The Boundless (22 page)

He says nothing, just closes his eyes. He hears her shifting and knows she's leaning over the side, peering at him. She prods him in the shoulder.

“I know you're awake.”

He doesn't reply.

“Don't go,” she says.

He lies still.

She pokes him in the eye.

“Ow!” he gasps.

“Sorry—did I get your eye?”

“Yes!”

He can see the shape of Maren's head, her hair spilling darkly down. Below them Mr. Dorian stirs, but then resumes snoring softly.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I just meant to poke your head. I know you're planning on leaving.”

“What're you talking about?”

“If you go, Mr. Dorian won't be able to rob the funeral car.”

“You get a cut, I suppose?”

“Not really.”

Will frowns. “Not
really
? What does that mean?”

“I don't care about the painting. He just needs me to turn off the electricity.”

“Why can't he do it himself?”

“The keyhole's underneath the funeral car—and the train will be moving.”

“Moving?”

Her voice is unconcerned. “I can do it. I've been practicing.”

He remembers her in the gymnasium, shimmying down the tightrope on her back. The image makes him queasy now.

“Is he forcing you to do this?”

“Not exactly.”

“How, then?”

She sighs. “If I do it, he says he'll release me from my contract—my brothers, too. And he'll pay me five thousand dollars.”

Will inhales sharply. That's a lot of money.

“We'll be able to start up our own show, my whole family. My father's leg won't heal properly, ever. No one'll ever hire him again. I need that money if we want to be together in one place. This is my chance to get free.”

“Still. Thieving, it ain't right. There's gotta be another way.”

Without noticing, he has fallen back into his old way of talking, words smacking together like shunted boxcars.

“And what would you do for me, Will Everett? Are you going to rescue me?”

Will blushes, glad it's dark. “I wouldn't know how. It just don't . . . doesn't . . . seem right, your risking your life.”

“I'm not worried.”

“No chains can bind you, no lock hold you.”

“That's right. Please, Will. Stay.”

He doesn't want to be swayed by her. He still doesn't trust her. He thought she liked him, but how can he know properly now? Yes, they're helping him, but they're also using him. And what kind of man would ask a girl to do something so dangerous? And all for a painting?

“You'll stay with us?” Maren asks him.

“Yes,” he says.

“You're lying.”

She's right, but he still doesn't trust her. For all he knows, she's invented her father's injury and her plans to start her own show. Maybe the painting is a lie too, and they're really both after the gold spike.

“I'm going to sleep,” he says.

“I'll stay up all night, watching you.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, and turns to face the wall. He has no intention of falling asleep. He'll wait her out. But he can no longer fight his exhaustion, and before long he's fast asleep.

*    *    *

Guided by lantern light, Brogan, Mackie, and Chisholm make their sure-footed way, single file, atop the Boundless.

On either side of the track stretches the Shield, a crust of ancient rock broken only by huge swaths of bottomless muskeg. Wizened trees crouch, rocking like old crones trying to stay warm against the cutting wind. The water glints restlessly, as though it wants to rise and spread. Brogan has seen this landscape in daylight and moonlight, in lightning and in blinding sun—and nothing improves it. It's the most godforsaken waste he can imagine.

“We shouldn't be out here,” he hears Chisholm say behind him. “The hag.”

Brogan glances back with a sneer. “What about the hag?”

Chisholm's cheeks are sunken in shadow. “Just that they say she's more active in moonlight.”

“There ain't no hag,” Brogan says. “And if there is, I'll give her a thumping she won't forget. If you'd recognized that boy when you seen him, we wouldn't need to be out here at all.”

“Had that giant with him anyway,” says Chisholm.

“Not anymore,” says Brogan, turning.

If that half-breed magician thinks he can spirit away the boy, he's sadly mistaken. A bit of face paint might fool the likes of Chisholm, but Brogan will know if he sees him. He should've suspected something when Dorian called him by his real name back in the circus cars. Who'd told him that? If it was the boy, that meant he was still alive and on the train.

And if he's on the train, he'll be in third class. There's not too many places they could put three circus performers for the night. They'll be sleeping by now, and the butt of Brogan's pistol will keep the ringmaster and the girl that way.

And for the boy, nice and quiet—the knife.

From the locomotive comes the long hard blast of the whistle. There is no more urgent sound to a brakeman. Sudden stop.

“Get back to your cars!” Brogan shouts to Chisholm and Mackie.

Down the length of the Boundless, lantern lights flicker as men rush to the rooftops, hustling for the brake wheels. Another long desperate whistle blast fills the night—and then another. It's an emergency, maybe something up ahead blocking the tracks. . . .

As he bolts back to his own station, Brogan already feels the train slowing. He glances down and sees the water nearly at the tracks, and lapping higher still. He knows what's happened.

Muskeg.

*   *   *

Will dreams there is a woman standing at the foot of his bed, screaming. She looks directly at him and, with a quick jerk of her hand, drags the covers off his body.

When he wakes, the screaming has become the frantic blast of a steam whistle and the shriek of brakes. His body presses hard against the bunk's safety rail as the train comes to a nervous standstill. A tremor runs through her steel skin, like a horse eager to bolt. Beyond the walls of their tiny compartment, Will hears the rumblings of surprised passengers. A baby's thin-edged cry wells up from a distant berth.

When he tries to sit up, he realizes he's been handcuffed to the bunk.

“Hey!” he says, yanking against the manacles.

“She's locked you up,” Mr. Dorian says quietly from the darkness. “No doubt for your own protection.” He's sitting on the bench, and appears to be already dressed.

“My own protection?” Will exclaims.

“You were thinking of running,” the ringmaster says. “You might've been caught.”

“You can't keep me locked up!”

“William, your voice, please.”

“I could holler for help!”

Mr. Dorian is suddenly beside the bunk, his face fierce in the shadows. “You could, but you won't. Because if you do, a porter will eventually come. Questions will be asked. While they're trying to figure out what to do with you, news will spread quickly through the brakemen. Before you even reach second class, Brogan will visit you, and his knife will find the soft place between your ribs.”

Will says nothing for a moment, breathing hard. “Why've we stopped?”

“I was just going to find out. There might've been an accident.”

He thinks instantly of his father. “What kind of accident?”

“Stay here.”

Will jangles the handcuffs defiantly. “I can't go anywhere else, can I?”

Mr. Dorian slips out the door and closes it behind him.

“Maren!” Will says, thumping the bottom of her bunk.

She mumbles something that sounds like “No,” and turns over, deep asleep. He kicks at the underside of her bunk and only succeeds in hurting his toes.

Outside the door he hears some footsteps and then someone, maybe a porter, saying, “Part of the track's been flooded. They're working to lay new rails . . . nothing to worry about. Shouldn't be too long . . . used to this kind of thing . . .”

Will twists himself around in the bunk and parts the curtains. The muskeg is barren, yet strangely beautiful, in the moon's silver light. There is scrub and black spruce and darkly lustrous pools of water. Because the train tracks curve gently to the left, he can see the entire length of the Boundless and, far, far in the distance, the silhouette of the locomotive. It's like a small mountain on the flat horizon. Pinpricks of light twinkle from the cab. It looks undamaged. His father is most likely fine.

In that moment he feels an almost smothering sense of longing. It is a big distance, but he could run it. He wouldn't have to bother with porters and passports. He could just run along open ground, right to the locomotive. He could jump aboard and be with his father. And he would've rescued himself—without anyone's help.

With a gasp he spots a woman standing at the side of the track, looking in at him. Their eyes meet. A chill sweeps over Will's body, and he realizes she's the woman from his dream.

He lets the curtains fall back, presses his hand against them, as if he can erase what he's just seen.

What have I done, what have I done?

He blinks, trying to flush the image from his mind. But he can't.

A wind blows outside the carriage, carrying with it the faint whinny of horses and the rusty moan of cattle. Will doesn't want to turn his head, because he is afraid—no, he is
certain
—that there is someone beside him on the bunk. In vain he tries to trace the wavery lines of the curtains, but his eyes won't cooperate. They want to slide away. He feels his head turning, as though some brutish schoolmaster has a hand on his skull.

She is crouched beside him, her limbs unnaturally folded, looking at him in terrible ecstasy.

He wants to scream, but his terror is bottled inside him, like in a nightmare, and the only sound he hears from himself is a dull grunt.

The hag reaches out and touches his handcuffs. They spring open.

You wanted an adventure,
she says without speaking.

His heart races. Yes.

Come have an adventure, then. You can run to the locomotive. You can be with your father.

His legs swing themselves over the bunk, and he slides down to the floor, trembling like a marionette. In his long johns and vest, he jerks over to the door, opens it, and steps into the corridor. He stares straight ahead. He doesn't need to turn his head to know she's right there beside him, tied to him like a shadow. He can feel her clawlike grip on his forearm.

In another moment he has reached the door to the car. There's no porter here, and he steps outside onto the platform. Four steps take him down to the side. Thick murky water laps against the rail bed like an oily tide.

Just look,
she says inside his head.
The locomotive's so close.

He starts toward it. If he can only keep his eyes fixed on the smokestack, and not look at the woman beside him, he will get there.

But his route is taking him away from the track, and he splashes into the wet muck. It flows over his feet. He doesn't notice until it's up to his ankles.

Keep going,
the voice in his ear tells him helpfully.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

The bottom is mossy, sucking at his feet as he lifts them with each slow step.

He keeps going, up to his knees now. The cold clench of water moves up his thighs. Then the bottom drops away and he flounders up to his neck.

“Help!” he cries from his wordless mouth.

He lifts his chin high, trying to tread water without swallowing any. He flails out for something firm, but every bit of earth dissolves instantly the moment he touches it. He kicks out, trying to find purchase. The water sucks at him hungrily, and he knows it isn't normal water. It wants to pull him under. It
wants
to fill his lungs.

Not five feet away there is a blighted tree, and he thrashes toward it, spluttering, getting nowhere. The muskeg hag is crouched there amongst the gnarled roots.

He knows he will never reach that tree.

Are you enjoying your adventure?
she asks soundlessly.

She is close enough so that she could reach out a hand and pull him up. Her face is expressionless. She sits watching as he sinks deeper.

Gently,
she says.
Go ahead. Breathe.

He can barely lift his arms through the dense muck.

She smiles, her eyes dead.
It's all right. Just take a deep breath.

He goes under.

Breathe.

He fights against the urge to fill his lungs. Something pokes him hard in the side of the head, and then again, and he feels roused from a sleep. Terror pours through him. Sluggishly he lifts a hand to protect his head, but is poked again in the shoulder. He closes his hand around the thing, and feels it give a tug. Instinctively he grasps it with both hands. Dragged upward, his head breaks free. He gulps air.

He sees Maren at the other end of her long tightrope wire, his pair of muskeg spectacles over her eyes. She pulls and reels him in with all she's worth.

He kicks toward her.

“Don't look back!” she shouts.

Look back.

He starts to turn.

Look at me, William.

“Look at
me
, Will!” Maren calls, and he keeps his eyes on her, as intent as if he were drawing her. Before long her hands are gripping him and tugging, and he lurches out of the muskeg.

She is panting and crying a little too. She turns her back to the muskeg hag and hurries Will toward the train. His legs have both gone to sleep, and he can barely feel them.

“Let's get you inside,” she says. “Your makeup's half washed off.”