Chapter 119

Episode 2: His Neverland Holding hands, they fell into the abyss— Huh…? Surfacing from sleep, Kieli blinked groggily several times at the sight before her. It wasn’t the darkness of a rugged valley floor that she’d expected. She was lying in a simple but clean and comfortable bed. Did someone save us…? With her cheek still resting on the pillow and her mind still foggy, Kieli scanned her surroundings. They consisted of a room with such a bare-bones layout she could probably call the place a “shack.” The construction of the bed was equally bare-bones in its simplicity, but maybe it belonged to a big person, because it was also very big. It was when she peeled away the blanket covering her and slowly tried to sit up that Kieli realized. Beneath the blanket was a redheaded young boy, sleeping snuggled up against her torso. Her right hand and the boy’s left still gripped each other tightly. Although his body was as covered in cuts and bruises as ever, most of them had been bandaged; he was tucked between Kieli’s body and the clean white sheets and sleeping quietly. It looked like it was a nice rest, too. Kieli sat up in bed without letting go of the boy’s hand and gazed down at his sleeping face for a while. When she stroked lightly at his disheveled copper hair, he opened his eyes. Two eyes the same copper as his hair roamed the empty air in front of him. “Are you okay?” Kieli asked. At the sound of her voice, the boy shifted his gaze toward her and tilted his head a little. Maybe he really couldn’t understand her words. His sluggish, clumsy movements and spaced-out expression made him seem a bit slow. What was different from before, though, was that he seemed to be properly aware and attentive of Kieli now. There was an unadorned square window next to the bed. The world on the other side of the window was still falling to pieces; she saw rock slides happening here and there in the vast wilderness outside. Even inside the shack Kieli could hear a muffled rumbling, but right now there was a sense of security, as if she was wrapped up safe inside its walls. Who could it belong to? The door of the room opened with a creak. When she and the boy looked that way, a man appeared. He had such a big, sturdy build that she thought he’d probably hit his head if he didn’t duck coming through the doorway. Somewhat frightened, Kieli wrapped her arms protectively around the boy. “So you’re awake,” the man said in exactly the low and deep voice she’d imagined from the way he looked, though his tone was mild. His short, stiff hair and the bristly stubble on his chin, both of which were the sandy color of the morning sky over the wilderness, matched exactly with the image Kieli’d always had of teddy bears. The boy slipped out of Kieli’s arms and slid out of bed to hop barefooted over to him without any sign of shyness. The man hugged him around the shoulders with a hand big enough to wrap clear all the way across his slim body and then turned his gaze to Kieli, too. “I bet you’re hungry.” Some warm, good smell was wafting in from the room on the other side of the door. Kieli’s stomach abruptly started complaining at her about the hunger she hadn’t registered until now. She nodded emphatically. A faint smile appeared on his rugged face. “Come this way.” Herding the boy in front of him, he disappeared into the other room. Kieli slid out of the bed and put on her boots, which had been placed right next to it, before following them out of the room. The door led to a modest kitchen almost completely taken up by a simple table and chair set. Gentle steam rose from the pot in the center of the table. It carried the delicious smells of milk and butter. Kieli giggled a little at the sight of the boy already sitting in his chair and swinging his short legs back and forth. When she sat next to him at the dinner table, the man ladled stew into tin dishes and set one in front of each of them. It was ridiculous that they were sitting there enjoying a leisurely dinner right in the middle of the ruin of the world, but at the same time it gave her a strange feeling of relief. Kieli scooped up a bite of stew with her spoon and put it in her mouth, and then her eyes widened at the old familiar taste spreading on her tongue. It tasted just like the milk stew of poultry, eggs, and chickpeas that’d been the standard dish at Buzz & Suzie’s Café in South-hairo…! With her spoon still sticking out of her mouth, Kieli stared at the man sitting across the table from her. He was crammed into an awfully small chair for a man of his size, head bent over a shoe he was silently cobbling. Maybe that’s his job? He wasn’t a sociable man and he didn’t talk much, but he had a placid atmosphere about him. In that he was a large man of few words, he did kind of remind her of Buzz, the chef who made that stew; but he was definitely a different person. All the same, the air about him gave her a vague sense of déjà vu. Who is this man…? She glanced at the boy next to her at the dinner table, who was applying himself to the task of eating his stew, gripping his spoon awkwardly and bringing his face to his bowl to sip at it instead. She remembered that he hadn’t liked milk at this age. Sure enough, after a sip of the milk stew he grimaced a little sadly. But then he stole a quick upward glance at the man across from them and tackled his stew again with a serious look on his face. She’d thought something was strange; now she realized he was holding his spoon in the wrong hand. This place is… Kieli put down her spoon and looked around the room. A simple, ascetic shack with only the bare minimum of things needed for survival. Almost like the solitary cell of a prisoner in exile. The ruin of the world went on outside the kitchen’s single window. In the small yard that she could see through it stood a bunch of grave markers made of carved white stone. Each one was inscribed with a tribute to the deceased in neat lettering, perhaps carved by this man. As though they were his atonement of sorts. It all brought back the memory of an old locomotive engineer, all alone on an abandoned train platform with his back facing her, planting stick after stick in the ground. What she felt from these grave markers, though, wasn’t the same anger at the world that the engineer had. It was a painful, even distressing mix of regret and sadness. “Um, where are we right now…?” she asked the man a little hesitantly. The man answered briefly, his hands not pausing in their work. “His world.” “…‘His world’?” Kieli remembered how just before white light had filled her vision, the ghost girl had guided her hand to touch the inside of Harvey’s body. This is Harvey’s world…? Was she peeking into the world inside Harvey? Come to think of it, she did feel as though she’d seen fragments of Harvey’s memories showing up in this world. The endless dry wilderness, the tiny scraps of memory from his boyhood days as Ephraim, the taste of the stew in South-hairo. And this sandy-haired cobbler sitting in front of her—this large man with the calm and stoic air about him that the boy was so fearlessly friendly with must be… …Jude…? And this boy is…She looked at the profile of the boy locked in desperate battle with his milk stew, his forehead practically touching the table. The boy who’d been trying to patch up this world, not even caring if he got hurt in the process. Who didn’t talk. This boy is Harvey himself. A crevice opened up in the ground right outside the window of the shack. One corner of the garden graveyard collapsed, and white gravestones were swallowed up by the chasm. The boy lifted his face from his stew. Hopping down from his chair, he ran over to the window and plastered his face to the glass. His coppery eyes looked steadily out at the world. This small boy was trying to save the world, the body, the mind called “Harvey” from collapse, even though he got hurt in the process. “This shack probably won’t last much longer,” the man said quietly. “You hurry on ahead.” “Ahead…?” Kieli asked, turning her worried face to him. “What should we do, sir? How do we stop this world”—stop Harvey—“from breaking?” “Go to the end of the world.” “The end of the world?” The man stopped working and raised his head, pointing straight out the window over the shoulder of the boy still gazing outside. “If you head straight east, you’ll come to a station. Board the train there.” Kieli nodded meekly at his explanation. The boy came back from the window and grabbed Kieli’s sleeve with his delicate, scarred hand. He looked at her expressionlessly. Still, she could see that he was trying to tell her something. “Yeah, let’s go. I’ll go with you. Let’s go together.” Smiling, Kieli nodded firmly to him. “Take these with you.” The man rummaged around in the kitchen cupboard for a minute before finding a bit of paper and handing it to Kieli. It was a little packet with what looked like two tickets in it. They were blunt tickets, with nothing printed on them but an arrow pointing to the words “The End of the World” in faded ink. The arrow went only one way. “Once you leave the shack, you won’t be able to come back here. You go straight east and never look back. You mustn’t look back no matter what; you got that?” “We won’t ever be able to come back…?” “That’s right. You mustn’t come back. I can’t go with you, so…” The man bent his knees and sank down in front of the boy. “Take these.” One by one, he took the boy’s bare feet by the ankle and slipped on the shoes he’d been cobbling. The boy lifted his legs without protest, teetering a little, and let him. The shoes had been tailored to fit perfectly over those feet as scraped up as his hands. The man looked up from his position on the floor and placed his big hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Ephraim.” The boy reacted faintly to the name, turning his empty gaze to the man. Pressing his forehead to the boy’s shoulder, the man said in a strained voice, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me…No, I don’t have the right to ask for that…” Kieli couldn’t bring herself to interrupt the heartbreakingly sad words of apology. She just watched the two of them, gripping the tickets tightly. She couldn’t tell whether the boy heard any of it or not; he stayed silent, his empty eyes gazing vaguely at the man’s hanging head. Paying no heed, the man kept on apologizing. His broad shoulders trembled as he spoke. The sight overlapped in the back of Kieli’s mind with that of her father, Sigri. He regretted having done something that couldn’t ever be taken back, and even though he knew there was no way he’d ever be forgiven for it, even though he knew he’d never be able to atone for it no matter what he did, no matter how cruelly he was rejected, all he could do was apologize. The sight of this man apologizing to this boy was a heavy blow to the chest. Kieli had rejected her father, swearing she’d never forgive him for abandoning her and her mother. Even though she knew he’d probably regretted it and punished himself for it all these long months and years, Kieli still couldn’t accept him. This boy, on the other hand… As the man went on saying he was sorry, the boy tugged on his sleeve. The man lifted his face from the boy’s shoulder. The boy looked at him with his head tilted to one side, as if he didn’t understand what the apologies were for. Then he took the man’s face in his small hands, drew it close, and conked his own forehead lightly against the man’s. That was his only expression of emotion. It was more than enough to send tears running down the man’s cheeks, though. Still holding the boy in his arms, he tilted his head down and whispered a trembling “Thank you.” They left the shack with the man to see them off. Kieli linked her fingers firmly with the boy’s again and stared east, where she’d been told the station was. All she could see in front of her was an ever-so-gently sloping red-brown wilderness that stretched all the way to the horizon. The rumble of the world’s ruin was still endlessly shaking the earth and skies. She wondered uneasily whether there really was such a thing as a station in this world, but she felt in her pocket for the one-way tickets to dispel her worry with the feel of them. Once they left the shack, they couldn’t go back. The man had warned them multiple times that they mustn’t look back, no matter what. “Let’s go.” Gripping the boy’s hand, she stared straight ahead and stepped forward. “Nggnnghhh…” As soon as she started walking, she heard something like the low moan of a beast behind her, and then a loud rustle. She almost turned around without thinking, but she managed to hold herself back. The boy looked absently forward, not seeming to have noticed anything. You mustn’t look back no matter what. She silently repeated the man’s words to herself like a mantra, and as nervous as she was of whatever was back there, she kept on walking briskly forward next to the boy and never slackened her pace. Her heart pounded faster at the feeling that a beast was approaching them from behind. A large, thickset shadow blanketed the two small shadows stretching faintly out in front of them, wiping them out. Something was definitely following them. You mustn’t look back. You mustn’t look back. She chanted it to herself and kept walking. The earth kept splitting around them and fragments of rock kept raining down from the sky, but those shards never fell on their heads; they scattered left and right, falling on the ground around them. Could the shadow behind them be protecting them? But what in the world was it…? The urge to turn and find out almost drove her to dart a quick glance behind her, but she remembered the man’s words, and fixed her gaze straight ahead. After a good interval of walking, an ash-gray slab of concrete came into view on the horizon. It was still small and faraway, but it was there. A platform? That must be the station he told me about. “Thank goodness!” When she smiled at the boy next to her in relief, Kieli saw the misshapen, taloned arm of a beast stretching toward his neck from behind. The talons snagged the collar of his pajamas, and his slight body was yanked backward. A hunk of rock fully as big as the boy’s own head plummeted down right in front of their eyes so close that it scraped the tip of the boy’s nose. Looking totally unperturbed by his narrow escape, the boy turned his head casually to look behind him. You mustn’t look back— “Don’t!” Kieli abruptly threw herself in front of the boy’s face to cut off his line of sight and wrapped her arms around his head. In that instant, she accidentally caught sight of the form behind them in her peripheral vision. With her arms still around the boy, Kieli gulped. A misshapen monster like a giant rotting mass of flesh with bits of different corpses stuck to its surface looked sadly down on the two of them with cloudy sand-colored eyes that peeped out from between folds of meat. Owooooo! The monster gave a roar that split the heavens. Kieli pulled at the boy’s hand and tried to run, but he remained stock-still where he stood, looking expressionlessly up at the monster. It swiped out with its talons and gouged his cheek. Deep gashes opened up there, and fresh blood spattered. Screaming, Kieli yanked hard at his hand. “Run!” The two of them took off running, tripping and almost falling over the cracks in the ground as they went, covering their heads against the rain of rock. The monster followed them with a bellow. The gray train platform that had looked so small across the wilderness finally seemed to get closer. There was no station house or shelter; the open concrete just lay there like a long snake. Its only feature was a simple signpost standing all by itself in the middle of the platform. It said TO THE END OF THE WORLD next to a one-way arrow, just like their tickets. A steam train with a long chain of passenger cars was parked there. Choo……… It sounded its whistle long and low and began belching steam. Apparently it was just about to depart. “W-wait!” she screamed at it as she ran at full speed, pulling the boy along by the hand. His foot caught on something and he toppled forward. The monster that had just caught up with them bore down with its talons for the boy’s back. Kieli dove underneath them with hardly a hairbreadth to spare, whisking him to his feet and taking off running with his hand in hers again. Chug, chug, chug… In a puff of light-gray steam, the train began to pull slowly away from the platform. Car after car slid out of reach. Kieli sprinted up onto the platform and managed to jump onto the ramp of the last car’s deck just in time, dragging the boy up after her. The train accelerated with a lurch. Their car cleared the end of the platform not a moment before the monster caught up to them. Then a fissure opened up in the earth right underneath the concrete platform, and it began to crumble. When Kieli leaned out over the railing of the deck and squinted, she saw the monster’s great form fall into the chasm and get swallowed up by the world’s abyss. “Ah…” A sound escaped the boy watching with her for the first time. “Ah…ah, ahh…” It didn’t form words. With the thin gasping of a baby looking for its mother that broke Kieli’s heart, the boy reached out with both hands for the monster vanishing into the ground. When it looked as if he was about to throw himself over the railing and fall, Kieli embraced him from behind and lifted him back up. The train picked up speed as though it were trying to outrun the fissures chasing it down the track. Holding the boy to her and panting, Kieli watched the white platform steadily disappearing into the ground for a while. The now-warped sign that had read TO THE END OF THE WORLD was the last thing to be sucked into the crevice, and the station disappeared. Behind them and on both sides of the tracks, there was nothing to see but the wilderness ever rumbling with destruction. They’d boarded a train of no return. “Are you okay?…Does that hurt?” She fished a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and pressed it gently to the awful scratches in the boy’s cheek. She carefully wiped away the blood, but the four deep wounds remained swollen and festered red-black on his pale white cheek. The boy didn’t look particularly bothered or pained by them; he looked right past Kieli’s gaze into nothingness. It was just as if his spirit was coming to pieces along with the world… Kieli drew her face close to his. “Harvey?” When she whispered his name, his gaze twitched toward her just the slightest bit. Kieli pulled herself back together and took the boy’s hand, squeezing tightly. “Let’s go to the end of the world.” They left the rear deck and went inside the train. They made their way forward through several cars, but there didn’t seem to be any other passengers on board. They chose a set of facing seats in a car near the middle of the train and sat down across from each other, and then all of a sudden a stocky man in a dark blue uniform stood in the aisle. She hadn’t even heard him coming. His face was pale as a ghost’s, and beneath the brim of the conductor’s hat he’d pulled down low over his forehead, he was looking down at her with a sunny smile creepily at odds with that bloodless face. Kieli hurriedly jammed her hand into her skirt pocket, took out the tickets she’d gotten from the man in the shack, and offered them to him. The conductor silently looked from their two tickets to their two faces. Kieli waited, wondering nervously if there was something suspicious about them, until eventually he stamped their tickets with two firm clicks and handed them back to her. “Um, what sort of place is the end of the world? How far from here—” she started to ask, trying to get whatever information she could, but before she could finish he’d already gone silently on his way down the aisle. When she leaned out of her seat, the uniformed back of the man drifting along just slightly above the floor melted into the air around him and disappeared. A rhythmic muted throbbing pervaded the air, but otherwise all was quiet inside the train. Outside the window the ground was splitting as fast as ever and the rain of rocks kept on falling, but the train kept right on going, indifferent to the ruin outside. It was like another dimension separate from the rest of the world. Clackity-clack, clackity-clack…The familiar throbbing of the train that her body knew so well by now brought her an interval of rest. The boy sitting across from her was looking vacantly out the window, swinging his legs back and forth. There was an awful claw mark on his cheek. He was even more of a wreck than ever. A train bound for the end of the world…Kieli didn’t know what kind of place the “end of the world” was exactly, but whatever it was, would they be able to stop the collapse of this world when they got there? Could she help the boy? But. Would stopping the collapse really mean saving him…? She felt a sudden stir of doubt. Her heart squeezed painfully. This world was Harvey himself. Harvey was always a wreck, just like this world; he always seemed on the verge of collapse, always battered and only hanging on by a thread. Just like this boy in front of her. And even so, he was still desperately trying to patch the world up. And each time, he injured himself more instead. His whole body was battered and fragile, and even so he was still trying to resist. Stopping the collapse of this world—wouldn’t that end up meaning hurting his body even more? Wouldn’t that mean him suffering even more than he already was? I don’t want to see it anymore…I don’t want to see him get any more wrecked. With a soft pat, the boy’s scraped-up hand landed on the back of Kieli’s where it rested on her knee. When Kieli looked up, puzzled, he tugged on her hand as if to say: This way, this way. She let herself be pulled up out of her seat and deposited on the one next to his. Pressing his injured cheek to the windowpane, the boy squinted down the tracks behind the train. Kieli stuck her own cheek against the glass next to his and peered in the same direction. An admiring sigh escaped her. “Whoa…” A magnificent sunset painted the whole sky. On the horizon where the track disappeared into the far distance behind them, a burning scarlet sun bigger than any she’d ever seen had begun to sink beyond the edge of the land, shimmering with heat. That evening sun beautifully colored the wilderness even though the world was crumbling. It’s gorgeous, Kieli thought with simple honesty. Even as it was swallowed up by ruin, Harvey’s world, this world the same copper color as his hair and eyes, was still so heartbreakingly gorgeous. The sun hung suspended in place there, never sinking fully away, and its dying orange glow lit their faces as they pressed their cheeks and hands to the train window, spellbound by the view. The train they rode kept on going, vibrating quietly beneath them. At some point she realized that the boy had lifted his cheek from the window and was looking at her. His coppery hair was brilliant in the setting sun. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but Kieli thought those copper-colored eyes that hadn’t shown a scrap of emotion so far were smiling at her now. A tear slid down her cheek. The boy cocked his head curiously, and Kieli turned her face away from him to wipe it away. “It’s nothing…I-it’s just that the sunset’s so beautiful…” …This tattered, collapsing world was so beautiful, and the tattered boy who didn’t speak still gave Kieli such a beautiful smile. Why? How could collapsing things be so beautiful? It was sad, touching, heartbreaking; the tears wouldn’t stop. For a while after that, the boy just gazed out the window, swinging his feet back and forth in the shoes the man from the shack had made for him, and Kieli let the vibration of the train lull her into a half doze. Since the boy was so bedraggled otherwise, the brand-new shoes stood out. They’d been made sturdy, to protect his frail feet. As though they carried the feelings of the man who made them for him. A twilit wilderness where the setting sun caught on the horizon and the evening never ended: It was the perfect symbol for Harvey’s world, where time had stopped. The ruin of the world flowed by outside the train window almost as if it had nothing to do with them. Was there really no one else riding this train? She hadn’t seen a single soul since that ghostly conductor from before. Kieli was just pondering whether anybody even lived in this world at all besides the boy and the man in the shack when she heard the forward connecting door open. A young girl’s innocent laughter and chatter filtered through it. Kieli popped her head out into the aisle. A pair of small passengers closed the connecting door and walked toward them. The one in front was a girl in a skirt. She broke off talking to the other child trailing after her and turned with a flutter of her skirt to look at them. She was a beautiful girl maybe about the same age as Kieli, with golden blond hair that flowed in gentle waves all the way down to her waist, clear ice-blue eyes, and a flattering red coat. Becca…! No, that’s not Becca. That’s… “Beatrix?!” Kieli half-rose from her seat without thinking. The boy acted faster, promptly jumping down from his seat and leaping out into the aisle to glom on to the girl. “Eep! You scared me. What’s wrong?” she asked him, blue eyes widening at this boy who’d charged at her and latched on like a wild animal, burying his face firmly in her chest. Then she patted him gently on the head. Kieli stood up, too, and stared with both hands over her mouth and her eyes swimming with tears at the beautiful girl’s face. As she patted the boy’s head, the girl lifted her head and smiled at Kieli, too. “Hello!” Kieli managed to choke out maybe half a “hello” in response to her cheery greeting. This isn’t a dream. Or, well, maybe this whole world is kind of a dream to begin with, but—this isn’t a dream. She was happy, she was confused, and the moment she opened her mouth the tears threatened to spill, so she couldn’t talk right. Kieli couldn’t believe she had the chance to see her like this again: not the hideous corpse that had been sucked into the monster, but someone moving and smiling and speaking. “Are these seats taken? Can we sit here?” the girl asked, gesturing with a glance at the seats in their box while she gently peeled away the boy clinging to her. Kieli nodded furiously, still unable to speak, and moved aside to make room for her. That was when she finally remembered the existence of the other kid who’d stood hiding behind the girl. He was a boy even smaller than the boy Harvey, and in stark contrast to the carefree, animated girl, he wore a sort of timid scowl as he peeked at them from behind her. Kieli thought he looked about eight or nine years old. The eyes giving her an upward glare were a clear, beautiful slate color. Is this boy Joachim…? When the golden-haired girl and slate-eyed boy sat down with them in their set of facing seats, their almost lonely little cube of space all at once took on a lively atmosphere. Kieli and the boy Harvey sat next to each other, and Beatrix and the boy Joachim sat across from them. The boy Joachim, the smallest of them, constantly darted glances up at the other kids with a scowl on his face. He clearly prized the paper bag he held, which seemed to be full of snacks; he never let go of it for one second. When he noticed the boy Harvey staring at it with a vaguely wistful expression, he shifted it out of sight with a start and said, “Y-you can’t have any!” Beatrix whacked him over the head. The boy Joachim glared up at her with teary eyes, but apparently she was the one in charge; he only gave her a bitter look, clearly unable to backtalk her. “Don’t be mean. If you’re a man, be generous and give him some.” So the boy Joachim reluctantly held out the bag to the boy Harvey as if he were doing him the world’s biggest favor. The boy Harvey stuck his little hand in the bag and grabbed the biggest fistful of biscuits he could, without any restraint, without any subtlety, and without any expression on his face. “Hey!” the boy Joachim cried, horrified. He clutched the bag to his chest and looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “You’re not getting any more! No more for you, got it?!” The boy Harvey didn’t even appear to be listening to him. He’d already started munching away, getting biscuit crumbs all over his hands and face. Kieli and Beatrix met each other’s eyes and grinned at the boys’ childish exchange. “How far are you going?” Beatrix asked her. Kieli glanced at the boy Harvey sitting next to her (who was cramming biscuits into his mouth like there was no tomorrow, the point of their trip seemingly forgotten even though it revolved around him). “The end of the world.” “Okay, then we’ll be together for part of the trip.” Beatrix beamed. Kieli smiled back, feeling heartened. She’d always been their strong, straightforward, heartening big sister. …In the real world, though, she was gone… In spite of herself, Kieli remembered what she’d looked like at the end, and her heart grew heavy again. Suddenly something hit the outside of the window with a rubbery squeak. When Kieli looked, she saw a balloon animal floating there with a carefree smile on its face that dispelled the gloom. The boy Joachim, who was sitting by the window, half-rose from his seat and plastered himself to the glass. “It’s the circus!” he cried excitedly. All sorts of different balloon animals floated lazily in the air outside the window. A caravan of trailers that sparkled with lights of all different colors was traveling parallel to the train. Stages were set up on the sides of the trailers, and on the round platform of one of them a fat clown in a costume with a ruffled collar made balloon animals and released them into the sky. The clown’s face was painted white with blue stars: He was the one she’d met a long time ago at the carnival in Easterbury. Trailer after trailer followed each other in a line, the artists on each of their stages giving merry performances. Balloons of all colors danced through the air as they passed. On one stage actors in giant-headed bear and mouse costumes put on a silly comedy, whacking one another and tripping and whacking one another again. In another trailer, a musical troupe decked out flamboyantly in red-and-green-striped breeches and yellow tights haphazardly played trumpets and cymbals; and in yet another, three tin dolls wearing matching sailor collars and mismatching triangular hats colored red, green, and yellow performed an adorable dance with quick little steps. In still another trailer, a fortune-telling girl shuffled cards with a practiced hand. One of the trailers was a dining car, even, and Kieli could see dear, familiar faces: There was Suzie busily carrying trays of the “parent-and-child stew” made of poultry, eggs, and chickpeas, and there was Buzz manning the stove. Kieli’s gloomy mood vanished. The glittering spectacle of the show on the other side of their window captivated her. Even the boy Harvey, who hardly ever changed expressions, had a faintly happy look on his face. His gaze was riveted on the succession of performances. Both his hands were pressed against the glass. So many people she and Harvey had met on their travels together were living and breathing here in his world. She saw people among them that she didn’t know, too—people who must have featured in his life before he met Kieli. But still, the vast majority of these faces were ones Kieli knew. That made her feel a little shy, and happy, too. Happy that these few short years since he’d met Kieli, these days together that were just a tiny fraction of his long life, stuck with him so vividly that they took up most of his memories. Sput, sput, sput. The line of trailers gradually receded into the distance as the train overtook it, and then something else noisily approached them from behind. When Kieli brought her face up to the window and squinted, curious what it could be this time, she saw another train pulling up alongside theirs from behind. She was pretty sure there’d been only one track, but now another one was unrolling out ahead of this new train like a carpet. It was a rugged one painted in an earth-toned camouflage pattern. The boy Harvey plastered his own cheek to the glass next to Kieli’s.