Railsea

These were not undangerous railsea stretches. There were a plethora of islets, here, & ill-charted woodlands & chasms in which a skilful captain might hide. It was no surprise buccaneers favoured them. They had not, though, expected quite how many would be looking for them.

A few days previously they had had the first of them. It could still have been a random encounter, they had thought. A jumped-up little beast-train had emerged from low trees remarkably close to them, & charged. The captain had cracked his enormous whip—it had been close enough with the wind going the right way for the Shroakes to hear—& goaded his snorting six-animal gang, three to each side of the rail, into massive gallops, while the small & vicious-looking pirate crew jeered & sneered on the ornate battledeck.

“Ooh look,” Dero had said. “Rhinos. Never thought I’d see rhinos.”

“Mmm-hm.” Caldera had given a contemptuous little kick, a little lick of speed, & they had left their pursuers coughing in their exhaust. The Shroake train, driven as it was by a hermetic engine, emitted no smoke: it did, though, have tanks of specially synthesised filthy fumes that could, with a button-push, be spurted out backwards to make a point.

“I liked them rhinos,” Dero said. “Did you? Caldera?” She said nothing. “Sometimes you wish I wasn’t with you, don’t you?” he muttered.

Caldera had rolled her eyes. “Don’t be absurd,” she’d said. Just occasionally it would have been nice to have someone else around, was all. “Enjoy that rhino-sighting while you can, Dero, because you ain’t going to see any more.”

“Why?”

“There ain’t many places a beast-train can relax about what pulls it,” she said. “& there’s things here’ll take a rhino no problem. They ain’t going to last long. They’re a way from home. Must be looking for something.”

The siblings had glanced at each other when she said that, but had still not assumed they were the target of these pirate forays. Until two days later, when a gang of small vehicles, each armoured like a dark tortoise, nearly caught up to them in the night, with surprisingly skilful switching. As their alarms sounded & the Shroakes powered away, they heard the lead dieselpunk shouting, “That’s them!”

Since then they had sped up to get themselves beyond any danger of detection. “You know,” Caldera said, “there are trainsfolk down south who get called ‘pirate’ all the time, & all they do is look after their coasts, ’cause for years trains of all the other places just dump junk there. Mum told me that. Loads of the people we call pirates aren’t doing anything bad at all.”

“These ones ain’t them,” Dero said, watching the progress of their pursuers.

“No,” said Caldera. “These ones seem to be the other ones.”

Their way was plotted from a combination of what their parents had told them before they left, what they had been able to glean from the notes left behind & their remaining father’s confused reminiscences. Those & the ordinator files, & the descriptions Sham had given them, from that old screen.

They were approaching a river. “Bridge?” Caldera asked the world. She could not see any.

“Um.” Dero checked the chart. “I think if we go star’d for—well, for ages—we’ll get to one.” Caldera calculated time in her head. “Know what?” Dero said slowly. “We can be quicker. What about if we take a tunnel?”

“A tunnel?” Caldera said. “You think?”

Underground was never a preferred route. There seemed something unholy about the passing, on rails, below, like some deep-digger heading home. Tunnels made the devout grumble. Usually trains would switch out of the way of such stygiana. Usually.

“Save us time,” Dero said. He was excited.

“Hmmm,” Caldera said. There were, it did look like, routes directly under the water.

The rails took them down, past a fringe of tough shrub, a mouthlike ring of rocks, into a concrete shaft. Some such were even lit, Caldera had heard. This was not. They travelled behind the fierce glare of their own bulb, the tracks, the damp-mottled cement & riblike reinforced supports of the underground passage flitting in & out of pitch as they passed.

“It sounds weird,” said Dero, his eyes wide. They were cocooned by echoes, every snap & clatter up close & reverberating against the metal of the train. “How far, do you think?”

“Shouldn’t be far,” Caldera said. “So long as we keep going roughly in this direction.”

Out of the shadow loomed more, tunnels veering from their own, a submerged maze. At each they slowed, checked the switches. Went on.

They were shocked by a sudden unearthly sound. A quavering, hooting shriek that made the tracks rattle, the ground around them shake. Caldera hit the brakes.

“What was that?” she said. Her own voice was strangulated. Dero stared & clutched her arm.

It came again. More aggressive this time, & closer. A coughing, swallowing, hollow screaming gasp. & now a faint clapping.

Staggering out of dark into the glare of the train lights, something came. It lurched. It staggered & flailed its limbs. Its great trembling throat glistened. A bird. A bird, its eyes sealed closed, covered in fluff, a bird taller than the tallest woman or man. It shook stubby wings, that could never have taken its weight, & tottered. Behind it came others, staggering into sight.

“Look at them!” shouted Dero. “What they doing here? They’re, they’re babies!” He smiled. “What are you doing, Cal?” His sister was scrabbling with the controls, checking the radar, moving fast & gritting her teeth. “Cal, they can’t get in.” The chicks could barely walk. They fell over as they came, trod on each other, eliciting squawks & pathetic little trills.

“That right there,” Caldera said, “is a nest. Those right there are the chicks of a burrowing owl that’s been too lazy to dig its own hole. Just moved in here. That noise they’re making …”

Dero gasped as realisation took hold. “… is an alarm call,” he said. He fell into his own seat, clicking through controls. They backed up. The newborns staggered after them, sounding piteously.

From behind the train came a much deeper, much louder call. It sent frost down Caldera’s bones. They heard a grating step.

Swinging side to side, eyes like giant lanterns hypnotic with rage, recurved beak an evil hook, an owl parent stepped into their hindlights. Its claws were out & ready. It rushed in to protect its babies.

“I’d go the other way,” Dero said in a choked voice.

The owl was taller than their train, hunched & stooped to scratch its way through the tunnels, filling the shaft with its wings. Its eyes shone like the worst moon. It screamed. Those claws would rip the Shroake train apart. To get at the soft Shroake grubs within.

Switch, clickety split. Caldera was getting good at these abrupt & sudden line changes. Back past the junction while the chicks stumbled & the terrifying adult closed in, forward again down a sideline, accelerating out of that predator’s burrow.

“It’s still coming,” said Dero.

“I know,” Caldera said. Switch, forward, star’d, fast.

“It’s still coming!” Dero shouted.

“Wait!” Caldera shouted. “I think we’re—”

With a rush & the merciful dissipation of all the close-up noise, they burst out again, into the day. On the far side of the river. The raging owl stamped out after them, almost at their speed, opening wings & lurching on stilty legs, half flying, half running, fast, but not as fast as a fleeing Shroake train zipping through grass.

“& farewell to you, angry owl,” said Caldera triumphantly.

“No! More! Quick routes! Through weird things!” shouted Dero.

“Ah, hush. It was your idea. We made it, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, but now I’m just wondering …” said Dero.

“What?” Caldera said. “Don’t I even get any well-dones for having got us out?”

“It’s just … doesn’t it take two big owls to make little ones?” said Dero.

A colossal noise above, a thunderclap of wings.

In this case, they learnt, as a shadow blotted out the sun beyond the upsky, it took one big & one very, very big owl. Which, that latter, descended, with a bass hoot that made the Shroakes’ bones & their train