Maybe. It seemed too simple. But like a lock-spell, the simplest explanations were often the true ones.
WE SOLD OUR pony and gear the next morning and headed to the train junction on the southern edge of the city. There we bought two first-class tickets, nonstop, for Phoenix City.
“How much money do we have left?” I whispered when I heard the price.
“Never mind,” she whispered back.
She shoved a brochure at me, while she handled the paperwork.
. . . unlimited meals, private bath, luxury and security in a single package for the discriminating passenger . . .
Yao-guài poked its beak outside my shirt and chirped. Unlimited meals, huh. With our hungry little monster, maybe that was a good thing. Not to mention the extra guards. And maybe, if we were sitting in a private compartment, I could talk to Yún about what happened in the mountains.
We boarded our train late that afternoon. As soon as we reached our cabin, Yún disappeared into the private bathroom with our griffin. I stowed our packs in a cabinet and scanned the compartment. It was huge—big enough for two couches and a table. Buttons along the window let me change the glass from transparent to gray to absolutely dark. More buttons and switches controlled the seats, how much air flowed through the cabin, even what perfumes got puffed from hidden dispensers. A special combination (explained in tedious detail by some bureaucratic technical writer) explained how to transform the seats into beds.
Purely by luck, I pressed a combination that made a vid-screen pop out from its slot. A tap or two on the controls, and the picture snapped into focus. A man’s face fi
lled the screen—his eyes were dark slits, his skin the color of weak tea, his hair a thin skein of iron gray over his skull. His face was unlined, but I could tell he wasn’t young. He stood, as the saying goes, on the far side of the mountain. How far, I could not tell.
I was fiddling with the controls, trying to find out what kind of vid was playing, when the screen blipped and a long menu written in hand-lettered characters appeared. Food. Real tasty food, cooked by gourmet chefs—not weeks-old provisions warmed over a smoky campfire.
Yún would like these, I thought, scrolling down the list.
I punched in whatever sounded tasty, or interesting, or even just different. Candied prawns, gingered shrimp, twice-cooked beef with scallions, a very strange dish called magic crabs. The only thing missing was the rude commentary from Chen. I paused and listened, certain he would pop into hearing or sight, but . . . nothing.
Oh, well. He’s still off investigating with Qi.
The rushing water had stopped inside the bathroom, but still no Yún, either. A serving boy soon arrived, his cart piled high with dishes. With a flourish, he swung a table out from its hidden slot, then laid out each dish with another flourish and a bow. He reminded me too much of Deming, back in Lóng City. In spite of that, I paid him an extra large tip.
Only after the door closed did Yún peek out from the bathroom.
“Is he gone?” she asked.
She wore a silk robe, rose-colored and embroidered with lilies and hummingbirds along its borders. Her dark hair was damp, and braided into a loose queue draped over her shoulder. She smelled faintly of rose petals. All my good intentions vanished and my face went hot.
“He’s gone,” I mumbled. “Let’s eat.”
We ate for a while in a silence thicker than wool. Just the click-click-click of the wheels as the train rattled on its tracks, the shi and hiss of the wind in the train’s sails, and the crackle of magic when the engineer adjusted his levers to maintain the speed.
Only once did I try to say something. “Yún, about Golden Snowcloud. I’m sorry—”
“No,” she said right away. “I mean, not now. Please, Kai. Later. After we find Lian.”
Right. A good excuse, a true one. But would later ever get here? Or would Yún go back to Lóng City, earn her conjuration license and set up another shop, far away from a stupid street rat named Kai Zou?
My appetite vanished. I clicked the vid screen on again. Six old men in dark tunics sat around a table, jabbering on about economic stimulus packages, future shares in magic flux, and how the trade negotiations in Lóng City might affect them. It was dull, but right now I wanted dull. Everything else hurt too much. Yún. My mother, missing or worse.
Yún set her chopsticks down. “That’s not a video. That’s real-time broadcast.”
I blinked at her words. Sure, I’d seen fancier real-time broadcasts in Lóng City’s vid-parlors, but never before in a train rattling along at thirty li an hour. I started to ask Yún how she could tell the difference, but she shushed me.
My questions were unimportant, I thought. I poured myself a mug of tea and punched the window controls. The swirling patterns vanished from the glass. Outside, the countryside flashed by. Fields and fields and more fields. Herds of swine and cattle and sheep. A larger market town. A broad sluggish river. Tiny villages that were hardly more than dots as we sped past. Dark clouds smudged the gray skies. Even as I watched, a white streak jumped from the clouds to the soggy fields below. It was raining again.
EIGHTEEN HOURS.
Ai-yi, they were the fastest and slowest hours of my entire life.
The griffin slept and ate and chewed up blankets. Yún did nothing but watch the news broadcasts, switching from channel to channel for no reason I could figure out. After a while, I gave up and stared out the rain-smudged windows at the countryside as the train shot over the rails. Chen never did make an appearance, though I called to him once or twice. It felt strange to be so alone inside myself. Worse than alone—empty.