“Miyole.” I pick at her shoulder. “Do you see that?”
Miyole looks at it and shrugs. “It’s an elephant.”
An elephant. I remember a picture in one of Miyole’s tablet stories. I had thought it was imaginary, like the Void zephyrs or zebras. A canopied platform rests on its leathery back. A woman sits behind the animal’s ears, and a man, three children, and a silver-haired woman ride behind her.
The old woman beside Miyole glares at me and clears her throat. I’m stepping on the hem of her dress. I back away with an apologetic glance.
The train stops at another station. I know I should step off, look for water again, try to figure out where we are, but there are so many people, all of them packed in tight like fish. My legs feel too heavy to move. I can’t call up the energy it would take to edge my way through the crowd, much less pull Miyole after me, so I watch the unfamiliar station names glide along the windows. The world is getting bigger and bigger and I am shrinking in it.
Finally the buildings drop back from the trainway and the crowd thins. Clusters of man-tall pipes run alongside our window for a time, and then veer off into a different part of the city. Light still fills the sky, but it has a tarnished look to it, like old metal. The day is nearly spent. A hill rises into view. Houses and naked pipes crawl up all of its sides but one, a sheer face that drops down to rooftops below.
The train glides to a stop.
“End of transit line,” the overhead voice tells us.
All of the remaining passengers file to the exits. I look down at Miyole, who has fallen asleep in her seat, her head slumped against my shoulder. I wish I could do that. Lie down and drop out of the world for a space. I glance around. The train is completely empty now, the doors standing open.
My eyes ache. My body is so heavy I would swear Mumbai has its own, more powerful gravity. I want Perpétue. I want her to tell me, “Don’t worry, fi,” and find my modrie for me so this can be over. I want Iri or, better, my own long-gone mother to pull me against the warmth of her chest. I want Luck to stroke my hair and tell me he’ll fix everything.
But he won’t. None of them will.
“Miyole,” I whisper. “Time to keep moving.”
We walk out onto the train platform. The train sighs behind us, waves of heat rolling off its metal skin. Across the street, shops selling tea and long bolts of lightweight cloth pack in close to the road. Reddish stains color the bottom of the white plaster walls, as if the foundations had been dipped in a dye bath. Men and women shuffle along, or else thread their way carefully through the crowd atop jingling two-wheeled machines and the occasional horse. Maybe here we’ll have more luck with water.
I spot a smartboard near a cluster of benches and a stunted tree in a concrete pot. I squint at the board. Scratches cloud its face, and the low angle of the sun washes out the letters and lines on its display.
A man in a light blue uniform makes his way down the platform toward us, stopping every few strides to check inside the empty train cars.
He takes in our clothes before he speaks. “You girls are waiting for the next train?” His voice is buoyant and rolling.
I nod.
“We’ll not be leaving for another two hours.” He waves a hand at the train. “Maintenance stop.”
I stare at him dully. Maintenance stop? I know what those two words mean, but my mind won’t put them together. All I can do is stare at the badge on his shirt, glinting in the late sun.
“Why don’t you go find some dinner?” He smiles. “Come back in a few hours when the line is running again.”
My despair must be showing on my face, because his smile dissolves. “Are you lost? How long have you been traveling?”
“Since the morning,” Miyole pipes up, her voice a soft rasp.
He sighs. “You didn’t bring extra money for water, did you?” He shakes his head and fumbles at the water bottle clipped to his belt, holds it out to us, annoyed. “Here.”
I snatch it up and hand it to Miyole. She drinks long and deep, a little trickle running down the side of her chin. At last she pulls back with a gasp for air and hands the bottle over to me. The water is cool—perfect—almost sweet. I drink and drink until the last drop is gone.
The look of annoyance is gone from the train man’s face, replaced by a furrow of concern between his brows.
I hold the empty bottle out to him. “Thank you, so.”
He shakes his head. “Keep it.” He looks from me to Miyole as if he wants to say something. He shakes his head. “You girls take care of yourselves, okay?”
I don’t know what to say. What other choice do we have? He backs away and resumes his inspection of the train cars.
I hand the plastic bottle to Miyole, and she crinkles it in her hands, click-pop, like a heartbeat. Across the street, a gaggle of smallones races along a cinderblock wall, laughing, and cart pushers shout promises of juice and fried things and tea, switching between English and the other language.
My stomach growls. The water has woken it back up and cleared my head some.
“Are you hungry?” I ask Miyole. Maybe I can work out some trade with one of the vendors. I can carry and clean for them, or practice my fixes.
Miyole shakes her head. Click-pop, click-pop.
“Still thirsty?” I say.
She nods.
I close my eyes and call up my memory of the city from above. There were streams and rivers, weren’t there? If we can find one of those, we can fill the bottle back up. We can look for water while we’re stuck here, and then we can figure out where we are and get back on the train. We’ll find my modrie and everything will be all right.
I tug on Miyole’s hand. “Come on. We’ll find some water.”
She shakes her head and looks up at me. “I’m tired, Ava.”
Her eyes are wide and bloodshot with grief and exhaustion. They’re her mother’s eyes.
“I know.” I kneel down beside her. “Here. Climb up.”
Miyole loops her arms around my neck, and I lift her up onto my back.
We join the crowd moving along the street. Lights flicker on in the shop windows and flash along the edges of one of the gigantic pipes rising above the rooftops. People stand on the second tier balconies above the stores, laughing and calling out to one another, or scolding dogs and calling children in from the streets. Small green machines scuffle along the road, scraping horse droppings and bits of trash off the pavement and tilting it into their mouths. Dust muddies the air.
A girl in an elaborately wrapped orange dress and gold and blue bangles leans beneath an awning, intent on her handheld.
“Pardon,” I say. “Do you know where we can find water?”