Chapter Eighty-Two. Rory
Rory
The world was snow. Snow falling from the sky. Snow piling on the tracks. Snow pressing closer, shoving against the windows, the tin walls. There was nothing but snow and slow-mounting dread, growing more frantic with each hour that slipped away.
“Do you know how much longer this will take?” Rory asked a passing conductor, breaking the hush of the sleepy cabin. Behind the conductor, a trio of shoveling constructs, their appendages snow-speckled and worn dark with cold, clattered to a stop.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have an estimate yet.” The conductor pulled on his uniform cap. “Not until the storm blows over.”
“Do you think it could take the whole night?” Rory pressed. It was half past nine already.
The conductor sighed. “In my experience, it usually doesn’t take that long.
A few more hours, at most. But we won’t know anything for sure until the storm ends.
” He gestured vaguely at the constructs standing behind him, puddles of melted snow slowly forming under them.
“In the meantime, I would recommend trying to get some sleep. I can bring you one of the spare blankets we have left?”
“No, thank you.” Rory tucked his coat tighter around his shoulders. “I’m fine.”
The muted howl of the wind masked the conductor’s retreating steps and the clatter of constructs following.
Rory looked around the train car, at the smattering of passengers huddled into coats or stretched across seats.
He remembered countless nights gasping awake from scenarios much like this one—the road flooding, the train breaking down, his feet slowly falling off, piece by piece, with every step he took closer to Daye.
A hundred ways he could fail to come to her when she needed him.
A hundred ways to fail her. A hundred ways to arrive too late, finding only leaf dust and crumbled flower petals.
Even knowing that Daye was safe, that the seasons and withering no longer had a hold on her, he couldn’t shake the sense of dread that being unable to get to her left him with.
As if at any moment, the world might slant sideways, tipping him into one of the nightmares that had twined through his nights, like insistent cats, ever since he was fourteen.
Sleep was a thousand miles away. So Rory stared out the window and waited for a break in the storm, daydreaming of spring breezes and Daye’s smile.