by Lev Grossman
“Yes,” Uncle Herbert said. “It’s a steam whistle, though. Doesn’t work without steam.”
“Oh.”
Kate and Tom wandered around spinning wheels and pulling levers and moving anything else that moved. None of it did anything. It looked cool, but they were kind of at a loss how to play with it. They opened a kind of stove thing set into the wall. It was full of cold ashes and soot.
Tom pretended it was a tank and stood on his seat and machine-gunned an army of invisible Nazis out the window, but you could tell his heart wasn’t a hundred percent in it.
Then they climbed down again. It was all a little anticlimactic.
“You know what we should do?” Kate said when they were back on the ground. “We should connect these tracks with the old ones in the woods.”
There were some rusty old tracks out there, buried in leaves and sunk in the mud—she and Tom found them one day when they were out exploring.
“Those old things?” their father said. “Been a long time since a train ran on those tracks.”
“All right, everybody!” Their mom clapped her hands for attention. “It’s Kate’s birthday today! Who remembers when my birthday is?”
“Next week,” Kate said.
“That’s right. One week from now. That’s how long you can keep the train. Then, as your birthday present to me, Herbert, you’re going to get rid of it.”
“What?!” Kate said.
“But what if I already got you something else?” Uncle Herbert said in a small voice.
“Did you get me a flatbed truck hauling away a gigantic blazing steam train?” Kate’s mom put her hands on her hips. “Is that my birthday present?”
“No.”
“Then whatever it is, send it back. For my birthday you’re going to get this thing out of here.”
“No!” Kate shouted before she even knew what she was doing. “You can’t! It’s mine!”
3
Kate Said a Lot of Other Things, Too
KATE TOLD HER PARENTS THAT SHE HATED THEM AND that they were the meanest and worst people in the world. She said she never got anything special or good, and even when she did they always ruined it. She said they didn’t love her and all they cared about was their stupid phones.
I wish I could tell you that she said these things in a calm, reasonable tone, but she didn’t. She yelled them as loudly as she could.
Then she said that this was the worst birthday ever, and her mother told her to go to her room, and she said Fine, I will, and she slammed the door, even though at that exact same moment her mom was yelling at her not to slam the door. Kate stayed in her room for the rest of the afternoon.
None of the things Kate had said were strictly true, except maybe the one about it being her worst birthday ever, although when she was two she’d had a fever and spent her whole birthday throwing up, so it was a close call.
Deep in her heart Kate knew that. She knew that her problems weren’t real problems, at least not compared with the kinds of problems kids had in stories. She wasn’t being beaten, or starved, or forbidden to go to a royal ball, or sent into the woods by an evil stepparent to get eaten by wolves. She wasn’t even an orphan! Weirdly, Kate sometimes caught herself actually wishing she had a problem like that—a zombie apocalypse, or an ancient curse, or an alien invasion, anything really—so that she could be a hero and survive and triumph against all the odds and save everybody.
Which of course she knew was wrong. She just wanted to feel special. Like somebody needed her. And obviously, having a steam engine wasn’t going to make her special. Obviously. But she’d felt special for a bit. And now her mom was going to send it back to wherever steam engines came from.
And the worst part of it all, Kate thought—as she lay on her bed, her eyes feeling sticky from crying, and stared glumly out the window, and the afternoon stretched on and on toward evening—was that she kind of saw her mom’s point. Kate hated to admit it, even to herself, but even though the train was real and awesome, it was also insanely big and kind of ridiculous, and, bottom line, it didn’t really do much of anything. Given the untold skrillions of dollars Uncle Herbert must’ve spent on it, he probably could’ve bought, I don’t know, a mini-submarine, or a rocket, or a supercomputer.
Or a robotic exoskeleton maybe. Anything but a stupid steam engine. Maybe he could return it and they could keep the cash instead.
Someone knocked on the door—she could tell from the knock that it was Tom. She didn’t answer. He went away, tried again, went away again, then finally he just came in without knocking and flopped down on the lower bunk. They had their own rooms, but they used to share, and there were still bunk beds in Kate’s room.
Tom just lay there for a while, but he couldn’t stay still for long. He always seemed to have more energy than he could comfortably store in his body, and he had to burn it off somehow. He started singing under his breath. Then he started drumming along with the singing. Then he kicked the bottom of Kate’s bunk. Then he pretended to be shot and fell off the bed to try to make her laugh.
Kate didn’t laugh.
“Go away,” she said.
“At least we get to play on it for a week. It’s better than nothing.”
Somebody must’ve told Tom once that you were supposed to look on the bright side in situations like this. She wished he wouldn’t. It was annoying. Nobody ever took Tom’s presents away. He never got sent to his room. Or it seemed like that anyway.
More silence. He still didn’t go away.
“I think it’s on fire,” Tom said.
“Good.”
“Why are you being mean about the train?”
“Because I hate it.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate everything! Including you!”
“That’s not very nice.”
“I’m not trying to be nice!”
Tom was looking out the window.
“Well, it’s your lucky day because the train really is on fire. Seriously. Look at it.”
Kate looked out the window. She frowned. There was the tiniest flicker of what looked like warm firelight in the cab of the steam engine.
“That’s strange,” Kate whispered.
“Do you think it’s really on fire?”
“How could it be on fire? It’s made of metal.”
They slipped out of Kate’s room together, and out the back door onto the evening lawn. The grass was cool on their bare feet. You’d think that at this point Kate and Tom would have alerted their parents that there might possibly be a flaming steam engine on their property, but they didn’t. Something interesting was happening, and Kate didn’t want the grown-ups to swoop in and take it away. Not yet.
“Hey, look at that,” Tom said. “More tracks.”
He was right: That afternoon the train had just been on a little stub of track, but now bright new silvery steel tracks curved away from it through the grass.
“I thought that was a good idea you had,” said a voice from the shadows. “Connecting them with the ones in the woods.”
Uncle Herbert was standing there, leaning against the train. Kate hadn’t seen him.
“It wasn’t a good idea, it was a stupid idea,” Kate said. “Those tracks are all old and rusty, like my dad said, and they don’t go anywhere, and even if they did, the train doesn’t move. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I had noticed, actually,” he said. “Kids aren’t the only ones who notice things, you know.”
“Well, it sure seems like it sometimes.”
“Well, it sure seems to grown-ups like you spend all your time watching TV and playing video games instead of paying attention to real life.”
Adults always said scoldy stuff like that, but Kate was surprised to hear it coming from Uncle Herbert. She’d been starting to hope he wasn’t like that—but of course he was. All grown-ups were.
“Why should I pay attention to real life?” she said. “Real life is boring!”
“How do you know it’s boring if you don’t pay attention to it?”
“Well, maybe real life should pay attention to me sometime!”
“Perhaps,” Uncle Herbert said quietly, like he was trying to sound all mysterious, “the world is more interesting than it appears.”
“Well, that would be great.” Kate crossed her arms. “Because it appears really boring!”
“What about that mysterious fire in the train. Is that boring? That is why you snuck out here, isn’t it?”
“Oh, right,” Kate said, brought up slightly short. “I guess it is.”
She took a step toward the train, then turned back and gave Uncle Herbert a look.
“This isn’t over, though.”
“No,” Uncle Herbert agreed. “It isn’t.”
4
It Really Wasn’t Over
NOW THAT KATE WAS RIGHT UP CLOSE TO THE TRAIN, she noticed something else: White steam was floating out of a pipe on top of it and swirling around its wheels.
Suddenly she felt a bit nervous.
“Go on,” Uncle Herbert said. “This is it. Real life is being interesting for a change. It’s paying attention to you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Kate didn’t especially like having her own words quoted back at her, so without answering she climbed up into the cab, the metal rungs hard under her bare feet. Inside the cab was all lit up by glowing firelight. That cold, sooty box they’d found before was actually a little fireplace, and somebody had built a fire in it. She could feel the heat coming off it in the night air.
Something else, too: Before, the tender was empty, but now it was full of coal, a huge heap of it. Tom climbed up behind her.
“Cool,” he said. “It’s like camping. We could sleep out here.”
“It’s like that cabin with the woodstove,” Kate said. “That time we went skiing and Dad hurt his knee on the first day and was in a bad mood the whole rest of the week. You were little.”
“I remember, though.” Tom perched on one of the seats. “That was when I lost Foxy.”
Foxy, full name Foxy Jones, had been Tom’s stuffed fox from when he was a baby. It broke Tom’s little heart when he lost him—he still couldn’t read Fantastic Mr. Fox without crying. Weird how boys had feelings, too, but pretended they didn’t.
Kate could see into the house, where her father was setting the table for her birthday dinner. He looked a thousand miles away.
“I wish it were a real train,” she said quietly. “I mean I wish it could really go somewhere. Like on an adventure.”
“Yeah.”
Just then a big lever shifted forward with a clunk.
Kate frowned at it.
“That was weird. Did you do that?”
“No,” said Tom.
She stuck her head out the window.
“Uncle Herbert? Something just moved in here.”
Uncle Herbert looked up at her.
“What do you mean, moved?”
“Like by itself.”
He frowned. “Couldn’t have.”
But now a couple of the brass wheels were spinning, too, and some of the needles and gauges were stirring and twitching. A couple of switches flipped.
“Uncle Herbert, really! Things are moving! Like, a lot!”
It was the first time Kate had seen her uncle look unsure of himself.
“Right. You might just think about climbing down from there.” He was using that cautious tone you use when you’re trying to reason with a cat. “Both of you. Maybe quite quickly actually.”
“Kate,” Tom said. “Maybe we should.”
“But what is this? Is it a game?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Uncle Herbert said. “Just get out of the train!”
Tom went to the door, but Kate stayed where she was.
“You can go,” she said. “It’s okay. But I want to see what happens.”
Tom thought about it.
“I’m going to stay too,” he said finally, in his most serious, solemn voice.
Now white steam was leaking and poofing out of the train everywhere and drifting across the lawn. A knob turned and a pure, bright white light stabbed forward from the nose of the train, lighting up the grass and the trees and the side of the house next door. From somewhere below came a sharp, satisfying crack. Not like something breaking, more like something that had been stuck for ages finally being released.
“That was the brakes!” Uncle Herbert yelled. “Come on! Get out!”
Chuff.
The engine made a deep, hoarse sound like an ancient beast waking up from a very long sleep and snuffing the air.
“Wait—is this pretend or real?” Kate yelled.
“It’s magic!” Uncle Herbert yelled over the hissing of steam. “You didn’t think I got rich by working hard, did you?”
Kate very much doubted that this was true, because unlike in books, in real life magic did not in fact exist. But right now it wasn’t like she had another explanation.
Chuff…
Chuff…
Chuff…
Hissing and clanking sounds came from all over the train. The whole thing, all 102.36 tons of it, started rolling forward along the tracks as smoothly as a boat across a still pond. With something that heavy, you just knew there was no stopping it once it got going.
Uncle Herbert started running alongside the train muttering no no no no no to himself and trying to jump onto it like they do in movies. But somehow Kate didn’t feel scared. Instead she felt as happy as she ever had in her life.
Like something in her was being released, too. Like her brakes were finally coming unstuck. This was it. This was the something she’d been waiting for.
Uncle Herbert seemed to be finding out that jumping onto a moving train is harder than it looks in movies.
“Come on, Uncle Herbert!” she called.
“I can’t! Jump down!”
“I don’t think so. It’s like you said: Life’s being interesting.”
“But this is too interesting! Like way too interesting!” Uncle Herbert stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. “You’re not ready!”
“Ready for what?”
Kate felt ready for anything. Wind was whipping her hair around. She didn’t know if she was doing something very smart or very stupid, but in that moment she didn’t care, because the thrill of it made her heart want to burst.
This was so much better than Vanimals.
Chuff.
Chuff.
Chuff, chuff…
Chuff, chuff…
Uncle Herbert tried to run after them again, but he stopped almost immediately. He really wasn’t in very good shape. They were leaving him behind.
“I’m sorry!” Uncle Herbert called. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! You’ve got a big job ahead of you, a huge job, so—just do the best you can!”
They were gathering speed now, following the tracks across the lawn as smooth as a blade over ice.
There was just one thing missing.
“How do I blow the whistle?” Kate yelled.
“Dangly thing!”
It was the last thing Uncle Herbert said before they lost sight of him.
There was a wooden handle dangling from the ceiling. Kate pulled it, and the sound blasted out into the night:
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!
The whole neighborhood could hear it. It felt like the whole world could hear it. She did it again. And then, because she was a generous person, she let Tom do it, too.
5
Things Get Weirder
THE TRAIN SWUNG TO THE RIGHT, FOLLOWING THE tracks into the woods behind their house, which just barely saved Kate and Tom from crashing through the fence and annihilating the neighbors’ house and probably the neighbors.
Instead they started smashing their way through the trees.
“I can’t believe this!” Kate shouted. “This is insane!”
“Whoooooo!” Tom whooped. “Whooo
!”
“I mean this is really crazy!”
The train snapped branches and shoved aside whole trunks of trees, the headlight blasting out ahead of it like the fiery white breath of a dragon. Green summer leaves flew everywhere. They were going to be in so much trouble. So much. They were going to pay for this forever! But it was totally worth it.
They knew these woods like the backs of their hands. They’d lived here their whole lives, and they’d climbed and jumped off and fallen from every tree and rock a million times. But they’d never seen the woods at night from the cab of a giant runaway steam engine. Kate braced herself for the ultimate smash, when they would hit something big or when the tracks would run out and the whole train would lurch to a halt. It was going to be such a disaster. But so worth it. She swore to remember this her whole life: the night she rode through the woods behind her house in her own real steam train.
But the big smash or lurch never came. Instead the train kept going. Birds startled. Stiff branches scraped against the windows. She and Tom laughed hysterically. How far was it going to go?
Then Tom stopped laughing.
“Wait,” he said. “What happens when we get to the hill?”
It was a good question.
In the old days, when people made maps and they came to the part where they didn’t know what was there, they just drew a bunch of dragons and sea monsters instead of land. On the very oldest maps they wrote Hic sunt leones, which is Latin for “Here be lions.”
About a quarter mile into the woods behind Kate and Tom’s house there was a sudden steep hill, almost a cliff, with a chain-link fence at the top, and at the bottom was a scary dark swamp with a lot of bugs and, supposedly, a giant snapping turtle so big it could bite your foot off. If an olden-days person were making a map of the woods behind Kate and Tom’s house, that hill would’ve been where they started drawing sea monsters. Or lions.
Kate risked sticking her head out the window.
“Oh my God. We’re almost there!”
“Kate,” Tom said seriously, “what’s actually going to happen, though? I mean really? Should we jump out?!”
