train was laboring hard. It panted like a fox with a pack of dogs after it, dragging itself along. There was no way it would reach all the way to the top of the wizard of Perfil’s stairs. And if it did, the wizard wouldn’t be there, anyway, just the moon, rising up over the mountains, round and fat as a lardy bone.
The wizards of Perfil don’t write poetry, as a general rule. As far as anyone knows, they don’t marry, or plow fields, or have much use for polite speech. It is said that the wizards of Perfil appreciate a good joke, but telling a joke to a wizard is dangerous business. What if the wizard doesn’t find the joke funny? Wizards are sly, greedy, absentminded, obsessed with stars and bugs, parsimonious, frivolous, invisible, tyrannous, untrustworthy, secretive, inquisitive, meddlesome, long-lived, dangerous, useless, and have far too good an opinion of themselves. Kings go mad, the land is blighted, children starve or get sick or die spitted on the pointy end of a pike, and it’s all beneath the notice of the wizards of Perfil. The wizards of Perfil don’t fight wars.
It was like having a stone in his shoe. Halsa was always there, nagging. Tell them, tell them. Tell them. They had been on the train for a day and a night. Halsa was in the swamp, getting farther and farther away. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone? Mik and Bonti had seduced the two rich women who sat across from them. There were no more frowns or handkerchiefs, only smiles and tidbits of food and love, love, love all around. On went the train through burned fields and towns that had been put to the sword by one army or another. The train and its passengers overtook people on foot, or fleeing in wagons piled high with goods: mattresses, wardrobes, a pianoforte once, stoves and skillets and butter churns and pigs and angry-looking geese. Sometimes the train stopped while men got out and examined the tracks and made repairs. They did not stop at any stations, although there were people waiting, sometimes, who yelled and ran after the train. No one got off. There were fewer people up in the mountains, when they got there. Instead there was snow. Once Onion saw a wolf.
“When we get to Qual,” one of the rich women, the older one, said to Onion’s aunt, “my sister and I will set up our establishment. We’ll need someone to keep house for us. Are you thrifty?” She had Bonti on her lap. He was half-asleep.
“Yes, ma’am,” Onion’s aunt said.
“Well, we’ll see,” said the woman. She was half in love with Bonti. Onion had never had much opportunity to see what the rich thought about. He was a little disappointed to find out that it was much the same as other people. The only difference seemed to be that the rich woman, like the wizard’s secretary, seemed to think that all of this would end up all right. Money, it seemed, was like luck, or magic. All manner of things would be well, except they wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the thing that was going to happen to the train, perhaps Onion’s aunt could have sold more of her children.
Why won’t you tell them? Halsa said. Soon it will be too late.
You tell them, Onion thought back at her. Having an invisible Halsa around, always telling him things that he already knew, was far worse than the real Halsa had been. The real Halsa was safe, asleep, on the pallet under the wizard’s stairs. Onion should have been there instead. Onion bet the wizards of Perfil were sorry that Tolcet had ever bought a girl like Halsa.
Halsa shoved past Onion. She put her invisible hands on her mother’s shoulders and looked into her face. Her mother didn’t look up. You have to get off the train, Halsa said. She yelled. get off the train!
But it was like talking to the door at the top of the wizard’s tower. There was something in Halsa’s pocket, pressing into her stomach so hard it almost felt like a bruise. Halsa wasn’t on the train, she was sleeping on something with a sharp little face.
“Oh, stop yelling. Go away. How am I supposed to stop a train?” Onion said.
“Onion?” his aunt said. Onion realized he’d said it aloud. Halsa looked smug.
“Something bad is going to happen,” Onion said, capitulating. “We have to stop the train and get off.” The two rich women stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Onion’s aunt patted his shoulder. “Onion,” she said. “You were asleep. You were having a bad dream.”
“But—” Onion protested.
“Here,” his aunt said, glancing at the two women. “Take Mik for a walk. Shake off your dream.”
Onion gave up. The rich women were thinking that perhaps they would be better off looking for a housekeeper in Qual. Halsa was tapping her foot, standing in the aisle with her arms folded.
Come on, she said. No point talking to them. They just think you’re crazy. Come talk to the conductor instead.
“Sorry,” Onion said to his aunt. “I had a bad dream. I’ll go for a walk.” He took Mik’s hand.
They went up the aisle, stepping over sleeping people and people stupid or quarrelsome with drink, people slapping down playing cards. Halsa always in front of them: Hurry up, hurry, hurry. We’re almost there. You’ve left it too late. That useless wizard, I should have known not to bother asking for help. I should have known not to expect you to take care of things. You’re as useless as they are. Stupid good-for-nothing wizards of Perfil.
Up ahead of the train, Onion could feel the gunpowder charges, little bundles wedged between the ties of the track. It was like there was a stone in his shoe. He wasn’t afraid, he was merely irritated: at Halsa, at the people on the train who didn’t even know enough to be afraid, at the wizards and the rich women who thought that they could just buy children, just like that. He was angry, too. He was angry at his parents, for dying, for leaving him stuck here. He was angry at the king, who had gone mad; at the soldiers, who wouldn’t stay home with their own families, who went around stabbing and shooting and blowing up other people’s families.
They were at the front of the train. Halsa led Onion right into the cab, where two men were throwing enormous scoops of coal into a red-black, boiling furnace. They were filthy as devils. Their arms bulged with muscles and their eyes were red. One turned and saw Onion. “Oi!” he said. “What’s he doing here? You, kid, what are you doing?”
“You have to stop the train,” Onion said. “Something is going to happen. I saw soldiers. They’re going to make the train blow up.”
“Soldiers? Back there? How long ago?”
“They’re up ahead of us,” Onion said. “We have to stop now.”
Mik was looking up at him.
“He saw soldiers?” the other man said.
“Naw,” said the first man. Onion could see he didn’t know whether to be angry or whether to laugh. “The fucking kid’s making things up. Pretending he sees things. Hey, maybe he’s a wizard of Perfil! Lucky us, we got a wizard on the train!”
“I’m not a wizard,” Onion said. Halsa snorted in agreement. “But I know things. If you don’t stop the train, everyone will die.”
Both men stared at him. Then the first said, angrily, “Get out of here, you. And don’t go talking to people like that or we’ll throw you in the boiler.”
“Okay,” Onion said “Come on, Mik.”
Wait, Halsa said. What are you doing? You have to make them understand.
