The old man who answers my knock blinks milky, surprised eyes at me and says nothing by way of greeting.

  “Sorry,” I repeat what I’ve been telling passengers all morning as I hold out the box I’ve come to deliver. “Your regular courier is sick.”

  “Oh yeah?” He looks suspiciously first at me and then the package in my outstretched arms as if I might have packed the illness up and brought it to his door in a box.

  “He just ate something he shouldn’t have.” I know better than to announce the presence of illness on the train without disclaimers, but I am tired. It has been years since I have been this far down the line of cars. My official courier duties rarely take me past the 25th car, and the less official favors that are so often added to the task list don’t extend much farther.

  When I arrived at my final stop yesterday, however, the second courier wasn’t there to meet me. He had, according to fellow passengers, spent the night emptying his guts into various receptacles and found himself unfit to make the wobbly trek through 25 moving train cars that his route would require. So here I am, making his stops in addition to mine. I’ve been careful to avoid the dining car in his section, but otherwise the change in plans and scenery has been a welcome disruption to a stale routine.

  The man grunts a laugh. “We all ate something we shouldn’t have. You front-riders won’t send us your chef.” He takes the package from me and turns to set it down inside his cabin. To people outside the train, we’re all “whistlers”. Inside, however, there are a number of divides: the people like myself who grew up on the train and those who boarded as adults. Volunteer whistlers and those stationed here by the Committee. People are divided by role, age, status, and a dozen other things but the most prominent line is between the front-riders and the tail-enders.

  “There have to be some perks for the Conductor,” I say with a grin. “We don’t want him leaving us stranded and going back to the Citadel. The mages there have it real easy.”

  When the customer turns back to the door, he hands me a smaller package. “You do special deliveries, yeah?”

  “Yep,” I take it from him. “I do, but you shouldn’t just ask any backup courier that. What if I were a snitch?”

  He shakes his head dismissively. “Not likely. I’m betting you take after your mother.”

  Something in my stomach performs an unpleasant flip. He turns away again and begins to close the door but I raise a hand to keep it open. “My mother?”

  The passenger looks mildly surprised again. “You’re Tenaya’s girl, aren’t you? Everyone knew your mother. She wasn’t too good for the backend cars.”

  “No, I know. She came down here for weeks at a time, sometimes. It’s just no one ever talks about her. To me, at least.”

  I look at the man with renewed interest, fully taking him in this time. I’ve been thinking of him as the old man since he opened the door, but now that I’m truly looking at him, I realize “old” is too generous a term. He might have been tall in his youth, but is now stooped to just above my own height. His movements are slow and cautious, age-spotted hands trembling as he holds the door. He wears a neatly groomed white beard, thick-framed glasses, and a suddenly uncomfortable expression.

  People on the train generally avoid the topic of my mother since her disappearance 13 years ago. I returned to my cabin one day and my mother was simply gone. She didn’t fall off the train, or die suddenly or come to harm at one of the station stops. I know because her things were gone as well, the cabin meticulously cleaned, and my clothes and books and toys were neatly put away. Wherever Tenaya went, she left of her own accord, without a word to her 12-year-old daughter.

  “Sorry,” the old man says, and he sounds sincere. “I didn’t remember…”

  “No, it’s okay! I don’t mind.” I suddenly have a hundred questions. He spoke of my mother with familiarity—maybe even fondness. He must have known her at least well enough to recognize her in me and trust me with contraband deliveries.

  After an awkward pause, during which the passenger seems about to turn away once more, I reach a hand out in a gesture of formal greeting. “I’m Tali.”

  The old man’s name is Bartlett and his cabin is homey and sweet. I wonder, as Bartlett potters about the stove making coffee, whether some of its quainter decor might be the work of a former occupant—perhaps a wife or lover who has since passed on.

  I glance around for pictures on the walls but find none. They are instead lined with shelves on which reside a host of apparently unrelated odds and ends—all arranged carefully on lace doilies. There are miniature books and shells, colored stones, and dried flowers.

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  There are a lot of little figurines, representing animals and people and trees, none seeming to be crafted by the same hands. They are carved from wood, marble, soap, and a number of substances I can’t identify. One figure of a horse looks like it’s built out of tiny machine parts and delicately twisted wire. I have always been fascinated by the ancient creatures.

  He seems to be partial to containers as well as tiny statues. I see among his collection wooden boxes with lids, little glass bottles in various colors, carved bowls, and knitted pouches. A cube made of some kind of smooth black stone catches my eye. Streaks of silver and pale red running through the stone made it look like a swirling liquid. I scan it for some visible seam or sign that it can be opened.

  “That’s one of my favorites,” Bartlett says, and I turn to see he’s followed my gaze to the weird little cube. The mug of coffee he hands me is a rich, warm black and smells like cinnamon.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say sincerely. “Where did all this come from?”

  “Here and there.” He lowers himself slowly into the chair opposite to mine at a small round table. “Station stops, mostly.”

  “You find this stuff during stops? What for?”

  The old man shrugs but his face brightens as he surveys the collection with pride. I suspect he doesn’t get to talk to people about his treasures very often.

  “Nothing really. I just like them. Someone cared about each of them. I like that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You can just tell, can’t you? Like that one.” Bartlett points at the horse. “I like to think about the person who found all those tiny pieces of metal and wire and put them together like that. Think about how much work went into shaping the wires just right to form the haunches, and polishing them all to just the right sheen. Why put so much effort into something so small?”

  I open my mouth to respond but not finding an answer, close it again. I find I’m glad that the old man collected all his little items. If someone cared enough to create them, they deserve to be appreciated by someone.

  We sip coffee in friendly silence for a few more minutes, until I can no longer hold in the questions that have crowded my mind since hearing my mother’s name.

  “What do you remember about my mother?”

  Bartlett doesn’t look at me but there is reminiscence in his smile.

  “She used to stop by for coffee from time to time,” he says at length. “Although she liked a dash of whiskey in hers more often than not.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  Bartlett’s eyes search the ceiling, trying to place memories in the right order.

  “She found me poking around the shops in some little station or other and took an interest in my collection. She used to bring me things she thought I could add to it.” He scans the shelves as if looking for an example.

  “This was not too long after you were born, I think. She talked about you quite a bit.” I have been looking at the shelves while he talks but my eyes snap back to his face at this. The little stomach flip that happens again might be pleasure or might be anger. I will have to interrogate it later.

  I practice the next question in my mind once or twice, hoping it will sound nonchalant.

  “What did she say?”

  It does not sound nonchalant.

  “That you were a troublemaker,” he laughs. “She was very proud of that, actually. She said you could outsmart her before you could walk.”

  This time something in my gut tightens painfully, and a bitter laugh escapes my lips.

  Bartlett glances at me, his smile full of gentleness, but he doesn’t comment or question.

  “You escaped the train once, do you remember that?”

  The surprise jolts me off the darker path my thoughts were about to take. “What? I don’t remember that at all.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t. You were probably only two or three.” He takes a sip of coffee. “You were always trying to escape back then. You had a personal grudge against the Conductor.”

  That doesn’t make sense. “Charlie?”

  “No, no it was the previous Conductor back then. Reynolds. You weren’t the only one who couldn’t stand to be around him; he was a damned unpleasant old man.”

  Charlie has served as Conductor for only the last 15 years, but he played such a central role in my memories of life on the train that I sometimes forget there was ever a train without him.

  I met him for the first time, in fact, shortly before my mother’s disappearance. His kindness was a source of comfort to me in the wake of it. I realize now I remember basically nothing about his predecessor, save passing mentions of him throughout the years.

  “So you’re saying everyone hated him, but I was the only one brave enough to make a break for it.”

  Bartlett chuckles. “Something like that. You and your mother were in one of the shops when she saw him headed your direction. Next thing she knew, you were nowhere to be found. It took so long to find you that the train nearly left.”

  This startles me considerably. “Surely it wouldn’t have just left us behind.”

  “The train schedule is sacrosanct, my dear. You were five minutes away from growing up in Haven Station.”

  I snort. “Maybe that was just my mother’s first attempt.”

  “At?”

  I open my mouth to say “Leaving me behind,” but the words are stuck behind the lump in my throat. I close it again.

  Bartlett pats my hand. “I don’t know why your mother got off the train, but I can promise you this: if she could have brought you with her, she would have.”

  “If you don’t know why she left, you can’t possibly know that.” I’m suddenly angry. I’ve heard enough platitudes from other passengers to last a thousand trips around the broken world.

  Bartlett lets the silence hang between us for a moment.

  “Fair enough,” he says at last.

  I wonder what I hoped to accomplish by visiting a total stranger who claimed to know my mother. He has no new information about what happened to her, only the memories of an old man, probably softened by the passage of time, and empty words of comfort I no longer need.

  “Thank you for the coffee.” I stand. “I had better finish my deliveries.”

  His smile seems a little sad as he stands with me. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Tali. I hope you’ll come back.”

  “Sure, next time I’m in the neighborhood,” I lie.

  As I step through the door, the old man catches my hand in both of his and tucks something into it.

  “To remember me by,” he says with a final hand pat before the door slides closed between us.

  I know what it is even before I uncurl my fingers to examine the object—a tiny, delicately crafted machine horse.