Chapter 121

And so the train carrying Kieli and the boy, leaving all kinds of things behind and feeling each individual loss, began driving down the track on the sand once again. Their tears mingled together as the wind took them before scattering them in the night sky. Now that it was just the two of them in the train again, all at once it was only about a tenth as noisy. It felt awfully quiet. Outside the window, it was nighttime. Clackity-clack, clackity-clack…Rhythmic throbbing and the dull soft glow coming from the train-car lights gently enveloped their set of facing seats, but everything else was dark. A round ball of fire drifted by outside their window. Wondering what it could be, Kieli pressed her face against the glass and squinted out at the night sea. “Ah…!” That’s not the sea—! Somewhere along the way the train had pulled past the Sand Ocean, and now it was running on tracks that floated in nothingness. There was no ground and no sky and no way to tell where the horizon was; only a dizzying pitch-black void surrounding them on all sides. Two enormous spheres of rugged rock were floating so close to the train that Kieli was afraid they might collide. Are those the twin moons…? When she pressed her cheek to the window pane, she saw that they were riding on an arcing track suspended in the void, and behind them on that track floated a huge sand-colored planet wrapped in a hazy layer of atmosphere. Fragments of rock streaming past their window were pulled in by the planet’s gravity, catching fire as they plummeted toward it. One after another after another after another, balls of flame were sucked down to the planet far below Kieli. Before her eyes, one of the twin moons floating in the void split clean in half without a sound. A chunk of it became a giant meteor wreathed in flame and plummeted toward the planet just like the other balls of fire. The world—it’s starting to completely break down— The air inside the train began vibrating wildly. She realized that while her mind was elsewhere, the ruin of the world had finally begun to overtake even the train itself. When she checked out the window, the cars at the back of the train were breaking off one by one without a sound, just like the moon, becoming nothing but pitiful fiery wreckage. “Oh no…!” Taking the boy Harvey’s hand, Kieli stood up from her seat and rushed out into the aisle. They ran away from the destruction toward the front of train. It was all they could do. The boy behind Kieli fell after a particularly abrupt shake of the floor, and she crashed down with him. As she tried to help him up, the floor cracked and a gaping hole opened up at the boy’s feet. His body started to disappear into the gap. Just in time, Kieli threw her upper body over the edge and grabbed his arms. Then she opened her eyes wide. The boy’s body was cracking, too, as if in sync with the ruin of the train, and beginning to crumble away like dry sand. Chunks of his arms and legs fell off. “No, not yet! Hang in there!” Kieli used every ounce of her strength to haul the boy’s body up, and they took off together in a stumbling run. Then the boy suddenly gave Kieli’s hand a sharp tug. Stumbling backward a little, she turned around and followed the path of the boy’s gaze to look out the window. A misshapen sphere of rock was coming into view like a solitary island in the sea, radiating a muted, hazy light in the center of pitch-black outer space. Somehow the train managed to pull up alongside the lonely platform even though most of its wheels were gone. That body of rock was rumbling violently, just as the wilderness had been before, with fissures forming here and there across the land. The boy Harvey jumped down onto the cracked and crumbling platform ahead of Kieli, and she followed after him. It looked about to break down and be swallowed up by the ground any second. When she stepped outside, the sky above her was a jet-black void with no atmosphere separating her from it. Shooting star after shooting star rained down around them. Near the middle of the cracked platform stood a tilted sign. Printed on it in a scratchy font were the same words that had been on the tickets, the words proclaiming this place THE END OF THE WORLD. On the far side of the platform Kieli saw what looked like a giant stake sticking up at an angle. The boy Harvey jumped off the platform and went running up to it. When he got there, he put both hands around the stake and tried to pull it out of the ground. That iron stake, like a thick tree trunk, was so big the boy’s arms only just barely fit around it; he obviously wouldn’t have an easy time prying it out with his small, powerless arms. As if to mock his efforts, it only bit even further into the rock, forcing the crevice in the ground wider. Each time, the world rumbled its scream of agony. Fragments of rock raining down from the sky mercilessly struck the boy’s shoulders and arms. Still the boy clung to the stake, gritting his teeth, and tried to hold together his crumbling world, his wrecked self. A bit of falling rock slammed into his shoulder, and it turned to sand and crumbled away. He fell to his knees with a little cry. The ground shook violently, the world synching with the boy. The stake bit even deeper into the land, and the world screamed. The boy crouching on the ground collected sandy shards of his own scattered body and began using them to fill in the gouge that the stake had dug into the land. Each time a stone struck him and he lost a piece of his body, he picked up the fragments of himself and went about repairing the ground with them. On top of the eye and shoulder he was already missing, he lost an arm, a knee, a shin…Little by little, the boy’s whole existence was flaking away. And still he didn’t stop working to repair the world. “Stop…” Kieli whispered hoarsely where she stood frozen behind him. She ran up to him, tripping whenever the land shook along the way. She threw her arms around the small back that just kept on getting smaller as pieces of it crumbled away and shouted, “It’s enough. Stop! Please, just…just stop working so hard…!” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders as she begged him. When that ghost girl had shown her what Harvey’s body was like inside, she’d directly seen, felt, known just how wrecked it was, and it had left her terror-stricken. But in spite of it all, his body had struggled to stitch his veins and skin and bone and muscle and nerves, his very self, back together. It’s too much, it’s too much, just… The boy shook off Kieli’s arms, though, and his small body, so wrecked now that he was almost beyond recognition, silently collected up the fragments of himself and filled in the ground with them as he tried to get it to hold out as long as possible. He tried to fix the collapsing world. “Harvey!” Kieli screamed tearfully as she sank to the ground. “Just stop…! I don’t want to see you like this; I can’t take it anymore!” she cried, covering her face with both hands and shaking her head. The moment Kieli said those words, the boy who’d just ignored her presence up until now stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her for the first time since he’d started working. He stood still, letting his hands fall limply at his sides, and his face started to crumble away. It started around his missing right eye and seemed to drag his whole body after it: It turned to sand and began to break down. The land shook even harder than before—so hard that Kieli could hardly stay sitting upright no matter how desperately she held on. The stake bit in deep, pushing the rift in the ground open wide in the blink of an eye. Don’t let go… Beatrix’s clear voice echoed in her mind again. No, you can’t give up. You can’t be the one to let go of his hand. Please, don’t turn your eyes away. Never turn your eyes away. That’s what Beatrix had said to her in the cathedral. Kieli raised her face with a start. The boy on the verge of losing himself was looking at her with sad, pleading eyes. “Harvey…” Wiping away her tears and pressing her lips resolutely together, Kieli stood up. Standing as firmly as she could on the shaking ground, she stumbled over to stand next to the boy. Reaching out from beside him, she wound both arms around the stake piercing the ground and held it. She hugged it securely in her arms as though she were supporting his body itself. “…Okay. It’s all right; I’ll hold you up. I won’t let go, no matter what.” A bit of falling rock slammed into Kieli’s shoulder. Still Kieli clung to the stake, gritting her teeth. “Let’s hang in there. Let’s do this together. You’re not alone, so let’s work together. I won’t give up, okay? I won’t give up!” When they’d fallen into the Sand Ocean together only a little while ago, she’d vowed in her heart never to let go of his hand, no matter what. If Kieli’s strength was holding him up, if he needed her, she wouldn’t let go come hell or high water. She wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t turn her eyes away. The ruin that had been eating away at the boy stopped. He looked up at her with his one remaining copper eye. As she kept on supporting the stake, Kieli nodded emphatically back at him. Kieli held the stake’s weight, and the boy repaired the fissure in the ground by filling it with broken bits of his own body. The two of them kept on working and working, trying their best to slow down the ruin as much as they could so that the world wouldn’t end. Single-mindedly, losing all sense of time and self, they held the world together. It was quiet. Ba-dum, ba-dum…The sound of a heartbeat dimly permeated the air. Kieli found herself slumped on the ground at the base of the stake with her arms still wrapped around it. At some point she’d fallen asleep with her cheek pressed against it. She opened her eyes slowly, squinting at the sudden bright light and blinking. The rumble of the world’s collapse that had dominated Kieli’s hearing for so long was gone, and everything was awfully silent. The gentle arc of this little planet’s horizon sprawling at the far reaches of her vision was starting to lighten. Faint, soft light began to filter through the vault of space that had been blanketed in pitch-black darkness so far. She groggily lifted her cheek from the stake and sat up straight, tracing the stake upward with her gaze. It had stopped still here without widening the fissure in the ground any further. The earth tremors and fissures that had rumbled all around them had calmed, too, and there weren’t any meteorites raining down on them either. She only heard the occasional pattering of tiny falling rocks like an aftertaste of the storm. The world’s collapse had stopped. Kieli looked around her with a start. “Harvey!” She saw a pair of slim legs lying on the ground on the other side of the stake from her, one of them still wearing a shoe. When she crawled over, clinging to the stake for support, she found a boy in tattered pajamas lying there as still as the dead. A chill ran down Kieli’s spine. “Harvey…?” she ventured tentatively. The boy lying limply on the ground cracked open an eyelid. An empty copper eye turned toward her. She took a relieved breath and lent the boy a hand to help him up. His body was horribly light, but it was here—he hadn’t broken or disappeared; he existed here in her arms right now. They sat down on the ground side by side and leaned their backs against the base of the stake in the earth. The narrow rays at the horizon gradually expanded, piercing the pitch-dark sky with a soft light. “It stopped, huh? I…wonder if that means we’re saved…” At Kieli’s half-formed question, the boy silently raised his face up to look at the stake overhead and then lowered it to survey the various parts of his own body. Miraculously, the missing parts were gradually returning to the way they’d been: a tide of sand coming into shore. The crevices in his body began to fill, catching and reflecting little twinkles of light as they went. For a while the boy stared wonderingly down at his hands, experimentally making rock-paper-scissors gestures a few times, even, before lifting his eyes to look at Kieli. The sand-colored light shining on this little planet lit his face just enough to let her see it break into a soft smile. A familiar scent wafted in on the breeze. The scent of their planet, wreathed in coppery wilderness and ashen smog. Choo…… The train parked by the cracked platform sounded its whistle. Ash-colored vapor drifted toward them on the wind. Along with the vapor came the faint sound of static-filled music—the bouncy tones of stringed instruments, coming from the radio. As if drawn to the music, the two of them took each other’s hands and stood up. The wrecked train that was down to just a few cars now puffed steam, waiting for them to board. They looked at each other and smiled. The smoggy wilderness wind caressed their cheeks. “Want to go home?” Joining hands, they started walking toward the train. Let’s go home. Let’s keep up this journey together a little farther, a little farther. Ba-dum. Ba-dum… She could feel the warmth of someone’s body heat against her right hand. Ba-dum. Ba-dum…The sound of a slowly pulsing heartbeat traveled faintly along her fingers into her consciousness. When she opened her tightly shut eyes one by one, Kieli saw the big palm and long angular fingers wrapped around her own right hand—she would have recognized that beloved left hand anywhere. The radio’s speaker was playing them a stream of noise at low volume. It didn’t quite form music, but it had a lilt to it like a lullaby. Just like the melody that had come to escort them back home in the end, the one coming from inside the train at the end of the world. Kieli lifted her cheek from the cold floor of the colonnade and sat up. Her eyes fell on the hand linked to hers and slowly traveled up. There was the long arm that always protected Kieli. The lean, battered body crashed out on the ground next to her. Copper-colored curls lying sloppily against the nape of his neck. And when she let her eyes travel even farther, his coppery right eye and dark brown left eye: They looked a little vacant and kind of listless, but there was unmistakably light and awareness in them as they gazed up at her face. Kieli felt his hand squeeze hers, a little weakly still. His dry lips moved a fraction. “I…” The scratchy murmur ended there, but it sounded like a question. “Mm-hmm. What is it?” Kieli whispered tenderly. She brought her ear to his lips as he tried to speak. “…I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t move, and I was alone in a dark place for a long time…and I wondered if maybe this was the end…and I got…scared. But I could hear your voice somewhere in the distance. I heard your voice calling me the whole time. So, I couldn’t see very well, but I walked toward your voice, Kieli…and I tripped and fell sometimes…but I could hear your voice the whole time, so I could walk here without getting lost…” His halting words went straight to Kieli’s heart, and tears formed in her eyes. She shook her head to stop him from saying anything else, gripping his left hand in both of her own and pressing her forehead to it. “Mm-hmm…Welcome home, Harvey.” Ba-dum. Ba-dum… With her face this close, she could just make out his heartbeat. It was weak, but it was undeniably there. The blue-gray night was already half-gone, and the capital was still in chaos. And yet right now, she felt as if it would all work out somehow. She felt as though, as long as the owner of the hand in hers stayed with her, right now she could do anything.