Sometimes I wonder what he looks like and if I’ll ever write to him again.
Sometimes I—
The train lurched.
Iris stopped writing, glancing out the window. She watched as the train rumbled slower and slower, eventually coming to a complete, smoke-hissing stop. They were in the middle of a field in Central Borough. No towns or buildings were in sight.
Had they broken down?
She set her notepad aside, rising to peek out of the compartment. Most of the passengers had already disembarked at the previous stops. But farther down the corridor, Iris caught sight of another girl, speaking to one of the staff.
“We’ll pick up speed once the sun sets, miss,” the crew member said. “In about half an hour or so. Please, help yourself to a cup of tea in the meantime.”
Iris ducked back into her compartment. They had purposefully stopped, and she wondered why they had to wait for darkness to continue. She was thinking about gathering her bags and seeking out the girl she had seen when a tap sounded on the sliding door.
“Is this seat taken?”
Iris glanced up, surprised to see the girl. She had brown skin and curly black hair, and she held a typewriter case in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. She was wearing the same drab jumpsuit as Iris, with the white INKRIDDEN TRIBUNE PRESS badge over her heart, but she somehow made the garb look far more fashionable, with a belt cinched at her waist and the pants cuffed at her ankles, exposing red striped socks and dark boots. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck and a leather bag was slung over her shoulder.
Another war correspondent.
“No,” Iris said with a smile. “It’s yours if you want it.”
The girl stepped into the compartment, nudging the door closed behind her. She set down her typewriter, then dropped her leather bag with a groan, taking the seat directly across from Iris’s. She closed her eyes and took a sip of the tea, only to promptly cough, her nose crinkling.
“Tastes like burnt rubber,” she said, and proceeded to open the window, dumping out the tea.
“Do you know why we’ve stopped?” Iris asked.
Her newfound companion shut the window, her attention drifting back to Iris. “I’m not exactly sure. The crew seemed hesitant to say anything, but I think it has to do with bombs.”
“Bombs?”
“Mm. I think we’ve reached the boundary for Western Borough, and beyond it is an active zone, where the effects of the war can be felt. I don’t know why, but they made it sound like it’s safer for the train to travel by night from here on out.” The girl crossed her legs at the ankles, studying Iris with an attentive eye. “I didn’t realize I’d have a companion on this trip.”
“I think I arrived at Inkridden Tribune right after you left,” Iris said, still thinking about bombs.
“Helena ask you a hundred questions?”
“Yes. Thought she wasn’t going to hire me.”
“Oh, she’d have hired you,” the girl said. “Even if you had arrived looking like you’d just danced at a club. Rumor has it they’re desperate for correspondents. I’m Thea Attwood, by the way. But everyone calls me Attie.”
“Iris Winnow. But most people call me by my last name.”
“Then I’ll call you by your first,” said Attie. “So, Iris. Why are you doing this?”
Iris grimaced. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to reveal about her tragic past yet, so she settled for a simple “There’s nothing for me in Oath. I needed a change. You?”
“Well, someone I once respected told me that I didn’t have it in me to become published. My writing ‘lacked originality and conviction,’ he said.” Attie snorted, as if those words still stung. “So I thought, what better way to prove myself? What could be a better teacher than having the constant threat of death, dismemberment, and whatever else Inkridden Tribune said in that waiver of theirs to sharpen your words? Regardless, I don’t like attempting things that I think I’ll fail at, so I have no choice but to write superb pieces and live to see them published, to my old professor’s chagrin. In fact, I paid for him have a subscription, so the Inkridden Tribune will start showing up on his doorstep, and he’ll see my name in print and eat his words.”
“A fitting penance,” Iris said, amused. “But I hope you realize that you didn’t have to sign up to write about war to prove yourself to anyone, Attie.”
“I do, but where’s the sense of adventure in that? Living the same careful and monotonous routine, day in and day out?” Attie smiled, dimples flirting in her cheeks. The next words she said Iris felt in her chest, resounding like a second heartbeat. Words that were destined to bind them together as friends. “I don’t want to wake up when I’m seventy-four only to realize I haven’t lived.”
{17}
Three Sirens
By the time the train chugged into the small station of Avalon Bluff, Iris and Attie were the only two passengers remaining, and it was half past ten o’clock at night. The moon hung like a fingernail, and the stars burned brighter than Iris had ever seen, as if they had fallen closer to earth. She gathered her things and followed Attie onto the platform, her legs sore from sitting most of the day, and drew a deep breath.
Avalon Bluff tasted like hay and meadow grass and chimney smoke and mud.
The girls walked through the abandoned station, which soon spilled them onto a dirt road. Helena had given them instructions on how to locate their lodgings: Marisol’s B and B was on High Street, just through the station, third house on the left, with a green door that looked like it once belonged in a castle. Attie and Iris would need to go directly there while being wary of their surroundings, prepared to take shelter at any moment.
“I take it this is High Street?” Attie asked.
It was dark, but Iris squinted, studying the town that lay before them. The houses were old, two-storied and built from stone. A few even had thatched roofs and mullioned windows, as if they were constructed centu ries ago. Fences were made of stacked rocks covered in moss, and it looked like there were a few gardens, but it was hard to discern things by the light of the moon.
There were no streetlamps to guide them along. Most houses were gloomy and cloaked in shadows, as if they were fueled by candlelight rather than electricity.
It was also very quiet and very empty.
Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed, but there were no other sounds of life. No laughter, no voices, no music, no banging pots in a kitchen. No crickets or night birds. Even the wind was tamed.
“Why does this place feel dead?” Attie whispered.
The temperature had dropped, and a fog was settling. Iris stifled a shudder. “I think I see Marisol’s,” she said, eager to be off the haunted street.
Helena had been right; the B and B had an unmistakable door, arched as if the house had been built around it, with an iron knocker fashioned as a roaring lion’s head. The building was quaint, with shutters that looked to be black in the starlight. Rosebushes crowded the front yard with scraggly limbs, still bare from winter, and ivy grew up the walls, reaching for the thatched roof.
But it was dark within, as if the old house was sleeping or under a spell. A sense of uneasiness washed through Iris as she knocked. The lion’s head clanged far too loud, given how mum the town was.