Chapter 6
Thorn
Morning comes, the train bell rings, and we all tumble out of bed, grab a bit of breakfast on the way, and board the train.
Tabby comes along with us quite nicely. Her hair is tousled from days of travel and quite a bit of drama.
She needs a bath. I’d like to give her one.
I’d like to help her wash her hair. I’d like to clean every inch of her skin.
I’d like to be inside her again, but not in a horrible, terrible, fucking monstrous way.
Krall is not leaving her alone for a single moment, and Skor isn’t anywhere too close, but his eyes never flick away from her. All three of us are absolutely obsessed with our mate.
The train is not that full. We are almost the only passengers on it, aside from a couple of adventurers who load on with big rucksacks and crates.
I suspect they’ve been mining gems in the lower hills.
They look very defensive of their haul. We’ve no interest in their shiny rocks, but it will be better to stay away from them.
As the journey goes on, more and more people will join until it is crowded.
“We’ve got a sleeping cabin until Westwood,” Krall tells us. “That’s about three days from here. After that, we’ll have to see what we do. Maybe get a car and go by road rather than rail.”
Three days seems far enough away that worrying about it would be on the unnecessary side. I’ve had life change so much in three days it’s completely unrecognizable. Three days ago we didn’t even know Tabby, and now she is the most important thing in my life.
We settle into the cabin. It has two double bunks and two singles up top. It’s designed to sleep six, which is generous. Tabby immediately climbs to the very top bunk and looks down at us.
“This is mine,” she says. “I need my space.”
Skor and Krall look put out about that, but I just smile. I think she’s cute, I think she’s smart, and I’ll never forget how strong she is. If she wants a top bunk, she can have a top bunk. I’ll spend my life getting her what she wants.
“I’m going to patrol,” Skor says.
“I will take the other way,” Krall says.
That leaves me and Tabby alone in the cabin as the train starts to hiss and snort like a wild animal. She looks a little perturbed. She’s never been inside a vehicle before. This is going to be wild for her.
“Can I come up?” I ask the question as if she’d be doing me a favor, not as if I’m trying to protect her from her fear of being in the train as it gets going.
She pretends to think about it for a second, then shuffles over obligingly. I jump up there, using one rung on the ladder.
“Here,” I say, producing a crumpled brown bag from my pocket. It contains a dozen sweets that I noticed she particularly liked.
“What is that?” She grins at me as she looks in the bag and her pupils dilate with excitement. “Where did you get these?”
“I dropped into the store before we left. I woke up a little earlier than the others. I usually do.”
“She let you buy them?”
“She did.”
“She was going to cook me alive and eat me.”
“Well, nobody is perfect,” I deadpan.
She giggles, and offers me a sweet. That says a lot to her nature.
She loves these treats, but her initial impulse is to share them with me.
We are incredibly lucky to have found a mate like her.
We could have been left with a feral mountain girl with a cold heart and cruel tongue.
Instead we have one with a loving bosom and a sweet tooth.
“They are for you,” I tell her. “All of them. Save them. We might not find others as good.”
“Really?”
“No,” I say. “There will be others, but those are the only ones from this place.”
“Oh,” she says, looking at me with something like surprise. “Oh!” she says again. “Yes,” she says, tucking them into her satchel. “Thank you.”
The train makes a jolt as it starts to move, along with a loud whistle.
She reaches for me with a little shout of shock.
“We’re moving,” I say, stating the obvious in case it helps. “Look out the window.”
Tabby
The world is starting to slide by outside the window. It makes me feel slightly sick, if I am to be honest. The few buildings of Last Stop slip away, and then the outdoors starts to get very fast in a way my brain has never dealt with before.
I grab for Thorn in an effort to steady myself, lie back, and close my eyes. But there’s no real escaping the movement. I can still feel it, a pressure pushing me backwards.
“I don’t like this sorcery,” I say.
“It’s okay. It’s weird to get used to at first,” he says. “It might be easier to deal with if we go outside and get some air on your face.”
“Go outside? Go outside where?”
“There’re little balconies between carriages, and at the end of the train.”
I find myself quite unable to move from the bed. Mostly because I am clinging to it with an absolute death grip.
“I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” he says soothingly. “I’m right here with you, and you’re going to be okay. Just let yourself get used to it.”
I don’t know how anybody gets used to being in the belly of a charging beast. It’s the most unnatural thing I have ever experienced in all my days. This should be illegal.
I grip the walls on my way past, feeling very unsteady as the train rocks back and forth, side to side.
I feel a sort of low grade queasy terror that is not like proper fear.
It’s some other kind of thing, a fear of unfamiliar things.
I have lived my whole life with only familiar things. Easy evils.
The door to the carriage opens at the far end, and Krall walks in.
“What’s wrong with her?” Krall looks immediately concerned.
“She’s getting her sea legs,” Thorn explains.
“The train is moving,” I say, barely able to get the words out.
Thorn opens the door at the end of the carriage. Wind rushes in, the tracks rush away. I collapse to the floor and scream. It’s not my proudest moment.
Thorn shuts the door again.
“I hate it here!”
“It’s okay,” Thorn says, going to a knee next to me. “I know it looks weird. Why don’t we just sit here for a while and relax?”
“Why don’t we get off this horrific beast? Nothing good can come from it.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Thorn says. “In a few hours you won’t even notice the movement.”
He is speaking so soothingly, but I don’t believe a goddamn word he says. There’s no number of hours that will ever make being digested by a metal beast feel normal or good. I want to feel solid ground again.
I feel tears pricking at my eyes. I am so afraid and there is no way out or off. I can’t fight this. I can’t flee this. All I can do is freeze, and that feels the most hopeless of all the options.
“Come here, baby,” Thorn murmurs, pulling me into his arms. He snugs down on the floor with me, holding me tight while I sob and hate everything. The train’s rocking is oddly soothing, but I also hate it because it proves we are still moving.
“What’s wrong?” Skor comes bursting into the hall with a growling fury. “Who did this? Who am I killing?”
“She doesn’t like being on a train,” Krall says.
“Oh,” Skor replies, seeming a little deflated because there’s nobody to fight. “Is she sick or something?”
“She’s scared,” Thorn says.
“She’s scared?” Skor’s tone dips into disbelief. “I’ve seen her kill vampires and zombies without breaking a sweat, but she’s scared of a train?”
Nobody responds to him.
The train keeps rocking.
Skor
Something doesn’t make sense here. Thorn has her cuddled up and she is obviously crying and the train is rattling along like old trains do, not particularly fast compared to some of the bullet trains in Eclipse City. She hasn’t seen anything yet, and she is already pale and teary-eyed.
I wonder if we are not doing her a cruelty taking her from the only world she has ever known. She said as much, and I felt it inside her when we were connected.
I pull Krall aside, back into our cabin. “We might not be able to take her from the mountains.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean some things can only live where they’re made to live. Caterpillars only exist on some leaves. You can’t just put them on any plant. We might be separating her from a source of nourishment she needs.”
“You don’t usually talk in poetry,” he says. “And she’s afraid of the train, that’s all. She’s scared and she’s young, and this is her first time away from home. She will be fine. Thorn is taking care of her.”
He’s not exactly open to the idea of returning to the mountains, evidently. Krall wants to retire to Eclipse City, take up a post in the royal guard, breed his mate, and live a quiet life.
Even though we’re brothers and have shared basically everything in our lives, we never planned to all share one girl. Though we’ve played along so far, there are some very hard conversations to have.
Krall doesn’t want to have them. He’d prefer we all defer to him and go along with his wishes because he considers himself alpha of our unit. So far he’s getting his way. I’m going to let him keep thinking that.
Talking to him won’t get me anywhere. He’s too simple minded. A grunt who got promoted to the limit of his incompetence. He doesn’t see Tabby for all that she is, and the few bits he does see because she forces him to see them, he resists and resents and tries to stop her from manifesting.
“Last night, when she broke into the candy shop, you know she used magic, right?”
His face hardens. Oh, yes. He doesn’t like that thought, not even a little bit. He was trying not to think about it, and he doesn’t like that I brought it up and made him face it.
“I can deal with that later,” he says. “Magic is outlawed.”
“It’s really not,” I say. “Maybe in the isles we come from, but we’re not taking her back there. We are taking her to Eclipse City, where they just don’t believe in it.”
“I don’t want a mate who does magic. Not around my pups.”