Ten minutes later, Theo came back into the compartment with a small bucket of beers and two glasses. “Here’s the deal. You need to mellow out. Have a beer. Then we’ll try again.”
TWO hours and three beers later, I was definitely feeling mellow. I’d successfully gotten Theo to do a handstand on his bunk, text a girl in his Statistics class, and yodel. I was feeling confident now.
When I whistled to him, the gold spark in his chest danced for me. I felt powerful. I’d never felt that way about my magic before.
I leaned across the aisle to Theo, waving my beer, “Let’s try an inanimate object. The book you gave me said the Robber Nightingale leveled a palace.”
“Yes,” Theo said, pushing my beer out of his face and munching on a handful of M&Ms and peanuts, “while theoretically I agree that we should try an inanimate object next, I don’t think the place to do it is on a train traveling at 120 miles per hour. What if you aim for a cookie, hit the window, and we get sucked outside like in Total Recall?”
I blinked owlishly at the image. That sounded reasonable. “All right then, school’s over, I’m going to bed.” I stood and grabbed the toiletries from my bag and then, staggering to find the rhythm of the rocking train car, I opened the door into the corridor. I gently swayed my way down the hall and into an open bathroom. It was spartan but clean. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and changed into my sleep shirt and sweats. Then I slowly made my way back to our cabin. I paused once to stare out the window into the black countryside. The sky was awash with stars, pinpricks of brightness in the dark canvas of the night.
THE next morning, the train was still rocking along. I sat up and peaked out the window, trying not to disturb Theo sleeping across the aisle. I saw a landscape of white – white snow, white snow-covered trees, and white low-lying clouds. I stared through the frosted windowpane and after a minute or so I could see that the fields of snow were separated into lines of cultivation. Abruptly, the fields vanished and we were traveling through a forest. The scene was dramatically beautiful. I felt like I was in a snow globe, right as the glitter has finished falling, and now the miniature scene has a sparkling, pristine layer of white.
The trees were very tall and their branches bowed heavily under the weight of snow. The sun shining through the nexus of limbs cast intricate patterns on the forest floor. I felt homesick for the winter woods around the farmhouse. I bet there were snowshoe hares in these woods as well, and gray wolves hunting them.
I made my way down the corridor again to the bathroom to get dressed and brush my teeth. I texted Theo that I was going to find the restaurant car. I stopped to check the map by the door between the cars and then made may way across the flexible, noisy gangway to the next sleeper car.
A few hops later and I found the restaurant car. It wasn’t crowded, likely because it was late in the morning. I chose a seat and when the server came by with tea, I pointed at the picture of pancakes on the menu.
While I waited for my food, I sipped my tea and fiddled with my phone. I emailed my parents an update and texted Julian. Then I put my phone down to stare out the window some more.
Someone stood across from me and I looked up with a smile, expecting Theo. Instead, it was a woman around my age, with white-blond hair tied back in a low pony tail and a cheerful face. She asked me something in Russian and when I shook my head, she changed to English, “I can sit here?”
“Sure,” I said, “Help yourself.”
“Thank you,” she sat across from me, putting a backpack under her chair. She leaned forward and said confidingly, “I don’t like to sit by myself on the trains. Some man will always sit right next to me. So, I look for a girl to sit next to first.”
I smiled. “Good strategy.”
The server came by with my pancakes and the girl put in an order for coffee. I smeared some jam on my pancakes and dug in. Deliciously fluffy.
“My name is Zasha. I work for the Federal Space Agency. It is like your NASA, I think.”
I swallowed my bite quickly. “Really? Are you going to Chelyabinsk to study the meteor?”
“Yes! I am very excited. It’s my first time at a meteor crater. I am, how do you say? Intern. I am intern.”
“That’s awesome. My name is Verena, but my friends call me Very. I’m heading to Chelyabinsk too.” I paused and thought hard. Why hadn’t we come up with a cover story yet? “I’m doing some research at the university there, studying Russian folklore.”
Zasha beamed at me. “You are American and you study Baba Yaga?” she asked and laughed delightedly.
I grinned back at her, remembering the Baba Yaga story from my Russian Lit class just last week. “Yes, witches just like her, and other monsters too.”
“A very interesting job to have.”
“Not as interesting as yours,” I replied. “Have they found the third impact site from the meteor yet?”
“Oh yes,” Zasha answered. “It’s in the national park outside the town of Zlatoust. That is just so where I am heading. My team leader, Dr. Kuznetsov, has not checked in with me, but I think that is where he is. He probably got so excited, he forgot
