots.
He knows he will never reach that tree.
Are you enjoying your adventure? she asks soundlessly.
She is close enough so that she could reach out a hand and pull him up. Her face is expressionless. She sits watching as he sinks deeper.
Gently, she says. Go ahead. Breathe.
He can barely lift his arms through the dense muck.
She smiles, her eyes dead. It’s all right. Just take a deep breath.
He goes under.
Breathe.
He fights against the urge to fill his lungs. Something pokes him hard in the side of the head, and then again, and he feels roused from a sleep. Terror pours through him. Sluggishly he lifts a hand to protect his head, but is poked again in the shoulder. He closes his hand around the thing, and feels it give a tug. Instinctively he grasps it with both hands. Dragged upward, his head breaks free. He gulps air.
He sees Maren at the other end of her long tightrope wire, his pair of muskeg spectacles over her eyes. She pulls and reels him in with all she’s worth.
He kicks toward her.
“Don’t look back!” she shouts.
Look back.
He starts to turn.
Look at me, William.
“Look at me, Will!” Maren calls, and he keeps his eyes on her, as intent as if he were drawing her. Before long her hands are gripping him and tugging, and he lurches out of the muskeg.
She is panting and crying a little too. She turns her back to the muskeg hag and hurries Will toward the train. His legs have both gone to sleep, and he can barely feel them.
“Let’s get you inside,” she says. “Your makeup’s half washed off.”
“Thank you,” he wheezes.
He’s startled by how far they are from the train. He stamps his feet against the earth, trying to batter feeling into them. And then he sees three figures walking toward them.
* * *
“Hey!” Brogan shouts out. “What are you doing out here!”
“Who are they?” Mackie says.
“I can’t see ’em,” Chisholm replies, squinting his buggy eyes at the two figures staggering out of the muskeg.
Brogan lifts his lantern, trying to catch them with his light. One of them is a girl, and the other one’s leaning on her—a boy, he thinks, but can’t be sure because his head is down. Who’d be stupid enough to wander out here . . . unless they were making a run for it? Brogan finds the knife in his pocket and grips it tight.
Suddenly the two figures start hobbling for the train, fast as they can.
“Get ’em!” Brogan barks, and they give chase. It’s dark, his lantern light jangling around all over the mushy earth. The moon disappears behind cloud, and Brogan trips on something and goes down. The lantern is dashed from his hands and extinguished. Blind for a moment, he pushes himself up, and thinks he sees a woman’s face, cheek pressed to the mud, smiling at him. Can’t be right, just a shadow, and now the moon’s back out and he’s on his feet again and the boy is right in front of him. It’s him—William Everett.
There he is. Couldn’t have asked for more.
Brogan tackles him, and they both go down into two feet of muck and water.
You can drown him nice and quietly, the voice says inside his head.
“Brogan!” the boy is shouting. “Brogan! Stop!”
He’s thrashing hard, the boy, dragging both of them deeper into the bog. Brogan tries to stand, and feels his feet sink. He steadies himself, punches the boy in the face, gets his hands round his throat and pushes. The boy’s head goes under, comes back up gasping, and Brogan pushes it down again, this time for good.
There you go, she says inside his head. Hold him down. . . .
“Brogan!” someone is shouting beside him. It’s Mackie. “Brogan! Let him up! That’s Chisholm!”
* * *
“Just run!” Maren hisses.
Will takes a last backward glance at Brogan, struggling with one of his own men in the bog. What happened? A third man—maybe Mackie?—is hollering from the shallows, trying to pull them both back to solid ground.
Then Will looks straight ahead and forces his numb legs to carry him as swiftly as possible toward the Boundless.
THE WORLD OF WONDERS
* * *
Mr. Dorian is waiting for them at the door to their carriage and hurriedly ushers them inside.
“Thank goodness,” he says with obvious relief. “I was just about to go looking.”
Will is sodden and shivering and covered in bog mud. There are a few other people in the corridor, and he hangs his head so they won’t see his washed-away face.
“Just a little stroll in the muskeg,” Mr. Dorian says to the curious.
Inside their compartment the ringmaster locks the door. “What happened?”
“I can’t believe I opened the curtains,” Will mutters.
“I woke up,” says Maren, “and you were gone, and I saw the handcuffs on the floor. When I looked out the window, you were there—and there was just something about the way you were walking, like sleepwalking. It wasn’t normal. So I put on those glasses of yours and hurried out.”
“Well done, Maren,” the ringmaster says.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” Will asks her.
“It’s all shadow through the spectacles. But there was definitely someone with you. She moved around a lot. Sometimes it was like her feet weren’t even touching the ground.”
“She came right inside,” Will says. He points to the handcuffs on the floor. “She took those off. What is she?”
Mr. Dorian takes a breath. “That, I don’t know. What she does is quite beyond my understanding or abilities. The world is full of wonders. Especially along this road.”
“Brogan and some of his men were out there too,” Maren tells the ringmaster.
Mr. Dorian turns intently to Will. “Did they recognize you?”
“I don’t know. He was shouting at us. We just started running.”
“I thought we were finished,” Maren says, “because you were really slow at first. But then suddenly Brogan tackled one of his own men. It looked like he was trying to drown him!”
“He must’ve seen the hag,” Will says. “She puts ideas into your head.”
“Maybe he thought it was you,” says Maren.
Will shivers at the thought.
“You’ll want to get out of those wet clothes,” Mr. Dorian tells him.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, for the underclothes have a rich stink to them. He still feels dislocated from
his body, like all the sensation hasn’t quite returned to his limbs. He starts peeling off the soaking garments, then glances awkwardly over at Maren.
“I won’t look,” she says, turning. “Here, I’ll set out your dry clothes on the bunk.”
“I’ll take these to the washroom to clean them,” says Mr. Dorian, pushing the filthy clothes into a burlap sack and leaving the room.
Gratefully Will dries himself with a small towel and pulls on clean trousers and a shirt.
Maren is going through her bag. “Madame Lamoine gave me some extra paint for touch-ups.” She produces several small jars and a brush.
Will sits on the bench, and Maren kneels before him.
“Can you fix it?” Will asks.
“It won’t be nearly as good as what Madame Lamoine did, but I’ll try.”
Staring at him intently, she brushes paint over his cheekbones. She bites her lower lip as she works. Will knows she’s just concentrating, but he still feels embarrassed to be the subject of such attention from her. He gazes at the floor, though keeps sneaking small peeks at her face. Her eyes unexpectedly meet his.
“You handcuffed me to the bunk,” he says.
“I just saved your life!”
“You turned me into a prisoner!” He’s still angry with her but can’t quite muster the same outrage he felt earlier.
“I knew you’d run, so I manacled you.”
Mr. Dorian returns and locks the cabin door behind him. He’s carrying two steaming mugs.
“Hot chocolate,” he says, handing them to Maren and Will. “Your clothes are hanging up to dry in the washroom.”
“Thank you,” Will says. “Is the train all right?”
“Quite all right. I made inquiries. A sinkhole opened up beneath the tracks, but they’re working hard to fill it up with sand and gravel.”
“Will we be able to get through?”
“The Boundless carries extra steel for just such eventualities.”
“No one was hurt up front?” he asks, thinking of his father.