Embroidery Lessons
From the Passenger Records of Hiraya Sia
Raya
The gold thread slipped out from Raya’s flesh and embroidered itself back into an eternal knot on bamboo silk.
No one could tell by looking at it that it had just stitched a tale into Raya’s soul.
“How many times, Rasmus?” She crumpled the silk in her fist. “How many times have Q and I boarded this train?”
“Too many.” Rasmus stared at the shelf overflowing with embroidered silk sheets. “And each time, it’s ended the same way. Q dies. You live.”
“But Q found the compartment first.” Raya’s voice quivered. “You escorted me from the train. Why did he die?”
“Q gave up the compartment for you.”
“No.” Raya shook her head. “That’s not true. That’s not what I saw.”
“You can’t see what isn’t there. That part of the record has been cut out.
The thread couldn’t show you how Q begged me to let him join you at the back door to say goodbye, and how, against my better judgment, I agreed to his request. When I opened the door, he threw himself out of it. There was nothing I could do.”
“I don’t understand.” Tears blurred Raya’s eyes. “Why would Q do that?”
“For the same reason he chooses to save you and this train time and time again. A moth always flies to the light. There hasn’t been a single version of Q that hasn’t been a good person.”
“So why was the train’s record cut? Who cut it?”
“I think you already know the answer to those questions.” The bustle of the room nearly buried Rasmus’s voice.
“The woman in Dev’s photo didn’t borrow her face from anyone, did she?” Raya touched her cheek. “Lily was wearing her own.”
“Lily was new and wasn’t keen on changing her face back then. But I knew that she was going to make a great conductor as soon as she boarded. She was used to carrying heavy loads.”
Water splashed around her foot. Raya had not questioned Rasmus when he told her that Lily’s office was located inside a teapot stored in a seldom-used pantry.
The knee-deep flood she waded in, however, made her fear that she had misunderstood him.
A slow, steady dripping sound came from the left side of the room.
Raya turned in its direction. Water trickled down a shelf, spilling from the spout of a chipped teapot.
Raya lifted the teapot’s lid. “Lily? Are you in there? It’s me, Raya. ”
“Come in, Ms. Sia.” Bubbles carried Lily’s voice to the surface.
“How do I—”
“Jump in.”
Raya dove into the teapot and landed softly on colorful woven mats strewn over a slatted bamboo floor.
Swaths of gauzy fabric took the place of walls and billowed in the breeze.
Round capiz shell lamps, carried by pairs of dragonflies, hovered above and around Raya, bathing the villa in their glow.
Raya parted a curtain and looked out. A still, borderless lake surrounded her, the bamboo villa’s reflection a ghostly boat floating on a sea of stars.
“Good evening, Ms. Sia.” Lily walked up from behind her.
Raya turned, prepared to see a stranger. She had not seen Lily since breakfast and knew that she would have changed by now into a new face to welcome the evening’s arrival. A face framed by red, unruly waves met her. “Why are you wearing Lily’s face?” Raya said.
“I guessed that since whatever is on your mind couldn’t wait until morning, it was something that really bothered you.” Lily smiled. “I wanted to make you feel as comfortable as possible. You seem to be rather attached to Lily. You haven’t been able to stop calling me by her name.”
“I can call you by your real one, if you’d like.” Raya stared hard at her. “Or would that be too confusing since we share it?”
“You’ve spoken to Rasmus, I see. I was wondering when we were going to have this conversation again.”
“Again?”
“Every version of us has gone straight to my office after speaking with him. We’ve had this talk as many times as Dev has shown my photograph to you.
I’ll have to pay him a visit to make sure he takes his latest dose of Mr. Goh’s tonic.
” Lily strode to the floor cushions arranged in the middle of the room.
“Have a seat while I make us some tea. I imagine there are quite a few things that you’d like to discuss. ”
Raya’s tea sat ignored on a low table but did not grow cold. Like the Elsewhere Express, it cared little about change or time.
“Would you like to start with small talk?” Lily picked up her cup. “You’ve found it helpful in the past.”
Raya tried to imagine how all her previous conversations with Lily had gone. No matter how pleasantly this talk began, she could not think of any circumstances where it would end well. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Lily took a sip of her tea. “Our other selves were rather curious about why the pantry was flooded with tears. Astrid and Isla were surprised to learn that this lake is where sad thoughts board the Elsewhere Express.”
Raya’s jaw grew slack. “Astrid and Isla are—”
“Us? Yes. And there are quite a few others too. They all go by different names. No one wants to use the one we boarded the train with. Every version of us is disappointed that no matter what we do or what department we join, we can’t stop Q from bringing his darkness on board with him.
I’ve seen it happen over and over again.
Once Q boards, the stowaway follows. When he leaves, the stowaway departs too. ”
“Is that how you remember it?” Raya said.
“How else would I remember it?” Lily frowned. “What did Rasmus tell you?”
“Rasmus didn’t tell me anything. I saw the train’s records.”
“He showed them to you?” The wrinkle between her eyes deepened into a well that seemed to catch all the shadows in the room.
“Yes. He told me that he wanted to do things differently this time. He’s tired of seeing Q die.”
“And you think I’m not?” Lily’s eyes, Raya thought, quivered in a way that made her both unrecognizable and familiar.
The face of the woman who welcomed her on board had never showed such pain.
The face that greeted her in her compartment’s bathroom mirror each morning did.
“Respectfully, Ms. Sia, looking at one train record doesn’t mean that you know me.
You and I are no longer the same person. ”
“You’re absolutely right.” Raya lifted her chin. “You stopped being me a long time ago. I would never ask Q to sacrifice himself the way you have.”
“That’s because you don’t have to, Ms. Sia.
You aren’t the conductor. You don’t have to make the hard decisions to keep this train safe.
If you did, you wouldn’t be able to conveniently ignore Mr. Philips’s past and how he’s repeatedly threatened to destroy everything and everyone on the Elsewhere Express.
Mr. Philips carries an anger inside him, whether you admit it or not, a rage that swarms the train and turns everything to rot. ”
“And yet there was no sign of the stowaway the first time Q boarded the train, was there, Lily? Not one hint of rot or even the slightest sign of rain. This person you call a monster is, in fact, the very reason why you’re standing here.
Q threw himself from the train to save you and you couldn’t even allow the train to remember him. Why?”
“If you have to ask me that, then you and I really are completely different people now,” Lily said.
“How could I possibly spend an eternity on this train or even a second in a compartment that Q paid for with his life? Nothing good would come from anyone finding out about what happened that night. Breaking one of the train’s most important rules was as good as breaking all of them.
The only way I could make sure Q’s sacrifice wasn’t wasted on me was to make sure that what I did here mattered.
I didn’t want to be as purposeless as—” Lily bit her lip.
“Go ahead,” Raya said. “You can say it. It’s the truth. You didn’t want to be as purposeless as me. That’s why you wanted to be the conductor.”
“And I couldn’t be a good one if I carried my grief and guilt with me the way you do. I had to let Q go.”
“But don’t you see? That isn’t what you did. You didn’t let go of him.”
“Of course I did. I took Mr. Goh’s serum. The only reason I remember any of this is because of Manon’s perfume.” Lily took two vials of ocean-blue serum from the tea tray. “But after tonight, neither of us ever have to think about this again.”
“Until the next time the stowaway shows up,” Raya said.
“Maybe this time it will be different.” Lily watched the gauzy curtains ripple in the breeze. “Maybe it won’t come back.”
“It will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Raya said. “In fact, I guarantee it. You can throw Q off the train a thousand times and it won’t make a difference. The stowaway is still on board the Elsewhere Express. It’s never left.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lily scoffed. “You saw the stowaway scatter into nothing with your own eyes.”
“I did. But I also saw what you’ve cut out from the train’s records. Just because you’ve taken great care to keep that part of your memory buried beyond any serum or fragrance’s reach doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” Raya took a needle threaded with gold from her bag.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. Sia.”
“You will.” Raya stabbed the needle into Lily’s hand.
Earlier
Rasmus refolded the embroidered sheet and returned it to the shelf.
“That’s it?” Raya said. “You just put the truth back and forget about it?”
“It’s not my truth to remember. What Lily chooses to do with it is her decision.
I can’t say that she hasn’t made the right choices.
She’s kept the train safe. When I drink Mr. Goh’s tonic, that’s what I’ll remember.
I’ll appreciate Lily’s service without loathing her.
” Rasmus smoothed the sheet and turned to face Raya. “And so will you.”
“Just like every version of me that’s boarded the Elsewhere Express.” Raya heaved a sigh.
Rasmus let his eyes fall on the gold butterfly embroidered into the scarf in Raya’s hair. “I’ve lost track of all the times I’ve sent that away by gifting it to other passengers. But it always finds its way back. All secrets surface.”
“What are you talking about?” Raya said.
“The truth you’ve been wearing. Despite all my attempts to gift or hide it, it seems to know where it belongs and whom it belongs to.
The train’s records are thoughts just like everything else on the Elsewhere Express.
When Lily cut it, it needed a place to go.
I sewed it into that scarf. I didn’t have enough thread to make a knot and so I—”
“—embroidered a song.” Raya pulled the scarf off, remembering with a shiver how Q’s fingers had combed through her hair to tie it.
“Thoughts know their owners, just as owners know their thoughts,” Rasmus said. “All the other Rayas chose to forget it, afraid of what they might learn about Q.”
Raya traced the embroidery. Though gold wings fluttered against her fingers, a dark swarm crawled under her skin. Raya dropped the scarf.
“You can do as all your other versions did.” Rasmus took the needle from the pincushion. “Or you can see how the stowaway really boarded the train.”