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“Only if I get really impatient,” Marla said. “Otherwise, I’d just as soon do without the
risk of getting flattened. Assuming Bethany is home, she knows we’re here, and if she’s
curious—which she must be, sorcerers are an inquisitive sort—she’ll send a train. Or
else she’ll come here herself, though I doubt that. Making people come to you is the
stronger position.”
They waited, Marla doing a simple series of martial arts exercises to keep her body
occupied, nothing too advanced; if they were being observed, it wouldn’t hurt to seem
less skilled than she was. Rondeau sat on the floor, staring at the far wall, singing
Beatles songs badly. B was jittery, sitting down for a few moments, then rising to pace
the length of the platform, stopping occasionally to peer into the tunnel.
“What’s on your mind, B?” Marla asked.
“Ah,” he said, “I’ve had weird experiences with trains. Not in secret stations, but that
doesn’t exactly detract from the likelihood of weirdness.”
“What’s your train story?” Rondeau said. “I could use some entertainment. I’ve gone
through the whole White Album already, and Marla gets pissed when I sing anything
from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
“Do tell,” Marla said.
“It happened about a year ago,” B said. “I met this guy, Jay…his girlfriend had just
died, and he had this idea that he could go to the land of the dead and bring her back.
And I had to help him, I knew it, because I’d had this dream about him before I even
met him—”
“The way you dreamed about me,” Marla said.
“Yeah. One of those dreams. I knew there was no use trying to avoid him—I’d tried to
get out of stuff like this in the past, and it never worked—so I agreed to help. We hid in
a BART station until after they closed. Late that night, a train came. It wasn’t a normal
train. It looked like a thighbone with windows, and there were bone hooks on the ceiling
for handrails. We got on, and it took us way down deep, to some place….” He shook his
head. “I don’t know where exactly. Thinking back, it’s fuzzy, misty, just images—trees,
shapes in the shadows, bees, maybe lizards, and a cave, except it couldn’t have been a
cave, because there were stars overhead. I don’t know what happened to us down
there—it’s like I’m forgetting it even more now that I’m trying to think about it. But
whatever happened, I made my way back to the train, and I came back up, alone. I don’t
know if Jay found what he was looking for, or if he ever made it out….” B looked
bewildered now, and maybe a little scared.
Marla found herself approximately a million times more impressed by B than she had
been a moment before. “You touched something old and powerful,” she said. “The stuff
that myths are made of. Don’t worry about the way your memories are wobbling on
you—the numinous is like that, it resists accurate reportage. You could embellish it,
make up details, throw in a love story or a little suspense, make yourself a hero—that’s
how myths get made—but giving a true and accurate accounting is just this side of
impossible, even for someone who can see as clearly as you do.” Marla was