“That’s all I got,” Kate said.
“Me too.”
“Needs one more thing,” Uncle Herbert said.
“What?”
“Come on. Every train has one.”
“Oh—a caboose!”
“Now you’re done.” He turned to go.
“Uncle Herbert?” Tom looked like he had a thought that he was trying hard to formulate into a question. “Why are we here?”
“You mean here in the rail yard?”
“No, I mean—like why are we on a train in the middle of nowhere? Where are we going?”
It was a fair question. Kate wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask it herself. She had the dizzy feeling of being caught up in something much larger than she’d realized—like she was a player in an enormous game that she didn’t know the rules of yet, or like she’d happened to glance out the window of a building and discovered that she was much, much higher up than she’d realized.
“You’re going on an adventure,” Uncle Herbert said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yeah…”
Tom didn’t look completely satisfied with that, but Uncle Herbert just waved the clipboard.
“I’ll get this up to the dispatcher. Just remember: Keep the water tank full, and never let the fire go out. And keep an eye out for the twilight star.”
He turned to go and then stopped again, peering up at them in the darkness. “Wait a second. Something’s wrong. You look… floppy. Droopy.”
His lack of experience with children was showing again.
“We’re tired, Uncle Herbert,” Kate said. “It’s really late.”
As soon as she’d said it, she yawned.
“Oh.” He rubbed his chin. “That’s right, probably it’s past your bedtime. Why don’t we hitch up the passenger cars and the sleeper car and you can go to bed.”
“Like sleep here? On the train? What about Mom and Dad?”
“I’ll explain it to them.”
“They’re going to go mental,” Tom said. “You realize that. Like, they will literally take leave of their actual senses.”
“Might be good for them,” Uncle Herbert said. “They’re much too sane, those two. Night-night.”
With that he walked away, presumably to go find the dispatcher, whoever that was.
Suddenly Kate could barely keep her eyes open. She had no idea she was so exhausted. It was late, and about two months’ worth of stuff had happened to her in one day, and it was all catching up with her at once. She sat on her little fold-down seat and leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
She wondered what Uncle Herbert had meant when he’d said that about magic. It was impossible. There was no such thing. But at the same time it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you just said. And evidence to the contrary was mounting up like snow in a blizzard.
More wisdom from Grace Hopper floated through her mind: “If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep. You don’t know when you’ll get any more.”
Kate couldn’t have said how much time passed before she felt a gentle bump. That must be the first passenger car being hitched up, she thought, without opening her eyes. And then bump: passenger car number two.
I hope the animals will like them, she thought.
And then bump: That must be the sleeper car.
As if in a dream, she and Tom climbed down out of the cab. They barely even noticed the click-bing of the train saying
GOOD NIGHT
It was beyond strange, being out in the middle of the night in a rail yard that shouldn’t have existed, in a winter that should’ve been summer, but Kate was too tired to care. The night air was freezing, and the ground was covered with a mix of snow and gravel that was extremely painful to walk on in bare feet. Train cars loomed over them, big as houses, casting sharp black shadows in the artificial light. Past the passenger cars they found the sleeper car.
It was painted a comforting cream color, like ivory or very fancy paper, and it had two doors, one at each end. The first door had TOM neatly lettered on it. The second said KATE. When Kate got to her door it opened automatically and clever little metal steps folded down. Much easier than getting into the engine.
Inside it was warm, and the lights were dim. On one wall was a little sink with a mirror over it. Next to that was a hook with a soft white towel hanging on it and a holder for an enamel cup with a toothbrush and toothpaste in it. Everything was ever-so-slightly miniaturized to fit in a train compartment. It was like being a doll in a very expensive dollhouse.
There was a closet, with a soft Kate-sized robe and slippers already in it and a little drawer for a pair of neatly folded blue-and-white-striped flannel pajamas. Whoever had put all this together was extremely well organized, Kate thought.
She was so tired she just splashed some water on her face and dried it with the towel. The pajamas felt cool and soft and clean. She didn’t brush her teeth, because what was even the point of getting to sleep on a magic train if you had to brush your teeth?
There was a little bed that folded down from the wall, with a little bookshelf next to it in case you wanted to read before you went to sleep. Which ordinarily she might have done, but not tonight. She was too tired even to read. She turned out the light, snugged the blanket up over her, and took a deep contented breath. The sleeper car smelled like clean linen and scented wood. There was a window over the bed so you could look up and see the stars.
A tiny door opened in one wall. Tom’s face peered through it from the other half of the sleeper.
“Hey,” he said.
“Pretty nice, right?”
“So awesome.” Tom paused for a second. “Hey—is it okay if I leave this open?”
Sometimes she forgot that Tom was two years younger than she was. He’d never even been on a sleepover, except with their grandparents, and now he was going to sleep on a talking train in the middle of a mysterious rail yard.
It might even make her feel better too.
“Definitely okay. Good night, Tom.”
“Good night.”
Kate closed her eyes and slept.
8
Tickets, Please
KATE WOKE UP TO THE SOFT CLICKETY RHYTHM OF A moving train. Morning sunlight streamed in through the little window of the sleeper car. She sat up. For a second she had no idea where she was.
Then it all came rushing back—her birthday, the train, Uncle Herbert, the animals, everything—so fast it made her head spin. She peered through the peephole into Tom’s room. It was a mirror image of hers, except that it had Tom in it. He was still asleep.
Kate opened the window. The morning was cold and clear and smelled like snowy woods. Ahead the Silver Arrow was puffing out gray smoke and white steam, and behind them a proper train stretched out now. The cars were all different colors: black and white and pine green and sky blue and brick red and bulldozer yellow. One of them, painted a deep indigo blue, was a yard taller than all the others.
She counted them: fifteen cars. Wherever they were going, they were going there in a real train.
There were clothes in the closet, which was good, because her old clothes were way too light for winter, which it now apparently was, and they weren’t especially clean either. Though the new clothes were a little odd: a white blouse, thick gray cotton overalls, and a matching blazer. There was also an old-fashioned-looking black winter coat made of waxed canvas, with interesting brass buttons, and a pair of excitingly grown-up-looking black steel-capped boots that would be exceptionally good for kicking people with, if for some reason that ever became necessary.