The hallway outside the gates funnels us past advertisements playing on the station’s walls, past shops selling food and hats and tiny motorized fans. The crowd from an arriving passenger flight swallows us up and pulls us along, down into a narrow room lined with seats. It isn’t until a soft chime sounds and the doors seal themselves shut that I realize we’ve boarded a train car. I wish I could feel the thrill of it—my first time aboard a train—but I cannot. It whisks us through a dark tunnel, and then out into the dazzling sunshine, along the side of a landing yard crowded with thousands of craft glinting in the sun.
The car slows. The chime rings again, followed by a woman’s voice speaking a bubbling, melodic language I don’t understand, and then, “Navi Flightport Authority welcomes you to Mumbai, located on one of the world’s oldest surviving peninsulas. Please enjoy your stay in our beautiful historic city. Svaagatam!”
I want to ask Miyole if she knows what a peninsula is, but she looks the way I feel—wrung out and hollow, as if any words might echo through her.
“All we have to do is find my modrie.” I squeeze her hand. “We’re close. Don’t worry.”
We stand on the lip of a crowded platform outside the spaceport. Everything is too bright and loud. Hulking passenger trains roar by, stirring up gusts of hot wind. The smell of burned ozone, simmering spices from the pushcart at the far end of the platform, and the oily stink of hot pavement stews in the air. On the palm-lined street below, crowds of people press by, some on foot, some high on creatures I think are called horses.
I should be awed, but I only feel numb. The world should be silent and gray now Perpétue is no longer in it, not teeming with voices and light.
“There’s got to be a map someplace,” I say. And then I spot it through a break in the crowd, a freestanding smartboard in the middle of the platform.
We make our way over. “How do we . . . ,” I start to ask, but stop when I glance down at Miyole’s face. It’s utterly blank, as if whatever makes Miyole Miyole has evaporated from her body.
She steps up to the smartboard. “Map,” she tells it, and an aerial view of the city springs up in front of us. To me, it looks like a knot of letters and lines and shapes, but Miyole focuses it easily with one bandaged hand.
“We’re here.” Miyole points to a flat, ticklike shape to the far right of the tallest buildings. “Mumbai University, please,” she says.
A column of rectangular boxes springs up, each connected to a spot on the map by a thin white line. There must be a dozen of them.
Miyole frowns at me. “Which one is it?”
For one brief, panicked moment, I can’t remember. I haven’t slept in over a day. My head feels thick and grainy. “Ka. . . Kalina.” The name comes to me in a rush of relief. “Mumbai University at Kalina.”
Miyole taps the map. It zooms in and focuses on an image of a weathered gray building flanked by palm trees. A light breeze stirs their fronds, and blurs of people pass by on the pavement.
I step closer. “How do we get there?”
Miyole touches a series of yellow dots, which link together and form a line from our place on the map to the university. A train schedule slides into view at the corner of the board. I can piece out the words now, the number and times. Train fifty-nine, estimated arrival 10:48 a.m. Train twenty-four, estimated arrival 10:52 a.m. Iri might be alive now, we might both be safe with my modrie Soraya already, if only one of us could have read what the hologram was trying to tell us. I would never have met Perpétue and Miyole and brought all this trouble on them. Perpétue might not have been gone that day if she hadn’t been teaching me to fly. She might be alive, and Kai and his family, too. . . .
Stop. I hear Perpétue’s voice, as if her ghost is speaking in my ear.
“It says we can take train twenty-four to cross the river and then switch to number one-oh-five.” Miyole looks up at me.
“Right so.” Together we walk to the edge of the platform, away from the other travelers.
“When we find your tante,” Miyole says, looking down at the track. “Will she let me stay?”
“Course she will,” I say, even though I not sure if she’ll let me stay.
“Why should she?” Miyole kicks at the line of glow paint by the edge of the platform. “I’m not her blood.”
“I wasn’t your blood when your mother took me in. But now . . . you’re my blood, now.” I squeeze her hand so she’ll know I mean it. “I won’t stay without you. We’ll go back up in the ship and find work at Bhutto station if we need to. Your mother—”
I choke to a stop. A soft hum rises from the magnets below us, and far down the track, a sleek white vessel turns toward us. TWENTY-FOUR glows on the smartboard across its face.
“The train,” says Miyole.
We step back as it blows past us into the station, glass doors and windows tripping by. It brakes to a smooth, sudden halt. The doors open, and we climb in, wary of the dark gap between the car and the platform. It reminds me of the shark-filled gaps between the Gyre’s pontoons. Miyole sits with her back to the window, the sun setting the tiny curls that have escaped from her braids alight and casting her face in shadow.
Bodies pack in around us. Men in dark suits and collarless white shirts buttoned at the neck, chins shaved and hair oiled and tucked behind their ears; women dressed the same, with diamonds or gold rings studding their ears and noses; others in pretty printed dresses and scarves, or wide-cut, flowing pants. The ones standing alongside me in middle of the car grab hold of a rail above our heads, so I do the same. The sharp odor of so many sweating bodies packed together nearly suffocates me.
The city whips by, the closer buildings a blur of metal and glass, and gray stone, with only the faraway towers and treetops moving slow enough for our eyes. Suddenly, the train’s windows darken. Thick, white letters glide over the glass, BAY MOUTH STATION, and at the same time, a calm voice rings out from the ceiling, repeating the name aloud in English and that same bubbling language I don’t know. We come to a stop. Our train empties half its passengers out one side of the car, then opens the other side to let more pour in. A young man calling, “Chai! Chai!” edges through the car with steaming drinks balanced on a tray hung around his neck.
We pull out again. The train is building into its steady, silent glide, slipping under the midday sun, when a rushing sound swells up beneath our feet and the floor jerks under us. The car fills with screams as we crush together, too close packed to fall to the floor. The gravity’s malfunctioned, I think for a half a breath, but then I remember we’re groundways. Something’s wrong—bad wrong. The train screeches and shudders to a halt.
A stunned silence holds us all for a moment. Then a baby breaks into a frightened cry, and the car fills with shouts.
“De! Watch it!”
“. . . every time I’m running late.”
“Hawa aane de!”
“Damn. What, again?”
“Miyole?” I shout.