Palimpsest

Plenitude crawls up Sei s arm like a caterpillar, and perches just inside her elbow, fluttering its strokes.

“Of course it is not foolish,” Sei says, wondering. “I had no idea.”

“It is not widely known, or else we might be subject to poachers.”

“Does that mean there are… spaces to pass between this city and the child at her desk in my world? Tunnels? Bridges?”

The Third Rail slides her eyes sidelong at Sei. “Did you not pass through such a place?”

“I suppose, but kanji are … ill-equipped to come by the path I took.”

“How many roads are there into Tokyo?”

“I don't know… dozens.”

The scarlet woman shrugs and smiles secretively. “Palimpsest is the same. Only one, though, is big enough for people to squeeze through. But a character is small, small as a thought. She does not need such a great highway.”

Sei considered, and tried to shake off Plenitude. The little kanji clung to her, making tiny gurgling sounds, like ink bubbling.

“They get attached so easily. Insoluble little dears,” the Third Rail coos.

“How much longer does this night last, Rail?”

“One more car, Sei. It pains me that you cannot stay longer. Perhaps one day you will allow us to become dear enough to you that you will do what is necessary to stay.”

Sei grips the Rail s arm, hard and hot beneath her hand. “What is necessary? I don't know! Tell me how.”

“I do not know either,” the crimson woman says, dropping her chin in shame. “I am too big to pass by that path. I must stay here, there is no road wide enough to bear me. But I hope one is wide enough for you.”

A rich and mushroomy loam covers the floor of the fourth car, toadstools fulminating beneath benches. Pine trees sprout everywhere they can grasp hold, growing sideways, diagonally crawling across the aisle. Between them nestle parcels, wrapped with brown paper, tied with twine, dozens upon dozens. The contorted, warty pine-roots splay over cushion and wall, sucking tentatively at windows. Their needles shine dark and glossy and thick, and from their boughs hang great orange-gold lanterns, globes ablaze with light. Some few folk in severe black clothes clutch the handholds and stare into the lanterns. Their faces are marked with white lines like smears of chalk. Sei looks up-the ceiling is far too distant, far too high, and there seem to be stars there, behind green-gray clouds.

At the far end of the great carriage there is a fox. He is also red, and his nose black, in the manner of foxes.

“I know you,” he says dispassionately.

“I don't think you could,” Sei replies.

“Imagine a book at the bottom of a lake.” The fox yawns. He paws the soil and lies down to sleep.

“Fish,” the Third Rail whispers tenderly, “read it. We read it.”

Sei shuts her eyes against sudden tears. The room seems to tilt, and the great peace of the rice and the cabbages drains from her like rain. Plenitude quivers in distress on her shoulder. “I can't,” she gasps. “I couldn't… I don't want to. This is too much. You talk like a dream. Nothing matters in dreams.”

“We talk like your mother talked.” The Third Rail scratches her elongated cheek fretfully “We thought you would like it.”

“I don't!” Sei cries, half a scream, the other half squeezed off by her suddenly aching throat.

The scarlet woman hangs her head in shame and pulls her kimono around her breast to hide herself. “We are not infallible,” she whispers.

“What's in the packages?” Sei feels ill. The shaking of the carriages tips her into the arms of a seated pine, which wriggles with pleasure and cradles her in its branches. It allows one ecstatic drop of sap to fall onto her hand.

The Third Rail looks toward the sleeping fox in agony. “If you don't like it we shall take them away! We promise!”

Sei shrugs off the purring pine tree and pulls frantically at the twine of the package nearest to her. It comes open cleanly in her hands, like origami falling away from itself. Inside is a red mask, longer than a human face, its eyes and mouth hard black slits. One of the men in his black tunic reaches in and pulls it onto his face. He sighs resignedly, as if he knew all along that it would come to this. Sei gapes, hides her face in the pine tree. She does not want to look at the Rail again, at her hard, red, long face.

But the Third Rail kneels in submission at Sei s feet, imploring her in silence, her face a broken panic.

“These trains speed past each other,” she says, “utterly silent, carrying each a complement of ghosts who clutch the branches like leather handholds, and pluck the green rice to eat raw, and fall back into the laps of women whose faces are painted red from brow to chin…”