Elsewhere

CHAPTER 5: Elsewhen

Through those thick glasses, she observed the changing landscape of the outside, painfully dreaming about the day she would have finally reached it. Over time, she began to recognize it, month after month, hill after hill, land after land. She began to understand, but it was still not enough.

She knew that every year they made the same route, stopping at the same Stations, but punctually, when they got near to the one that seemed the last, or the first, or really any point of the path but always the same one - it was a ring after all - they locked her in a windowless room. In there, she could hear the train slowing down three times before they freed her again. She had noticed that there were few, or none, people coming up from those three Stations. The only thing she was sure of was that, as soon as they let her free again, the Train was empty. All for her and her Master. Empty and silent.

For the rest of the year, the number of people who got in varied each time.
Sometimes, groups of fifty or sixty individuals made their way in chaotically.
Others, she could count less than a dozen new passengers making their way through the crowd.
Some more, none at all.
And so they drop off.
Sometimes in large groups.
Sometimes in pairs.
Sometimes alone.
One or twenty Stations after the one they had left.

As soon as she realized that they were about to reach "her" Station, always the same one, she looked out the window and anxiously waited for the black gallery to lead them to the sidewalk of the platform.
What she saw then cut her breath out of her chest.
A silent sob exploded into her throat.

The snow had frozen that place in a desolated melancholy.
Groups of bodies piled on top of each other. Those still able to move tight in search of heat. No one raised their head. No one stepped forward. No child ran excitedly among adults. No one looked up to see if the doors opened.
They all remained motionless, solid as rocks, except for a little blonde head that rose from behind a man lying on the ground.
Two eyes the colour of the sea of ice stared into hers.
Tired, sick, sharp, and angry, those two blue eyes looked at the Train until it disappeared.
The only eyes that had the strength, in that infernal Winter, to light up again and watch once again salvation slip away from their grip, knowing that the following year it would vanish away in the same way.

-I want to get off! - She screamed, rushing toward the red door.
-No, you can't. - The Master held her. The girl was born on that Train. She could not leave it.

"Hold on another year. I'll find a way to take you away." She thought, before collapsing exhausted on the couch.