by Callie Stone
Natasha continued to watch as I sliced the baguettes, uncrossing her arms and stepping her foot slightly into the kitchen.
“Something on your mind?” I asked her with just a flash of a polite smile before turning my eyes back to the knife and the bread.
“I was just noticing how foggy condensation has started to gather on the outside of the windows. The train doesn’t leave for a bit, I believe; we could probably afford to leave a little early. Also, you know how Alexander prefers privacy when he wakes up. So if we moved now, we’d be able to find him his own seat on the train. It might also be more peaceful for us all, as well, have room to spread out a little more,” she suggested.
“The platform will probably be packed like sardines just before we board. But we all have private sleeping compartments for the trip. We will all have privacy.”
“Oh,” I heard Natasha respond, and as I glanced out at her again I noticed her staring down at the linoleum flooring.
Was it not a good thing that we all had privacy? That is what I wanted to ask, but as I had no idea what Natasha could be thinking at that moment, I just kept talking to give a chance to reflect on whatever it was.
“But we will be arriving a couple hours or more before daybreak,” I said. “We will have to go out and do our initial scouting of Zurich quickly.” I kept talking, a bit more quietly, gesturing to Alexander in the other room. “Then, we may need to retreat to the congregation’s accommodations until nightfall. I think I’ve heard the apartment there is larger and nicer. Then, once darkness falls we can go search out this place, and proceed whichever way we decide is best.”
“Sounds like a solid plan,” Natasha replied, before finally looking up and making eye contact. “But, if we need to operate in the dark, maybe we should avoid sleeping too much on the train. You know, sleep schedule and all that.”
Immediately I felt myself raising a curious eyebrow at her. Natasha had been working with us and with Alexander for some time. This was nothing new and it was strange for her to bring up. Regardless, I did my best to keep a neutral face as she just shrugged as if to say ‘just an idea’.
“If you want to play solitaire in your compartment all night, that’s up to you.” With a mild smirk I finished the first baguette and began making a breakfast plate for her. Natasha walked across the kitchen, seemingly impatient to get what I was preparing, and arrived at my side the moment I had finished filling the plate with stewed eggs, potatoes, and tomatoes.
“No cards for solitaire.” With that strange comment Natasha grabbed the plate from the counter the split-second I could finish preparing it. “That’s the problem.”
I had no time to consider what in the devil Natasha was on about before a wide, radiant grin spread across her face. It must have been something about her angelic powers which sent a wave of unexpected warmth through me as my heart seemed to skip a beat, or two.
Maybe she realised she was not making sense so she used some sort of cherubic charm to distract me.
That must have been it. It had worked though, at least long enough for Michael to wander into the kitchen.
“Finally,” he said, eyeing the breakfast plate I started making for him. “It may as well be brunch at this point. Or dinner.”
“Saved by the bell,” I said to Natasha a bit under my breath, and sure she would not understand the subtle joke.
Natasha’s grin just widened even more, almost causing me to spill a spatula full of fried potatoes on the floor.
“Hey, eyes on the ball, chief,” Michael laughed. Natasha giggled, seemingly at Michael’s joke, but still watching me.
She must have been in a festive mood, I figured. Maybe as a way of dealing with all of the heaviness surrounding the previous evening and the upcoming mission to Zurich.
“You got it, boss,” I said to him, rounding the bar with the plate.
Stepping a few paces across the well-worn kitchen floor, I handed him his breakfast. Michael’s eyes remained focused on the plate. “Thanks, man,” he said.
I eyed the meagre amount of food left in the pan—the food meant for me.
It was not as if I was very hungry anyway. Perhaps the nature of our mission was weighing on me, but all I could think about for a moment was my lack of certain memories of the kingdom, from my days as a prince.
There were things I felt as though I remembered vividly, but some other facets of my daily life there, like eating, what I consumed day to day, even the routine dining habits of the royalty there were things I could not conjure in my mind save for the vaguest ghosts of memories.
Spectres of memories so ethereal I could even be sure if they were real.
Chalking it all up to my mind’s way of expressing my uncertainty and uneasiness regarding the massive nature of my team’s mission, I forced myself to end that useless train of thought and walked into the living room.
Kieran was sitting in the old rocking chair in the corner, which I considered to be ornamental. However, he was actually rocking on the thing, a bit nervously as he looked through the printed rail passes.
“You’re going to wear holes in those things if you keep obsessing over them,” I said. “You must have every detail of those tickets committed to memory by now.”
“It’s an important mission,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
From where he sat, he could see through the tiny crack between the blackout curtain and the wall by the window. It was not enough to let sunlight in, but Kieran angled his head just right to catch a glimpse of the boulevard outside.
“It will get dark earlier tonight,” he observed.
“With the clouds, it will be safe enough for me soon,” Alexander said while rising from the sofa.
“The sooner we can depart, the better.”
Kieran almost shot up from the rocking chair with a burst of anxious energy he had clearly been holding back.
When looked over at Natasha stepping in from the kitchen, she, amazingly, still looked happy and relaxed as she licked the last bits of egg and potato from her fork. “I’m ready,” she announced with a smile.
Michael started shovelling his meal into his face faster. “Give me a minute, guys, sheesh.”
I stood up. “No worries, Michael, I need at last two minutes to pack the sandwiches.”
Natasha laughed again, and even that was enough for me to feel a little ripple of warmth and for my heart to not skip a beat but to seem to go faster for the briefest of moments.
While packing our baguettes for the train ride, I realised that Natasha must have been using her angelic charms to help lighten the mood of the team from its current anxious heaviness so we could head to Zurich confident and ready.
“Good use of your talents,” I whispered to myself as I finished packing the food.
“What was that?” Michael’s voice asked. I turned around to see the rest of the team all standing behind me, their bags, ready to depart.
“Nothing. I’ll get my bag.”
I walked back to my room and threw my bag over my shoulder.
“I would like to board early, before we have to deal with too many… passengers,” I heard Kieran relay nervously as I walked back into the kitchen.
It was clear that he wanted to say ‘humans’, but as we were all ideally becoming comfortable in the world of humans as part of becoming more effective as a team, Kieran felt the need to stop himself from stating that outright.
“If we leave on foot now it should be no problem,” Alexander responded as I arrived to face my waiting teammates in the kitchen.
“Right then,” I said with authority, growing weary of the team standing around and expressing their anxiety in all sorts of weird ways. “We have a train to catch.”
Natasha, Alexander, Kieran, and Michael, who were all standing in sort of an inpatient queue waiting for me began to turn around and walk to the front door as I grabbed the bag with the sandwiches.
Outside, the Boulevard de la Bastille was quiet and uncrowded underneath t
he heavily overcast skies. It was ideal for us, but there was an eerie sense of electric dread in the atmosphere.
Arriving at the train station not five minutes later, it was clear that it was not only quiet, but unnaturally so. Instead of the standard echoing of rolling luggage and chatter of travellers one would expect at such a major transit hub, there was a vacuum of typical noise and energy I could almost feel in my bones. Along with the strange stillness of the surrounding blocks—including where our flat was located—I had to conclude that people were subconsciously staying away from train stations and airports, anticipating something bad happening there.
An announcement in French put a fine point on this, the voice coming through the PA system piercing the dead air of the station was a contrast that would startle anyone.
“Embarquement anticipé pour le Paris-Zurich Express, qui relie Paris à Zurich. Tous à bord du Z-Express.” The amplified voice was bored and monotone, as if the announcer had just awoken from a deep sleep.
“What track?” I whispered harshly to myself, ready to board the blasted train and settle in.
“Look,” Natasha said. “There it is!” She seemed to notice the train for the first time.
The awaiting Z-Express stood at track Huit, a non-descript sign that bore its name on an otherwise blank red background. While I had expected some ultramodern train, maybe bearing some resemblance to a sleek bullet-type train one would see in Japan. However, the train that stood waiting for us was blocky, clunky, utilitarian at best.
It was maybe not as romantic as I had envisioned. As to why I had been envisioning anything romantic was anybody’s guess.
“Express is a misnomer,” complained Kieran as eyed the tickets. “It takes two hours longer than the midday train.”
Kieran went wordless again as we boarded the sleeper car and he handed us each our passes like a teacher passing out a surprise quiz.
The inside was nicer than I’d expected, looking almost exactly like the fine first-class seats of an airplane. Soft, pleasant lighting and a gently curving wall led to a long hallway, probably where the beds were. Everything was quiet, and there was not another soul in sight.
“Put your bags over there,” said Natasha, gesturing to a metal rack beside the doorway. “From what I have seen these sleeper compartments will be super small.”
“Now what?” I asked, turning back to Natasha. Kieran, Michael, and Alexander had already started towards their compartments with their bags, having ignored Natasha’s advice.
“Solitaire?” Natasha shrugged, smiling in a way that seemed mildly laboured but still with enough genuine warmth to be an oasis in the sea of unease our team had been swimming in for days.
I looked around the cabin, at the seats behind me, but nothing happened. Not another soul had boarded. It was quiet, save for the faint hissing of the release valves outside. The lights were dim and…
I do not know how long we waited. It wasn’t long before the train slowly started to roll down the track, but it felt it.
“I wonder if there’s an observation car.” Natasha smiled a bit more genuinely before wandering off down the slim stretch of hallway by the sleeper compartments. I followed, glancing into the bedrooms as I passed.
I cast a cursory glance into each of the rooms as I passed, all of them empty save for the barest necessities. The beds were piled with softly humming devices that blinked and glowed with a comforting cool blue light.
It was cold in the hallway, and I could feel my pulse slow as my ears began to ring, and although I had grown used to it, for a moment I felt the discomfort of my pointy ears tucked into my cap. The lights flickered once, then twice, as we walked towards the end of the car.
There was a sliding door there, leading out onto a narrow walkway outside.
I opened the door and stepped out into the frigid air. The wind whipped my face, and I could see Natasha smiling from ear to ear as she took in the cold. I glanced over the edge of the walkway and realised just how fast we were starting to travel as the train left Paris.
“Are we supposed to be out here?” I asked Natasha, feeling the traces of a smile on my face. She was having a ball.
“Probably not,” she said. She put her hands up like she was going to do a handstand on the hand rail, but then she lost her balance and tottered dangerously close to the edge of the walkway.
“Careful,” I said, bracing myself in the doorway to keep from falling over as the train rocked back and forth.
She giggled as she regained her footing.
“Come closer,” she said, holding out her hand to me. I stepped back onto the walkway and took her hand. “Now slip your other arm around my waist.”
Natasha turned her back to me and slowly backed into me. I wrapped both arms around her and held on as the train rocked from side to side.
At no point did I think to question what her plan was.
As far as I knew she could fly, and was deciding to share that with me.
Not even after she turned around to face me with a bright, mischievous grin.
“Now, we can walk safely,” Natasha said with a wink.
It was not quite flying, but walking between cars in the manner that Natasha had instructed was a bit more exhilarating than I had anticipated.
“Whooo!” she shouted unexpectedly as we stumbled slowly, step by step, through the wind, and the track sped by just below our feet.
I could feel the vibration of Natasha’s shrill, excited shout as I continued to hold her from behind in the manner she had told me to.
“Okay, you can let go,” Natasha instructed me after we made it into the next car.
“Do I have to?” The words were, I believe, not audible to Natasha. Nor did I expect to say them out loud, and I was not quite sure why I did. If Natasha had heard me, she at least pretended not to as she looked up at the glass ceiling of the train car.
“Wow!” Her eyes widened at the sight. “I think we found it.”
I looked up at the sky. The clouds had cleared, the moon was shining and I was glad that Natasha and I were here to see it. The moon was waxing, a bit over half full, casting a silver sheen across Natasha’s profile as she continued to gaze out the window.
Her eyes darted toward me, and she smiled, but turned away as quickly as she did.
“One day,” she said to herself, continuing to look out the window. “I’ll be up there.”
I laughed a bit, more charmed than amused. Yet, still confused. I did’t understand where this was coming from. As far as I knew, we weren’t friends. Not really.
“What’s so funny?” she turned around to ask me, still smiling herself.
I shook my head, not really knowing how to respond to her. At least, not in the way she wanted me to. So, as was now natural to me, I ignored her and looked back out of the window.
As we rumbled along through the night, I felt Natasha shift in her seat to look at me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked. “We don’t really know each other.”
Her smile faltered, but only slightly. “Do you believe in fate?”
“No.”
She turned away from me again, and I could tell our conversation was over. I was glad. There were things I didn’t feel like talking about. As I watched Natasha’s reflection just below the semicircle of the moon as rural France continued to whizz by, I was okay with the quiet and our mutual comfort to be quiet together.
“Are you watching my reflection?” Natasha asked.
Alright, I was more than okay with talking as well.
“Maybe.”
She laughed. “You were, weren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
She laughed again. “What’s so interesting about my reflection? Don’t I look normal?”
“No,” I answered simply, unable to keep a smirk off my face. All I could hope is that she could not see...
“I’m watching your reflection, too.”
Damn. Blast.
At least Natas
ha seemed to be enjoying it all, judging by her growing smile and the sparkle in her eyes.
“If only you could see what I could,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Ah, well. Maybe one day.”
I could only hope that one day wasn’t today.
The moment Natasha turned around to face me, I could tell that hope was about to be dashed.
“Troy,” she began, the smile falling from her face already. “Why did some of the fairies from your old kingdom seem so, well, old?”
It was not the question I feared she would ask, and I was barely able to suppress my natural sigh of relief.
“Well.” I smiled warmly, calmly, politely, like a friend. “With some fairy-folk, how can I put this, the years alone do not age them, not in the same way as humans.”
Even as confusion crossed Natasha’s face, I kept the friendly, open expression held onto my own.
“What?”
“Hmm, I would say that while the folk there do not age like humans exactly, something they have in common is what is in their heart, what they carry around with them can bring age to their face, to their eyes, to their voice.”
“What they carry around with them? What does that mean?”
“They’re not just fairy-folk who have aged, they are fairy-folk who have seen much sadness in their lives. Some of them choose to hold on to that sadness until they get used to it. They get so used to it that it becomes their lives, and they need it. And that is when the sadness takes its toll on the fae spirit, and the body, and the mind. It is unfortunate, yet not uncommon where I come from. There is an old saying about them and it is true: ‘Even when a fairy laughs, somewhere a fairy cries.’”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I am sure that it does,” I replied.
“Why were they so ungrateful to you?”
Damn it.
“I can’t say for certain, but I believe that it has something to do with their culture. I am not an expert on their culture, but I do know that fairy-folk have always been a proud bunch. Even when they are offered a helping hand, they turn it down, because they are too stubborn to admit their weaknesses.”
