25.
PRESENT DAY
"Let's think this through," Rowan said. "So you're going to somehow save an entire train from the eruption, we know that much, but then why did I need to tell you that if you do it, your seal will fade?"
"Lotte says she doesn't know," Maloru said. "She says her seal is fading anyway, so she might as well save some people on the way."
"And how do you intend on doing that?"
Lotte had collected what materials she could from the Nahilin cult. They didn't have any magical ingredients, but she was going to enchant a massive hulk of iron, she didn't think magic ingredients would cut it.
No, what she needed was something else. A path opened in her mind. She knew where she was going and how to pave her way.
"Lotte needs you to go to find Igador, Rowan," Maloru said. "You need to get him to stop the train when Lotte enchants the engine."
"You're going to enchant the train?" Rowan cried. "The whole gods-damn train?"
"It's the only way," Maloru said. "She says she knows she could do it thanks to you."
Rowan frowned, shaking her head. "So what's the plan?"
"Lotte and I are going to gather some ingredients," Maloru said. "Then she's going to start enchanting the train beginning from the last car and ending at the engine. She wants you to have the train stop in one hour."
"What is she going to make the train do?"
Maloru gasped when Lotte sent her answer. "Fly," he said.
"That's crazy!"
"Lotte sounds pretty convinced."
Rowan heaved a sigh. "Fine, but we need to arrange a rendezvous and ditch the train the second you land it somewhere."
"It'll be fine," Maloru said. "We'll find you."
"It's not me I'm worried about," she said. "You're two elves on a human train in the middle of a war. What's more, if you can make this train fly, that'd be broadcasting to the world that someone can use magic on iron, that there's a power in this country that's magic, but isn't working for the elves. I don't know if the elves will like it. I doubt the humans would."
Rowan had a point, she had several points. Lotte pursed her lips.
"We'll meet at the train's engine," Maloru said. "In one hour."
A few minutes later, Lotte and Maloru with their heads covered, snuck through the narrow corridor along the train car, passing compartments filled with sleeping passengers, towards the luggage compartment.
They pushed open the sliding door and closed it behind them. There were chests, trunks and suitcases in all sizes and shapes lining the racks on the walls.
Lotte pulled the nearest one onto the narrow floor area.
"It's locked," Maloru said.
Fintan chirped importantly, attacking the small padlock.
It broke off with a crunch. Lotte swung the suitcase open.
She found a bag of toiletries and emptied it on top of the folded clothes. It was a woman's case and there was a tube of lipstick and some perfume. She put both of those back into the toiletries bag.
"What should I be doing?" Maloru asked.
Keep watch, Lotte thought, hauling down the next chest. This one was heavy and bulky and should've been impossible for her to lift.
But not for her elven strength.
Fintan took care of the next lock too. The chest was filled with children's clothes and toys. Lotte took out a box of wax crayons and dumped them into her bag.
Thus the search continued. Lotte collected personal possessions, hairspray, brown shoe polish, a bottle of brandy, cough syrup, rogue, toothpaste and eyedrops.
The luggage compartment looked like a hurricane had passed through it, and Lotte had everything she needed to make her ink.
Back in their compartment, Lotte checked the toiletries bag for holes. It was made out of some kind of heavy nylon and was large enough to contain everything she needed it to.
But before she started mixing her ink, she needed to create a brush.
She attacked her bag and found the little pair of scissors the cultists had given her. She cut a lock of her own hair and attached it to the other end of a paintbrush with some glue she found in the luggage compartment and a bit of magical encouragement.
Then she began to mix her ink, crushing lipsticks, crayons and powder rogue. She put in a healthy dollop of the brown shoe polish and had to break the glass bottle of the nail polish to get the red product out. In went everything she found in the luggage. It was a concoction of human possessions.
"Lotte, that's like a human child's version of a magical potion."
Lotte was smiling as she worked. It was her zone, her element. She trusted her instincts and knew she could do this.
Elven magic won't enchant iron. Human magic will.
"There's no such thing as human magic."
There's going to be.
She was ready. She put her newly crafted brush behind her ear and closed her fist over the toiletries bag so the liquid inside wouldn't spill.
Help me with the window.
Maloru tugged on it, trying to push it up, but it wouldn't budge, not before Fintan gnawed at the latch.
You don't have to come, she thought as she climbed to the seat and rose onto the empty window frame.
"Who'll protect you if I'm not there?" Maloru said, hopping towards the window. He swiftly swung himself onto the roof, using the bolts on the side of the train as handholds.
When he was up there, he offered Lotte his hand.
She smiled at him and took it. It was true, she needed him to steady her. With the paint in her hand, she had only one hand to hold on with.
Theirs was the seventh cart, and there were thirteen in total. The journey on the top of the train was harrowing. The train's roof was rounded and the constant rattling didn't make for easy stability. The gap between each car was larger than Lotte had thought and they had to leap over each time.
It felt like they'd never reach the end of the train.
But eventually, they did.
She settled down to work immediately. She would need to draw her flying enchantment—the same one she used to jump out of Sullivan tower—twice on each car and then one big one on the engine.
That was twenty-seven enchantments. She had to make every stroke bold, everything with the full conviction that she can do this.
She hoped they had enough time.
Doubts started to dart into her head as soon as she was on the next car. The odd mixture she had made was too runny, droplets leaking from her brush strokes, forming lines down the metal.
It was supposed to do this, Lotte thought, imagining how each stroke was spreading over the train, encompassing it.
The lines began dripping even more after that.
She worried about her capacity to carry so many enchantments at once.
And she worried about the seal. That stupid seal that Poe had deemed best not to mention.
Just because she had done it in a different timeline, didn't mean she could do it again. Even a small change in intention could alter an enchantment completely.
She suddenly wished Rowan was up there with them. If something went wrong, Rowan would tell them.
Lotte bit her lip, feeling the sharp points of her teeth. There was no point thinking these thoughts. She forced her brain to focus.
Car twelve was done, and then elven, then ten, and nine, eight, seven—
The earth gave a violent jerk, a roar coming out of the mountain as overhead lightning forked across the sky.
The whole train wriggled like a metal snake.
And Lotte's bag of makeshift ink slipped out from her fingers, tipping over, dumping its contents into the darkness below. No!
Fintan flew after it, trying to swipe it up, but he was too late. Maloru tried to catch it too but Lotte grabbed him pulling him away from the edge of the car.
"Right...right..." Maloru mumbled. "So, we just have to make some mo—"
Again the mountain rumbled and little red veins lit the darkness above. Lotte could smell the acrid smell of smoke wafting on the breeze.
The train stopped at once.
With trembling fingers, Lotte removed from her bag her mixing bowl and any ink she could find. It didn't matter which. She was clean out of all magical inks anyway.
Glass ink bottles clinked together as Lotte's hands shook. She mixed half-heartedly, swinging her pack over her back and taking the bowl in the other hand.
It was easier to tread steadily now that the train wasn't moving, despite the shuddering mountain they were on.
Lotte's strokes were hasty, her mind hazy. She thought of nothing but the race against time.
The volcanic fumes began to curl through the air in spiky clouds, like paint spreading in a glass of water. They were white-grey and reflecting the moonlight like snow. She tied her scarf over her face and lowered her goggles over her eyes.
Go down below, she told Maloru. Find Rowan. You have to get as many people as you can to the back of the train.
"But what about..."
Go!
And Lotte rushed to make the next enchantment. She didn't know how these enchantments would fare. They didn't feel as certain as the ones she'd done before.
But she continued, there wasn't any choice.
The air grew warm.
Lotte was on the fourth car.
And then hot.
She was on the second car.
It was so hard to breath once she reached the engine, her eyes wouldn't focus. She could barely hold up the brush.
But like this, with smoke or unconsciousness blurring the edges of her vision, she suddenly felt a clarity.
A calm fell over her as she completed the last stroke of her enchantment.
It was sealed with an odd certainty and a grim understanding.
She braced herself against one of the little metal chimneys coming out of the top of the engine. It was hard to hold on. Her fingers felt like rubber, slipping over the metal as if she were trying to grasp air.
Overhead, the mountain coughed. The sky became bright orange and yellow. The veins of lava she had seen at a distance were also directly above them now, streaming down in eager rivulets towards them.
The mountain began to crumble, boulders rolling down along the molten fire streams.
Lotte clenched her teeth together as fear gripped her heart. She didn't want to die here. She didn't want to fail.
There was an odd tingling down her spine, like little thorny ants running up and down her back.
Her stomach flipped, throat constricting.
And a scream ripped itself out from her throat.
It was her voice, hers. It had been freed from its prison.
Her back burned where the last of the seal's magic was used up, and on her stomach, where the transformation tattoo had been, and on her arm, the enchantment connecting her to Maloru burned out as well.
With a screech of metal echoing her scream, the train began to rise from the tracks.
It swam up into the air like an eel in water, cutting its way through the cloud of fumes and smoke.
Below, she could hear hundreds of people screaming in terror, in wonder or confusion.
Ahead, she could see the stars as they escaped the smoke.