Chapter 19 In Which I Educate My Companions About NJ Transit
In Which I Educate My Companions About NJ Transit
We stood in the small clearing, not looking at each other. Our packs were gone—requisitioned, probably, by Kamare and company. I imagined another night in the freezing forest, this time without a tent.
I broke the silence. “No chance we can just walk away?”
“I do not think the Queen will permit that,” Lene said, staring determinedly at a tree in the middle distance. Her bottlebrush tail stuck out like she’d been electrified.
Sahir cleared his throat, scuffed his toes through the dirt. “If Roman is correct, you may well live.”
“And if he’s not?” I asked.
“We do not really have a choice,” he said, his throat working. “I cannot defend you from all the Queen’s legions. I cannot even defend you from all the Queen’s magics.”
I breathed deep. “Okay, then there’s no point putting it off,” I said.
“If you die, I will be displeased,” Gaheris told me.
Sahir sighed, a sound that warmed my heart.
“Miriam can leave Faerie,” he said. “Probably. So we can travel through the Queen’s portal, take the train in the mortal realm, and enter through the Princeling’s portal.
Once Miri has stepped through the portal, the Queen will consider the transgression repaid. ”
Confronted with my own mortality, I searched desperately for anything else to focus on. Otherwise, I would never be able to keep myself upright.
Lene made a noise like a cow attempting to sing a Christmas carol. I surged toward her, arms open. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been in the mortal realm,” Lene said, falling into my outstretched arms like a 1920s starlet. I sagged under her weight.
Gaheris took it more stoically. “I have,” he said. “And it will be interesting to see all of the electricity again.”
I glanced at Sahir, who shrugged.
“Lene?” I asked. “Would you like to travel with Gaheris through the Queen’s lands?”
Lene touched my face with soft fingers.
“Lead us,” she said. “We must complete our quest with honor.”
At this point, we all seemed to realize that we didn’t know where the portal was. Sahir raised an eyebrow at Gaheris, who only blinked back at him.
Sensing that none of us would be useful, Sahir sighed again.
“Well, then,” he said, and scanned the clearing with slow eyes. “She will keep the portal close under her gaze, I think.” He walked a few steps toward one tree, then backed up again, probably trying to sense magic but appearing for all intents and purposes uproariously drunk.
I hefted Lene upright and we followed Sahir toward one end of the clearing, my arm around Lene’s waist.
We approached two tall, thin trees that leaned into each other, meeting overhead in a keystone arch.
Their trunks were branchless, but where they tangled overhead they sprouted dozens of tiny branches covered in silver petals and gold leaves.
Sahir put his left hand on the nearer trunk, and the tree shivered, dropping silvery petals onto the sandy dirt.
As each petal fell, it trailed light, until the entire archway was filled with a shimmering glow.
This portal felt showier than the Princeling’s, which hadn’t glowed at all and didn’t involve denuding a tree. I tried not to judge, but to be honest, I didn’t try very hard.
When I looked at Lene’s face, it became evident that she wanted me to go through with her. What part of bone shards and blood mist had she not processed? I motioned for her to go first, but she shook her head and held her hand out to me.
“You sure?” I croaked.
Her lips tight, she nodded. I slid my hand into hers. Sahir took Gaheris’s hand, and Gaheris took my other hand.
I cleared my throat. “If I die,” I started, and then stopped, staring at the shivering silver petals dancing between the two trees.
“If you die, I will comfort Doctor Kitten,” Lene assured me. She was going to comfort Doctor Kitten either way, so I wasn’t impressed by this declaration.
I looked past Lene at Sahir. “If I die, it will not be your fault. You have served me with honor.”
He stared back at me, his jaw set and still sporting a few small branches.
“I’ll ask only that you tell my parents what happened,” I said.
Sahir jerked his head in a single, short nod, his black hair curtaining his face.
“Then let’s go,” I said, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.
I exhaled at once, remembering that when you’re scuba diving if you hold your breath while you ascend you will explode.
Lungs empty and daisy-linked to the others like children, I let Sahir lead me back into the mortal realm.
My first breath of mortal air in eleven weeks was gray and smoky. I gasped and opened my eyes.
The four of us stood in a long glass corridor highly reminiscent of a New Jersey Transit train station. I looked out to the right and saw tracks. I wondered if I’d died and was now experiencing my own version of a train station denouement with some beloved and criminally negligent professor.
I looked out to the left and saw a squat and unhappy-looking city filled with smog and cursing passersby.
“Are we in the Trenton, New Jersey, train station?” I asked, too shocked to process that I hadn’t died.
As with all of my traumatic experiences, I assumed the terror would hit me in approximately twelve hours, and I would become insensate with distress at that time.
“Train stations are highly convenient,” Sahir said defensively, apparently displeased with my tone. “And often sited upon ley lines.”
Lene’s breath came in quick panting gasps.
I looked up, hoping to see the sun through the glass ceiling, but the day was cloudy and dull. I glanced around for something to calm her.
“This is ugly,” Gaheris said. “Why would anyone choose to live here?”
I squeezed Lene’s hand, hard. She stared at me, her slitted pupils dilated in terror. “It’s okay,” I said. “We can always go back.” I turned her toward the portal, still shimmering behind us.
“Sahir, is that always visible?” I asked, pointing.
He frowned. “Not usually to humans,” he said.
Lene’s eyes had fixed on the shimmering magic veil, and her claws dug into my upper arm. I let her latch on to me, relaxing my jaw to breathe through the pain. Treat her like any other cat, I reminded myself. You wouldn’t dislodge a cat for your own comfort.
This was perhaps not conventional wisdom, but I lived by certain principles.
“We cannot go back through the Queen’s Court,” Sahir said, “as she might consider it a second trespass and decide to kill you.”
Delightful.
The corridor was fairly empty, one man in a corner wearing a tan trench coat and another man by the door holding a vape pen. I looked around, trying to determine the time. A large digital clock over the far doorway proclaimed 2:18 p.m.
“Sahir, we need to stop at my parents’ on the way back to the Princeling’s Court,” I said. “I need to see them before I go back to Faerie.”
I expected him to argue, but he only sighed. “I know,” he said.
“They live in Princeton, so we can just get on the train.” I took several confident steps toward the ticketing area, dragging Lene along with me.
“What is a train?” Gaheris asked. “I do not think my sister told me of them when we went to the aquarium.” I wondered if his hair could feasibly look red from a distance.
Then I saw that the vaping man had started to back away from us, which answered that question.
Unless he’d seen Lene’s furred face. Or her tail.
“A form of transportation that brings you from place to place at great speed,” Sahir said.
When we reached the ticket machine, I stopped and patted my pockets like a dude trying to get out of paying for a date. “I think I don’t have my wallet,” I said, feeling guilty. “I can Venmo you,” I added when Sahir reached for his own pocket.
Sahir slipped a credit card from his autumn-leaf wallet. “I do not know what that means,” he said sagely. “Nor do I care.”
He printed four tickets to Princeton Junction, and I brought us across the station hall to the turnstiles.
“Go through,” I said to Lene, feeding a ticket into the machine.
She stared in horror as the mechanism guiding the glass panels whirred, separating them. “What dark art is this?” she whispered.
Gaheris, displaying a startling presence of mind, shoved her in the back so that she stumbled through.
The gate closed behind her, and she yowled at volume, startling the few other people in the station. When they looked over and saw three faeries, they all looked away again.
I felt a surge of anger at that.
Sahir fed another ticket to the machine and Gaheris sped through, gathering Lene into his arms. He squeezed her until her feet left the floor, and she quieted.
Sahir and I let ourselves into the station and shepherded Gaheris and Lene onto an escalator.
Lene’s keening started again when she realized she was standing on moving stairs.
“I remember this from the aquarium,” Gaheris explained, patting the rubber railing. “It is an excavator.”
“Escalator,” I corrected. “Lene, it’s okay. There’s a motor below us that moves the stairs. It’s all mechanical.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” she said between howls. My head throbbed.
We stepped off onto the platform, Gaheris lifting Lene bodily so she didn’t fall over. The train sat in the station, doors open.
I glanced at the sign above our heads. “The train leaves in six minutes,” I said to Sahir, my eyes on the highly vocal Lene. “Do we, like…” But I trailed off, well aware that if you knock someone out in real life, they can get a pretty nasty concussion.
He raised an eyebrow in a way that indicated the beginning of a headache and then took Lene’s arm. “Lene, listen to me,” he said. “I come to this world every week. I have survived everything we will do today.”
“You’ve never met my mother,” I muttered, but Sahir ignored me.
“I am going to lead you onto the train,” Sahir said, staring into her face. “It will move, but it will not hurt us.”
“You can hold on to me the entire time,” I offered, already regretting it.