“Tour America by Rail!” the sign said, and so Sweetsong does. Everything she needs for a journey fits into her saddlebags, and there are plenty of trains to choose from if she’s resourceful enough.
“Tour America by Rail!” the sign said, and so Sweetsong does. Everything she needs for a journey fits into her saddlebags, and there are plenty of trains to choose from if she’s resourceful enough.
There’s nothing quite like having her hooves over the side of an empty gondola watching the world speed by, or looking at the stars overhead through the end bracing on a grain car. Sometimes box cars have their doors left open, and she knows how to jam them so they won’t close en route.
When she gets where the train takes her, she can live off the land or sing and play her guitar for money. When it’s time to move on? There’s always another train.
Destination Unknown Emmet St. Bridge Admiral Biscuit
The underside of a bridge was protected from the weather, and the steel beams that supported the deck served as a windbreak. While the sloped concrete abutments were easily climbable, and did sometimes provide shelter to humans or animals, the pillars weren’t. A small space, true, barely big enough to turn around in, but for now it was hers, safe and unassailable.
Or at least reasonably so; the local avians occasionally squawked their displeasure at her intrusion.
She’d already checked for nests; there weren’t any in her current hidey-hole, and she and the birds had eventually come to an uneasy truce.
•••
Trains were big and noisy and trains had no right to sneak up on a mare. They sounded their horns all the time, but not before arriving at the overpass.
Just to the south of the bridge was the crew-change point. She’d flown off a southbound freight when it stopped, her car far short of the bridge—she’d needed a chance to stretch her wings and to explore Battle Creek.
Now that was done; she’d seen what she’d wanted to see, she’d earned some bits from her singing, and she’d even toured a cereal factory. Now it was time to move on again. Time to stow away on another freight train, time to go wherever the rails took her.
The locomotive glided under the bridge, prime mover idling, nearly silent on the steel rails. A gust of diesel smoke befouled her temporary perch, eddying around the girders and the train’s slipstream, and then it was gone. Two of the more aggressive sparrows chirped after it in a vain attempt to scare it off; Sweetsong and the veterans of the Emmet St. bridge stayed put, watching it pass below.
Mixed freights were the best, giving her a wide variety of cars to choose from. Humans liked to ride grain cars with high-sided ends or boxcars with easily-opened doors, while she preferred freight cars that were open on top.
Coal cars were not good, even if they were open on top, and that’s what the train had to offer. In her experience, trains carrying coal hauled nothing else, so as soon as the first aluminum gondola swept beneath her, she slumped back down on the abutment.
She’d tried riding a collier once; it was oily and grimy everywhere and took countless baths to wash out of her fur. Out west, train after train was nothing but coal gondolas, and she’d gotten impatient—but she’d learned her lesson.
Sweetsong flicked her tail and fluffed her wings, unintentionally inviting a few chirped threats from the birds. She wanted to go, and she could; she could abandon her temporary perch and fly along the tracks until a better train came into view beneath her.
It’s just one train, there’ll be more. Riding into Battle Creek, she’d seen an abundance of trains passing northeast, and it was reasonable to assume that the southeast track was just as busy. She had a good spot, all she had to do was wait and the right train would not only come along, but it would stop below her just like her last train had, just like the coal train was, taunting her with the view of an empty aluminum hopper streaked with coal dust.
She settled back down on the cold concrete and waited.
•••
After a crew change and brake check, the coal train moved on, and as the sun crept towards its zenith, no new trains stopped. A priority container train swept by underneath, slow enough that she could find a spot if she really, really wanted to, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If the car had a proper floor at all, it was barely a hiding space; it wasn’t a matter of if she’d be seen, but how quickly. A better train would come along if she waited. Patience was a virtue.
Sweetsong wasn’t patient enough to sit on the abutment forever; a half-hour after the container train passed she stuck her head down below the girder, looking up and down the tracks for another approaching train. When that failed to provide any gratification, she dropped off the concrete and flew out from under the bridge, followed by a few birds who thought they were chasing her off.
She climbed up and circled, following the tracks with her eyes, looking for a train going in the right direction. Ten miles of visibility, maybe; she could see Bellevue’s water tower poking above the trees and trains were long enough that even with some of the tracks obscured, she ought to be able to see one if one was there to be seen.
Sometimes she got impatient, and followed the tracks along in the hope that a train going in the right direction with a suitable car and going slowly enough that she could land might pass beneath. Most often what she’d get instead was sore wings and a veritable cornucopia of inviting railcars that were too fast to catch, cars she could have boarded if she’d been more patient. As she glanced to the south, she spotted a mixed freight that was headed in the wrong direction, swore at it, and then reminded herself that another would come, another would stop in the yard, and she’d have her pick of cars to ride.
Amtrak was also an option, they had a station in Battle Creek and if she knew where she wanted to go she could buy a ticket there, but half the fun in riding the rails was not knowing where she was going to go until she got there.
•••
When she returned to her perch, the birds didn’t welcome her back, but she didn’t care. They could deal with it; she wasn’t going to be a fixture all that long.
Napping was the traditional pegasus way of dealing with boredom, and while the concrete was cold and un-sunwarmed, she dozed off until the distinct whine of a dynamic brake and the clatter of slack action perked her up. Sweetsong’s head was over the edge of the concrete in time to get a blast of exhaust from the locomotives, and then her eye was on the train as it rumbled by underneath.
A motley collection of box cars and grain cars, then a string of tank cars—nothing she could ride, but a mixed train nonetheless. The first gondola, empty but for some leftover dunnage, two centerbeam flatcars loaded with lumber—those were a possibility, but cramped and dangerous if the load shifted. Coil steel cars, with mismatched covers, two stray autoracks likely collected as an afterthought, another cluster of mixed grain cars, and then, trailing a Wisconsin Central boxcar, was a low-side gondola with no cargo in it.
The train police didn’t like people or ponies getting a free ride on the train. Being in the yard was risky; the longer the train sat still the more likely somebody would spot her. She’d found her car; she could fly to the other end of the yard and catch it as the train left.
That was the wise thing to do: unnecessary risk was foolish and would get her nothing, any more than flying along hoping to spot a slow-moving train beneath her. She knew that, and yet, like a thunderstorm building on the horizon, her wanderlust nagged at her, demanded action. Her army blanket looked like a tarp, and she could blend in with the leftover dunnage in the car. She’d have more time to settle in while the crew got changed.
Sweetsong sighed and shifted on the bridge as the gondola passed beneath. She could have dropped straight down in it and nobody could have seen her, and now it was gone. Now a trio of auto racks skimmed by, nearly touching the bridge beams.
All the other nearby bridges were close to businesses that would be open, she’d have to fly all the way out of Battle Creek to catch the train again, and right now the autoracks on her train and the cars on the next track provided excellent cover, almost as good as dropping in the car from her perch.
Patience was a virtue, but impulsiveness got things done. She grabbed her gear and caught up to her gondola as the train braked, landing on the scarred floor two car-lengths beyond the bridge.
Waving a goodbye to the birds wasn’t really necessary, but she did anyway. They still had their bridge, and now she had her train. As soon as it got a new crew, she’d be on her way south.
Destination unknown. Where the train was bound—where her gondola was bound—she didn’t know. Couldn’t know. She might get shunted off in the next yard, or she might ride all the way to California or Maine or Florida.
Sweetsong didn’t carry much in the way of personal belongings. A faded Army blanket, saddlebags with toiletries and space for food on one side, and a folding guitar on the other. Humans were very clever; while it didn’t sound as good as a proper guitar, it was compact.
•••
Rail yards were dangerous; rail yards had cameras to watch the trains and lots of people who might spot her, who might kick her off the train. Just like the bridge, patience and stealth was the key; she nestled into a corner under her blanket, just another piece of leftover rubbish in a gondola. Not as good as hiding in the hole on a grain car, but better to escape from if she had to.
Grab her blanket and fly. Humans had helicopters, angry mechanical dragonflies. Those could follow her in the air but couldn’t go in trees, and they wouldn’t chase her anyway. She’d watched some other train-riders get arrested once, back before she knew what she was doing. She’d found what she thought was a safe spot crouched down in the well of a container car, invisible except from above, and they’d done the same. And they’d been undone by a bridge, or maybe a camera mounted on a pole. It didn’t seem smart to stop a train to kick off stowaways, but they had.
She’d heard the green-shirted man crunching across the ballast and had correctly deduced that he knew she was there, that the same person or camera who had spotted the other riders had also spotted her, and while they had no option but to try and run, she took to the sky, taking a path that their boxy trucks with their flashing lights couldn’t follow.
Two days of hiding on a mesa, not trusting any trains that came through, nibbling on the tough, unsatisfying plants of the high desert. She didn’t know how long they’d search, and there was nowhere to hide, not until a brief rainsquall blew in, and she followed the tracks as best she could, finally finding a big railyard filled with identical hopper cars, a sea of anonymity. Nobody could check all of them.
•••
Her ears perked as prime movers wound up, and the engineer sounded the horn. The engine note deepened and the train started banging as the locomotives pulled the slack out of the couplings. As the noise got closer, she tensed, then her car jerked and started moving, and it wasn’t time to celebrate yet; she still had to pass through the yard and it was possible the delay hadn’t been just a crew change and the locomotives getting fuel, they might have been replaced by a switching engine that was going to split up the train and set it in the yard.
Sweetsong preferred being near the front of the train so she could clearly hear what the locomotives were doing. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and her car was where it was, near the tail. At least it left her well clear of the diesel smoke.
The wheels banged across track joints and had a different tempo across switches; the sounds around her changed as the train passed blocks of stationary cars and moved beyond the yard, and then the sounds changed again as the train left the yard behind and moved out into the world.
She poked her head up, then rolled her blanket and strapped it to her saddlebags. The immediate danger of discovery was over; she might have to make a choice if and when the train stopped, but for now she was clear. She had a ride, passage to wherever. Buildings near the tracks were giving way to trees, and bridges were being replaced by level crossings; she was out of the city and in the country, a mare on the move.
Sticking her head up above the edge of the gondola violated the usual mantra of attempting to be unseen, but Sweetsong liked to see where she was going. She could estimate by the locomotive’s horn when they’d come up on road crossings, leaving her only at risk for people on bridges or cars on parallel roads.
With her gear strapped on, she could move quickly if need be, so being spotted was only a minor inconvenience. She’d learned a lot since she’d had to hide on the mesa: always have her gear ready, especially when the train was stopped, for one. Pick rides carefully; high-value cargos were more likely to be watched. Be cautious in switchyards and ready to bail at a moment’s notice.
The rail line ran southwest, and it stayed double-track. Typical Midwestern fields came all the way up to the right of way, corn and soybeans and hay, and occasional woodlots on one or both sides of the tracks.
She heard the change in the wind noise around the train and ducked back below the side of the gondola as a northbound freight roared by, sending a brief gust of grit in her direction.
Did they see me? They might have; the locomotive sat high enough they could see down in the car, but the two trains had passed at speed; the crew would only have had a fraction of a second to spot her.
Trains ran really close by each other, and having that much steel flashing by just inches from her made her nervous so she moved across the gondola and stuck her head out the other side. Another field, a cluster of trees, then a decent sized lake with the train running right up against the shoreline.
A few bumps in the lakefront were wide enough for houses, and they’d been uncomfortably crammed into the available space. She should have ducked down, especially since the train was slowing, but the other train was giving her cover.
Except it wasn’t, because it had passed, and she’d been so focused on the lake she hadn’t noticed.
Real smart, Sweetsong. She ducked back down as the train passed by the end of the lake. There hadn’t been any houses on the other side, and only a couple of road crossings for the short lakefront access roads, so she probably hadn’t been spotted. She was ready to jump if the train stopped, but it didn’t.
It rounded a gentle curve as it passed through another small town, and then they were in fields again, and she stuck her head back up. She could see a water tower to the west, just too far away to read the name on it.
A few minutes later, the train raced through the village, and she waited until she heard the crossing bells fade off behind her before looking up again. Bigger cities went on for a while; most little towns were a cluster of houses and businesses and then right back in fields again. Sometimes when she flew over them, she could see new housing developments where fields had been. Those were rarely built near the tracks.
The train bent back to the southwest, and picked up speed.
•••
Indiana looked a lot like Michigan. Highways had welcome signs at the borders, but there weren’t signs like that along the tracks. Railroad divisions might span state lines anyway, she wasn’t entirely sure how they worked.
She knew at some point she’d passed into it, or maybe she hadn’t yet; as long as the train stayed on a generally southwest path she’d have to enter Indiana.
She was reasonably confident that the train would go through South Bend, and that was a decent-sized city. When she got there, she’d know she was in Indiana, and after that . . . she’d decide when she got there. For now, it was more fields and woodlots and occasional small towns that the train rushed through.
•••
After South Bend, the train turned more to the west, then began angling north. It also started slowing down, and the air started smelling weird.
It eventually came to a complete stop, and Sweetsong stuck her head all the way over the side, resting her forehooves on the battered gunnel of the gondola. She was in a barren area with sickly-looking trees on either side of the tracks, and could spot houses beyond them. To the front of the train, the ballast tapered down to a gravel parking lot next to a steel warehouse of some sort.
Another train honked its horn, and she glanced down both sides of hers, where there weren’t any other rails. If a collision was coming, she wanted to know about it in time to get clear, so she decided to risk flying up.
There weren’t any trains approaching on her track, and she could see the red signals for her train.
Just then, a locomotive emerged from the trees just in front of her train, and she flinched back in the air before realizing it was merging onto her tracks and that’s what her train was waiting for.
Even though it was risky, she landed on the roof of the boxcar and watched down the length of the train until the crossing cleared and the signals turned green. Sweetsong heard the familiar bass rumble of the diesels getting to work, followed by the banging of draft gear as the slack got pulled out of the train, and she landed back in her car after it started moving.
She got jerked to the side as the train switched tracks, now in the middle of a trio. She was going northwest now, which meant she was bound for Chicago. Not exactly where she wanted to go.
They’d passed over some switches in South Bend, and maybe if she’d known the routes better she could have gotten off the train there, found something southbound. Or Chicago was a possibility, lots of trains went there. It was a big city and easy to get lost in if she wanted to.
The train made its way to grassy dunes, a highway on one side and steel mills on the other, with multiple sets of tracks converging from all sides, it seemed. A short silver passenger train zoomed by on a nearby line, a long intermodal freight on a parallel track rumbled by in the other direction, and her train started slowing down again.
Now it was a race against the clock. Disembarking in the middle of the rail yard during the day was risky, there were lots of people who might see her. After dark was better, even with all the lights there were shadowed spots and dark spots; she could fly out of her gondola and stay low, or climb quickly to get above the lights. It would depend on circumstance.
There were enough people and other trains it was really risky to have her head up above the gondola. After brief consideration, she moved to the leading edge of the car. That would give her a good view of trains approaching from behind, and make her impossible to spot from a locomotive going in the opposite direction.
•••
The train slowed again, and bumped across a set of switches. She leaned over the edge of her gondola and glanced around the boxcar in front, and they were approaching a yard, earlier than she’d hoped. There was a steel mill and a casino on the lake side, and under the elevated highway, she could see blocks of houses. Certainly not Chicago proper, but an industrial suburb. Not the best place to depart.
Sweetsong decided to risk it. The train would stop or it wouldn’t; if it did, she’d just bail when it got dark. Keep her head down, the crew was unlikely to spot her if they broke up the train. She’d never seen people climb up on the gondolas to see what was inside.
To her surprise, the train didn’t stop in the yard, instead picking up speed again. At the far end, it crossed over a diamond and a maze of lines that led off in every direction, then slowly angled to the northwest.
Everything was dirty and gritty and smelled like rust and sulfur. Even the water in the small canals the train crossed over didn’t look right.
Things got better as the train continued north. The train passed another yard, and an elevated road joined on the right side of the train.
They were slowing, and the train was moving at no more than a fast gallop.
She could afford to keep her head up; the train was running on an elevated embankment, which meant that she didn’t have to worry about cars waiting for the train to pass seeing her.
Past a decaying grain elevator, the train crossed a lift bridge and then rounded a curve under the highway. As her gondola rounded the curve, she could see another yard in front of her.
She’d pushed her luck far enough. There was a nice highway bridge to sleep under, with a wide-open truss deck and even a walkway underneath that would be the perfect place to relax. In the morning, when the sun was up, she could take stock of her surroundings, decide if she wanted to visit Chicago or not, and figure out which tracks led out of town.
Sweetsong had long since gotten used to the noise of road traffic going by overhead and the banging of railcars in a switching yard. The catwalk on the bridge was wide and flat, and the steel latticework didn’t suck out her body heat like concrete did, which was also a blessing. She spread out her army blanket and took off her saddlebags, then settled in to sleep.
She woke with the dawn, yawning and arching her back before stretching her wings out.
In the full light, under cover of the bridge, she could see the track she’d come in on, along with the rails that ran parallel to the interstate and appeared to lead to Chicago proper.
Across the river there was a big concrete lot full of boats on stands, and behind that was another railyard, this one with orange and black locomotives. That was a railroad she didn’t know, nor where it went.
Just to the north was yet another rail line that looked to head due north, terminating a few surface streets before her bridge. That one had overhead wires and a big passenger shed alongside the tracks.
To the west, the railyard she wasn’t in—she glanced over it and didn’t see her gondola. Either it had gone out in a block of cars, or else it was hidden among all the other cars.
Sweetsong didn’t know all the rail routes, but she had the advantage of wings which would give her a better view of where she was and the best way to get to Chicago or elsewhere—she still hadn’t decided for sure.
It wouldn’t really matter if a train spotted her flying off the bridge, but she looked anyway before putting her hooves up on the railing and jumping over the edge. A short descent away from the highway but not too close to the trees flanking the railroad. Too early for thermals, although once she gained some altitude the busy road might give her a boost.
•••
Lake Michigan was off to her right, as she’d suspected, and Chicago still to her north, an unmistakable cluster of skyscrapers towering over the cityscape. The rail line she’d been on before went northwest, and while it probably turned, it looked like it was going to avoid Chicago. Likely as not, the line to the west kept going west; it wouldn’t make much sense for it to curve back.
Commuters on the road and trains alike were already in motion; she could see a freight approaching from the way she’d come. Maybe it would stop in the yard and maybe it wouldn’t.
How many bits do I have? She could mostly live off the land but liked little luxuries now and then. Chicago was a big town full of people who might be generous, people who might like to hear her sing.
•••
Riding on freight trains was fun and free. Riding on a commuter train cost her, although admittedly it was more comfortable and she didn’t have to worry about being seen. She could press her muzzle against the glass and watch the scenery go by with no fear of being evicted.
The train was electric, which was an additional bonus. Normal locomotives thundered in the ground, through her shoes and in her chest; the electric coursed across her wings, giving her the feel of a budding thunderstorm even on a clear, cloudless day. It was almost close enough to shape to her will, a different harmony. She felt the traction motors work, she was practically one with the current.
Of necessity, commuter trains made more stops, then they were off like a racehorse to the next station, pressing her back with acceleration. Latecomers who couldn’t find seats held on to the overhead bars and sometimes gave her sideways glares, which she ignored. She’d bought a seat, she had every right to use it.
As the train bent sharply left, she thought she might have made a mistake; she hadn’t studied the route map all that well and human place names were weird, then it turned again and bumped across a switch and continued en route to Chicago proper.
Sweetsong didn’t know exactly where she was going, or how far the train ultimately went. Her ticket let her ride if for however long she wanted, either to the end of the line, or else she could just ride back and forth, she wasn’t sure. Amtrak made her pay to a destination, but the last commuter train she’d ridden had only charged her to board.
She finally decided to get off at the 11th Street station, since a cluster of people also were detraining there. She could see skyscrapers inland and what looked like a park on the other side, which gave her options.
Her first order of business was breakfast. Surely there were some restaurants around, but she opted instead for edible landscaping. There was plenty of variety, even if humans liked to keep the grasses cut short.
Then a dessert of tender leaves from the cornucopia of trees. There were even flowers as an aperitif, although people sometimes got offended when she ate those. Best not to risk it; she didn’t want to get run out of town. If she’d come into the park the normal way instead of flying out of the train shed and landing in the grass, she might have seen signs saying she wasn’t supposed to eat the flowers.
Hunger sated, she flew up and surveyed the nearby area. Ideally, finding a spot where humans naturally congregated or passed by in crowds was the best place to perform. Somewhere she could be inspired by the scenery and where she could quickly fly away if anyone wanted to tell her busking was illegal was also good.
The paths had informational signs on them, and she finally settled on a sidewalk alongside Lake Michigan, between Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium.
•••
Her folding guitar was clever and compact, but didn’t have the decency to stay in tune when it was folded and then unfolded again. Experience got her close, but the first pluck of each string was discordant, offensive to her ears. Several minutes were spent tuning it, getting the strings to sing in harmony. Every time she had a brief moment of doubt thinking that they wouldn’t and then she hit the sweet spot, strummed the perfect chord, and all was right with the world.
The riff from Crazy Train was as good a way to make sure her guitar was ready, and it was.
•••
Sweetsong had learned lots of human ballads, and she mixed them in with popular Equestrian songs and a few of her own. The latter were often improvised, musical poems capturing the essence of the city, of her trip. The slumbering song of the fields she’d passed, the busy tempo of the mills, then the calm of this oasis of green in a bustling city. Some people didn’t get it; some people paused and then moved on, while others stayed and listened.
She sang in Equestrian and English and sometimes the Spanish she’d picked up in the south. She let the song guide her; her hooves worked the strings inspired by the calm of Lake Michigan or the busy banging of the switching yard, the rush of a freight through the farmland or the constant stopping of the commuter train. The weird tempo of wheels banging across a diamond and the constant throb of the overhead wire; the hum of traffic on the bridge and the rustle of wind through leaves.
Sometimes she’d set herself up and start to sing knowing she needed bits, feeling the grime in her fur and the growling in her belly. Sometimes her songs had a tinge of desperation in them, other times she could easily move beyond the physical and into the spiritual.
She never knew what it was going to be and that was both a blessing and a curse.
And in the end it didn’t matter; she sang because she could. She sang because she needed to, and she would have even if her audience was no more than a lone disinterested tree.
Sweetsong sat on the concrete and sang. In front of her, the city bustled with its anonymity; to her back, the lake offered its own oblivion.
•••
Some buskers had a guitar case for people to put bits in, but a guitar case defeated the benefit of having a folding guitar. Instead, she used a soft hat which was marketed as a fishing hat. It could indeed catch a fish if she was patient, but it was better used to catch money.
One of the lessons she’d learned was to not stay in one place too long; not only did it go against her nature, but it invited unwanted attention. By lunchtime, she’d made some money, she hadn’t yet been run off by cops, and she decided she wanted to explore.
Lake Michigan was a good enough bathing spot; she stashed her saddlebags in the top of a tree so nobody would steal them, and waded into the lake with a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap in her mouth. It was all natural, biodegradable, and loaded with invigorating mint. The bottle also had all sorts of writing on it printed in every direction, telling her the lessons Rabbi Hillel wanted to teach all the occupants of Spaceship Earth.
Humans liked writing fortunes and lessons and inspirations on anything they could, they spray-painted the railcars with art or just their names and sometimes she thought about doing the same, but it didn’t feel right. Pegasi were born from the sea and flew on the winds, never leaving anything behind but memories. Painting her name on a railcar would be vanity, and would mean nothing to anypony who saw it, but her song might live on in the minds of everybody who heard it. Nothing was meant to be frozen in time, it was an ever-changing symphony.
A few people watched her bathing, but none of them shouted at her or waded out in the water to try and stop her, and once she was done, she shook off her wings as best as she could and flew to the tree, retrieved her saddlebags, and then looked around for a good landing spot.
The peninsula just south of her had an inviting-looking beach at the southern end, so she flew down there, slaloming around a few kites before landing.
A few people were sunbathing and she joined them, stretching out on the grass overlooking Lake Michigan and dozing off as her coat and mane dried.
Her coat wasn’t completely dry by the time her stomach started grumbling and she nibbled on some grass to sate her hunger, then sat on her haunches and looked out at the lake, at the waves rolling in and crashing on the beach. Calling it a lake didn’t feel right; she couldn’t see the other side and probably couldn’t fly across it; it was a small ocean. An inland sea.
From the other side, she could have watched the sun set over it; here the sun was at her back, painting the lake in a rainbow of colors as it descended behind the skyscrapers. And when it was gone, even with all the lights of the city behind her, over the lake it was dark, a vast emptiness which was both foreboding and enticing. Airplanes flew overhead, their navigation lights clear in the sky, and below them boats bobbed on the surface, almost identical in appearance. If she were a fish, could she tell them apart?
She shivered in the night air, then took flight, kicking up a cloud of sand. Due east, into the nothingness knowing that as soon as she looked back the skyline of Chicago would be a clear beacon.
The water held the sun’s heat, fed its heat up into the sky, gave her almost-thermals to ride on and more turbulent air down low. A sailing ship passed under her, its sails rigged for effect but powered by the diesel engine thumping in the stern. She thought about landing on it—some sailorponies felt that the first pegasus landing on the ship as they approached the coast was good luck.
Could they see her, or was she invisible in the darkness, a shadow briefly blocking the stars? She didn’t know.
She buzzed the rigging, diving between the masts before heading into shore. Fireworks were shooting into the sky, painting the night in their temporary colors and for a moment she thought about climbing, looking down on the fireworks display from above, but instead chose to skim the wavetops, flaring as she arrived on shore. In the city proper, she started to climb, thinking that the Hilton Chicago would be the perfect place to camp for the night.
But she needed to hear the rumble of a train and while she still hadn’t picked the right yard, there was the El, with its antiquated bridges over the city, chock-full of hidey-holes. The swish of tires on cars passing below was almost like ships cutting through waves, and she wrapped herself in her army blanket and settled into position as an El train clattered overhead, peppering her with rust and grime.
It had been too long since she’d been to the ocean. That was her new goal, once she tired of Chicago she would go west, all the way to the Pacific. This time she’d take a northern route where the weather would be more favorable.
•••
Chicago had plenty of tourist attractions on offer, most of which wanted to charge her money to see. Sweetsong didn’t mind paying to watch Hamilton; even if she didn’t understand American history, the music was catchy and she caught herself singing What Comes Next as she flew to the Willis Tower. There, they let you pay bits to ride the elevator to an observation floor, but they couldn’t stop her from flying to the top, circling the building to taunt it, finally landing between the antennas and getting a view that the tourists couldn’t, no matter how much they paid.
And she realized as she sat on the edge and peered over the parapet that she hadn’t flown that high in a long time. Whatever, there were too many rules about flying on Earth and the clouds didn’t exactly cooperate with pegasi.
From her eyrie, she could see the lake vanish into distant haze, long before the shores of Michigan could be seen. And she could see airplanes departing O’Hare and idly wondered if it would be possible to stow away on one. An airplane could take her places that a train couldn’t, but they flew too high and too fast for her comfort.
She could also see a network of tracks winding in and out of Chicago, yards scattered seemingly at random. Some were elevated, some disappeared under buildings, and while at first glance there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it, railroads didn’t build yards for no purpose. All she had to do was find the right one, one that offered mixed freights and a good hiding spot away from the bulls and the cameras.
That was for later. She glanced up at the twin antennas, wide enough to be a perch if she wanted to try. Surely birds landed there sometimes and maybe a pegasus had, too. She could have flown up, but instead, Sweetsong leapt off the edge and glided down, angling for the Shedd Aquarium; patrons had been generous and it was worth the admission price to see a fish zoo.
•••
Stores let a pony browse, even if she wasn’t actually interested in buying what they had to offer. Clothes, sunglasses, tourist kitsch, fashion accessories, jewelry, Legos, even a pancake café. Her blackberry key lime pancakes were expensive and worth it.
Chicago also had plenty of rooftops and bridges where a pegasus could overnight and never be noticed, and for a few days she let the city enfold her, guide her. She wanted to move on, that was always in the back of her mind, but for now there was plenty to see and experience, easy money with a few hours busking in the various parks.
The silver bean, the stained glass museum, even standing on a street corner and watching a bridge lift to let a boat through. Flying over Soldier Field while a game was being played; landing on a South Shore platform with no intention of boarding a train, just reveling in the electric currents from the wires, a barely-contained lightning storm. Lou Malnati’s sold her a Chicago-style pizza, different than any kind she’d tried before, thick and rich and filling and big enough to last for two days.
Sweetsong knew how to use a computer even if she wasn’t good at it, and the library gave her access to rail maps. By the end of the week, wanderlust was crowding back in her mind, and while there was still plenty of Chicago to see, a few flights back to the shores of Lake Michigan only heightened her need to stand on the shores of the Pacific instead, to feel the even more distant wind ruffling her mane.
Destination Unknown Leaving Chicago Admiral Biscuit
Chicago had entertained her with its museums and aquariums and planetariums and the former highest building in the world. She’d played on the Solidarity Park sidewalk and the Navy Pier and the Kedzie-Homan platform; she’d flown over a baseball game, ridden the El, seen a musical, and window-shopped at every manner of store. Three days after arriving in Chicago she’d decided that it was time to move on again, hid under a rail overpass, and hopped a Union Pacific freight out of the Cicero Yard bound for points west.
•••
It felt like the city went on forever. Sweetsong thought she’d appreciated the scope of it from the air, but she hadn’t.
Her train hadn’t had any open gondolas, but it had a grainer with a pony-sized hole in the supports for the slope sheet, and she’d tucked herself into the space. The railcar had been riding high on its springs which meant it was empty and would be going to the Midwest to refill with grain. Eventually.
Once it got past the city that never ended.
Another commuter train whisked by and she thought again about the advantages of taking that to the end of the line and then finding a freight to hop, but patience was a virtue, and even if her train was plodding along now, once it got out of the city it would pick up speed.
The steel supports were not unlike the latticework of the bridges she so often called home. Sweetsong set a hoof on the end platform of the car then decided against it and settled back into her temporary nest, wondering just how far the city could go before it finally ended.
Pegasi were champion nappers, and the gentle rocking of the car and the click of the wheels across switches and rail joints, combined with her safe hidey-hole were more than enough to lull her to sleep.
Every now and then, the train’s motion would change as it slowed for a signal or waited for another train, and she’d perk her head up and look out the hole to get a sense of where she was. At first, it was more city, and then it was fields and trees and scrub-brush.
Sweetsong risked poking her head out the end; it was dusk and the odds of being spotted were slim. She couldn’t tell anything other than the direction they were heading.
Her saddlebags had plenty of snack food and water, even if she’d had to overpay for it in Chicago. It was always a delicate balance to decide how much she needed to carry with her and how much she could forage on the way, how much she could count on the generosity of strangers and how much she should save for the next town, wherever the next town was. Outside of cities, she had plenty of forage available, and often had opportunities to graze when the train was stopped: as long as she stayed close, she could get back; freight trains couldn’t get up to speed quickly.
Water was generally more uncertain, so she always prioritized that. There were plenty of ponds and rivers and ditches, but the water in them often couldn’t be trusted.
She’d tried using water purification tablets, but that water tasted terrible. Bleach was better, bleach gave it a nice salty kick that she liked, but the instructions on the bottle didn’t tell how much she needed to use to make sure the water was safe to drink, and it was less convenient to carry than her little bottle of purification pills.
Keeping the tablets for emergencies was smart, they didn’t take up much space in her saddlebags, but she’d grown accustomed to the advantages of bottled water or various free supplies in towns.
Sweetsong moved out of the hole onto the end platform and settled in, nibbling on a granola bar as her train plodded towards the sunset.
•••
A block of empty grain cars wasn’t a priority. She got set out three yards further down the line, then had to decide if she wanted to wait in the car until it got picked up again, or change trains.
Unfortunately, her yard backed on a container terminal with lots of lights and lots of cameras, and on the other side was nothing but open fields. She could fly out of the car and maybe be seen, but she’d get away from the lights and cameras before anybody could muster a pursuit. Boarding another train, though, that was chancy. If she spotted the right car, and if it was close, and if the bulls weren’t paying attention to the cameras, or if she kept low, she’d make it.
Sweetsong had a decent idea of how railroads operated, and decided that her train had been set out in this yard because something broke, and they’d want to get it out of the way as quickly as they could. She reasoned that the only trains typically stopping or slowing would be intermodal trains, and riding those was a last resort, just above coal trains.
She had enough food and water in her saddlebags to last for at least another day, and if the train hadn’t moved by then, she’d reconsider. Her cars were on the outside yard track, so all the other container cars did give her pretty decent cover.
•••
Dawn brought changing winds from the west, and she poked her head out of the hole and then climbed on the end sill, peering between the bracing to look at the weather. The yard was angled, and she could see towering thunderclouds to the west, along with occasional flashes of lightening.
If I do decide to bail out, they’ll never see me during a thunderstorm. Although she’d be soaked through by the time she made it back to the last town they’d passed.
•••
The steel nest in the car insulated her; let the weather sneak up on her. It felt like it was getting close, and then a gust rocked the railcar and the floodgates opened, some droplets even splashing into her nest. Outside, the yard lights all came on, fooled into believing it was nightfall.
She didn’t hear the locomotive back into her train, but she felt the jolt. She almost didn’t hear the hissing of air through the brake pipe. If she hadn’t been tented under her army blanket, her head almost against the brake reservoir, she might not have.
They’re charging the train pipe, and we’ll be on our way soon. They wouldn’t have aired it up if they were breaking up her train.
Some yards had hoses stuck between the rails that they could attach to cuts of cars before the locomotives attached, saving time.
She couldn’t hear the locomotives as they throttled up, and she didn’t hear the slack being taken out until it was a few cars in front of her, then the familiar banging of a train going into motion. Sweetsong only just had time to brace as the car jerked, slamming her against the steel, and then she was moving again.
The train jolted across the switches in the throat of the yard, then started picking up speed, leaving the stacks of containers behind. Once the last of the lights faded behind her, she climbed back out onto the end platform, near the center of the car where most of the rain would miss her and watched the landscape unroll.
A few small towns whizzed by, then an airport. The rain hid the runway lights, but she could see the sweep of the searchlight on the tower and knew what it meant. Every pegasus had to learn to recognize airports lest they get in trouble for flying in the wrong airspace or worse, get hit by an airplane.
The tracks curved as they came into another small town, the first sizable town since the intermodal yard. A few miles further along, she crossed a river, passed a few fields, and then ran on a causeway along the shore of the same river.
The line started curving through fields, and as the rain began tapering off, thundered across a series of bridges and islands over a wide river.
Shortly after crossing, she got shunted off into a yard again, this time being deposited next to a weird gold dome that looked like it wanted to be a fake sunrise.
Sweetsong studied the facility. It was some kind of storage dome, fed by giant pipes. Possibly some kind of grain; there were a lot of grain cars around. It was possible that this was her grainer’s final destination.
Leaving the train now was risky, but a cluster of bushes and stubby trees she could see off to the west would provide some cover. She hopped out of the latticework and looked up and down the tracks, not spotting anybody. Most people working in railroad yards wore bright yellow vests so they could be seen, which worked to her advantage.
Neither of the main tracks had a train immediately coming, and it only took a few seconds to fly into the concealment of the underbrush.
•••
She’d crossed the Mississippi, she learned. The staff at Vitales Pizza—just a short flight from where she’d left her grainer—were friendly and told her all about Clinton, Iowa. She learned that the gold dome was part of the ADM edible oils manufacturing plant, the town held an annual hot air balloon festival, and it had a small castle in Eagle Point Park. There was even a sawmill museum.
Her spicy pizza was delicious, although she’d gotten more than she should have. Her waitress packed it up in a to-go box which was nice, even though pizza didn’t travel well in her saddlebags.
Down the street and not too far from the train tracks she found a Quality Inn which looked okay and after some discussion decided to allow a pony to stay, which was better luck than she’d had at the Country Inn.
The bathtub was almost as good as a proper spa, and she soaked all the road-dust off herself, used up all the towels and still didn’t get completely dry, ate one more piece of pizza, then fell asleep on top of the bed.
The castle was small, really just a watchtower, but being up there and watching the sun rise over the trees was inspirational and she started singing.
Sweetsong usually started with songs she knew—Equestrian or human—and then once her voice had warmed up, she'd sing about her journey or places she’d whizzed by. The golden dome and the rainstorm, the busy intermodal yard, waking up on top of the covers with her head in the pizza box and having to wash her mane again . . .
Then, when a crowd had begun to gather, she packed up and flew off the castle. It wasn’t fair to people who wanted to climb to the top and look around if she was hogging it.
Pragmatically, she’d also get more money if she was where people could offer it.
She stayed until noon, giving a brief airshow for the small crowd that had gathered to hear her sing, and then flew back to Vitales. There was nothing wrong with eating pizza two days in a row, after all.
The day staff was just as welcoming and friendly as the evening shift had been.
•••
The US 67 bridge was south of the rail yards, and as good a place as any to catch a freight train as it made its way past. Time was on her side: there was plenty of daylight and lots of trains to pick from.
Sometimes flat cars were good to ride, depending on their load. There could be nooks and crannies to hide in, sometimes only visible from above. One time when she was feeling especially bold, she’d ridden between yards at the front end of a bulkhead flat, completely exposed to anybody who was looking but she had a great view and flying off was easy: straight over the side when the train slowed down.
She’d also spent most of the trip worrying that somebody would spot her and report her, and worrying that the cargo might shift forward if the train stopped suddenly, which had encouraged her hasty exit.
Experience had taught her to recognize which grain cars had hidey-holes and which didn’t even have floors. A mixed manifest freight rolled under her, and once the locomotives had passed, she stuck her head down and looked down the length of it. Slow-moving, plenty of possibilities, and she was bold and full of pizza, so she took the earliest car she could ride, even though it was only five back from the locomotive.
Getting through the steel supports on a moving train took practice and finesse, and luckily she had both.
Some hobos called the kind of grainer she found a Cadillac, not for its ride comfort but for its high side sills and flat floor. She didn’t have to crawl into a hole to hide; instead, she could ride out more in the open and not be noticed. She was safe from watchers on bridges, too; the slope sheets and roof hid her perfectly.
She settled on her belly and watched out the side as they rolled past a couple factories and a steel storage yard, wondering why the ballast for all the side tracks was a yellowish tan instead of the varying shades of grey she was used to. Maybe it was a local rock that could be gotten cheaply.
•••
The train went mostly west, sometimes bending around obstacles real or imagined. Opposing traffic was heavy and she had to keep more hidden than she would have liked, at least until the locomotive passed.
In the front, she could hear what her train's engines were doing, and got a warning as every grade crossing came up. More frequent horn blasts meant a town, and she kept low for those, but couldn’t help her curiosity. Her coat wasn’t that dissimilar to the grain car’s paint, a sort of rusty pink that was kind of beige-ish, at least when blurring by at 60 miles an hour.
Maybe she was overconfident, maybe that wasn’t true, but the train wasn’t stopping and green-shirted men weren’t searching for her and that was what counted.
Sweetsong glanced up at the sky. There were some low clouds, another option if she needed to escape. Helicopters could chase her, but they couldn’t find her in clouds.
•••
No individual field was worth observing, but the pastiche of them zooming by was. Modern metal barns or dilapidated wooden ones, what crops were planted, if they had a woodlot. Sometimes she saw tractors out in the fields, green and brick-red mostly, and a few of them were real monsters with eight wheels and locomotive-high. Sometimes she saw pastures with cows or occasionally horses, all used to the sight of passing trains.
She couldn’t help but whinny as she passed horses, and sometimes they’d look up in confusion as she whisked by.
Sweetsong snapped her head back as a freight barreled alongside, close enough to touch but she’d lose a hoof if she tried. A blast of air off its bow and then a blur of freight cars, seen and instantly forgotten as it roared past. One box car banged by with a flat wheel, and for an instant she got a glimpse of another rider, also cradled in a covered hopper, leaning up against the ladder and watching out her side.
He had a phone-camera up, she’d caught that. If she’d known he was coming, she would have waved.
Where was he going? Where had he come from? And did he wonder the same about her? Sometimes she saw other hobos waiting to jump a train, but she usually didn’t try and associate with them. She could have, and maybe sometimes it would be nice to have a partner, but she didn’t like the thought of having to make herself ground-bound. Crouching in the underbrush and galloping up to a car on the train didn’t feel safe, and humans couldn’t bail off the train if it was moving like she could.
She shifted her weight as the train rounded a curve and roared under an overpass.
It wasn’t just the worry about getting on and off trains, but where to camp. Humans couldn't nest in the tops of trees or on a roof; from what she’d gathered they sometimes even burrowed under loading docks and platforms and the idea of sleeping like a mole terrified her. Even the hole in the shotgun grainers made her nervous, although she’d come to terms with that. She didn’t always get the best ride, and sometimes had to sacrifice comfort for stealth.
Or just reliance on her wings; she’d taken chances on some rides knowing she could bail before the train even stopped. One winter in New York, she’d almost gotten caught on a CSX freight, but she’d heard the bull’s radio as he came close, giving her a moment’s warning.
Not long enough to grab her army blanket, and she didn’t want to lose it. Humans weren’t always smart about looking up, and she left her gondola and flew to the top of the box car in front of it, crouching down on the roof and listening as the bull told the head end that somebody had been mistaken, or if there was a hobo he was gone; all that was in the car was some dunnage and a wrinkled-up tarp.
She didn’t trust that he was really gone, if he’d felt the blanket he’d have noticed it was still warm. Until the train started moving.
Sitting on her belly on a boxcar roof wasn’t great, every time the train jostled it threatened to slide her off one side or the other, but she waited until she was sure she was clear and then swooped back down into the gondola, hastily stuffing her blanket back into her saddlebags in case the train stopped again.
It didn’t, and she’d ridden all the way to Tonawanda in that gondola.
•••
The train started slowing as it crossed a river into a large city: she caught a glimpse of a dam around a bend in the river and then they were on the far shore, baseball diamonds and a golf course on the north side and a power station with a big coal pile on the south. They went under a road, crossed the next at grade, then under I-380 and between a pair of warehouses.
The train held short of Beverly Yard in Cedar Rapids, and she curled up against the side sill and waited. Probably a crew change, which was nothing to be concerned about. There was a copse of trees off to her right which would be a good escape path if needed.
She could hear a van idling up front and brief snatches of conversation, not enough to make sense of it. A door slammed, then a change in pitch and the van drove off while the locomotives continued to idle.
She was close enough to the front she’d hear if they uncoupled, and they didn’t.
From the ground, from a van, what would they see? Maybe her ears, and that was it. In the fading light of day, what would that look like? Two triangles standing proud of the steelwork, nearly matching the paint . . . she was invisible.
The exhaust note of the locomotives deepened, the brakes on the train went off. This close to the front there wasn’t much warning as the slack went out and she almost bumped her muzzle against the end sill as the car jerked, then she was on her way again. Past a General Mills and a field right next to it—she considered how lucky that farmer was when it came time to market his crop. Straight through fields, then a slight curve and the train headed due west.
•••
The train stopped for good in Boone and got broken up, and she kept her spot until dark and then flew off. There weren't many good places to spend the night, not until she found a wrecking yard alongside the tracks with rows of automobiles to choose from. A sideswiped Traverse was as good a sleeping spot as any; most of the windows were unbroken and the seats in the back still folded down which gave her plenty of space to stretch out. It was her first time sleeping in a junk car and as she settled in she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it sooner; she’d seen plenty of salvage yards alongside the tracks.
•••
Sweetsong arose before the sun and flew a reconnaissance flight over the yard. During the day, that might tip off train crews to watch for her, but at night, with the lights from the yard, they couldn’t see her even though she could see them.
There was a train with locomotives backing up to them; she could get on now and take her chance that it left at a reasonable hour. Or she might be stuck all day in the yard, they might just be switching around the cars.
From her altitude, she could follow the rails with her eye, she could see where the track left the yard and curved, near a thick cluster of bushes where she could hide and wait for a train that was actually leaving. That close to the yard throat, it would be moving slow, and getting on board wouldn’t be difficult. There were houses on the south side of the tracks, but people who lived there wouldn’t be able to see her through the train.
Plus, if she waited until later, she could find a grocery store and get some more food and water. Her supplies were getting low.
•••
Some stores in Equestria painted their name on the roof so they were easier for pegasi to find. Humans mostly didn’t do that—water towers, airplane hangar roofs, and barns were the only exceptions she’d noticed so far.
From a lower altitude, though, she could read the advertising signs on the storefronts and on poles, and she found a Hy-Vee without too much trouble.
They didn’t open until seven, which gave her time to fly around town and explore some more. In the early dawn light, Boone didn’t look all that interesting, not until she found a small rail yard a block north of the Union Pacific mainline with an eclectic collection of passenger cars, freight cars, and locomotives. A sign on the passenger station said that it was the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad.
They didn’t open until ten, and although they had a website, she didn’t have a way to access it.
She circled over it and considered. If she hadn’t found an outbound train by ten, she decided to come back and see what the B&SV had to offer. It looked like a tourist line, which meant it would go out and back and not connect with anything, but it might be fun for a day’s diversion if the pickings were slim. Plus, she’d learned that railfans usually gave deference to railroaders, which she was by the loosest definition, and she could use that to her benefit. Sometimes they’d give her bits to help her on her journey, and as often as not they were very familiar with local railroad operations. They knew which lines went where or when freight trains typically came through, and could tell her when a suitable freight was likely to arrive.
Destination Unknown Council Bluffs Admiral Biscuit
She found an outbound train by ten, a slow-moving freight that trundled by her hiding spot. A graffitied Railbox with partially-open doors beckoned her, and she flew inside.
Sweetsong had mixed feelings on boxcars. If she stayed away from the doors, she was completely invisible, but her view was limited. That meant less looking at scenery, and things could sneak up on her.
There was also the possibility of doors sliding closed, although these had been jammed in position with track spikes in the lower guide rail, which meant somebody else had been riding the car.
She caught a glimpse of the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad as they passed by, then the train accelerated into the farmland, still picking up speed as it rumbled onto a cement bridge.
At first, it seemed normal, then she saw how the trees were dropping off on either side and then she was soaring above them, almost like her train had taken flight. She stuck her nose out the side of the boxcar, just to see what they were crossing—she hadn’t seen any wide rivers when she flew over Boone, although she hadn’t looked all that far off in the distance.
The river wasn’t much, just a few hundred feet wide, but the land around it dropped down in a wide flood plain, and that’s what the train was passing over, straight and level so the train didn’t have to descend and then climb back up.
Then the trees came back up, giving her the illusion of landing, and it was back to fields and small towns. Sweetsong settled down on her blanket in the center of the car, where she could look out both sides and not be seen while the train was moving, unfolded her guitar, and started to play.
The acoustics in the boxcar were weird, reflecting the sounds around to where she couldn’t find their source with her ears, although as she got accustomed to them, the echoes let her play in harmony with herself.
Usually she played for an audience but today it was for just her and the boxcar.
The tracks bent to the north and then back south again, paralleling a road, running through undulating wheat fields. In hindsight, the boxcar had been a good choice; she could watch the cars on the road, and they couldn’t see her.
•••
They followed a shallow river for ten miles, finally crossing it on a stubby, low truss bridge that felt completely unnecessary, then ran parallel to another track, oddly separate from her line. Maybe another railroad that wanted to take the same route although that didn’t make a lot of sense for someplace as open as Iowa. Everything she’d seen of it so far suggested that tracks could be put down wherever, with only the occasional river or road crossing to worry about.
She could be more restless in the boxcar, she could even fly in the boxcar, although not very far. It was easier to fly backwards; with her hooves on the floor she got the momentum of the train added to her movement, but in the air she didn’t. Half-remembered lessons about working stormclouds came to mind, practically every pegasus was expected to know how to work weather even if they didn’t make a career of it.
After a few failed attempts, she managed to flare just right to ‘land’ on the trailing end wall of the boxcar, hanging there briefly before she had to flap her wings and reorient herself. Weather classes never mentioned if a pegasus could do the same on the leading edge of a fast-moving stormcloud, although she thought it might work.
She settled back down in her Railbox, far enough away from the doors that the likelihood of being spotted was minimal but where she still had a good view through the doors as the world passed by.
Sweetsong rode through prairie and fields, paralleling the other rail line and a highway, finally stopping in a railyard at the end of a large airport’s runway. It was dark enough to vacate her boxcar without being seen, even though there wasn’t a good hiding spot nearby. Certainly not near enough to jump on a train.
That could be a problem for tomorrow. Judging by the size of the airport she’d glimpsed, she was near a big city. She could fly around in the morning, figure out where she was, and find out if there was a place she could play her guitar and make some money.
Down the tracks, south of the yard, there was a concrete road bridge with weird red and yellow antennas on it. She might get lucky and be able to drop in a hopper or gondola as a train went by underneath.
She set her blanket on the top of an abutment, nestled up between the concrete beams supporting the deck, and drifted off to sleep, the rumble of traffic overhead and the distant clanking of rail cars her lullaby.
•••
Council Bluffs had a rail museum, and while she couldn’t busk inside the building, she toured it anyway, learning about the people and equipment that had built the rail network she took advantage of. They even had a locomotive simulator, although in her opinion it wasn’t as good as the real thing, even if computer screens made it try to feel real.
She probably shouldn’t try to use her newfound knowledge next time she got into a locomotive. She knew how the angle cocks on train cars could be closed to keep the air in the train, and she knew about cut levers and now, if the simulator was accurate, she knew how to make a locomotive go. If she found one idling by itself, she could cut herself off the train and go on her own adventure, at least as far as the switches would allow her.
What would the train dispatchers think about that? The museum said that sensors in the tracks knew where trains and even individual cars or locomotives were, so they’d see that their DPU had gone rogue, although they wouldn’t know why. Out on the highways there were police cars that would chase misbehaving drivers, but the railroad bulls didn’t have locomotives, only SUVs.
It was fun to think about, and maybe the idea would make it into a song one day. She could picture herself with a pastern hooked over the throttle, head out the window, mane whipping in the breeze, thundering along the main in a borrowed locomotive.
Maybe there were places where she could ride on a locomotive and use the controls. Sometimes getting spotted was worth it; one snowy winter day in the mountains of Pennsylvania she’d been less subtle than normal and gotten caught by a yardmaster who’d invited her back to the shack to warm up. He’d offered her coffee and listened to her tales of riding the rails and told his own story about the railroad.
He’d even bought dinner to share, an Altoona style pizza which she flew off and got. It was a strange pizza, made with yellow cheese and cut into squares instead of wedges, almost like an open-faced sandwich.
As his shift drew to a close, he told her about the mixed freight that was due to come through the yard shortly and left the manifest on the table where she could read it and know in advance exactly which car was her best ride.
Sometimes she sent him postcards from places she’d visited.
•••
The next display talked about passenger trains, and she learned about the history of the Overland Limited and the Columbine and the City of Salina and the Portland Rose which honestly sounded like a pony name.
Unlike the silver-chrome Amtraks, these trains were painted in the same Armour Yellow and grey as the Union Pacific’s modern locomotives. She liked the shiny chrome of the Amtraks, but the yellow looked nice, too.
Freight trains were usually a variety of colors, from the typical black of the tank cars, bare aluminum colliers, to the aptly-named boxcar red of boxcars. Dingy grey-white hoppers and yellow Railboxes, the rare blue PanAm car. Everything she saw on display and in museums suggested trains had been more colorful in the past, but they still had variety.
She’d even once seen a repatched Klemme Cooperative Elevator hopper that was almost an exact match for her coat. If it hadn’t been sitting on a siding track in long-term storage—judging by the rust on the wheels and the weeds growing between the rails—she might have jumped at the chance at riding it.
Sometimes visiting a rail museum made her sad; there was just so much she’d missed by coming to Earth at the wrong time. And sometimes it made her hopeful, it was almost a vision of the future back home: the locomotives would be replaced with larger ones, trains would get longer, she wouldn’t get stuck halfway up the mountain because somepony miscalculated the tractive effort of the pusher.
•••
Another display showed pictures of the Golden Spike which joined the rails from the East to the rails from the West and made a transcontinental railroad, and it gave directions to the Golden Spike Monument, which wasn’t very far away.
Council Bluffs seemed like a really weird place to commemorate the joining of the two halves of the United States, especially since the display told her that the actual location of the spike was Promontory Point, Utah and she was in Iowa.
Still, it wasn’t far to travel, and it would be something fun to look at, and maybe there would be enough tourists she could set out her hat and earn some more bits. Or maybe once she was done looking at the displays she could walk across the street and visit the squirrel-cage jail instead.
•••
While the monument was nothing more than a giant, fake golden spike in a park which offered an orbit of concrete, a wooden sign, a bench and wastebasket, and an iron fence to keep tourists from touching the faux spike, it offered a commanding view of a nearby rail line and a few people who were willing to toss her some coins.
One of them asked her about her interest in trains, and she learned that there was another museum she hadn’t discovered yet which had both outdoor displays and a model train, all in and around a historic train station.
She didn’t know much about model trains except that some ponies set them up for Hearth’s Warming and that she couldn’t ride them. Clever crystal-powered locomotives tugged short trains filled with painted-on ponies in an endless loop around various other holiday-themed buildings available from local craftsmares and it seemed every year the sets got cleverer and clever; she’d seen a railroad crossing where the guardpony came out of his shack and lowered the gates when the train arrived, all accomplished with levers and tiny springs.
Humans had gone one step further; if she put her eyes as close as she was allowed to the edge of the layout, everything looked real, and the locomotives even rumbled like real ones. They didn’t shake her hooves as they went by, but that was a minor complaint.
The operator even let her try her hoof at driving a train which went okay—it stayed on the rails and didn’t crash into any other ones, and she made a full loop of the railroad before relinquishing the not-hoof-friendly controls.
It was more fun watching them instead of driving them.
The operator, who was named Tony, knew a lot about railroad operating rules, and in turn she suggested that they ought to include a hobo riding one of their trains, and pointed out which cars were best for that.
He also told her that while she was in town, she should visit the Big Boy and Century which were across the river in Omaha, and she should also plan on staying a second day if she could.
She could; she had no set schedule and she wanted to ask why but sometimes it was more fun to be surprised.
•••
Dinner was Nashville Hot Bites and a fish sandwich at Southside Jonsey’s Taco House, followed by a quick dip in the pool at the nearby water park, then she flew off to the UP’s railyard and spread out her army blanket on the flat roof of their offices.
There were enough trains that Sweetsong was tempted to hop a freight across the river rather than fly—she could land practically wherever and make it across the river before anyone noticed. For that matter, the trains were long enough that she could wait until one was crossing and then gallop along the roofs of cars and make it that way.
It was a stupid idea. There was no sense in being blatant, especially since when it came time to leave she’d have to hop a train and that would be harder if they were looking for a pegasus hobo.
Besides, it wasn’t all that far; she’d seen the river as she was flying around getting herself oriented. A couple of miles, tops.
Tony could have given her directions. Still, Sweetsong reasoned that locomotives would at least be near tracks—nearly every piece of equipment on display she’d seen so far had been. It didn’t make any sense to put a train on a truck and carry it somewhere just to show it off. Therefore, she got high enough to spot both the river and the rail bridge over it, an easily-distinguishable series of truss bridges marching across the water. Railroad bridges were generally more interesting than highway bridges.
As she flew closer, she could see that the truss bridges also continued over a small railyard that paralleled the river, but she didn’t see either a Big Boy or a Century there.
North, south, or west? The railyard that the bridge had fed into was gone, nothing but a barren lot with the main line and a single spur track leading to a former train station. Maybe it still was an active train station; if Amtraks went to Omaha they’d have to stop somewhere.
From what she’d learned at the museum, Union Pacific was proud of their history, and maybe they were so proud that they would put their locomotives near the highway where anybody could see them. They hadn’t done that with the golden spike, though, so maybe she’d have to hunt for them.
That at least narrowed her to two options—highways were both to her north and south, and for all she knew there was also one to her west that she just hadn’t seen yet.
Logic wasn’t helping her; the rails went in all three directions, so she fell back to the age-old pegasus method of making a choice—choose based on whether the next bird she saw was a chirpy bird, a ducky bird, or a hawky bird.
Despite the river, the first one she spotted was a hawky bird, already soaring in the early thermals, and she flew off to the north, towards the highway she’d spotted there.
She did not find the locomotives. She did find Lula B’s Breakfast, Brunch and Bar, and decided to change her routine by not ordering breakfast food, instead opting for their birria tacos. She could have asked her waiter where the locomotives were, surely he’d know, but where was the fun in that?
The restaurant was near both the highway overpass over the river and the railroad tracks, which was one option for leaving town—it was a little more open than she liked, though. At night, it could be an option.
•••
She flew north past a cable-stayed people-bridge across the river, then turned around at a weird-looking building with lots of parking lots but no locomotives.
A train was headed slowly south, and she paced it, checking for suitable cars to ride as they rolled by under her.
Sweetsong dove down and flew under the I-480 bridge, then picked up altitude again, following south along the river towards I-80.
The locomotives were easy to spot from the air. Despite its size, she might have missed the Big Boy, since it was painted black, but there was no missing the Armour Yellow Century, both of them angled—as she’d suspected—so drivers on the highway could get a good look at them.
She wasn’t the only one who had come to see them; already there were a few tourists out taking pictures of the locomotives and taking selfies with the locomotives. Not really enough to justify taking out her guitar, but even without it she could sing.
Putting out the fishing hat was a hopeful gesture, and she didn’t really focus on it, instead sometimes singing behind it and sometimes singing around the locomotives as she inspected them. The Century was so long that there was a passageway between its halves, so that nobody would have to walk the whole length and back again. The sign told her that it was powered by two sixteen-cylinder diesels, and made 6600 horsepower.
The Big Boy was longer and heavier, although slightly less powerful. Its sixteen driving wheels were all taller than she was, even on her hind hooves, and the sign said that it was the biggest locomotive ever made. She believed it.
Sweetsong couldn’t always get a sense of Equestrian railroads progressing to modern human railroads; there was a huge technological gap. Some of the museums she’d visited helped fill the spaces with their ever-larger equipment. While the Century wasn’t as obvious a creation, the Big Boy was familiar, but on a giant, nearly unfathomable scale. She couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to ride behind one, or even in one.
It was a shame that it was relegated to a park, like some animal in the zoo who wanted to run free.
•••
At first, the distant sound of a steam whistle didn’t really register. She hadn’t decided to become a hobo once she got to Earth, she’d ridden plenty of trains back home. And then she heard it again, and her ears perked and swiveled to the Big Boy—could it be her singing had brought it back to life, at least a little? Locomotives had personality, everypony knew that, and she was practically singing heartsongs.
The park was nearly empty, only one old man sitting on the bench listening to her sing, and then she heard the whistle again, long and mournful, and it wasn’t her imagination nor was it the ghosts of the slumbering locomotive.
Steamboat? Lots of rivers had steamboats, and some of them not only operated, but were also actually steam-powered. She hadn’t seen any, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one trundling down the river, loaded with tourists who wanted an old-timey experience.
She’d never tried to stow away on a steamboat before.
She apologized to the old man and nuzzled him as a farewell, then grabbed her hat—fuller than she expected—and took to the sky, ears swiveling as she listened for the whistle again.
•••
She saw the smoke before she heard the whistle, and it was well inland of the river. Every pegasus knew that when there was a fire they should gather clouds and attempt to put it out, and every pegasus learned sooner or later to tell the difference between a fire and a train—or for those who lived near the water, a boat. This smoke cloud was moving, billowing up from the trees in deliberate chuffs, and she could see a steam cloud underneath as the locomotive sounded its whistle again.
This was something she had to see, so she angled across the river and back to Council Bluffs, wondering if this was what Tony had told her she should stick around for.
Museums ran steam trains sometimes—the one near the UP museum had a couple steam locomotives although it didn’t look like either would operate. Or there were mainline excursions now and then, which at a guess was what was happening now.
As she got closer, she spotted the tail of the train, Armour Yellow passenger cars with grey roofs, and at the head of the train—
She didn’t believe it at first, but the evidence in front of her eyes couldn’t be denied: a Big Boy was on point on the train, twin to the one in the park.
Sweetsong swooped down for a closer look, flying through its smoke cloud, just above the cars filled with eager passengers riding behind the behemoth of the rails, and for an instant she contemplated landing on top of a coach, being princess of the train until they kicked her off. When she told the story, nopony would believe her . . . except that it seemed every crossing had railfans with cameras and there was even a drone in the air, following the progress of the train.
She swooped in front of the drone—she couldn’t help herself—and followed the tracks with her eyes, wondering if it was going to stop in Council Bluffs or continue over the river to Omaha, and wondering where she might get a ticket to ride it.
There were a few tricks to fool a conductor on a passenger train into thinking she had a ticket, although she hadn’t tried them here. Boldness got results, but stupidity didn’t; it was foalish to think that any conductor would forget that he hadn’t seen a ticket from the only pony on the train.
No open platforms or vestibules to land on, barring the footboards of the locomotive itself. She dropped back down to cab-height and flew alongside, looking in the cab at the crew, not dressed in the modern high-viz vests, but instead with overalls and striped bill caps.
The engineer waved and she waved back, then zipped ahead, climbing back up once she’d passed the front of the locomotive, racing it down the tracks. It was going slowly, letting the passengers enjoy the journey; if they’d opened the throttle all the way they’d have left her in the dust.
•••
It did cross the river, and stopped in Omaha. The passengers got out and she found out that they’d have a couple hours to look at museums and get something to eat and then go back and she should have gotten her ticket earlier if she wanted a ride, there weren’t any for sale any more.
The cars didn’t have any good hiding spots—she went in one just to see—and she imagined all the seats had been sold. Who wouldn’t want to ride behind a Big Boy?
Each car had its own volunteer conductor, and it was possible that they weren’t talking to each other, she could pretend she was supposed to be on the train. Worst case, they kicked her off.
Or she could focus on the crew. Maybe they’d let her ride in the locomotive? There wasn’t much chance of that, but it never hurt to try. Most railroads didn’t like hobos, didn’t like ponies who stowed away on the trains, but some of them were at least accepting of them.
•••
They were professional and strict and had a task to focus on. The yard they’d stopped by had a loop of track where they could turn the locomotive around for its trip back to Council Bluffs, and she could have landed on the tender and ridden on it for a while before she got kicked off, but that was a bridge she didn’t want to burn, not as long as there was still a chance to get on the train somehow.
She got yelled at for being too close to the yard, and rather than continue on anyway, she apologized and turned back, watching the locomotive from afar as it crept its way around the loop of track and through the switches.
Nobody was yelling at the drone.
•••
Once the locomotive was coupled back up to the new front of the train, the crew relaxed. Maybe it was her friendly demeanor, maybe it was that she was a pony, or maybe it was her singing Wabash Cannonball that got their attention.
To her disappointment, she wasn’t allowed up in the locomotive, although they didn’t shoo her off the front of the tender with its commanding view into the cab. They told her about the locomotive and how it had also been a static display before being rebuilt to celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad.
They were also curious about Equestrian railroads, and she admitted that the biggest locomotive that the Manehattan, Paisley & Greenock Northern owned would fit in the Big Boy’s tender with room to spare.
And then it was back to business; she was kicked off the tender so they could focus on work, and left to contemplate ways to sneak aboard the passenger cars. They were all connected, she could at least buy herself some time from alert conductors by pretending she’d gotten on the wrong car, and that was the plan she used.
Two cars back, she found a family of three who had an empty seat available and didn’t object to a pony taking up the vacant seat. Sitting in the aisle wasn't as good as a window seat, but they were fun conversationalists and her seatmate didn’t mind if she leaned over every now and then to get a closer look at the scenery. He was really interested in the hobo lifestyle, and she was torn between recommending it or warning him of the dangers of trains, especially for a rookie. She knew ponies who had been maimed or killed taking a chance they shouldn’t have.
Too soon, the journey was over, and she joined the throngs of people at the rail depot, either headed off to their cars or else taking time to visit the gift shop.
Sweetsong did tour the gift shop; it felt like she ought to since she was there. While she didn’t leave with any new purchases tucked in her saddlebags, she did overhear that the Big Boy was going to be moved later, so that it would be in position for a longer excursion tomorrow.
She’d gotten lucky enough to sneak on once, there wasn’t much chance of getting away with it again. Besides, even if she had the bits or the luck to ride it more than once, that wasn’t the point. Every day was a new day, every day should have new experiences. If the fates desired she’d cross paths with 4014 again, maybe out in Wyoming or Utah or further south—maybe the locomotive didn’t limit itself to UP rails, either. She often saw groups of locomotives from competing railroads pulling a train together.
Just the same, once she’d seen what there was to see in the gift shop and been tripped over or stumbled into by any number of train enthusiasts who were more interested in the merchandise on offer than a little pony, she flew back out to the yard to look at the locomotive one more time.
Back when it had been built, railcars had been smaller and it would have been a giant among them. Here, it wasn’t any longer or taller than an AutoMax car, and if it weren’t for the telltale plume of smoke and clouds of steam around it, it might have been able to hide in the yard.
And yet, it was still somehow regal in a way that the modern locomotives weren’t. It was out of time, it was out of place, and it was still unquestionably the king of the railroad.
•••
She stuck around after even the drone had given up interest in the Big Boy, circling around the yard on thermals and occasionally swooping down close to it, watching as it was watered and inspected and then it finally left the yard. She could have followed but instead let it go, until it was no more than a moving smoke cloud over the city and then even that was gone, too. A stack train snaked through the yard, its diesels thudding as it reached the yard limit and throttled up for the main, billowing out its own small clouds of smoke. The urge to land on it almost overtook her, and she swept down low, first passing over the tops of the containers and then as the train sped up, those same boxes were passing under her.
She peeled off, angling towards downtown, flying by the UP rail museum and the Squirrel Cage Jail she still hadn’t visited, then above the collection of railcars at the RailsWest museum, all the way down to the I-29/I-80 interchange and its collection of stores and restaurants. She was antsy, and she should be looking for a place to hop the next train, but she was actually in a flying mood.
The sky was clear, the sun was up, and the Big Boy hadn’t been gone all that long; she could climb up and maybe see its smoke trail as it raced across the plains.
She did get high enough to see another river south of town and flew off in that direction, following a rail line most of the way, until it was time to turn to the confluence. From the air, she could see that the water didn’t mix right away, leaving the river browner on the Nebraska side. There was an unoccupied island that would have made a good sleeping spot if it wasn’t so far away from the tracks.
Still, she landed and nibbled on some leaves then sat on the bank and watched the river flow by until she got hungry enough to want an actual meal, then took flight back to Council Bluffs.
•••
The first restaurant to get her attention was called Buck Snorts, and it was a sports bar. She stayed long enough to find out that they served both moose and donkey burgers, and decided to leave before somebody wondered if a pegasus burger might be worth eating.
Council Bluffs had the usual cluster of fast food restaurants and familiar sit-down franchises, and she considered flying to the Hooters she’d seen—nothing on their menu was particularly great, but the waitresses seemed to really love ponies and were always fun and attentive. But she felt like trying something different and found the HuHot Mongolian Grill, which had an almost confusing array of options, many with funny names.
The spicy veggie tacos were tempting, but the five-heat rating made her wonder how much she’d regret them—both right away and later—so she picked Krabby Kardashian instead.
It was different and tasty, and even though she shouldn’t have had dessert, the molten muffin was too tempting to pass up.
By the time she’d finished eating, she was nearly too full to fly; luckily there was a massive highway interchange with lots of bridges, a railyard, and several stores with big, flat roofs all nearby. There was also a big grain elevator with a headhouse tall enough it was practically a skyscraper, but that felt like too much effort, and she settled for the Home Depot.
•••
Getting out of town proved easy enough. Several days in Council Bluffs and Omaha had showed her plenty of likely spots and given her a good idea of the train movement. It felt like it was cheating by flying to Omaha rather than hop a train in Council Bluffs, but besides the risk of being spotted in a yard, there were enough rail lines branching in enough different directions she couldn’t be sure which way any train might go. On the west side of Omaha, Sweetsong had found a crazy bridge and rail intersection where three highways and four rail lines intersected. That would give her plenty of opportunity to find a westbound train or, barring that, a southbound one.
She was still more interested in going directly westbound; she hadn’t crossed the northwestern parts of the US yet but had heard that they were beautiful and wanted to see for herself. It would certainly be cooler than the desert; she’d made the mistake of hopping a freight that ran across New Mexico and Arizona on its way to California. The Sandia Mountains had been beautiful but once it got into the desert the heat was unbearable. She’d finally bailed out near a truck stop, spent a day there recovering, and then flown the forty miles south to the San Bernardino National Forest. At night, since it was cooler.
San Bernardino had an Amtrak station with a train to take her to Los Angeles, and it was air conditioned and had a water dispenser on it. Just in case there was more desert between her and the Pacific.
In the north, there weren’t deserts.
A day’s travel on a westbound manifest freight—riding in the open on a gondola again—brought her to Grand Island. The end of the yard had another rail line crossing on a bridge.
A slow-moving coal train was trundling across the bridge and she paid it little mind, coal trains were all coal and whether the hopper cars were loaded or not, they were dirty and oily.
When two orange BNSF locomotives appeared on the tail end, that got her interest. They were both facing forward, so they were pushing locomotives, run by remote control. The train was going slowly, she could catch up to it, and she’d never ridden in a locomotive before, not without a crew’s blessing.
Maybe it was a dumb idea, but Sweetsong was going to try. It was too enticing.
Her departure from the Grand Island yard was anything but subtle; she jumped up out of her gondola, climbing over the tank car that was in front of it, getting good clearance before angling for the BNSF tracks.
She was spotted—she heard a few workers on the ground yelling, but they hadn’t seen where she’d come from, and even if they had, they were too late.
Unless they radioed the BNSF train to watch out for her. So what if they did? They’d never see her from the lead locomotive, and if the train stopped unexpectedly, she could escape.
She caught up to it two bridges later, and almost flew down to the locomotives but there were a lot of houses, a lot of people to see an unauthorized rider. The train wasn’t going all that fast and she could already see how the tracks bent northwest and out of town; there were a whole lot of fields ahead and as long as it didn’t pick up speed too quickly, she would have an opportunity to board unobserved.
•••
Luck was with her. The train stayed slow well into farmland, and the cab door on the engineer’s side was unlocked.
Sweetsong spent the first part of her journey exploring the locomotive. There was the cockpit with the engineer’s stand on the right, with controls and screens to tell him what the locomotive was doing; on the other side was the conductor’s desk. The locomotive simulator had only shown the engineer’s side, and it hadn’t been plastered with warnings and information on just about every flat surface. She read a helpful bulletin on the back of the cab explaining how to inspect roller bearings, and wondered if the “Danger 600 Volts” sticker warned about the first aid kit mounted directly below it.
She didn’t think it did; BNSF wouldn’t electrify a first aid kit. The sticker probably warned of the electricity on the other side of the wall, which she could feel coursing around as the locomotive worked. Not as good as a proper electric locomotive, and nearly blocked out by the feel of the diesel engine.
Down in the nose was a small bathroom with a lever-operated toilet and some storage spaces, and there was even a window in the nose door where she could look out at the rump of the locomotive in front of her. The windows all carried a sign that said ‘Unoccupied DPU locomotive,’ which spoiled her view, but somebody would notice if she took them off.
Best of all was the constant feel of power, not just under her hooves but through her whole body, especially as the train finally got a highball signal and the engineer advanced the throttle.
She rushed back to the cab and sat in the engineer’s seat, studying the screens, imagining that she had her hooves on the throttles. What would that feel like, to command such power? The rail museum had tried to make it seem like a locomotive with computer screens showing scenery and a fake control stand, but they couldn’t replicate the deep rumble of the prime mover and the tantalizing tickle of electricity that suffused Sweetsong’s bones as the locomotive worked.
The window being opened in a locomotive that was supposed to be unoccupied might be noticed, but even if it was too risky to stick her head out, she wanted to feel the wind rushing through the cab, so she slid the pane back, reveling in what was so far her best ride ever.
Besides the comfy seat with fold-down armrests for humans, the locomotive itself rode better than any railcar she’d ever been on. Maybe that was the weight or maybe there was some kind of cushioning in it, she didn’t know. Maybe it was because she was at the very back and pushing, instead of riding a car in the middle. She wasn’t sure; she knew train dynamics from a personal view but not a practical one.
Small towns came and went, and way up front she could hear the horn blowing. Her locomotive also had a horn and it would be foolish to sound it, the engineer would hear it and wonder.
Unless there was another train passing by. She knew the proper horn cadence, and she’d found the button, and outside Ravenna she had her opportunity. A loaded coal train on the parallel track, a few road crossings, and her hoof hovered over the button before she made her decision and pushed it.
The horn was louder in the cab than she’d expected, and she almost stopped at one press but that was the wrong warning, that would raise suspicion.
As the final blare faded off into the dusk, she waited to hear brakes squealing but instead the train rumbled on, the crew none the wiser.
Sitting up in the locomotive gave her a commanding view. Much better than she got in a freight car, normally. As they ran along the highway, she could look down on the cars and trucks that passed by.
The land around was getting hilly, building up to the mountains she knew crossed the western United States. She'd have to get on a different train to take her there; coal trains ran to and from the mines to coal-fired power plants. When they stopped to change crews and service the locomotives, she’d have to bail out and then maybe she could get her spot back or maybe not. Hiding in a railcar while the train got serviced was risky; hiding in a locomotive was foolhardy. Surely the crew that maintained them would look inside to make sure nothing had gone wrong.
That was a problem for later. For now, she had a comfy seat and a view down the length of the train—the nose of her locomotive was just high enough she could see over the tops of the empty coal cars.
•••
They stopped just past Merna, waiting for a grain train to leave a big loop of track by a grain elevator. In the West where it was flat and land was cheap, there were lots of loops for trains to load and then pull back on the mainline.
Grainers had plenty of hiding places, and that train was a possibility if it was still in the next yard when her train arrived. It wouldn’t be that far ahead. Plus, she knew that the train was loaded and she knew that grain was exported overseas from ports on the West Coast; she could potentially get on that train and ride it all the way to the Pacific.
She’d just play it by ear, as she always did.
Sometimes she’d pick a car with her best guess to where it might be going. She’d learned how to tell loaded cars from empties by how they sat on their springs, although that wasn’t always easy to spot if she was boarding a train that was already moving, especially if she approached it from the air. And she still had a lot to learn about how railroads operated, and what cars would go where; these cars could ultimately be routed back to the General Mills plant she’d passed or the big ADM complex in Clinton.
The land was getting hillier, and there were large portions that were left to tasty-looking wild pasture grasses. Homes and traffic on the parallel road got sparser and sparser.
The train left the highway behind, then ran up on an embankment and over the road and a small river. The Dismal River, according to the sign on the highway bridge. A moment later, they roared past a small, forgettable town, crossed another river, and then rejoined the highway.
There was a desolate sort of beauty to Nebraska, and Sweetsong started to feel the urge to fly out of the locomotive, to land in the inviting pasture grasses, to gallop up the small hills and be princess of the world.
And if she’d been riding in an open car, maybe she would have. There was a stream, there were plentiful grasses; she could fly along the rail line or trot along it.
But she could also sit in the chair and watch the few gauges that were powered up, feel the thunder of the locomotive, watch down the length of the train as it rushed for another load of coal to feed the hungry furnaces back East.
•••
Suddenly, they were back out of the desolation and the train was slowing. Tracks full of coal cars bracketed her train, and she saw railroad employees between the trains, their high-viz vests also stained with coal dust, so she slid the cab window back shut, then they were past them and the train was still slowing down.
The good vision the cab provided out its windows was a boon. She could see a yard ahead, and for the moment there weren’t any trains approaching, and nothing but fields on either side. Now was the time to take her leave.
Out the nose door was the quickest way, and a human would have climbed down the steps but she didn’t have to.
For a moment, she fought for equilibrium as the sideways momentum and the slipstream off the train fought her, then she was climbing away from the train, away from the locomotive she’d called home for this leg of her journey.
Once she was clear of the tracks and well over a wheat field, she took stock of her situation. A nearby water tower helpfully informed her that she’d found Alliance, and she got more altitude to get a better idea of the lay of the land.
Besides the yard she’d just passed, there were two more. Tracks went out to the northwest and southwest, both reasonable options for leaving town, and there were a lot of tracks and therefore a lot of trains.
A wye at the end of the first yard drew her attention; trains went through it slowly. If the center had been trees or even tall grass, it might have been a good place to find a ride; unfortunately, it was nothing but a wide expanse of gravel. There was a salvage yard off the western leg, but that still left her with some ground to cover if she found a suitable railcar.
Off the south leg, there was a bridge, and that was her best shot. Right before the second yard, which could be a blessing or a curse. Trains usually went through yards slow, but there were a lot of people who might see her boarding.
Sweetsong climbed higher, getting an idea of the more distant landscape. Both of the directions the tracks went followed a highway, although neither had a convenient bridge. To the north another loop of track around a grain elevator was a possibility, trains would take that curve slowly, both because of the tight radius and because they’d be loading grain.
That would be a problem for the morning. For now, she had to decide if she wanted to sleep in the rough again or in an actual hotel.
•••
Actual hotel won out in the end. She still had more than enough bits left from Chicago, Clinton, and Council Bluffs, and there was an Econo Lodge next to a coffee shop and a McDonald’s that was cheap.
It wasn’t much of a hotel room but it was good enough.
It felt weird to not have the bed rumbling under her, to not be swaying ever so gently on the rails. The locomotive had had a refrigerator in it with bottled water, and was that something that got checked and refilled every time the train stopped, or didn’t they bother with a DPU? Maybe she could have stayed hidden in it, maybe if she had she’d be on her way again and not in a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Alliance.
Or maybe she would have been caught and led off the train in hobbles, her picture telegraphed up and down the line so the bulls would know who to watch out for.
The television had plenty of channels and none of them were of any interest to her. Instead, she unloaded her saddlebags and took inventory, refilled her water bottle from the sink, and then stuffed everything back in.
She considered unfolding her guitar, but the desolation of Nebraska felt more a cappella, so she sang without it as the sun set and the light faded.
•••
Morning brought a McMuffin and two burritos for later. Several railroaders waited in line for their food, and she listened with interest to their radios. Neither of them tried to confront her which meant that despite her sloppy gondola dismount in Grand Island, nobody was looking for her.
They were just getting into their truck when she flew out of the store with her food sack in her mouth. It was a pickup with hi-rail wheels and a collection of tools in the bed, and as she gained altitude she wondered if she could hitch a ride on it. Every now and then she’d see one actually on the tracks, and while it wasn’t a train it went on the rails and that kind of counted. With the big rear window, though, there really wasn’t any place to hide, and as far as she knew the trucks didn’t go all that far on the tracks anyway.
She’d actually gotten to see one mount the rails once. She’d been sitting in a tree in Alabama waiting for a train to come along, and it had driven up onto the tracks and she started paying attention to it because she’d already learned that people did stupid things at railroad crossings.
It turned parallel to the rails, dropped down its rail wheels, and then took off down the tracks, passing below her before going around a curve and being lost to sight. Later on, she found out that sometimes they would inspect the tracks before a train went over, especially after storms. There had been a big storm, and she’d given up on the idea of finding a train and flown off to a nearby farm and sheltered in a half-collapsed barn until the storm passed.
Sweetsong circled around to watch what the truck was doing—if it was like when she’d been in Alabama, there would be no trains until the truck gave the all-clear. It didn’t try to get on the tracks; instead, it went off in the direction of the rail yard.
She flew southwest to the highway overpass she’d spotted earlier and after checking in both directions for trains and rail bulls, she settled on top of a pier and opened up her food sack.
She sacrificed some of a burrito to appease the pigeons, and then waited. There were lots of tracks and lots of trains to choose from, and one would be along that she liked sooner or later.
By noon, one still hadn’t arrived. She offered the rest of the first burrito to the pigeons, then flew back to the Econo Lodge—there was an Italian restaurant in the parking lot of the hotel that looked good.
They had a lasagna pizza, which was both confusing and intriguing. Humans were very experimental with food, she’d discovered, and especially with pizza. Nobody even seemed to agree on what the right style of pizza was, although every pizzeria she went to said theirs was the right style. It was always fun to experiment, and pizzas always left her with some food for later.
•••
Sweetsong hid under the 10th Street Bridge, the best place she’d found to hop a northwest-bound train. It was clear of the huge yards, and the only cover she was likely to get during the daytime—outside of town, there was nothing but fields and scrubby little bushes that barely provided any cover at all. The Southeast was best for hiding alongside tracks; the kudzu came up so close she could practically touch a train without being seen.
It wasn’t so far out of town that the trains would be moving quickly, at least that was the hope. And the body of the train would block any view from the railyard, keeping her ahead of the bulls yet again.
She stuck her head below the girders, checking up and down the line, watching a northbound train as it crawled through the wye. Lots of grain cars, lots of places to hide, and there wasn’t much chance of anybody looking up and seeing her.
The train crew might, so she ducked back under the girder and centered herself on the concrete pier until the locomotives thudded past, then stuck her head back down, watching and waiting.
It was picking up speed, accelerating into the plains, and as the first half of the train whisked by with no good car in sight, she started to consider second options, until she found a gondola full of scrap steel right in front of a grain car. The train speed was higher than she liked, but the gondola would give her more maneuvering room, and she dropped down as it went beneath, letting the grain car come to her, tucking her wings in around the steel supports as she dropped along the slope sheet.
Up ahead the tracks paralleled a road, she’d spotted that as she looked down the tracks, so she crouched down on the floor of the car, using her tail to brush a clear spot. Not as good a view as the locomotive, but the wind was rushing over her and that was the best way to travel.
The tracks were on a slight abutment, high enough that passing cars wouldn’t be able to see her if she kept low, so she unrolled her army blanket and spread it on the floor, choosing the front of the grainer to give any oncoming locomotive the least possible amount of time to spot her.
Sweetsong watched the tops of semi-trucks on the parallel road, and beyond them mostly circular fields with their giant irrigation booms. Humans couldn’t control the rain they got and had to resort to those, and she sometimes wondered if she could make bits as a rainmaker.
That was a lot of work, though; it was much better to ride the rails as a vagrant, going where she wanted and when she wanted and answering to nobody and nopony.
She dug the pizza box out of her saddlebags, opened it up and took out a slice while she watched rural Nebraska pass by.
Destination Unknown Wind River Canyon Admiral Biscuit
She woke in the middle of the night, briefly disoriented. The train was moving slowly across switches and she almost stuck her head up before remembering that was a bad idea. There was the flash of lights from a highway crossing and then the train went back into the night, bound for she didn’t know where.
She didn’t care where. At a guess, she was still going north or west, and that was good enough.
Stars spread out above her and she watched them until the train lulled her back to sleep.
•••
In the morning, her train was stopped in a yard. It was open and dry, what little vegetation she could see was scrubby and brown, and she began to wonder if she’d accidentally gotten on a train that was going to cross the desert again.
It wasn’t hot, though.
She was on a middle track, railcars on both sides largely obscuring the view. Sweetsong swiveled her ears and didn’t hear anybody nearby, so she stuck her head over the side sill and looked towards the front of her train. The locomotives were still there, and if she leaned her ear to the reservoir tank, she could faintly hear the thump of the air compressor.
Usually, they’d cut the locomotives off if the train was going to be broken up. Older, smaller locomotives moved cuts of cars in the yard, while the big new ones hauled the trains back and forth on the mainline.
Unless she were on a short line, then it was anypony’s guess what they’d have for equipment. Those wouldn’t take her as far, but the crews were less wary about riders, and some of them went really interesting places that the big trains didn’t go.
She’d gotten caught on a short line once; back before she was as smart about keeping her saddlebags on whenever she might be seen. Riding on the end of a grain car away from the locomotives, and she had crouched down and hidden herself as the rest of the train was cut away, but she hadn’t expected them to try and kick the cars into a facing siding, nor had she expected the conductor to climb up on the ladder to ride the car.
They’d locked eyes and she would have flown off but her saddlebags were there and her blanket was unrolled and she didn’t want to lose either, so she gave him an apologetic shrug and he pointed off the train. Then he lifted his radio up and told the engineer that the brake wheel was stiff and it would be a moment.
That was good enough for her, so she rolled up her blanket and strapped on her saddlebag and then flew off to a nearby tree—there wasn’t any sense in going further, not until she got a good idea of the situation.
It turned out that the conductor was friendly and invited her to ride in the locomotive for most of the rest of the run. He let her sit in his seat, even. It wasn’t as comfortable as the seat in the DPU she’d ridden to Alliance, but it was still a lot of fun. She got to chat with them about the finer points of running a railroad and a few things to watch out for, and in turn she told them about some of the places she’d been and some of the trains she’d ridden.
The engineer had been with the railroad since the locomotives were yellow and had names. Now they were blue and didn’t have names anymore, which she thought was a shame.
Sometimes she’d send them a postcard. It was about time to do that again. She wanted to wait until she was in the mountains, though. She hadn’t sent them one from the Rockies yet.
•••
Her train left the yard just before noon. She ducked down against the slope sheet and got the rest of her pizza out of her saddlebag—it was soggy, but she ate it anyway.
The town didn’t extend far beyond the rail yard; the tracks crossed under a state highway and all of a sudden there was practically nothing but open scrubland. The train passed an airport and a collection of fields, and then it headed into the high plains.
The terrain got ruggeder and ruggeder as they climbed towards the Continental Divide. She didn’t know how far away it was, how long they’d be in foothills or mountainous terrain. The tracks only occasionally followed roads, coming alongside now and then, before leaving them behind. She rarely saw cars on the road, and got bolder, standing up on her platform so she could see the scenery better.
They were on single track, so there wouldn’t be any opposing trains except on passing sidings. And there wasn’t anybody else out here. A few small towns that flashed by in a moment, occasional houses and farms, and an abandoned rail yard, its only remnants an empty passing track and one leg of the wye still leading off into the scrub brush.
Sometimes settlements naturally grew up around railroads, and she knew that some of those towns had died off again; the train passed through a couple where there were only a few buildings and a faded sign with the town’s name printed on it. Natrona, Arminto . . . where had the people who lived there gone? Had they moved to the cities, or back into the wild, away from the trains and the roads?
She could see diverging tracks and buildings ahead, so she ducked back into the safety of the car, her shape broken up by the air reservoir and its plumbing. To the north, a collection of mobile homes in dirt lots, then a grain elevator with a long string of grainers lined up.
Then it was gone, and the tracks crossed under a road important enough to warrant an overpass, then bent north.
Sweetsong caught a glimpse of an abandoned line that branched off, and the ground was flat enough she could follow it with her eyes until it ran into a lake.
She knew about the big reservoirs out West, but thought that all of them were built where the terrain was more mountainous; here she could only see distant mesas in the direction of the lake, although there were rocky hills to the north.
Maybe it was big and shallow, or maybe an earthquake had made it. Or maybe it had been a river cutting through the land, like the Grand Canyon. That was a place she wanted to visit sometime, maybe in the autumn when the train ride out would be cooler.
Soon enough, they were running parallel to the shore, occasionally right on the edge or even on a causeway over a small bay, other times further inland. The land alongside the train was rapidly rising up, faster than she had expected.
She hadn’t been anticipating a tunnel, but all of a sudden it was dark and she jerked back, then huddled against the slope sheet of the grain car. Some tunnels were long and she wasn’t ready for that.
The sound of the train was very different in the enclosed space, echoing and weird. Everything was louder and she couldn’t tell where sounds were coming from; she could faintly make out the tunnel walls rushing by and then they were gone, too, swallowed in the darkness.
She couldn’t tell if the train was speeding up or slowing down or keeping its pace. Logically, she imagined that it was keeping pace, that the train crew wouldn’t want to stop in the tunnel if they could avoid it. But she was dozens of cars behind the locomotives; if they had to stop, the tail of the train might still be in the tunnel and then what would she do? There was barely any clearance on the side of the train, she knew that. Walking out would mean getting killed by a freight car, one she’d never see coming.
What if the train broke?
•••
It was only a couple minutes before the train popped out the other side, and she caught sight of a dam then they crossed over the river on a nice, open bridge and followed along on the west bank.
The terrain had changed to rocky outcroppings and falls of gravel leading towards the river, with scrubby bushes and grass anywhere that stayed still long enough for it to put roots down. Taller trees lived near the river, if there was a spot of land flat enough for them.
She looked ahead, and this time was prepared when the train went through a shorter tunnel, then another short pair, crossing through the jutting rocks that led down into the river. On the other side, a highway curved along, also following the watercourse. It, too, had to pass through tunnels.
The river was beautiful, and she spent as much time watching it as she did the terrain around her. Sometimes the trains went places the roads didn’t, but here people driving on the highway got the same view she did, just from the other side.
Much of the right-of-way had been eked out of what little land they had to work with, and the rocky walls to the west were almost close enough for her to touch . . . and some places, they were. When the rocks came in on both sides of the tracks, that usually meant another short tunnel, a place where the rocks went right down to the water and couldn’t be cut through.
Even without leaning out too far, the train went around enough bends she could see the cars in front of her and behind her, and they were moving slow enough that if she’d wanted to, she could have flown off the train and over the river.
It was tempting, but if she left the train would she actually be able to catch it again? Better to take in the scenery from her comfortable platform.
The west was in shadow, and chillier than the daylight implied. When Sweetsong rummaged in her saddlebags for some granola bars to snack on, she also unrolled her army blanket and draped it across her back.
They ran alongside along the river for a while, until the land had flattened out, then went through some fields and crossed over it again, and then a second time before coming up on a town. The highway was close enough to the town she could read the signs put up for cars: Thermopolis. It was the biggest town she’d seen since the train left the yard in the morning, and it had restaurants and hot springs, and she almost bailed off her train, but thought if she did, she might not be getting on another until tomorrow.
Now they were back in more familiar-looking farm country, fertile land in the floodplain of the river they ran alongside. The train picked up speed, now that it wasn’t running alongside the edge of rock outcroppings, and up ahead she saw a passing track with a southbound train waiting. She crouched back in the car until they were past the locomotives, then got back to her hooves.
The highway came and went, following its own course, and she had her head out the side of the car as it bent towards them again, her eyes on an oversized load making its way along the highway.
It was bracketed by a pair of minivans, and carrying a train-sized load. What it was, she couldn't tell; some sort of cylinder with attachments for pipes all over it.
Eventually, the train started to slow down, and she rolled up her army blanket and tied it to her saddlebags, then crouched down and waited, just in case they were arriving at a yard.
•••
They were on the outside track of the yard, and she jumped off the train as soon as she had cover.
Just down the street was a restaurant called The Tipsy Cow, and her stomach was growling at her—the granola bars hadn’t been enough.
Bars were usually fast, and had okay food for cheap. There was a chance she could get back on the same train and get pulled out during the night—she hadn’t gotten that lucky yet, but there was always a first time.
Even though it wasn’t good for her, she had a craving for fried food, so she ordered fried pickles, pizza bites, and mean beans, all to go, and decided to have a cider while she waited. They had Angry Orchard, which she’d tried before and decided was okay.
On an empty stomach, it hit right away, and now she was light-headed and hungry. Real smart, Sweetsong, you should have known that would happen.
Tempting though it was to devour her food as soon as the Styrofoam cases were placed in front of her, she didn’t. She trotted towards the yard, then took flight, the smell of the food taunting her nose. The train was moving again, slowly, but it was moving.
She could see the yard office and a warehouse and climbed higher as she curved north. A road paralleled the yard, and there was a bridge a mile ahead. Trains sometimes accelerated deceptively quick; she’d never make it that far before the train was either gone or too fast to board.
Sweetsong had her food, a rail yard at her disposal, and a town that would surely offer some kind of sleeping space, but now it was a race. She angled for just beyond the throat of the yard; there was a small junkyard along the frontage road and no rail bulls in sight, nor any other railroad employees.
Matching speed was essential; she got too far forward and had to slow down and let the train come to her, balance out some speed gain on the dive and some speed loss on the turn, and then she darted between her grainer and the trailing grainer. Instead of landing on her car, she let the rearward car come to her, dropping down to its flooring—carefully, this one was what she’d heard was called a suicide grainer. Instead of a nice floor to lie on, it only had narrow support beams, and a misstep would drop her onto the turning axle, or worse, in front of the wheels.
She barely touched hoof to its beams before crossing back to her car, a short, easy flight with an easy push-off, and as soon as Greybull disappeared behind her, she tore into her sack of food.
Pizza bites were a form of pizza she’d never had before, fried pizza raviolis with sauce and cheese and almost certainly mystery meat pretending to be pepperoni. Or maybe it was just meat flavoring; she’d seen that grocery stores sold smoke flavoring so you could make your food seem like it was properly prepared even when it wasn’t.
On a stomach that was empty save a bottle of Angry Orchard, they were pure bliss, and she scarfed half the package before taking her time to properly enjoy the rest.
Beans were good cold, too, so she left the mean beans for the morning, as well as half the container of pickles, and settled down on the end sill and watched Wyoming go by.
Destination Unknown Big Sky Country Admiral Biscuit
It was still dark when the train arrived in a yard and got broken up. She was vaguely aware of the locomotives being cut off, then the jerkiness as blocks of cars were cut off and moved. This was not the morning wake-up she’d expected; usually trains sat in the yard for a while before they got switched.
Sweetsong stayed put until she was fully awake, then stuck her head over the side to see what was around. She didn’t have the best hiding spot, but unless car inspectors actually climbed the ladder on her car, they wouldn’t see her.
Who knew how long she’d be in the yard, though? Grain could go a long time before it went bad; her block of cars might not be a priority. It was dark, and nighttime was the best time to leave the train unobserved. They couldn’t catch her, but if they didn’t even know she was there, they wouldn’t be wary, and it would be easier to get another train.
She was on her hooves when the car jolted, and she held her position as the slack got taken out, then ducked down as her block of cars cleared a cut on a parallel track.
A few moments later, she got shoved back through another switch, next to a long string of tank cars.
Once the switching locomotive had dropped off the cut of cars, she jumped off the grainer and darted under the tank cars, which wasn’t really a safe place to be, but it would give her a chance to see if anything was coming on the next track.
There wasn’t, so she took off, getting above the reach of the yard lights as fast as she could, then scanned around to find the best place she could spend the rest of the night.
Just across the road was a Walmart, with a big, flat roof, a perfect spot to sleep. People never went up on the roofs of buildings at night, and there was usually a parapet to hide her from anybody looking up.
She just had to be careful; on rainy days the roofs often flooded. She didn’t know why; they had drain pipes and scuppers. That was also a potential danger in some railcars; mostly they weren’t sealed up on the bottom all that well, but water could pool in places and make a car untenable.
•••
Laurel, Montana had an old Northern Pacific caboose by the railyard, and a big park near the center of town that was popular with retirees and dog-walkers in the morning and school children in the afternoon. There was even a pool that was open to the public, although according to the lifeguard, the public didn’t include ponies.
She wasn’t offended; human pools were chemically and had filters that clogged if they got hair or fur in them. Public fountains were much better to bathe in; she could get herself rinsed off before anybody kicked her out.
Adults had more money to give, but the kids were more enthusiastic to see her and talk to her and pet her and listen to her sing, and while they didn’t have enough trees to make a proper obstacle course, she wasn’t that great an acrobatic flier anyway. A simple course was better and safer.
An older couple offered to treat her to dinner at the Pelican Cafe, which had a delicious rainbow trout despite being far from any proper lakes. The deer heads mounted on the walls were creepy, even though she knew that humans hunted them with cars and guns. She didn’t feel the need to keep a trophy of the fish she’d caught for dinner, or the prairie grasses she’d snacked on, or the box that a pizza came in.
Sweetsong could have spent the night in town; the old couple offered to put her up at their house and there were also hotels, but she wanted to get back on the rails again, and needed to scout out a route and a likely train while it was still light.
Tracks went north, east, and west; west was where she wanted to go. There was a highway bridge over the tracks, which was an option. As she got close, she found that there was another railyard further along, and even better there was a long train in the yard being fueled from a tanker truck.
At first, it looked like it was facing the wrong direction, but as she flew over looking for a car she could ride on the other tracks, she realized that it had a pushing locomotive at the rear and two pulling locomotives at the front, and it was actually facing the correct way.
It was a tank train, and she couldn’t ride a tank car. But it had a couple other cars in it that she could, a single beat-up hopper between the front locomotives and the tank cars, and even better, another one at the rear.
She knew that those were supposed to keep the crew safe from the tank cars, as if one hopper would do much if the train derailed and caught fire. But that was the rule, and it would work to her advantage. At a guess, they’d put one on each end so no matter which way the train got pulled, it would be protected.
•••
A tree just on the other side of the yard made for a decent perch, a place to wait until the fuel truck rolled up its hoses and drove off. Once it was clear, she crossed the tracks and climbed into the hopper. This one had a hole and a void space under the slope sheet where she could hide, and once the train got moving she had every intention of seeing if she could get into the locomotive. It had worked once, and it might work again.
•••
She wasn’t expecting the crew to board the locomotive at her end; trains were supposed to have more locomotives in the front.
She could abandon the train, or else see where it was going.
Maybe they were moving it into the yard, maybe they’d just fueled it here because there wasn’t enough room to do it on the other tracks.
Sweetsong could barely see from her hiding spot, and she didn’t dare poke her head out. They were moving slowly, crossing over switches, and she could tell by the sun that they were heading southeast. Back where she’d come from.
I knew a tank train was a bad idea. She’d gotten greedy, thinking she was going to get to ride in another locomotive, and now she was going to go back to Alliance—she was too close to the locomotive to bail out.
That wasn’t the worst fate; it wasn’t like it mattered when she got to the West Coast. Or where she arrived, for that matter. Maybe this time she’d hop off in Thermopolis and explore the hot springs.
The train crossed a now-familiar truss bridge and started slowing down, eventually coming to a stop on the other side of the river. She could hear the clanging of a crossing bell, and then heard a door slam—someone had seen her and reported her.
There wasn’t going to be a way to gracefully exit; she’d have to wait until they told her to come out and then fly off. If they were south of town, it was remote enough that she could get away from roads, and then formulate a plan from there. Gain some altitude and follow the rail lines from the sky, find a place where trains slowed down and she could get on another.
Most important was being sure she had all her things. She hadn’t taken off her saddlebags or rolled out her army blanket, since she’d been planning on boarding the locomotive.
Much to her surprise, nobody climbed up on the car and ordered her out. Instead, she heard the doors slam and the vehicle drive off, and then after a few minutes, the train started back up, this time going in the opposite direction. Back the way she wanted to go.
Back across the bridge, and this time it turned the other way, heading northeast, into the big railyard.
More switches and crossovers later, the train finally curved around another wye and started heading northward.
The tracks were in a cut, which gave her good cover, and they were still moving slow. She climbed out of her hiding spot and peered down the length of the locomotive’s walkway. Taped across the window to the cab door was a sign which said “Unoccupied DPU locomotive,” just like on the last one she’d ridden.
Sweetsong hopped off the end of the grain car, taking a brief flight to the locomotive’s walkway, then went by hoof up to the door and tried the handle.
They’d locked the door, but they forgot to close the window all the way, and she flew alongside and pried it the rest of the way open then closed it behind herself.
That was a good thing to remember; crews might often leave windows unlocked since there was no way to get to them without flying. Even if it was slid shut it might not be latched.
•••
Since she was on the end of the train, she didn’t have to look at cars in front of her. She could look through the big cab windows at the land as it passed behind.
There was only one track, so there was practically no chance of being seen. Especially after she draped the army blanket around her, covering her pink fur with the dull olive cloth.
The tracks ran straight for a while and then they started curving to avoid terrain. After a weird S-curve, the train went into a tunnel. This time she had some warning it was coming; she saw it in the locomotive’s rearview mirror.
It didn’t feel as claustrophobic inside the cab. She could see the light from the portal in front of her, and the cab itself dulled the echoing, plus the reassuring sounds and vibrations of the locomotive and the speedometer showing that they were still moving.
She also could see light in the rearview mirror as the locomotive got close to the tunnel mouth, and then they were back out in the open and she watched the tunnel portal shrink off in the distance, imagining how the train crews would see it the other way.
Of course, they had headlights to help them see. Her locomotive did, too, but they were turned off and it would be foolhardy to switch them on.
A few miles later, they passed a mixed freight waiting on a siding. He was going south, and she watched the switch behind her change, the signal turn green, and heard the other locomotive throttle up. Since the mainline was, for now, running arrow-straight, she saw it cross over onto her track as it faded in the distance.
It occurred to her as she saw the flashing red light on the end of that train that its locomotives had rearview mirrors just like hers, and if the crew had been watching them as she went by, they might have seen her sitting up in the cab. She knew that passing trains were supposed to watch each other and report any defective equipment or riders, and that she’d be wiser to just lie down on the seat or sit on the cab floor. That wasn’t fun, though; it was better to have a view of the world going by.
They were running alongside a road, keeping pace with traffic. Then they passed through a small town and ran beside a cut of coal hoppers and after crossing a small lake, they began diverging from the road.
Another couple curves, a short tunnel, pastures full of cows who ignored the train as it went by. A few roads crossed over the tracks, but it was mostly empty land, big skies above and lush prairie below.
If she ever wanted to settle down, this was where she’d live.
They crossed another river on a deck bridge and then a road and then they were back in the open plains. She slid the locomotive window open and reveled in the blast of air and the smell of all the grass.
•••
They got sidelined just outside a small town. Sweetsong could see a distant water tower but couldn’t read it.
There was a wheat field right next to the tracks, and she had to fight the urge to just fly out of the locomotive and snack on some.
After a half hour of waiting, she gave into temptation. No crew were walking alongside the train, and she could see that the switch to her track had been changed back, which meant another train was coming through and they wouldn’t be going anywhere until it did.
She buckled on her saddlebags because it would be dumb to leave them in the cab, then checked one more time to make sure no crew were coming, checked to make sure that the cab door was unlocked and that the window was unlatched, then she hopped out onto the walkway and glided off between the uprights for the handrails, over the little ditch to the south of the tracks, and she was in the pasture.
Some ponies didn’t like eating food in the wild, as if it was significantly different than what they could buy at the market. Sweetsong liked the variety, and the ability to fend for herself. She didn’t need markets or grocery stores or pizza restaurants to survive, she could live off the land and sleep in the rough and let trains take her wherever she wanted to go. She didn’t have to work if she didn’t feel like it, she was a proper nomad like the pegasi of old, only owning what she could carry on her back.
She sniffed around the grass, finding the tastiest stalks and leaves, ripe but not yet dried by the sun, and then she reached under her belly and unfastened her saddlebags, slid them off her rump, and then started rolling in the prairie grass, stretching out her back in a way she couldn’t on a train.
An oncoming train blew its horn at a distant crossing, surely the one they were waiting for. She’d seen the process when the other train had been waiting for hers; she had time. Still on her back, Sweetsong stretched out her wings and pushed against the ground, holding them for a moment before tucking them back in and rolling onto her belly. Another mouthful of grass, then she stood up, still chewing, and trotted back over to her saddlebags.
She heard the train blast its horn again, practically beside her, and watched a foolish pickup truck race it to the crossing, barely clearing the plow on the front of the locomotive. The engineer blasted his horn in anger, and she wondered if he was going to radio the crew of her train and explain his near-miss.
Her locomotive would have a radio in it, and she could turn it on and listen to the trains talking.
She grabbed her saddlebags in her mouth as her train started moving, took a short flight to the walkway, let herself back into the cab, and settled back down on the conductor’s seat.
•••
After it left town, the tracks curved away from the road and followed their own path through fields and pastures. Sweetsong raided the mini-fridge in the nose of the locomotive for a bottle of water.
As the terrain undulated, the train skirted the edges of rocky outcroppings, ran through cuts and across fills and a few short tunnels when there wasn’t a way around. Sometimes they came along a road, then they’d veer off on their own course again.
The few towns the train passed were tiny, gone in an instant. A couple intersections and a small cluster of buildings at most. Beyond that, she didn’t see the normal collection of distant houses and barns across the open land.
Sweetsong rummaged through the cab, exploring. Warning stickers and labels all over the back of the cab; above the windshield the locomotive model and weight—four hundred sixteen thousand pounds. Next to that, the reporting marks, wheel diameters, warning lights, the road number again, safety tags for the conductor or engineer to mark broken or dangerous equipment. She found the radio and turned it on.
There was a lot of sameness to the scenery, almost as if she wasn’t going anywhere at all.
Montana was a big state, and it would take a while to cross it, especially since the train wasn’t going in a straight line. Then came Idaho and Washington or Oregon, depending on where she crossed, and then the Pacific.
The train radio helped; even if train crews weren’t chatty and some of the voices were simulacra that counted wheels as the train went by, every message perked her ears. She didn’t know which train hers was: they’d identify themselves by the numbers on the lead locomotive and she hadn’t thought to fly down and read those when she’d been scouting out the train.
•••
It was risky, but they were in the middle of nowhere, so she opened the nose door and stepped out onto the walkway, letting the wind blow over her, watching the ties flash by. Passenger trains didn’t have any outside platforms and the windows didn’t open.
They crossed a short bridge, and she could look between the ties to the creek below. It was disorienting and made her dizzy, but she did it anyway, then put her hooves back up on the handrail.
It was almost like standing on the fantail of a ship, watching its wake through the choppy sea. The undulating waves of grains and grasses, the rails narrowing down to a point behind her, and the wide open sky.
Riding in the locomotive was comfortable, but as the miles rolled by Sweetsong decided that on a day like today, she’d rather be out in the open, not in the confines of a cab. Even if it had comfy seats and bottled water and a flush toilet.
•••
She had to get back inside as they approached a road; it wouldn’t do to have people in cars see her and tell the crew that they had a stowaway aboard their locomotive.
•••
Another small town with abandoned stock pens and a decaying grain elevator, then they ran parallel to a state road, finally turning north and away from it, and eventually punching through a short tunnel.
Sweetsong reasoned that they’d have no way of knowing if she flipped the headlight switch on, so she did, getting a proper look at the inside of a tunnel for the first time. The walls were unfinished, roughly blasted through the stone, and then they were out in the open again and she turned the headlight back off.
She watched a low-flying airplane curve out over the prairie and then turn on its landing lights as it lined up with a nearby airport, which meant that they were getting close to a sizable town.
It was still light out, and paradoxically the locomotive would be more difficult to escape from than an ordinary railcar. Those usually weren’t inspected closely, but if the train stopped to change crews or be serviced, they would surely check the pushing locomotive to be sure everything was working. In theory, she could hide in the toilet cubicle, they probably wouldn’t check that, but she didn’t feel like spending however long it took for the train to get moving again hidden with no real escape route.
Of course, the train might not stop at all, might just go all the way through this town, too. The smart thing to do was be ready to bail out, but stay aboard as long as the train kept up speed. It would take it a mile or more to stop, which would give her plenty of opportunity to disembark.
•••
She hadn’t counted on it not slowing down appreciably until she was well into the city proper, a river on one side but houses and businesses and factories on the other, lots of people around who might see her.
Luckily, a highway overpass gave her some cover, and she jumped off the train alongside a public park.
She quickly gained enough altitude to spot where her train was going, across a long plate girder bridge and then into a wide open yard on the other side.
It did stop in the yard, so she’d made the right choice to leave it behind.
There were two main yards back-to-back and a third small one just beyond that didn’t seem to be used for much. Maybe it was extra overflow if there were too many trains, or maybe it was left over. A lot of railyards had downsized. This one still had a turntable but no roundhouse.
She flew over the yard and got a good look at the trains that looked ready to depart. None of the open gondolas had clear floors, but there was a collection of grain cars that were promising, including a pink one that nearly matched her coat. She could be more out in the open on that one and nopony would notice her.
•••
Beyond the yards, the highway crossed over the tracks on a pair of concrete overpasses, which gave her good cover, at least until the train approached. There was a frontage road on one side, so she picked the abutment furthest away and waited.
•••
The thunder of the accelerating locomotives shook the bridge, and then they were past. She’d counted the cars, although she hadn’t anticipated the train picking up speed as fast as it did.
Getting through the support bars and ladder were tricky, but she’d practiced plenty of times and stuck the landing, settling into the end platform.
She held a hoof up to the side slope, and sure enough the faded pink of the car nearly matched her coat.
•••
They followed the highway and then it curved off and they paralleled a winding river instead, crossing it occasionally to keep in favorable terrain.
They didn’t make it far before they had to stop; she wound up just past the center of town. A track to the west led off to a grain elevator with a loop of track, and she watched the train there slowly make its way around as the cars were loaded.
The horn of the other train gave her some warning before it rocketed through town, rocking her grain car, and then they were moving again, fields and pastures, alongside the highway and then they drifted away and all of a sudden the land dropped away and the train crossed a river valley on a long deck bridge.
They passed a small town, crossed over another tall deck bridge over another creek, found the interstate and then lost it again, running instead in a dry wash.
They got sided out again in Conrad, and this time her train picked up a fresh cut of cars from the grain elevator there. They’d been set out in front of a tractor dealership, and she hadn’t been anticipating it.
The conductor wore a bright yellow safety vest, and his back was to her as the car rolled past.
She ducked down against the slope sheet, fitting herself in around the air piping and brake levers. Matching the grainer’s color might prevent casual viewers from seeing her, but surely the conductor would know what belonged on a railcar and what didn’t.
•••
It seemed like forever before they got moving again. She kept her head down, kept to her hiding spot. She could hear the conductor’s boots crunching over the ballast and his radio talking as he came by again; she was probably safe then but didn’t dig herself out of her spot until the train started to move again, until it got back on the single track out of town.
Not far out of town, the tracks curved west, then they slowed down, passed through a switch, and turned to the east, heading through some low, flat land between two ridges.
•••
Another small town brought more grain cars to be added, and she hid once again, then they were back out in the open with practically no signs of civilization.
Sweetsong wondered if she’d picked the wrong train, if she’d gotten on one that would be stopping at every grain elevator on its way to pick up more cars, even though it had already seemed like a long train.
It did not, because there were no more grain elevators, just open valley and open skies.
•••
One of the challenges in the plains was a lack of cover. Her train got routed through the yard ladder and then unceremoniously left on a long yard track.
She could easily be seen underneath the bellies of tank cars if she disembarked, there was an access road to the north and a busy highway to the south.
Across the access road was her best bet. She had to cross several tracks, which might have moving trains and might have crew members walking along, looking for railcars. She’d have to be both fast and careful.
•••
Tank cars didn’t provide much concealment, but they were easy to walk under. One track over, a centerbeam flatbed provided her with at least a slight cover—she was off the ground and not as easily spotted.
One more track to cross, then the road, and there was a highway overpass ahead which might provide some cover. The trains on both tracks flanking her didn’t have any tank cars between her and the bridge, so she wouldn’t be too obvious.
Sweetsong galloped the distance, her hooves occasionally skidding on a loose piece of gravel ballast, and as she got close, she took flight, crowded in the narrow confines between the cars.
Up and over, there’d be traffic on the bridges so she banked sharply and buttonhooked north, climbing just above the parapet of the bridge before remembering that not only would there be plenty of cars to see her impromptu Wonderbolts show, but it was going to be anything but subtle.
It was too late to stop, unless she wanted to crash land on the bridge abutment, so she picked up speed instead, climbing as quickly as she could before arcing over the northbound lanes of the highway.
She’d gotten lucky; there wasn’t much nearby traffic and she didn’t cause an accident.
•••
The town both followed along the tracks and also had a leg to the north. Sweetsong decided to stretch her wings, flying along Interstate 15 until she spotted a lake off to her right. It was almost surely artificial; two of the sides were nearly straight.
There were nearby RV parks which was a place she might earn some bits, although they weren’t her first choice.
She flew south of the tracks and found a splash park which was open from 8 to 8, although their sign said that they didn’t allow pets. Sometimes people considered her a pet, like the lifeguard in Laurel. It was worth a shot, though; she could rinse off in the water and not have to worry about a hotel for the night.
Nobody kicked her out, and she rinsed the road dust off and shook off on the concrete pad—well away from any kids or their parents—and then flew up to the roof of the pool building to dry off. It was mostly flat, although the solar panels that angled up off it made it more difficult to find a good spot.
Once she was dry, it was time to find dinner. Clark’s looked good, there were plenty of semi-trucks parked around it.
The fish and chips were tempting, but she settled on an omelet instead with swirl rye toast on the side. Jam and jelly came in frustrating little packets—humans liked putting things in little packets and she’d gotten decent at opening sauce packets but these were more of a challenge. She was ready to give up on them, but the waitress saw her struggling and helped her out.
There was a carousel in town, an added attraction at the local rest area. The inside of the building was plainer than she’d expected, and the carousel looked out of place. They’d put local pictures around the top border, trains and cattle and grain elevators and cowboys riding horses.
A few people snickered as she hopped up on a horse, but she ignored them and took a dozen laps before hopping off. They also had helicopter rides, although they were fake helicopters on metal arms and she wasn’t interested in that experience.
Someone who’d taken her photo offered to buy her huckleberry ice cream, and that was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
They’d never seen a pony up close, and wanted to know what brought her to Shelby. Sweetsong admitted a freight train, specifically a grain car, and she had every intention of leaving the same way tomorrow. A room for the night was offered and declined; sometimes Sweetsong accepted the generosity of people, but other times she wanted to be outside.
She thought about getting out her guitar and maybe making some bits, but she’d already had ice cream and didn’t feel like seizing the opportunity.
More photos were taken, and obligatory pets from curious children, and then she took to the sky, searching for a spot for the night while it was still light.
This part of Montana didn’t have any good trees outside of town, and most of the buildings didn’t have good roofs, either. West of town, though, she found a railroad signal bridge which would be a good perch for the night. While she’d be obvious during the day, at night the trains might not spot her, and if they did, they’d have to find someone to climb the ladder and kick her off the spindly structure.
Back east there were still plenty of unused coal towers standing, and she’d overnighted in them before. They were big and spooky and weird, but gave her a commanding view of the mainline from the high windows, and rarely had people in them.
•••
Montana was Big Sky Country, and it certainly lived up to that expectation. She wasn’t quite far enough out of town to avoid the glare from the lights, and of course there were two highways—one of them paralleling the railroad—and a constant parade of trains passing by. Even so, millions of stars spread across the sky, and the dusty smudge of the Milky Way. She’d heard that further north sometimes the Aurora Borealis was visible, ever-changing skylights and one day that would be something to see.
A few high-flying airplanes blinked by overhead and she shivered on the cold steel walkway of the signal tower. Coyotes howled off in the distance, but she was safe and secure until she got rousted by a bull.
If she did.
She dozed, and sometimes she woke and looked through the latticework as a train passed below her, and sometimes she looked to the sky and the uncaring stars above.
Maybe Montana was too big-skied, from what she’d seen she could have flown off north and been lost in endless hilly prairie land for as long as she wanted to be. That did have its appeal, but she liked talking to people and seeing different things every day. Some humans claimed that you could find yourself by losing yourself and she didn’t believe them.
The stars danced overhead and the dawn came and trains passed by. Sweetsong stood and stretched and waved to the crew of a coal train headed west. They honked their horn and after the locomotives passed, she took to the sky again, flying north, losing herself in the vastness of rural Montana. The grasses were a nearly untapped bounty; whenever she felt peckish she dropped down and snacked, then flew again. There weren’t rivers, but there were occasional ponds in small depressions and while she was skeptical of drinking the water, she splashed around in one, shook off on the shore, then took off again.
Roads and power lines were generally straight and unnatural, fields were giant rectangles, and she found a small ranch off by itself with cattle pens on one side of the road and abandoned trucks on the other.
The boringly-named Kevin, Montana was next to a dried-up reservoir and she was briefly reunited with railroad tracks. She could have waited alongside them and hopped the next southbound train back to Shelby—whenever it came—but the sky was big and so she continued flying, cruising on thermals for a while before diving down and flying low, skimming the top of wheat fields. An airport she hadn’t noticed on her way north caught her eye and she considered flying a pattern and landing just for fun. With no radio, that was potentially dangerous, even though she couldn’t see any airplanes.
What’s life without some danger? She circled the field, didn’t see any airplanes preparing to land or take off. She knew how it was supposed to be done; virtually all pegasi were considered weather reservists and that held true here on Earth, too, so she’d spent a week at Cessna Clipper’s mareport, learning all the rules she needed to know.
Her downwind leg complete, she turned to base and skimmed over Interstate 15 to ‘land’ on Runway 29.
Long white bars were where the airplanes were supposed to touch down, and she put her forehooves nearly to the stripe before pulling up and making a sharp southerly low-altitude turn no airplane could ever hope to emulate.
Once she climbed again, Sweetsong continued her flight back to Shelby, already wondering what kind of car she’d ride for the next leg of her journey.
Sweetsong flew over the yard, her eye on Main Street instead of the trains. WOK N ROLL caught her attention, and she swooped down on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.
She knew all too well that too much Chinese food—no matter how good it smelled or tasted—would be a problem later, so she settled for a seaweed salad and an eel avocado roll, then trotted around town, looking for a good park to busk at, finally settling on the park behind the carousel building again. As much as she hated visiting the same place more than once, it seemed popular with tourists, and put her in a location where she could be seen by the patrons of Clark’s, but also Pizza Hut. It wasn’t very park-y; it featured a boxing sculpture and various informational signs explaining that a famous boxing match had once been held there, a hundred years ago.
Sweetsong only knew one boxing song and she wasn’t entirely sure it was about a boxer at all. Sometimes human songs were strange and their lyrics didn’t mean anything. But the tune was catchy and people liked it, and she wound up performing it several times through the afternoon, along with her more usual repertoire of train songs and improvised travel songs. Her fishing hat caught plenty of money, and as the sun was settling over the distant horizon, it was time to move on.
The Alibi Lounge had a Flyin’ Hawaiian pizza with nacho cheese sauce instead of normal pizza sauce which was both intriguing and proof that humans would never stop coming up with new kinds of pizza. The smallest one was more than she really needed, and if she ate it all, she wouldn’t be a Flyin’ Sweetsong, but that was okay, she could eat the rest of it tomorrow.
The flavor combo was weird and she couldn’t decide if she liked it or not. But after the leftover pizza had been boxed up she had a sudden urge to take just one more piece.
Even in the dark, the signal bridge was easy to find, and she settled into her now-familiar spot, facing her rump into the wind before draping her army blanket over herself.
•••
Sweetsong woke before the first light of dawn and looked down the tracks. All the signal lights were red; she could see that without even having to crane her neck over the walkway. But she could see dimmed headlights in the yard, and that might mean a mainline train headed in her direction soon . . . or it could mean that the yard crew was on break.
It was tempting to fly towards the yard and see what, if anything, that locomotive was coupled to, but it was smarter to stay on the signal bridge as long as she could; she was far enough out of the yard she wouldn’t be seen by anyone there, a departing train wouldn’t be moving all that fast, and the locomotive crew would be unlikely to spot her on the bridge until the sun came up.
She rolled up her army blanket and then got out a slice of cold pizza, keeping her eye on the yard.
•••
The sky was getting light; the stars were fading, and she was losing hope of catching out from the signal bridge. She’d had an eastbound train pass under her; it was still sitting in the yard, its rear light blinking.
People had been generous at the park, and she had enough money that she could take an Amtrak train to a better location. Or she could try her luck hitchhiking; she’d met an earth pony at a truck stop who did just that. You couldn’t stow away on a truck like you could a train, but you could ask and often get a ride. A few truckers had listened to her singing, and surely some of them understood the need to always be moving along.
She paced the steel walkway, her eyes constantly returning to the train that wouldn't move, and then it was moving, its headlight was bright, and its ditch lights were cycling back and forth.
It would be just her luck that it was a train of all tank cars or all coal cars, or something else she couldn't or wouldn’t get into.
Just one empty gondola, that’s all I need. Too far to tell. It crept through the yard, picking up speed, and then it was out from among all the other cars, and the very front of the train had a quartet of covered hoppers, followed by a Pan Am box car. Almost certainly a mixed freight.
Now was a delicate balancing act; she wanted to keep her eyes on the train for as long as she could, to get an idea what cars might be a possibility—she didn’t want to pass up a suitable car in the hopes that a better one might come along. The Pan Am box car had an open door, although it was much closer to the front than she’d prefer.
But as the train got closer, the risk of being spotted got higher and higher, and the crew might be watching in the rearview mirror to see what she’d do. They might see her board the train. Unless they never knew she was there. . . .
The signal heads worked to her advantage; she stepped behind it and waited as the locomotive got louder and louder, then a blast of hot exhaust washed across her belly and ruffled her feathers. If they were really attentive, they might have been looking up and spotted her, but there was nothing she could do about that. Most people didn’t instinctively look up.
Mid-train there was a gondola trailing a bulkhead flat with a tarp-wrapped load, and she kept her eye on that. The train was picking up speed faster than she wanted it to, which made grainers and box cars with open doors a riskier proposition.
Timing was everything; as the bulkhead flat passed under the bridge she had a very short run-up and then jumped off, well aware of the second bulkhead closing in on her. The train wasn’t moving too quickly, and she could almost match its speed.
The instant the rear bulkhead passed under her, she flared then dove, eyes already on her touchdown point. A brief wobble as the slipstream of the bulkhead flat caught her, and then she was between the gunnels of the gondola and then on the floor.
The floor wasn’t clean—they usually weren’t in gondolas—and she tossed a few scraps of wooden dunnage over the side, just so she wouldn’t have to worry about them flying at her if the train made a sudden stop.
If it wasn’t so much bother to carry, a broom and dustpan would be nice to get some of the grit off the floor of the car. She did the best she could with the tips of her wing, then shook some of the accumulated gravel out of her primaries. Not as good as a proper preening, but it would do for now.
The train was still accelerating as it curved around a small rise, coming close to the highway before moving away again. Gondolas were nice for their openness, but not so good for sightseeing off the side; if she poked her head up she was too visible.
The route map that the train station had, though, had suggested that soon enough they’d be back in the middle of nowhere and she could sightsee as much as she wanted. The train was going to have to go through the mountains to get to Idaho, and she didn’t think there'd be a lot of human civilization out there.
Sure enough, as soon as the train left Cut Bank, it left the road behind, meandering through fields instead. Sweetsong stuck her head up over the edge, studying the distant horizon, wondering how soon she’d see proper mountains instead of the hills and hummocks that jutted up from the undulating land.
•••
It wasn’t all that long. After another stretch along the highway, the train briefly turned away and she stuck her head up and was sure that those weren’t clouds on the horizon, but actual mountains.
She kept her ears alert, ducking down whenever she could hear nearby traffic, then popping back up cautiously whenever it was gone.
The track bent to the south and passed through a small town, and then they started climbing above the road. To the west, only hilly upslopes, covered in scrub brush, with aspens and pine trees at higher elevations.
They were headed southwest, surely working towards a pass or tunnel. The train curved around as it followed the easiest path, finally crossing over the highway and then a river and off into the wilderness.
She hooked her forelegs over the edge of the gondola and watched the trees rush by, occasionally remembering to look back in case they were being overtaken by another train.
•••
The first tunnel caught her by surprise; she’d dropped back down to the floor of the car to get a water bottle out of her saddlebags, and all of a sudden it was dark and echoey.
It was short, and a moment later, before she’d even caught her bearings, there was a second tunnel.
Back out in the open, the tracks were running alongside the road again, but there were enough trees Sweetsong didn’t think she’d be spotted. Besides all the trees and the undulating terrain, she’d wrapped her army blanket around herself as a makeshift cloak, dulling herself out.
She did duck back as she spotted the headlight of an approaching freight, tucking herself against the front of the car. They’d have a moment to spot her if they were looking right out the side, and then she’d be lost in the shifting shadows as the train passed by.
How weird would it be to be in a tunnel with a train going the other way? There were still two tracks, and that was very much a possibility. She didn’t know if there were just some short tunnels, or if she’d find herself in a long one. Sometimes railroads would tunnel through the mountain well below the peak to save curves and elevation—she’d already passed by a few spots that looked like they’d been former turnbacks, and a couple of cuts which might have once been tunnels.
Just before the end of the opposing train, the highway crossed over them and then diverged off.
They were running on a gravel embankment not far above the river, crossing a series of fan-shaped lowlands which surely flooded when the snow melted in the spring. Maybe sometimes the tracks got flooded, too, if it had been a snowy winter, and the trains would have to wait until the river levels went down. That was the risk of following a river’s easy path.
A track curved off along the riverbank and then just ended, and a moment later they passed by another switch—a wye, likely to turn around helper locomotives. Human locomotives were big and powerful and could get a train up the mountain without help; Equestrian trains sometimes needed extra locomotives to pull or push.
The land flattened out into fields, an odd thing to see in the middle of a mountain range. She ducked back below the lip of the car until they were in good tree cover again.
It was inevitable she’d see boaters on the river, and she did, both rafters and kayakers, and most of them paid the train little attention—most people were interested in the locomotives but after the first dozen or so cars passed, lost interest in the train. That was another good reason to prefer the rear half of a train to the front half.
Not all of them did, though, and she got spotted by a kayaker who raised a beer can up in salute. She did the only logical thing and waved back.
•••
The train was slowing as it passed into the tunnel mouth, and even though the tunnel was short enough she could see lights from both ends, Sweetsong wondered again what she’d do if a train stopped with her in the tunnel. She’d have to stay with her car and not panic and assume the train would get moving soon.
Then they were back out along the river again, but she could see ahead of her where the train vanished into another, and she could also see the headlight of an oncoming train on the other track.
She ducked down until the locomotives had passed, then stuck her head up again, watching the opposing train pass by, the rocks rising up, and even though she knew it was coming, she wasn’t prepared for the sudden darkness and cacophony of noise two trains made in a tunnel together, nor the shadowy blur of the other train, moving at a different speed than the rough rock wall on her other side.
Even though she instinctively knew she was safe as long as she stayed inside the gondola, with each passing second the urge to fly out to safety grew stronger. A railcar with flat wheels could be a monster stalking the cave, she swore she could hear water—what if they were under the river and the tunnel was leaking?
For once, the gondola was too open, crud was pelting against her, tossed around by the weird currents in the tunnel, and the stink of diesel exhaust covered everything else.
And then they were out and she was blinking against the sudden brightness; it had only been a few minutes but it felt like it had been hours.
Humans made rail systems that ran entirely underground and she didn’t know how they could stand that.
•••
Two more tunnels, both of them short, and then the train passed through West Glacier. Sweetsong ducked down as they went alongside a road and past the train station, then they were back into thick trees.
The sun was getting close to the top of the mountain, and she started to consider if she wanted to ride the train all night or if it would be smarter to bail out and find another train in the morning. She didn’t mind overnighting when she had a safe nest against the slope sheets of a grain car or inside a boxcar, but open gondolas were a different matter. Even at night, she might get spotted and the train could be stopped and she’d have little warning she was about to be evicted.
On another hoof, if there were any more tunnels, she might pass through them asleep, unaware, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Plus, she’d get closer to her destination, and she wouldn’t be in the wilderness out in the middle of nowhere hoping for a slow-moving freight to pass by.
The gondola wasn’t the best car to be in, but it was pretty good. If she stayed up towards the front end, if she had her blanket over her, she’d be nearly invisible. Anybody who noticed it would think it was a piece of tarp left over from the last time the car was loaded.
It was getting cold. Higher up, she’d seen snowy patches that looked fresh, and that was another disadvantage of the open car she’d picked, if it snowed it would snow on her.
On the plus side, that would make her less likely to be spotted, she’d just be a lump of leftover dunnage on the floor of the car.
Unremarkable.
She nosed open her saddlebags and got out a bag of potato chips. Crunchy and salty, the perfect aperitif. Big Bold Buffalo Blue flavor, and she wasn’t entirely sure how any of those were food, but vaguely remembered hearing about a big blue buffalo who had explored America and maybe it wasn’t flavored after him, but instead the flavor he liked.
She hadn’t expected spice, but that was a welcome taste for the cooler weather, and she ate them all then stuffed the empty sachet back in her saddlebags.
•••
Sometimes she made music for her audience and sometimes for herself. Getting out her guitar and unfolding it and tuning it maybe was overkill but it felt right, and as the train passed through a town on the end of a lake, she started playing and singing. A song for the fish, or the train, or for herself? Did it matter?
The train curved around and into forest again, and she leaned up against the front wall of her gondola and sang for the trees, for the birds and animals who watched the train pass with a mix of concern and familiarity. And as the last light faded, she folded her guitar and put it back in its case and curled up on the floor of the car, pulled her army blanket over herself, rested her head on her saddlebags, and drifted off to sleep as the sea of stars slowly drifted by overhead.
Sweetsong almost slept through Idaho. She woke up covered in snow as her train slowly percolated through a rail yard.
Instinct said to shake off the snow, but it would help her blend in, at least as long as she was in the yard. A clear spot on the floor of the car would be a dead giveaway, if anybody looked.
She didn’t know how much she’d moved around in her sleep; her army blanket might not have much snow on it at all. But if she moved, she’d dislodge whatever was there.
Gondolas were open-topped; worst-case she could fly out. There wasn’t a lot of the yard she could really see without moving, but she caught the tips of some pine trees in her peripheral vision, which suggested tree-cover at the end of the yard was possible, if there weren’t bridges.
Her train jerked to a halt and she perked her ears, listening for human voices, engines running, the crunching of shoes on snow. Nothing close; she could faintly make out somebody speaking in the distance, and a radio playing country music. Plus, the ever-present rumble of diesel locomotives and the syncopated beat of railcars across joints and switches.
Most yards didn’t have towers anymore for humans to watch over their fiefdom, but they did have cameras on poles which served the same purpose. Movement might be noticed, and she might wind up with a railroad bull rousting her out of her gondola if she moved too much.
Grain cars gave her more cover than a gondola and she could have moved to one . . . but she liked the openness. If she got kicked off the train, so be it. She’d find another.
Am I being uncoupled? She didn’t hear the telltale sounds of couplers or the hiss of air, but it was hard to say. Flying out would blow her cover, there was no way they wouldn’t see her. She could poke her head up, look around, find a good exit, get away from the yard for a while. Surely there was a town nearby, she could visit and make some money.
But she still had leftover Flyin’ Hawaiian Pizza from Alibi Lounge, and if this was a through train she might make it to the Pacific in a day or so. Northern Idaho was next to Washington, and Washington wasn’t as wide as Montana. Patience was a virtue. A boring virtue, but a virtue nonetheless.
She tucked her head back down between her forelegs and closed her eyes. Maybe if she fell asleep again, when she woke the train would be moving.
•••
It wasn’t.
Sweetsong had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Long enough for the snow to start turning to rain, long enough that the dusky light of early morning had become a greyish rainscape. The first few droplets that fell on her could have been a fluke, could have been a bit of meltwater dripping off her forelock onto her muzzle, but now she was fully awake and there were unquestionably rain droplets mixed with the snowflakes.
It wouldn’t take long for them to dissolve whatever blanket of snow she’d picked up, not to mention that the floor of her gondola would soon be awash.
I need to get out of here. Stealth was evaporating as fast as the snow, and at least it was an open-top car, she had the length to run up and then climb, she’d be spotted but there was nothing they could do about that. If she had to leave, if there wasn’t any nearby cover, she should fly back east, back the way she came. If they didn’t see which car she came out of—and they might not—they’d think she was intending on riding eastbound, and they’d watch those trains with extra scrutiny while paying less attention to westbound.
There was still the possibility of subtle, if she wasn’t seen nobody would be watching for a pony riding the train without paying. A quick look over the edge, there might be a way to sneak out or a nearby grainer she could board and cuddle up there.
At first, she thought she’d slipped on a patch of snow, but then realized that the train was moving again. Back down on the floor, under her army blanket, a shapeless bundle of litter at the corner of the car.
The train went under a shed, and she smelled diesel fuel and saw the fueling stands as the train crept by, slowly picking up speed. Then she was back out in the open.
Surely they had cameras in the refueling shed, and any moment now the train would stop and she’d be evicted. She’d poked her head out when she smelled raw fuel, and she’d ducked down again as quickly as she realized where she was.
If they caught her, if they saw her up close, they’d know who to look for. The times she’d seen the bulls roust riders was always near a road, where they could get their trucks close. She had no intention of waiting around for the inevitable; it would take a minute for them to realize what they’d seen on the cameras or for an employee who’d caught a glimpse to report her, and then they’d have to call the train crew and the bull, which gave her a minute or two.
She kept her blanket draped over her and popped her head up, looking at what was ahead. They were on the outermost track, and past a parking lot was a stub track, and a gravel road that ran alongside.
More importantly was a collection of pine trees, the ones she’d spotted before. They weren’t much, but they were cover.
She rolled up her blanket and scooched across to the far side of the car, where she could see the trees as they appeared and get a little bit of run-up before going over the edge.
The wheels of her car bumped across the switch, and she saw the top of a pair of pine trees right in front of her. There was no time to see if anyone was looking in her direction, she focused on the blessed clearing between them, almost fifty feet wide and plenty of room to be out of the obvious view before she turned, forgoing her original plan and instead staying low, hooking to the southwest to follow a natural thin spot in the woods.
A white Explorer with flashing lights rolled down the access road, kicking up muddy slushy grit in its wake, and then she heard the brakes of the train hissing. She’d gotten clear just in time.
•••
She thought about sneaking up as close as she could and watching as the bull searched the gondola and didn’t find her, would he think that she had been imagined? But someone might tell him when he got back that they’d seen a pink pegasus fly off that very train, and then he’d know she was there. He might look around, wondering if she was so bold as to hop the very same train again, if she thought once he didn’t find her the first time he’d lose interest.
It was smarter to not chance it, even if that meant she’d have to fly for a while, low at first until she was well clear of the yard, and then she could fly up higher and get a pegasus-eye view of where the tracks went and where she might be able to hide out and find another train.
There were farms on the other side of the copse of trees, and she sometimes wondered what people thought as she flew by at low altitude. It was doubtful any of them would report seeing her to the bull, but just the same once she’d crossed under a set of power lines on big pylons, she decided to climb over a big hayfield and lose herself against the clouds before turning southwest again.
•••
To her north, it was hilly and the tracks ran right along the edge of it. On her side of the tracks there were farms and fields and as she got further southwest it got more crowded with houses. As the weather cleared, she could see a river and a highway to her south, and angled more in that direction, just to be sure she was well away from the rails.
She flew towards what she thought was a truck stop but instead turned out to be a weigh station. Sweetsong initially thought it was to make sure that trucks going over the bridge weren’t too heavy, but it was on the wrong side of the highway for that.
As she got close, she realized what it actually was. She wouldn’t find any food there.
Their parking lot had an okay thermal, and she used it to gain altitude. She knew some of the major truck lines, although not as well as she knew the big railroads, and read the signs on the doors of the trucks and their trailers. One of the trucks, carrying a big cargo on a special trailer with guide vans in front and behind caught her eye—it belonged to the Mareton and Driftfield Truckway, which sounded like a pony name if she’d ever heard one.
Sweetsong had met a pegasus truck driver; she’d been riding the UP in Texas and gotten off the train just outside Amarillo because she was feeling grimy and saw a Pilot Truck Stop sign. She knew that they had showers there, and one thing that Texas and Oklahoma had been lacking was convenient lakes to bathe in.
Since she’d already invested in the shower, it wasn’t worth flying anywhere else for a meal, so she’d bought a Subway sandwich and a Cinnabon and nearly dropped both in shock when she saw a fellow pegasus sitting at a table.
She spent the night in the truck’s sleeper, gave and received her best wing-preening in months, and rode in the truck all the way to Tucumacari, where she caught another freight.
•••
Sweetsong hadn’t meant to fly all the way to the next yard, but she had. It was called Yardly Yard which she thought was a stupidly stupid name for a rail yard, and everything around it was too barren to provide her with any cover at all.
She saw the gondola she’d been riding in sitting in the yard; if she hadn’t been seen she would have been in an even worse position, so it was just as well she’d spent half the day flying. Maybe the bulls in this yard were paying close attention to arriving trains, so she’d want to get on well past the yard. Especially once she saw that to the west, there appeared to be several diverging tracks.
That would be a problem for tomorrow. Now that she knew where the yard was, she broadened her circle and found an IHOP a few streets and a rail yard away. Pancakes were always good, and she hadn’t tried their tres leches pancakes yet.
IHOP was always generous with pancakes, and she had one left over for later in a little Styrofoam carrier. It would be soggy in the morning, but still tasty.
North of the small rail yard was a kidney-shaped lake that was a dumping ground for old cement pipes, weirdly enough. It had a few small copses of trees and was right next to the Spokane Fairgrounds, and was probably the best spot she was going to find to overnight unless she flew out of town or camped on a roof. The pond area was enclosed with a big fence which meant she probably wouldn’t be interrupted. It was either that or fly further south where it got hillier and there were clusters of trees around the houses.
•••
In the morning she ate her soggy pancake and then went exploring. Where did the tracks go? Which line would take her most directly to the Pacific? What could she find for food that would keep well in her saddlebags? Sometimes small towns were better than cities—in a small town she didn’t get overwhelmed with choices. But there were specialty shops in big cities, and she found a Petco that had alfalfa cubes for snacking. They were supposed to be for rabbits, but there were no Petco police to tell her she couldn’t eat them if she wanted to.
Had anypony started selling flavored alfalfa cubes yet? Surely there were enough ponies visiting and working to make a profit; if sour cream and cheese or buffalo flavor—whatever that was—could be preserved and dusted on chips then they could be put on alfalfa, too.
For a moment, she imagined opening a bakery—a chipery—but that was a lot of work and it was better to roam the country and take bits as they came, rather than settle down and have a boring, predictable income.
The land could provide her with grasses, shelter, and fish; people provided her with money and transportation. All she needed was her guitar and a bit of moxie. It wasn’t in her nature to want a house on a foundation or a steady job. Life was for experiences, not doing the same thing every day to pay a mortgage on a house that couldn’t even be moved if she got tired of where it was.
Admittedly, hot showers were nice, but there were hotels and truck stops that would rent them, and some nomads even got gym memberships just for the showering facilities.
She hadn’t interacted with all that many hobos, preferring to fly solo, but she’d come across a few. One, an older man with a beard and missing fingers on one hand, had lamented some modern hobos who made it a point to get as dirty as possible, even though the hobo code specifically said to stay clean. Even if that wasn’t a requirement, she would; she didn’t want oily fur or gritty wings.
Her bits were getting low and she decided to fly around and find a park, eventually settling on a peninsula in the Spokane River. It had what seemed like an unnecessary number of bridges and one of the roads tunneled under the park then split into two roads with two bridges on the other side.
Weird though it was, it was popular with tourists, already full of people as she settled down on the steps of the Great Northern Clocktower.
People were generous and she stayed all day, playing her guitar and singing; she discovered in the afternoon that a few people were willing to give her money for flying into the river and catching a fish, which she hadn’t intended as a performance—she was just hungry.
Still, bits were bits no matter how they were earned and she packed up for the night and flew off to the Amtrak station. She knew Amtrak went to Seattle, so if she picked the same route Amtrak took, she would also wind up in Seattle. That didn’t get her all the way to the ocean, but that got her close.
Her mission complete, she returned to the pipe pond to spend another night in the trees before finding her way out of town.
•••
Besides finding which route she should take, she also had scouted out a perfect hiding spot, and after another breakfast of IHOP pancakes with a few more for the road, she flew over to the Indian Canyon golf course. There was a copse of trees on either side of the tracks, and it was less than a mile past where the track made its sharp bend northwest. Freight trains would probably still be moving slowly as they went by, and that would be her opportunity. There was plenty of underbrush to hide her, and the only chance of being discovered was some golfer on the search for an errant ball.
That wasn’t much of a risk; golfers trampled through the underbrush like a herd of buffalo.
Even better, she’d have time to get situated on the train. After the golf course, there was a bridge, then a cemetery on one side and a weird abandoned amphitheater on the other, neither of which were likely to have people watching.
The downside was that she wouldn’t get a horn as a warning that a train was coming..
She nestled into the carpet of pine needles and twitched her tail, like a predator on the hunt. An intermodal train rumbled by, going slow as she’d hoped. Stack cars from one end to the other, no good hiding spots. The yard had had plenty of variety of railcars, and it was only a matter of time before the right train passed.
•••
An eastbound train rolled by, brakes squealing as it slowed for the curve ahead of it, and of course it had plenty of cars which she could have boarded, if only it wasn’t going in the wrong direction.
Sometimes she could see golfers through her tree-perch, and she amused herself watching one of them try to pitch his ball out of a sand trap. It took three tries before he got it back on grass, and another two before he tapped it into the cup and stomped off to the next hole.
Golf was stupid, its only selling point being that it was outdoors, but a person could walk around and not hit golf balls. There were plenty of sidewalks and trails.
•••
She hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the tree, but she did. It wasn’t a train that woke her; it was a golfer rustling around in the bushes on the other side of the tracks, and her first instinct was to duck back in the tree, out of sight.
He glanced up—he must have seen movement—but he didn’t spot her, and went back to looking for his ball.
After a few minutes, he gave up and went back on the course.
•••
It was easier to spot approaching steam trains back home, she could see the smoke over treetops sometimes when they were miles away. Human trains didn’t make as much smoke, even though they were bigger.
They were deceptively quiet, too, when they weren’t blowing their horns or ringing their bells. Usually on the mainline, the tracks were all welded instead of having joint bars every forty feet, so there wasn’t the rhythmic clatter of wheels crossing the staggered joints.
Another eastbound train passed, this one a mixed freight. Since there was only one track, that meant that it might be a westbound train’s turn next. It wasn’t all that far to the yard, and as the sun climbed up in the sky, she edged out on the branch, but she couldn’t see much up and down the main. They trimmed the branches back so they wouldn’t hit trains, which meant she was a good thirty feet away from the tracks, and couldn’t see much but other trees.
•••
Half an hour later, her patience was rewarded as a westbound train came by, shaking the ground and trees as the locomotives accelerated.
She jumped out of the tree and glided alongside the train—the locomotives were far enough past that the crew wouldn’t see her—her eyes peeled for a good car.
Midway through the train, a boxcar with an open door. That was an option. Behind that, she could see a few grain cars which were also a good choice.
The train was picking up speed and she had to decide quickly. The boxcar would be easier to get into, and she had a track spike in her saddlebags to wedge the door.
As she banked into the moving car and settled on the floor, she realized she wouldn’t have to. Some other hobo had already spiked the door, and they hadn’t caught it in the yard.
She settled back in the car, positioning herself far enough back that she had a good view, but couldn’t easily be seen.
•••
The tracks curved around a few times before settling on a southwest route that took her near an airport. She couldn’t see where it was, probably on the other side of the train, but did see a big grey airplane climbing off to the north.
Most of the land she could see was fields, with occasional woodlots or swampy areas left fallow.
Half an hour past the airport the train slowed down and Sweetsong started worrying. She’d thought a hobo had spiked the door, but maybe it was one of the bulls; maybe they were still looking for her. Maybe they thought that the boxcar would be the perfect trap, and maybe they thought they’d lull her into a false sense of security by letting the train carry her for a while before making their move. Outside she could only see fields and distant barns but the train was slowing down for something.
Logically, it was probably a meet, but she realized that she could hardly see any trees out her side, there might not be any on the other side either. Nowhere close to hide.
There could be an access road on the side with the closed door, there was no way she’d know. She focused her ears intently, trying to make out noises through the metal wall of the boxcar, almost missing the distinctive sound of the train clattering across a switch.
Normal operations . . . but she didn’t feel comfortable in the boxcar any more. She could see another track on her side of the train, with nothing on it, then gathered up her blanket and stuffed it back in her saddlebags.
She could lean against the side of the car and get a decent view, and she saw that the tracks curved to the left, which gave her good sight down the main. There wasn’t a train yet.
If her paranoia was justified, the bull would be waiting about where the car stopped, and he’d be on the far side of it so she’d have no warning, no time to get away. The train was moving slowly, there was nothing coming on the other track, and the fields were empty.
Sweetsong jumped out the open door and glided into the field, close to the tracks. No shouts of alarm and outside she didn’t hear anything that wasn’t train noise.
She checked both ways and hopped up on the main, risking a glance underneath the still-moving railcars. She couldn’t see any rail bulls over there, just more wheat. It didn’t rule them out.
Staying on the main wasn’t wise, so she hopped back down off the ballast and waited at the edge of the field, nervously nibbling a few stalks as her train finally came to a stop.
Once again, she looked up and down the main and there still weren’t any trains coming. Hers was stopped, and she flew up to the open platform of a cylindrical grain hopper. It was completely unsuitable for riding, but safer to go through then under.
She poked her head around the edge, and discovered that there was no frustrated bull storming up to her boxcar, and in fact there was no road at all for him to be on. She’d abandoned her car for nothing.
Just the same, she liked more open cars anyway. Since the train was stopped in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but fields and a few distant barns poking above them she might as well find a better car to ride. Covered hoppers were tricky to mount when the train was moving, but now that it was stopped she could take her time picking. If she heard her train start to move, she’d retreat back to the boxcar, otherwise she had a wide selection of grainers to choose from.
She almost jumped off her hooves as the other train blasted by; she hadn’t heard it coming at all, and then a moment later a buffet of air between the cars and an orange blur of the locomotive.
Which meant her train was about to start, it could have already, and while it had seemed a good idea to have the boxcar as backup, she’d have to cross under her train then get in the narrow gap next to a fast-moving train to jump aboard, and that was suicide.
Sweetsong could hear the banging as her train started moving, pulling the slack out of the cars, and she was going to get back on her train or be standing out in a field in the middle of nowhere and hoping that the next westbound train also stopped.
The car next to her was a bad choice, it had an open floor under the slope sheet, but the one behind it had a nice hidey hole and a floor, not her first pick when it came to grain cars but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
She landed on the floor just as the slack action arrived and got knocked off her hooves, and as she got up and dusted herself off, the last car in the eastbound train passed.
When the train crossed the switch, she was worming her way through the hole, a tight fit with her saddlebags but once she was in, she was invisible, and it was surprisingly spacious inside. Not great for riding while awake, but perfect for sleeping, a cozy little steel nest.
She stripped off her saddlebags and spread her blanket out, even though it was early. Unless she got cut out of the train, this was the car she was going to ride to the ocean.
Outside, she mostly saw the support struts of the car in front of her, and fields on the edge of her vision.
If she’d been thinking a few steps ahead, it might have been smart to pull the spike from the boxcar. A bull might see it and wonder if somebody was riding the train. They wouldn’t see her but sometimes they used dogs to help, and a dog might smell her.
Or maybe they’d check the car and find it empty and then think that whatever hobo had been riding the train had left and wouldn’t look further. Who would give up a nice comfy boxcar for a hole in a grain car?
It wasn’t worth worrying about; she was safe and secure and on the move again, and whatever the future brought, she could deal with.
Sweetsong didn’t notice when the railroad changed from single- to double-tracked; she was back in the hole preening her wings when an oncoming freight blasted by, rocking her car with its bow wave. She didn’t think much of it until a dozen or so cars had passed, suddenly remembering that there’d been only one track last time she’d looked.
Wouldn’t it be crazy if we’re running out a passing siding? But of course that wouldn’t happen; there were signals that the crew followed so they’d know what to do, and most of the switches she’d seen on the mainline had been operated remotely so there was no chance of a mistake.
If there was a crash, even though her instincts told her to be out in the open so she could fly free, having all the protection of the steel around her might be safer. If she was outside, a load torn loose from another car might crush her, but the end rails of her car would block it.
Watching the cars on the other train whoosh by, she was tempted to step out of her hole and try and touch them. That was a stupid idea, she’d lose a hoof, and after a string of tank cars blurred past, she concentrated back on her wings, getting her feathers back in order and picking out a few stray pine needles she’d accumulated while waiting for this train.
The train was moving and the bulls couldn’t chase her off while the train was moving, so she nosed her saddlebags open and got out her curry comb. She’d picked up some sap on her belly from the same tree, and it had been annoying her for the last hour.
•••
The double tracks ended while she was in the hole. The train was still running at speed, and her coat was groomed, so she sat on the end platform and watched Washington pass by. The land was grassy and dry, yet there were pine trees clustered around in spots. None of them provided good cover for her, so she kept her head low, wondering if she was less obvious by the slope sheet or the ladder, and wondering if it was worth pulling her army blanket out of the hole to break up her shape.
She decided the slight gain in stealth it might offer was offset by the feeling of wind blowing through her coat and feathers. Medium sneaky was good enough for now.
•••
Her train moved in fits and starts, getting sidelined at nearly every opportunity. Sweetsong spread her blanket out on the floor in the fading light of day, stretched out on it, and pulled the free end over herself. She’d tried a sleeping bag but that wasn’t good for a quick escape if needed. Admittedly, here in her grain car if she got woken up by somebody sticking their head in, she’d have nowhere to go. Still, it wasn’t worth carrying both the blanket and a sleeping bag, it was better to have less stuff weighing her down.
She’d just gotten her head comfortable on her makeshift saddlebag pillow when a passing freight rocked her car, and she wondered if she’d get moving again once this freight passed.
She was asleep before she could get an answer.
•••
She was awake before the sun, her train slowly creeping along a river on one side and buildings on the other. It wasn’t safe to poke her head out, not until the buildings thinned out and she didn’t hear the train constantly blaring its horn for grade crossings.
Breakfast was two granola bars that shared a wrapper, and a few more alfalfa cubes, washed down with a bottle of water.
This car had enough room for a proper morning stretch, and she indulged herself then stuck her head through the hole to take in the scenery.
There wasn’t enough light to be sure, but she thought she could see mountains off in the distance. Closer to hoof, it was all fields and the river, interrupted with clusters of houses, businesses, and factories.
The train trundled across the river on a truss bridge, then the highway, then the river again, like it couldn’t make up its mind which side it wanted to be on.
As the sun climbed, she was sure. Off to the west, she could see the tips of mountains lit by the rising sun, while she was still in shadow, deep in another river valley the train was following. It was disappointing that she wasn’t closer to the ocean; the train had probably kept up its slow pace through the night or it might have even stopped. Usually that would wake her, but not always.
Sometimes trains sat in sidings for hours. If she had a train radio of her own, she could listen to what the dispatcher was saying—surely they’d tell the crew if they were going to have to wait for a long time.
The fields on either side of the track were orchards instead of grains, much to her surprise. She knew Washington was famous for apples, but didn’t think that they grew them in the shadow of the mountains. If these were even apple trees, it was late enough in the year that the crop was off them.
It looked like there were rows of grapevines, too.
Sweetsong was still puzzling it out as the train left the fields behind and went back into a tighter valley, with no room for farms at all. Instead, trees crowded right up to the tracks.
It was risky to move out on the end platform, but she poked her head through the hole all the same, getting a good view of the scenery on either side.
The train was keeping a surprisingly straight course, with no major turns. She’d considered racing her train as it climbed through the mountains; if she was in an open-top car she could fly out and take a shortcut across the mountain and then catch it on the other side.
That would be for another trip; for now, she just wanted to get to the ocean.
•••
The valley widened out, and the train curved west, then crossed a ridgeline into another river valley, running on the edge of a slope, gaining altitude.
There were very few buildings, it was only her and the trees. She stepped all the way out onto the end platform, sticking her head over the edge to get a better view.
Sweetsong imagined how it would look in the wintertime, with a thick blanket of snow covering everything—she’d have to come back this way.
A tunnel caught her by surprise; she had only a moment to register the sound of the train changing, and then she was in it—a downside to the mountains. She flattened herself down on the floor of the car before the light was completely gone, wishing she’d had more warning. More experienced hobos knew the line better than she did. They wouldn’t be in the Amtrak station puzzling over the route map and trying to figure out which tracks went to Seattle.
Now she knew about this tunnel. It was short, and she stuck her head over the edge of the car to see if there was another up ahead, but the curve of the track kept her from seeing.
Sitting on her belly with her head on the side sill wasn’t comfortable, so she got to her hooves and stuck her head over the side just as they crossed over a river. She ducked back as they crossed a road, then moved forward again, looking down the train. There was nothing but trees.
Standing perpendicular to the train was awkward; she had to constantly shift on her hooves to make up for the unpredictable motion of the grainer. It would be easier to go bipedal, and she could hook her hooves over the ladder—
—after the next tunnel.
She hooked her forelegs over the ladder and stuck her head cautiously out over the side, once again looking down the length of the train. There was nobody to see her.
Until the train ran across an overpass, and she clearly saw a surprised driver in a light blue Mustang looking up at her.
Not that there was anything he could do about it. She waved at him as the train carried her back off into the woods.
The track curved north and she saw the level crossing coming in plenty of time to duck back down. The side sills weren’t high enough to completely cover her, even if she crouched, but it made her less obvious, a pink lump on the floor of the car which could be anything.
The train ran past a small town, barely seen through the thick clusters of pine trees, then the tracks curved back around to the west, following the curve of the mountain.
•••
She had to lie down again as the train ran along a state highway, and then they moved apart, and she spent most of the next ten miles standing on the end of her car, like a sailor on the railing of her ship. Around her, a sea of trees, made into waves by the mountains. Rocks jutting through were the foam on the waves.
They passed an eastbound train waiting on a siding; she had enough warning as the train bumped over the switch to get down and tuck herself against the end of the railcar since it would take too long to get inside, and from the crew’s position in the locomotive they wouldn’t have much opportunity to see her.
She hoped; they’d have a radio and could call the other train to have that crew kick her off. If she had her own radio, she could listen and know if she’d been spotted.
As they cleared the passing siding and crossed over another short bridge, she decided that since they weren’t slowing down, she hadn’t been spotted.
Her elation didn’t last long; the train went around a broad S-curve, and with almost no warning, plunged into a tunnel.
As if the darkness wasn’t bad enough, besides the cacophony of the railcars and the throb of the diesel engines echoing up and down the tunnel, something that sounded like a jet started up and a moment later she could feel an unnatural wind in the tunnel.
She wanted no part of any of this, but couldn’t do anything about it now. Her instincts screamed to fly away, to fly to safety, but she couldn’t do that so she blindly crawled back into the hole on the car and curled up with her blanket, pressed against the cold steel that at least muted some of the sounds and gave a false promise of security.
It felt like she was trapped in stygian blackness forever. Whenever she judged a minute or two had passed, she’d lift up her head and look hopefully through the hole, already knowing what she’d see—the sounds hadn’t changed, the train was still in the tunnel.
Her coat was damp with fear-sweat when she finally emerged from the grainer’s hole, back out into the light of the sun, into the sweet evergreen-scented air. Her whole body was trembling with adrenaline, and she needed to run or fly but she couldn’t, not from a moving train.
But she could. As she stuffed her army blanket back in her saddlebags, the rational part of her mind told her it was stupid and dangerous, the train was still moving fast. She’d picked this car believing that it would safely take her through the mountains, and so far, it had. It would be foolish to abandon it, especially here where the trains rushed by—and it was accelerating, no doubt grateful to be out of the tunnel as well.
She didn’t care. Her instincts had been screaming at her to fly for a quarter hour, and she was going to fly.
Brace on the angle iron, check for major obstructions, remember to come off banked because she was going to be hit by a harsh crosswind immediately and she’d have no time to recover if she screwed up. She’d wind up stuck in a tree or picking gravel out of her coat for a week if she was lucky. If not? Well. . . .
Her launch was sloppy but effective. Sweetsong didn’t hit any of the nearby trees or the side of the hopper car, and her forward momentum carried her up to the tops of the trees almost immediately. She’d heard that humans sometimes launched airplanes with catapults and this was nearly the same thing; she’d had a forty mile an hour head start on her liftoff.
The track was easy to follow, not to mention the road that ran nearby, along with a wide clear swath through the trees to the north where power lines went.
The Pacific was west, so she went west, soaring a few hundred feet above the tops of the trees, racing at first to get all the adrenaline out of her system, and once she started to feel better, she slowed her pace to a more conservative speed, one she could maintain for hours if needed.
Aside from the road and the power lines, there wasn’t much sign of civilization around her. Later, that might be a problem, but for now she still had food and water, she could sleep in a tree, and she’d already seen two passing sidings. More would be further down the tracks. As long as she kept them in sight, she might yet find a train she could ride.
•••
Sweetsong circled Skykomish, getting the lay of the land. The town had food, lodging, a rail yard, and a miniature train which people were riding. It had steam locomotives and diesel locomotives, even a miniature replica of the BNSF locomotives that sat in the yard nearby.
She wasn’t ready to land just yet; she still needed to feel the air under her wings to offset the terrifying confines of the tunnel, so she swooped down under the truss bridge over the river and climbed back up, skirting the dense pine trees until she was overtop them again, then went north all the way to the power lines. As she passed under them, she could feel the current reaching out to her, lightning contained in a wire, teasing across her body as she dove back down, this time along a dirt road through the woods.
That was a tunnel of sorts, although the sun came through and birds were chirping and the only wind was the gentle mountain breeze, filling her nostrils with the scent of pine.
The road made a tight curve to follow the contours of the mountain, but she was not bound by that and climbed again, darting among the crown of trees.
In the plains, she didn’t have to fly very high to spot towns; in the mountains, the undulating landscape and trees hid them; if she hadn’t known where Skykomish was, she might not have even known it was there.
How far was the Pacific? If she flew high enough, could she see it from here? That thought nagged at her, and she circled aimlessly, wondering if it was within flying distance. The map she’d seen in the train station had had Skykomish on it, and she still had a ways to go. If her memory was correct, she was only halfway across Washington.
•••
She flew south and landed on a transmission tower. Her wings were starting to ache, and the feel of the electricity coursing below her was invigorating. It was almost like being in a thundercloud. Sweetsong let the current flow around her and through her and carry away the last memories of the tunnel, and then she flew off, back towards Skykomish.
•••
Tickets for the miniature train were free. She queued up with all the other people and got petted by a few kids who were suddenly more enthused about seeing a pony than riding a train.
Her train was a sort-of freight train and she settled in on the wide center beam of a flatcar not meant for carrying actual loads, hooking her forehooves over the front bulkhead. The locomotive on the front of her train was a steam locomotive, and its wheels slipped before it got the train moving around the loop of track. The miniature train’s route was decorated with rocks and plants and even had a small Cascade Tunnel, which wasn’t scary because she could see how big the hill was on top of it, and there was plenty of light inside. It was kind of silly to take a toy train that didn’t go anywhere, but she couldn’t resist the opportunity. It even had a name, as a proper railroad should: the Great Northern & Cascade Railway.
She couldn’t help but wonder what the big trains thought of it, what the big train crews thought as they went by. Did they think that a bunch of silly people were riding a little train in a loop, or did they ride it, too, on their time off?
She thought that some of them would.
Her second lap, she rode on the back car and watched the rails behind her, and the illusion of normality would take hold and then be dashed as they passed a real-size car or somebody casually stepped across the tracks to get a better picture of a pony riding a train.
The gift shop had hats and books of photos detailing the rich railroad history of Skykomish, as well as a rack of postcards. She bought two to send back to Michigan—maybe it wasn’t the Rockies like she’d intended, but the Cascades were nice, too.
There was no way she could summarize her journey on a postcard, no matter how small she mouthwrote, so she settled for a few highlights: the DPU, the electric commuter train in Chicago, hiding from the bull in Idaho. Sweetsong thought about mentioning the Cascade Tunnel, but then thought they might worry if they knew she’d abandoned a train while it was moving.
The post office was only a block from the train, then across the tracks was the bulk of town, nested on a triangular spot of land.
•••
Instead of finding a restaurant or convenience store for dinner, she followed the Skykomish River a few miles out of town and caught her own dinner, a nice fat trout.
She also found some horsemint and yellowcress, and by the time she perched in a pine tree for the night, her belly was full.
The air in the mountains was different than the air on the plains or out in more built-up areas. Sweetsong wasn’t sure why that was. It was thinner at higher elevation, of course, and there was more pine tree smell, but there was something else intangible about it.
Maybe it was just the nothingness of the spot she’d found, not so far from town that she couldn’t hear the trains run through, but far enough away she couldn’t see it from her spot in the tree.
Skykomish lacked the openness of Montana but had its own rugged beauty. She nibbled on a pine frond and then put her head down on her forehooves and fell asleep.
•••
In the morning, she caught another fish for breakfast, a young steelhead, then quickly washed herself off in the freezing cold river and stretched out on a rocky deposit to dry off. She’d already spotted the perfect place to catch a train, and wasn’t in any particular hurry. There was a steady parade of trains going by.
She brushed herself off then repacked her saddlebags, taking mouthfuls of fresh grasses for later. They’d be a nice change from the packaged convenience store food she usually got.
Not far out of the yard, the tracks bent along the river, with dense conifers on the other side. Any westbound train leaving the yard wouldn’t have much speed as it passed.
•••
By noon, she’d found a train, and the oddest flatcar she’d seen: it was neatly stacked with rail wheels, two rows high.
It only took her a moment to make her decision. The load offered both visibility and security; she could ride with her forelegs on the axles and have a good view forwards or backwards, and she could duck down under the axles and be practically invisible.
Even better, the ends of the car were open if she needed to quickly leave. She wouldn't have to try and fit out a hole or between cross bracing, she could run off the deck or climb to an axle on the top row and take off from there.
The car was specially made for this service. It had a low curb all the way around it to keep the wheels in place, and was stenciled “freight car wheels only.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen cars with special instructions painted right on them. Some of them were obvious, like only taking a specific load or being returned to a specific place, while others were less clear. There were instructions on how to load or unload cars, where to put the straps when the car was empty on centerbeam cars, and various hazardous cargo placards and signs. Not to mention they all had their load capacity and build date painted on them.
She dove in and landed on the leading end of the flatcar, worming her way under the rail wheels as the train passed back into the trees. For now, she was secure. The car didn’t lend itself to laying out her army blanket—the wind would take it—but at night she could wrap herself in it.
With a new kind of car or load, she always tried to figure out where she might be visible from and where she’d be hidden, and she took a minute to settle in, then peered through the gap between the wheels at the nearby mountains and the Skykomish River.
Sweetsong didn’t curse herself by promising that this would be the car she rode to the Pacific in, but she did try and psych herself up just in case there was another long scary tunnel ahead.
I could have bought a flashlight in Skykomish, she thought. That would help.
Would it? Or would the single beam of light playing against the rushing walls make it worse?
Logic suggested that any other tunnels would be short: surely tunnels were expensive to construct, and they wouldn’t have two long ones on the route. Besides, when she was riding the little train through the fake Cascade Tunnel, she’d learned that she’d ridden through the longest railroad tunnel in America.
Even though she knew that wasn’t true; subways were longer.
Instead of leaning on the first wheelset, she leaned on the second. That gave her very good cover to the front while still providing a decent view.
They ran alongside the Skykomish River and US 2, all of them taking the easiest route through the mountains. Sometimes she’d lose sight of the road or the river or both, and then they’d reunite.
As they continued west, she started seeing more and more houses, along with more towns. The land was flattening out, slowly descending towards the ocean.
Her train had to wait for an eastbound stack train to pass, and she took the opportunity to sit on the floor of the car and eat some of the pasture grass she’d gathered, along with the last two alfalfa cubes from Petco. On one side was a berry farm, and on the other a diner, and before the eastbound train had arrived, she’d considered flying out of her nest of wheels and getting some fresh food. Probably the farm wouldn’t like it if she started eating off their bushes, plus it was really rude. The diner might not ask too many questions about where she’d come from, and she could have just nipped out and right back to her hiding spot.
Then they were on their way again, and she leaned up against the axle. The train crept through a small rail yard, right along the edge of the Skykomish River. She kept low, peering through the bottom curve of the wheels—it wasn’t the best view, but she was nearly invisible.
This was the best car she’d picked thus far on her route, although if it started raining it wasn’t going to be as great. Decent view, virtually no chance of discovery, and the wind blowing through her mane. It was a shame more trains didn’t carry wheels around.
Only the locomotives had been better, but that was something she couldn’t count on.
•••
As she continued west, the land flattened out, and the vast pine forests were replaced with fields and towns, sometimes popping up seemingly out of nowhere. The train crossed a truss bridge over a branch of the river, and then suddenly there were houses and industries on either side of the train. At least the horn had given her some warning before they crossed a road.
No longer could she ride with her hooves up on the axle like a captain at the prow of her ship. Now she had to stay down, low enough that she wasn’t too obvious. Still, while the backs of the wheels were blinders, she had a decent view ahead and above.
One thing she didn’t entirely like about the load was that it wasn’t tied down, and they shifted ever so slightly as the train moved. Judging by the way they were stacked, they couldn’t fall so long as the train stayed on the tracks, but still. Loose cargos were dangerous, everypony knew that.
If there wasn’t anything too close, she’d risk sticking her head up to get a look around. The houses fell away, the river came close, and the road rose, leaving her in a defile, invisible to all.
Then the train honked its horn, the signal for a grade crossing, and as they rolled onto a deck bridge, she caught sight of the road again, now nearly level, and buildings ahead. This was a decent-sized town, US-2 merged with another route on a bridge that crossed the tracks, a bridge that could have been a good hiding spot if trains stopped here and if there weren’t so many cars or people around.
It was always useful to scout out potential hiding spots when she was en route, there was no telling when she might be able to use them in the future. There was a second track, so maybe trains did occasionally wait to pass each other here.
•••
She expected the towns to continue, getting more and more urban until she was in Seattle proper, but instead the highway turned away from the track, they passed an equine laundry, and she was still puzzling about that as they left the city behind and moved back into fields and pastures again. It wasn’t long before she saw another city to the north. It kept on the far side of the river while fields continued to her south, until it finally grew into what she was sure was Seattle.
A railyard had a long piggyback train loaded with semi-trailers, most of them equipped with skirting along their bellies. She’d never considered riding under a trailer before, but that could be a good spot to hide.
They went under an interstate, past Everett station, then curved around and headed into a trench.
She hadn’t expected the train to then go under part of the city, but it did.
Instead of panic, Sweetsong was completely baffled at how anybody thought of making a freight train a subway for a few blocks. Did they tunnel under or did they build on top of the railroad?
She stuck her head above the top row of wheels and could see faint light down both ends of the tunnel, so it wasn't that long.
On the other side, it wasn’t in a trench any more, and she could see big cranes and what looked like a ship off in the distance.
Is it the Pacific? She sniffed at the air, and could faintly pick up a sea breeze. But she knew Seattle wasn’t on the Pacific, it was on Puget Sound, and both her reckoning of where the train was supposed to go and the time it had taken weren’t long enough to actually get to the ocean.
From Seattle, though, she could find a route that did. Amtrak might not go there, but surely there were deepwater ports along the coast and trains that served them.
Overhead, she spotted a flock of seagulls. Back home, seagulls stayed where they were supposed to be—near the sea—but she’d discovered on Earth they’d often go far inland, subsisting on discarded food in parking lots instead of fish. Were they dumb seagulls who didn’t know how to hunt, or were they the smarter ones to get low-effort food?
She could have flown to the Pacific, and her saddlebags carried a few empty wrappers of food she’d purchased instead of foraging off what the land could provide, so it was difficult to fault the seagulls for seizing an opportunity when it was presented to them.
The train was still moving at a good clip and there were lots of people around, so it wouldn’t be smart to bail out right now, even though she could do so with little consequence. And she might, if the train appeared to be heading inland, but for now she was content to ride and watch as they passed a giant container yard, the source of the stack train that had passed earlier.
And then they were right on the coast, a tree-y hillside blocking any view of her, and the beach off to her right. Lots of islands filled the water, mostly covered in pine trees, not unlike the mountains she’d just passed through.
Seattle was famous for its coffee and its Space Needle, neither of which she could see from the train. As a pegasus coming to Earth, she’d learned about useful flight aids, but she hadn’t paid all that much attention. She wasn’t planning on flying all that far, nor at heights where she would have to use a radio and get a call sign and tell the airplane directors where she wanted to go. Humans had moving maps in glass-faced boxes that could tell her where she was and what she was seeing, but she hadn’t bought one. She hadn’t even been smart enough to buy a paper map. Still, to the best of her knowledge, there weren’t any other big cities along a body of saltwater on her route, so this must be Seattle. And if it wasn’t?
Life was more fun if each day was an adventure. This was a place she could spend a few days, earn some bits, tour around and see the sights, and when the wanderlust took her again, she’d keep going west until she found the ocean.
•••
Her ears and the occasional dock told her that she was still alongside a big city, even though it was mostly hidden by trees. The tracks ran right along the waterfront, sometimes practically in the water.
They got shifted onto a side track and had to wait next to a stinky tank farm and she considered once again leaving the train behind and exploring, but decided to wait and see where she wound up.
Two eastbound trains zipped by, and then they were on the move again, crawling forward. A passenger train passed, going in the other direction, and then they got onto another siding track, this time completely off the main.
Sweetsong strapped her saddlebags on and moved to the front of the car. She could visit the beach and get back to the train before it escaped, if she wanted to.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of orange, and stepped back as a freight blasted by on the track they’d just vacated, and as soon as she saw the first freight car, all thoughts of the ocean vanished in an instant.
The train was carrying airplanes. Fuselages, wrapped up in green plastic, their wings and noses and tails missing, but airplanes without a doubt.
Each one took a pair of flatcars, with the tail hanging over the second car, and there were little huts built at the end of the stump-tail, as well as metal brackets at the front of the car she couldn’t make sense of.
Humans are crazy. That was the only possible explanation.
She stuck her head over the side and watched as it vanished in the distance, then took to wing, making an easy flight over a small stand of trees and then to the beach.
•••
It was a popular beach for humans and dogs alike. And it turned out she was also a popular attraction for humans and dogs alike, although she didn’t notice until she’d splashed around in the water for a while and then soared around over the ocean.
She hadn’t intended to get out her guitar, but her muse was whispering in her ear, and she settled down with trees to her back and Puget Sound in front of her, and began singing.
Maybe she wasn’t where she wanted to be, yet, but maybe she was where she needed to be.
She was still playing her guitar on the beach as her train rolled out, and her hooves faltered on the strings as her car of wheels jerked and then was yanked away.
There was still time to catch it, and she’d been singing about life on the rails . . . but no, there would be another train. There was always another train.
Sweetsong played until sunset, with occasional breaks for a drink of water or nibbles of beach grass. She’d never liked beach grass, it was tough and bitter, but she was content to eat it and stay where she was rather than move on.
As the sun dipped to the horizon, it was time to fold up her guitar, time to listen to the crash of waves on the beach and the soft conversations of people doing the same, spoiled—for some—as a freight train rolled by.
•••
She should have found a place to spend the night when it was still light out, but hadn’t bothered. Sleeping on the beach was an option; it didn’t feel like the weather would get too bad. Sometimes parks had roving rangers who made sure everybody was out, and while she’d hidden up in trees in those parks before, here along the beach all the trees were stunted and wind-blown and she’d be spotted in an instant.
The bridge over the railroad tracks was built for people, and it didn’t have deep enough girders for her to tuck in to, and neither the bathroom nor the pavilion had flat roofs.
On the other side of the tracks, the trees looked thick enough, and she could stay off the path.
She flew up high enough to get a look at what was immediately inland while she still had enough light to see clearly, settling on the cluster of trees on the upslope at the north end of the park. There weren’t any trails through it, and she was close enough to the tracks she might be able to hop a freight first thing in the morning to take her to Seattle proper.
She had not flown up high enough to see the Space Needle, although off to her south she did see the lights of tall buildings.
It took a few minutes to find a good tree; when she did, she settled onto a branch near the trunk and pulled her army blanket out of her saddlebags. Draping it over herself while also keeping balance was tricky, especially as a few gusts from the ocean tried to take it.
•••
Through the night, her ears perked every time a train rumbled by, and then she settled back down until the next came.
•••
Sweetsong was up with the sun, her belly grumbling. She hadn’t had a proper meal since Skykomish, and she had no idea where the nearest restaurant was. Usually neighborhoods had nearby restaurants. She could fly around until she found one, or she could stay where she was, forage for a quick snack, and hope for a passing southbound train that was going slow enough she could hitch a ride into the heart of Seattle.
The park was on a small point of land, and she could fly south, which would get her closer to Seattle; if she saw a likely-looking restaurant she could get food, and if a slow-moving freight train came along under her, she could catch a ride.
She rolled up her blanket and put it back in her saddlebags, then flew out of the tree and across the tracks, cutting south as soon as she was over the beach.
She kept low enough that she could dive down to a train if one came by, but that meant she didn’t get as good a view inland. Sometimes along highways, restaurants and gas stations had their signs on very tall poles so they were easy to see from a long way off, but there was none of that here, just residential neighborhoods and trees and hills and a big golf course.
Inland, she’d have no trouble finding food, and she finally decided to head more directly to Seattle as she passed over another park where the land started to curve out to the west, along with the tracks.
After several blocks of houses, she came across Larsen’s bakery, and she glided to a landing in front of the store. The smell of fresh-baked treats was too much to pass by, and she left with a full belly, along with food for later: two kinds of kringle, a bread braid, and a small bag of smorkages, which looked like cinnamon rolls and smelled like almonds.
She’d find the bay and by extension the tracks again if she flew west, but decided to fly along on her own wingpower for now. She could see the buildings of downtown Seattle and the Space Needle as well, and changed her course to the southeast to fly directly at them.
•••
It was further than it looked, and her wings were getting tired by the time she finally reached the Space Needle.
She’d seen the CN Tower from a distance, and this wasn’t as tall; it was like the CN Tower’s little sister.
She wasn’t in the mood for singing just yet, so she didn’t buzz the windows of the tower; instead, she glided down into the park below, stripped off her saddlebags, and rolled in the grass.
As quick as it would have been to get the lay of the land from the air, she instead trotted around the park, getting an idea of what was there. They had directional signs and informational signs; they had a fountain and a stained glass museum and to the northeast there was a playground for artists which had a sound garden with all sorts of chimes for children to play with.
It was immensely popular with children or children-at-heart, and she got mobbed as soon as she was noticed. That wouldn’t earn her bits, but she couldn’t resist the allure of children who just wanted to pet her and talk to her, and before too long she’d gathered a small cluster of kids on a grassy mound that made ‘swish swish’ noises when the wind blew across it.
Behind them, a cluster of parents, watching over. She opened her saddlebags and set out her fishing hat, a clear sign that she was fishing for consideration, and then she started to regale them with tales of riding the rails, of her hometown, of what it was like to be a pegasus pony with the wind under her wings.
She knew plenty of children’s songs and foal’s songs, and she alternated when she sang, or just recited a verse here and there when it was appropriate, careful to not keep the children for too long, lest their parents start to worry about appointments that might be missed.
One more round of petting and hugs and nuzzles. Her wings and fur were ruffled, her mane was mussed, and her hat was full of bills from appreciative adults.
She’d get cornered again if she stayed on the ground, so once she’d gotten her hat and money stowed away, she took flight, landing on the roof of the monorail.
Sweetsong had heard of monorails but had never ridden on one, and after she’d preened her wings back in order, she flew around to the actual station entrance and paid for a ticket, then hop-flew her way up the stairs to the monorail station—there were too many people for her to properly fly up the stairwell.
While the monorail had seemed safe enough from the ground, seeing it as it approached the station gave her pause. It was balanced on a single rail, and she couldn’t figure out why it didn’t fall off.
Maybe the low-hanging parts of it were heavy keels, like on a ship, to keep it balanced.
Plenty of passengers were getting aboard, and a sign at the platform said that it had been operating since 1962, which implied it was safe enough. Safer, say, than riding a grain car through the Cascade Tunnel.
She’d felt the current as the train approached the station, and felt it again as the motorman advanced the throttle: a surge of electricity, barely-contained lightening leaping from conductors on the cement rail to conductors on the train, filling the car with eddy currents that were different than the faint prickle of electricity coming from the overhead lights.
It always boggled her mind that humans had done so much with electricity, even when they couldn’t properly feel it.
Sweetsong shifted on her hooves and flared out her wings as the train accelerated, the current peaking and then steadying out. She could have had a seat and a good view, but feeling the electric surge through her hooves was better.
The train didn’t rock like she’d expected; it stayed steady on the center of the rail, not leaning even as it took a curve. Some passengers were holding on to handrails—she’d learned from an old hobo that the railroads said you always needed three points of contact to be safe. With her wings she had twice that.
Admittedly, he’d been better at climbing ladders than she was, but she didn’t need ladders.
•••
The monorail dropped her off at a shopping center, which wasn’t the ideal place to earn bits, so she walked the sidewalks and looked into windows to see what people were selling.
When she’d first come to Earth, it had boggled her mind just how much stuff was for sale, and how full the shelves were. There never seemed to be empty spaces where the product had sold out, and it got completely overwhelming.
Not that she needed much. Anything she bought had to fit into her saddlebags, had to be something she could carry around with her, and most importantly had to be able to withstand a life on the rails. Before her army blanket, she’d had a polar fleece blanket which was soft and snuggly when it was new, but not so good after a few months of use.
Where there were stores there were restaurants, and she had a lot of options in a small radius. She found a ginger beer store that sold ginger beer by the cup or gallon if she was really thirsty, and in an alleyway behind that, a small cluster of restaurants including a clam chowder restaurant.
Sweetsong hadn’t had clam chowder since she was on the East Coast, and while it was tempting to try their New England version, she decided to try smoked salmon chowder instead. Maybe like pizza, everyplace had their own spin on the dish.
Best of all, they didn’t mind that she had a jug of Rachel’s Ginger Beer, and she could eat outdoors.
Right across the street was an actual fish market, which was a more familiar place to browse. Unfortunately, fish didn’t travel well, so she didn’t buy any.
Beyond that was a harbor and an aquarium which was tempting to visit, but she didn’t feel like spending nearly thirty dollars to see fish in glass cages.
Wings over Washington was ten dollars cheaper and promised a flying theater, but they didn’t have any seats that were pony-friendly. She could fly over Washington for free anyway, if she wanted to.
It was easier to ride a train.
•••
As she flew over Elliott Bay, she saw a ferry leaving the dock and she couldn’t help herself; she landed on the roof above the pilothouse and stayed there until the crew started yelling at her, then flew off to the nearest point of land.
That had a hilltop park where she earned some more bits, and a beach with a small Statue of Liberty. The real one was in New York and was big enough to go inside.
Inland, she found a big tree-y park that was the perfect place to spend the night. This time she scouted it out before nightfall, and found the perfect tree that was high enough to give her a view of the water but not be too obvious to the rangers.
That was the perfect place to eat some of her braid-bread and drink some more ginger beer as she watched the sun set in the distance and the lights of Seattle.
Tomorrow, she’d see what else Seattle had to offer.
•••
She was up before the sun, already headed east. Yesterday, she’d spotted a huge fuel depot along the water and while that wasn’t anywhere she wanted to try and catch a train—if there were even any cars there she could ride—it was easy to spot and had to connect to something.
The secondary railyard wasn’t hard to find; it was laid out diagonally just beyond the island the tank farm sat on. An airport was south of the railyard, something to be avoided. Sweetsong glanced around to make sure there weren’t any airplanes close to her, and then down at the runway to see if any airplanes were lining up to take off. Even if they passed overhead, she’d been warned that the big ones could make horizontal tornados in the air.
She didn’t see any airplanes lined up to fly, but she did see lots of them parked around the airport, one of which had the same blue-green wrapper on it as the ones that had ridden, wingless, on the flat cars.
That did pique her interest.
Airplanes couldn’t turn all that sharply, so she followed a river that paralleled the railyard and airport. It was tempting to dive down and see if she could find a fish for breakfast, but with the amount of industries all tucked up along it, not to mention the fleets of barges, that would be a bad idea. Human waterways were often polluted in cities.
•••
As she approached a marina, the smell of food got her attention, and she swooped down a street with a cluster of restaurants. The restaurants had attracted food trucks, and she decided to try the Burrito Express truck, which was parked behind Mi Fondita Del Itsmo. She got a ‘mare on a budget’ breakfast burrito with bacon, and a frijolero for later.
The roof of a marina was a good place to eat her breakfast burrito, and she had a good view of all the airplanes sitting on the other side of the river. Strangely, there were dozens of different airplane liveries and most of them had covers over their engines and windows. Is it an airplane museum? There weren’t people walking around enjoying the airplanes, just a single security car patrolling the airplane parking, its yellow light blinking.
It was too early for Mi Fondita Del Itsmo to be open; maybe it was too early for an airplane museum to be open, as well.
What if it’s an airplane factory? She’d seen auto factories and their giant parking lots full of cars, and she’d seen a train go by with airplane fuselages. Where airplanes were built hadn’t really come up in any of her classes.
Some of the buildings near the storage lot had big doors for airplanes to go in and out of . . . it would be an interesting place to explore before she flew back to Seattle and buzzed the Space Needle.
•••
The south end of the airport had T-hangers for little airplanes and a museum. The museum wasn’t open yet, so she found a FBO instead and settled into the lounge for some bad coffee and flying gossip. She knew about FBOs, the mareport had one, and they were supposed to be open to pilots. She could fly and had a provisional pilot’s license, although she’d have to rummage through her saddlebags to find it.
Not that she needed to; before she’d taken a single sip of coffee she’d already become the center of attention of the FBO.
It was inevitable as soon as she started chatting with pilots that Sweetsong was going to be invited to fly in an airplane.
She’d never really sought that out; every pegasus said that they were uncomfortable, crowded, smelly, and completely separated from the air outside, invariably causing vertigo. Those few pegasi who served rescue operations typically rode on the outside of helicopters, or inside but the door was left part way open for the duration of the flight.
Little airplanes were different, and it might be a fun experience. It might also get her a good view of how the land around Seattle was shaped, so she’d know what route to take by train.
One of the pilots had a Stearman Kaydet, which was a cheerful yellow, and even better had an open cockpit, so flying in it would be much like flying on her own, although with no real effort.
The leather helmet the pilot offered her was uncomfortable and the earphones didn’t line up with her ears, but she needed to wear it so she could hear him talking—the wind and engine noise would make it impossible to be heard otherwise.
Once she was settled into her seat, the pilot strapped her in place and gave her brief instruction which mostly amounted to ‘don’t touch anything,’ and advised her to not bail out of the airplane and fly off on her own. He had apparently seen some of the documentary footage of the Pegasus Rescue Brigade in action—they jumped out of their helicopter when it was hovering.
After the pilot completed his safety checks on the airplane and reminded her once again to not touch any of the controls unless he specifically told her to, the engine was started and they taxied around to the runway.
While he was speaking to the control tower, she was tempted to cut in on the radio and give her own callsign, although since she wasn’t flying on her own, she wasn’t required to. Also, she couldn’t even remember what it was.
The airport had two parallel runways, one for big airplanes and one for little airplanes. She’d seen the big ones flying overhead and approaching and departing from distant airfields before; she’d seen plenty of them on the ground, but being lined up at the threshold of their runway as a jet took off on the runway next to them was an entirely different experience, from the moment the lumbering giant’s engines screamed into takeoff thrust to it changing into a more graceful machine as it roared past their holding position. She watched as it rotated its nose up and then took flight, its wings flexing as they took on the whole load, and it was tucking its wheels into its belly as the blast from the engine and the vortexes from the wingtip washed across her, rocking their biplane on its landing gear.
Sweetsong knew about wake turbulence, but had never actually felt it before, and she wondered if the pilot could feel it, too. Her hoof hovered over the transmit button, and then the tower was on the channel, reporting the turbulence and also giving them clearance to fly.
Like the big airplane, the biplane was awkward on the ground, bouncing and rattling like a boxcar with a flat wheel, and she wasn’t fond of the loud buzzing that the engine made, either. Unfortunately, with her helmet on, she couldn’t pin her ears back.
Once the tail lifted up, it started to get in its element, and the bounciness of the gear nearly vanished. She could feel the winds over the wings change as they started to provide lift, and then they were climbing, more sedately than the jet which had left before them.
The pilot had to do a lot of talking to the airplane directors, and she was working out how the air flowed over the airplane—she had a vague idea of how it was supposed to work, but that wasn’t the same as feeling it for herself.
The runway was nearly lined up with the railyard, and she glanced down at all the railcars lined up, as well as the lack of good cover anywhere around the yard—no convenient bridges, and only a tiny copse of trees between the railyard and the highway; looking behind her, the tracks skirted the airport perimeter.
They turned as they flew over the island with the oil storage tanks on it, heading out over the sound. The Space Needle was off to her right, and she wondered if anybody in it was watching their airplane.
•••
He flew all the way up to Sequim before turning around, pointing out locations on the ground for her to see. She’d also been paying attention to where railroads went—or where they didn’t. There were no rail bridges across Puget Sound, which meant she was going to have to go south before she could go west.
The Sound had also held her interest—it was filled with all sorts of wildlife, seals and shorebirds, not to mention the shadow-shape of whales that would occasionally breach the surface and blow out a geyser of water before disappearing into the depths again.
There were also nearly every type of watercraft imaginable, from lumbering cargo vessels to the more nimble fishing boats; pleasure boats of every size; she’d even seen a small cluster of kayakers crossing from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. Sailboats tacked in the wind, and tugboats and pilot boats ferried around their charges.
The idea of bailing out of the airplane and flying the rest of the way to the Pacific on her own crossed her mind, but she’d left her saddlebags behind at the FBO, and she also couldn’t see the ocean from where they were. The pilot said it was another sixty or seventy miles west.
Instead of flying over the sound on the way back, they flew over the Olympic Peninsula, a rugged tree-y land that reminded her of Skykomish.
As they neared the Hood Canal, he offered her the chance to take the controls. She couldn’t reach the rudder pedals with her hooves, but could grip the control yoke with her forehooves and do gentle aileron turns. The airplane responded more slowly to control inputs than she did—admittedly, she was long past the point of having to think about what she was doing with her wings.
Tempting though it was to abandon her seat and fly free, to show the pilot what she could do when unencumbered by an aircraft, she relinquished the controls as they crossed back over land and let him fly the remaining distance to the airfield on his own.
•••
The FBO only had a vending machine for food, but South Town Pie delivered. They had a pizza called a unicorn which she had one slice of, and an artichoke pesto pizza which she ate entirely too much of, especially since after lunch she was pressed into doing an impromptu airshow outside the FBO.
While she wasn’t on her best form and never had been that great a flier, she could make sharper turns than the biplane had, and could hover-hop from lamppost to lamppost, and she didn’t need much of the taxiway for her runup or landing.
Sweetsong considered borrowing a radio long enough to get clearance across the runways to the Museum of Flight on the other side of the airport, but it was more sensible to ride in a car, even if it was miles around the bottom of the field instead of a short trip along a taxiway, across a runway, and then across another taxiway.
•••
Most of the airport was surrounded by modern buildings, but right next to the museum was a red barn that was the original manufacturing location of Boeing airplanes. Her new pilot friend told her that it had been moved to the airport by a barge, and she wondered if that could actually be true, then thought about the airplanes going by on flatcars and decided that it probably was; a building on a barge was no stranger than Boeings on BNSF.
The museum had airplanes both inside and out—a propeller-driven Trans Canada airplane sat next to the parking lot, and a pair of sun-faded stubby-winged fighter jets sat in the corner. Their giant air intakes in their noses reminded her of wide-mouth fish ready to chomp down on prey.
Inside, some of the airplanes were hung from the ceiling, as if they’d been somehow trapped in flight, while others either sat on the ground or on little pedestals. Some of them were meant to only be seen, while people were allowed in other ones.
Flying indoors was not allowed, which was frustrating. Maybe the interiors of the airplanes hanging from the roof were missing, and the museum didn’t want anybody to know that they were just empty shells.
They had a replica of Amelia Earhart's Electra. The sign told her that the original had been lost on a flight over the Pacific. Flying over oceans was dangerous; weather pegasi and rescue pegasi sometimes got lost over the ocean and never returned.
A few firsts were also owned by the museum; the first presidential jet which she could walk in, the first flyable 747, the first jet airliner, and the first fighter airplane. That one had a strange bullet nose and its wings were held up with as much rigging as a sailing ship.
She also got to see the inside of a Concorde, which was the world’s fastest and highest-flying passenger airplane, and the cockpit of a SR-71 which was the fastest production aircraft ever made. The rest of the airplane had been lost when it crashed.
Besides the conventional airplanes, they had a few unconventional ones, including a flying car with detachable wings so it would fit on the road, a human-powered airplane called the Albatross, and the Alcor, a pressurized glider.
Sweetsong liked the older airplanes, the ones that either had open cockpits or at least windows that opened. Humans seemed to prefer things that were faster and kept the outside out, but even as a mediocre flier, she knew it was better to be able to feel the air currents rather than be walled away from them, with no idea what the airplane was actually feeling besides what the instruments said. Pilots even needed a gauge to tell them if they were right-side-up or upside-down, something she’d never had trouble discerning when she flew.
Still, as she’d looked at the prodigious size of the 747 and the 787, she couldn’t help but appreciate the sheer magnitude of them, nor the dramatic difference between the wood and canvas fighter airplane with its two-bladed propeller and the enormous maws of the 787s engines which could surely suck in that airplane, chew it up, and spit out nothing but splinters and scraps of canvas. She’d felt for herself what kind of winds an airplane left behind when it took off on a parallel runway; standing directly behind one of those engines would be akin to trying to stand in a hurricane.
•••
She bade her new pilot friends farewell as the sun sank below the horizon. Several of them had offered her a place to stay for the night, but she’d turned down all their offers, preferring to spend the night outdoors. It had not been asked—nor could she have answered—what her favorite airplane was.
She’d seen a few good overnighting spots from the airplane, and ultimately settled on the roof of a printing press building located near the confluence of two rail lines. It wasn’t the best location; the roof didn’t have a parapet and she could theoretically be seen by cars passing on a nearby highway bridge, but figured that as long as she stayed behind the roof-mounted air conditioning units, she’d be decently hidden. People rarely looked on roofs, anyway.
The building had piles of pre-made tracks stacked up along its side, and all the chimneys smelled strongly of printing ink. The presses operating below her were a comforting noise, and the sounds of the railyard muted the swish of traffic passing over the yard on a long bridge.
•••
Midway through the night, the rain started, and she eventually abandoned her roof for a dryer bridge abutment. A few sleepy pigeons fluffed themselves up then moved aside as she picked out her resting spot.
•••
The rain kept up in the morning, and she reconsidered her idea to fly to the Space Needle. She’d wanted to buzz it just because she could, and that might get her more interest in the park, from people on the ground who saw it or people in the tower who spotted her on the way out. In the rain, though, there wouldn’t be any people in the park, and she was rarely allowed to sing for money indoors.
A passenger train whisked by along the edge of the yard, sleek and streamlined, with nowhere for her to ride unless she bought a ticket and got on at a station.
A few minutes later, a container train rolled slowly under her bridge, and she eyed the rain-slicked cars, contemplating ducking down into the small open spot at the end of a container well. It was a bad idea; the cars were closely-watched, and the train was stopping in the yard anyway.
Someday when it didn’t really matter, she’d ride on top of a railcar for as long as she could, sitting out in the open for anybody to see, as much as a challenge to the railroad as the pigeon who was strutting along the hem of her blanket was a challenge to her.
Sweetsong sighed and stretched out her wings, sending the pigeon scurrying off. If I’m not going to fly in the rain, I might as well just turn in my wings and stay grounded forever.
She rolled up her blanket and stuffed it into her saddlebags, looked up and down the tracks to make sure no trains were coming, and dropped off the abutment, heading north, flying above the tracks and searching for a restaurant.
•••
She got briefly distracted by a collection of Coast Guard cutters tied up together—all of them had marked helipads on them, and she considered landing on them just for fun, decided against it, and then started flying along a street that had two stadiums on it, figuring that there would be restaurants near stadiums.
There were, but most of them were closed, pubs and restaurants that catered to the evening crowd. However, a few blocks north she found the Biscuit Bitch which was open and offering breakfast. Their gritty scrambled cheesy bitch was a perfect breakfast for a rainy day, although a little too much to eat before flying. There was a bus stop right across the street; she could be lazy, spend a few coins, and ride a bus.
Instead, she trotted down the rain-slicked sidewalk in the direction of the Space Needle which she still couldn’t see, but she’d been told if she went east on Stewart Street until she found the monorail tracks, she could follow those.
By the time she found the monorail tracks, her breakfast was sitting comfortably and she took flight again, paralleling the monorail’s route. Trying to race it was dumb, she already knew it went faster than she could fly, but when she heard it behind her she picked up speed anyway, then rocked on her wings as it went past.
Attempting to chase it would gain her nothing, so she slowed back down and continued her flight.
Destination Unknown South out of Tukwila Admiral Biscuit
The Space Needle was ghostly in the mist, almost like a giant tree rising in a misty forest, its top invisible to her.
She circled its trunk and started climbing, staying far enough from the side to be clear of the elevators that ran outside—she was reasonably sure that they stayed attached to the side, but hadn’t paid them all that much attention when she was in the park.
It would have been nice if the top of the Space Needle had been sticking out of the clouds, but it wasn’t. She’d only seen that one time before on a foggy day in New York City. Did people appreciate how they could get out of the gloomy streets if they wanted by just riding elevators to the tops of all the tall buildings?
Sweetsong stayed cautious until she could see the shadowy base of the observation deck above her. It was hard to know when she was in a cloud just how much visibility she actually had.
She’d come in closer than she meant to, and now that she had her objective in sight, she started to angle out to the side, intending to fly by the restaurant windows.
That plan was a bad plan; she should have checked their hours of operation on the sign below. They didn’t open until lunch, so the only people in there were a skeleton crew getting everything ready for opening.
There were people on the observation deck, although there wasn’t much for them to observe. Not until she flew into view, anyway.
•••
Sometimes she sang when she flew, but usually not for an audience. She hadn’t intended to, but the smell of rain and sea spray was in her nose, the distant keening of seabirds, and she started to sing a traditional fishing song that all pegasi knew, first to herself and then out loud, still circling the Space Needle.
In some ways, it was not unlike the mast of a sailing ship, and she’d heard stories from sailors about fogs and mists so thick that when they were up in the rigging, they couldn’t see the ship below them.
She wracked her brain for any English sea shanties that she might know, finally settling on The Ballad of the Greenland Whalers. It would have been better if she’d been able to get out her guitar, but that wasn’t really an instrument to be played while flying.
Some sailorpegasi carried concertinas; maybe she could get one of her own.
It would have been nice to have people singing along, too. That was a strange thing about humans; they enjoyed her music, but even when she was singing human songs they’d rarely join in, even if it was a song meant for many people to sing. The only exception she’d noticed so far was Christmas carols—when she started singing those, people did join in.
But then as she orbited around she found a man who was at least mouthing the words, and she hovered in place and motioned for him to sing with her, and he did.
Once they’d finished singing, she flew up and over the glass barriers, landing on the concrete walkway. She hadn’t intended to, but it felt like the right thing to do. Would they get mad if she started singing on their tower? Would they be mad if she’d gotten up there without one of the elevators?
More importantly, what could they do about it? The first sight of black-clad security people and she’d be off the edge, and they couldn’t follow her. She lifted the flap on her saddlebags and got out her fishing hat, found a good spot on a glass bench, and started singing.
•••
She performed for almost an hour before she got the prickly feeling in her fur that she’d overstayed her welcome, so she cut her song a verse short, tucked her hat back in her saddlebags, and departed the way she’d come, over the edge and this time racing for the BNSF tracks only a few blocks southwest.
The rain had moved on, and the last clouds were breaking up or drifting off, leaving behind a rain-slicked city and bright patches of sunlight. There was almost no chance of making a quick escape on a passing train, but then she didn’t have to. It’d take them a while to get to the bottom of the tower and head down the street, if they even cared to chase her.
Still, she kept an ear turned back just in case they had a helicopter.
•••
She hadn’t expected to pass over a sculpture park alongside the tracks. Getting on a train would be too obvious with all the people around, and she’d started angling south to follow the tracks before she realized the opportunity she had in front of her.
The park had a bridge over the railroad tracks, and she set up at the end of that, which would both give her an opportunity to earn more bits and keep an eye on the trains that passed below, let her get an idea of what kinds of southbound trains were passing.
•••
She sang until the rain came back. People were generous; it wasn’t polite to count out the money in her fishing hat in front of an audience, but she could tell just by its weight. If people had made more of their money out of metal instead of cotton paper, she could get a better estimate by hefting her hat.
The end of the walkway jutted out, a runway for a pegasus, and she hopped over the edge and soared across Broad Street before picking up altitude, following in the trail of an intermodal train which had passed beneath her as she sang her last song.
Sweetsong settled on the roof of a gentrified warehouse long enough to sort her money—the people in Seattle had been very generous—and looked down at the tracks passing by, considering her options. Boarding a train here, if she even could, would be anything but subtle, and she’d found a spot near the airport.
On the downside, that meant flying miles and miles south, and it was starting to rain again. Her wings were sore, and her breakfast biscuit was nothing but a memory.
Food, then find a way to hitch a ride. A block off the main street, she found a bento house which was expensive but presented her sashimi in a wooden box. It was awkward to carry but more durable than the Styrofoam or cardboard wrappers she usually got with food.
By the time she’d gotten her bento box, it had started to drizzle again. Sweetsong didn’t feel like flying all the way back to Tukwila in the rain, so she considered other options. She’d seen a tram on her way to the Space Needle and remembered seeing signs for it where she’d left the monorail, and headed off in that direction.
It was only three dollars to ride, but she wasn’t supposed to eat her food on the tram, so she ate while two trams passed by, then got on the third.
The tram was running underground, which she didn’t like, although with the lights in the cars it wasn’t so bad, and she knew that it came out of the tunnel and ran on bridges. Unless there were more identical trains, something she hadn’t considered as it reached its second station stop, still underground.
She started humming Don’t Sleep on the Subway and concentrated on the feel of the motors as the tram accelerated away from the station, and soon enough they were back on the surface, running behind warehouses and under highway bridges—familiar territory for her.
Then the train started climbing up a bridge after it left a station, crossing over a freight line and past a storage yard for light rail trains, and it went right from the bridge into another tunnel without any warning.
Practically as soon as it came out, it was back on a bridge again, and then it came back down and ran in the middle of a street.
•••
It was still grounded at Rainier Beach, the closest stop to the bridge she’d found earlier. From the station, she couldn’t see the airport, but knew about where it was, and once she’d checked for any low-flying airplanes, she climbed up to see if she could spot it.
The airport was lost in the mist, so she picked a roughly west route and headed that way. Rainier Beach didn’t actually have a beach but it did have a ridge of trees that roads didn’t cross, which left her without one of the most useful routes to follow. Everypony knew IFR stood for “I follow road.”
Since she’d been in the company of pilots when she first spotted the bridge, she hadn’t gotten as good a look at it as she’d wanted to, and upon closer inspection it wasn’t a good location. Too close to the yard throat, and not enough cover. To the north, the tracks ran right alongside the airport, and that wouldn’t be good, either, but maybe to the south—the highway ran above the tracks on a hillside, and there might be a good place along the scrubby embankment to tuck away, or else a bridge further down that was better.
As if to mock her, a slow freight rumbled beneath her, idling into the yard, trailing blocks of double-stack cars.
She followed it along, climbing a few hundred feet up and watching for a bridge or somewhere she could hide; at the south end of the yard she found a perfect spot: the highway crossed over the yard on a nice, wide bridge, and she wasn’t too far from a Jack in the Box if she got hungry waiting for a train.
•••
Jack in the Box wasn’t great, but it was cheap. She’d decided to fly to a second, taller bridge which would give her a better view of the yard; when a train came through, she could just fly down to it.
If a train came through; all afternoon it had been nothing but intermodals, passenger trains, and one mixed northbound train.
She sprinkled her leftover fries on the bridge abutment for the birds, crumpled up her trash, stuffed it into her saddlebags, and settled down to wait.
•••
Her patience was finally rewarded when a grain unit train rolled slowly into the yard, a trio of locomotives at point. It was on the far side of the yard, to keep it out of the way of loading and unloading operations. She waited until the locomotives had passed under her, then flew across the tracks, keeping against the side of the I-5 bridge.
She had her pick of cars, finally settling on a weather-worn, heavily-graffitied Kansas City Southern car. This one had a few crumpled water bottles and a Zebra Cakes wrapper, evidence of a past rider. Sweetsong frowned, she didn’t like leaving things behind, especially litter. It wasn’t much effort to carry it back out and dispose of it properly.
She settled in as the train bumped through switches in the yard throat, keeping low since she was still in the yard and there might be workers everywhere.
Before too long, the train went over a narrow creek, and she was back on the main. It still hadn’t picked up too much speed, and a minute later she found out why; it went under a signal bridge and then diverted onto a side track.
She could see the Amtrak station from the wrong side as they went by and the train was moving slowly, she could still get off if she wanted to. Wait and find another.
Instead, she decided to see where this train would take her.
Like most grain trains, this one wasn’t in much of a hurry. It trundled along the parallel main at a fast trotting pace—she’d thought it would pick up speed when it left the yard, but it didn’t.
There were trees on one side and a golf course on the other, not as industrial as most cities she’d been in. She would have thought she was already out of town, although she’d seen how far the city extended while she was flying.
Just past the golf course, one line branched off to the east, and a moment later she was jerked across a switch as well, diverging west from the main line as the train crossed under a highway bridge.
Industrial buildings started to line the tracks, and rail spurs joined in to their line. This was a more familiar industrial setting to her: parking lots, security fences and dumpsters faced the track, along with stunted trees and bushes.
Did I get on a train that’s going to a grain elevator? She hadn’t spotted any export elevators on the waterfront, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. That was a problem for later.
Sweetsong yawned and then reached back for her saddlebags. A tug with her mouth and her army blanket was out; she stretched it across the floor, right up against the slope sheet.
A belt of trees on both sides of the tracks was enough cover for her to stretch, and then she settled down on her belly, disappearing into the shadows at the end of the car.
•••
Lights were coming on in the parking lots and on the buildings, and she was constantly rocked as the train crossed switch after switch. A steady parade of tracks came in from both sides, and she watched a northbound local pass, a caboose with big porches and no windows on its tail.
She dozed off as the train passed by a wood treating facility; when she woke again, the train was in a yard.
One side of the yard was walled in with concrete warehouses; the other side had a patch of trees visible above the stored railcars. The yard was well-lit, although the close-packed railcars would give her a decent number of hiding spots, if she wanted to abandon her train.
Sweetsong stuck her head over the side, checking to see if there were any grain elevators in sight. There weren’t, nor were there any employees that she could see. It looked like the locomotives were still on the front of her train, and she considered her options. She had no idea what time it was, or for that matter where she was. The safest bet was to stay put, make sure she kept under her blanket, and see if she woke up somewhere else.
•••
The train finally getting underway woke her in the early dawn. Her ears perked at the sound of slack coming out, and she was ready as the car jolted under her, then started moving.
It was smart to keep her head down in the yard, so she burrowed under her blanket and became a shapeless lump in the shadows, her ears monitoring the train’s progress as it switched across the yard throat and onto the main.
She stuck her head up when the train’s sound became hollow: that meant it was on a bridge. A rusty truss bridge across a muddy river, with a highway to her north. She could faintly smell salt in the air, which meant that she was still near the Sound or if she was lucky, the ocean.
As soon as it had come off the bridge, the train promptly went into another yard, and she ducked her head back down. Sometimes railroads didn’t have enough bridges across a river and it turned into a choke point for trains, so they’d put yards at either side so the trains could wait their turn.
The track made a sharp turn at the end of the yard, and then it started to pick up speed, almost immediately passing under a bridge with big curio windows on it. She couldn’t help but stare at it, even though there was a road right next to the tracks. She’d seen various kinds of fences and decorations on bridges before, but never glass objects.
Before she’d pulled her head back in, she heard a hiss of air, and the train began to slow. Did they see me? The locomotive had a mirror on it, and she should have been far enough back to be out of their sight.
Maybe someone on the ground in the yard had noticed her, had seen the lump of blanket tucked under the slope sheet. It didn’t matter. Sweetsong stuffed her army blanket back into her saddlebags and looked around—there was literally nowhere to hide. A road on one side, thin trees barely covering a hillside. She’d caught glimpses of water beyond the buildings, and that might be her best path. She could circle back around and catch a train later.
She looked up towards the front of the train, trying to get a good idea of the best place to bail, and realized what they were actually slowing for: a giant grain elevator with a ship anchored beside it.
That gave her a few minutes, anyway. Enough time to pick a better landing spot.
•••
She didn’t want to fly back to the yard if she could help it, but looking up the coast there just weren’t many good places to hop a freight. The tracks were pinned between the water and a road with no tree cover at all, and as she passed by a pair of ugly grey ships tied to each other, she started to wonder if she was making a mistake, if she’d be better off retracing her route and trying again.
She glided around on the weak early morning thermals and followed the tracks with her eyes. Further north, the tree cover was better on the inland side, and as long as she was careful, she ought to be able to board a train, if it was going slow enough. There were plenty to pick from.
Northbound trains took the outer track, which meant she would have to pay attention to any oncoming freights on the inside track. And she wouldn’t be able to look down the line as easily, not without people getting suspicious. Instead of hiding in the trees and hoping for the best, she could stop at one of the parks or beaches. She could earn some more bits, and find a train around nightfall. But she wanted to move, be back on the rails. She’d had a nice time in Seattle and now it was time to go on. Just as soon as she had some breakfast.
•••
Her saddlebags were devoid of food—she’d forgotten to stop at a grocery store to get anything for the road. None of the restaurants she’d flown over were open yet, which left her to either fly away from the tracks and find something, eat leaves and grass, or try her luck fishing. Just past the Silver Cloud Inn, there was a small park with a cluster of piers in the water, and she knew some fish liked to swim around piers.
Piers also might have mussels on them which were okay to eat and easy to catch. The difficult part was getting inside; they had hard shells that had to be cracked open with a hoof.
She stashed her saddlebags on top of a pier, then took flight again and circled around the forest of piles, doing her best to think like a fish. The water wasn’t very clear, which made it hard to spot them.
A smart fish would stay hidden unless it was after food. Minnows and herring and other small fish were easy enough to spot in their flashy schools near the surface, and a bigger fish might be hiding near one of the piles, waiting until he saw a meal passing overhead to dart up and grab something.
It was easier to fish when she wasn’t distracted by the sound of every passing train, but she nevertheless managed to find a small trout and flew it to shore.
When she was done eating, she kicked the bones and guts back into the water, retrieved her saddlebags, then flew over to the park’s restroom to refill her water bottle.
There was a small flier taped to the wall imploring her to help save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, a creature she’d never heard of. Octopuses lived in the ocean, not temperate rainforests . . . but the flier had a picture of an octopus nestled among pine branches. That was something to watch out for next time she found a tree to nest in.
•••
Her belly full, she settled into a scrubby, tree-y hillside just north of a fireboat on display in a parking lot and watched the trains go by. A southbound grain train, a northbound container train. A mixed freight with long strings of tank cars, clusters of centerbeam flats, and a few auto racks coupled near the end.
Some of them had locomotives on the rear end, others didn’t. There wasn’t enough cover to risk boarding a locomotive.
By noon, she was getting hungry and impatient. She could have bought a ticket on Amtrak and been on her way already, but there was no fun in that. Instead, she nibbled on some wild berries and watched another northbound train rush by too fast to catch. It was hard to say which was worse, to not have any trains, or to have a plethora of trains she couldn't catch. It was obvious most of them were accelerating out of the yard and had picked up pretty good speed by the time they passed her hiding spot.
She would have been better off flying back towards the yard and finding some cover there, picking a train that had just left. She could even do reconnaissance and find a likely-looking one, and then her ears perked as she heard another approaching train. This one was running slow, and she risked a short flight above the octopus-free trees to see what it was hauling.
Loads of grainers, one of them a familiar pink color. She’d found her ride.
•••
Catching a moving train in broad daylight with limited cover was not unlike stalking a tasty trout. She dropped back into the trees and waited until the locomotives thundered past, then she broke cover again to get an eye on the cars, checked for any southbound trains that could ruin her approach, and launched herself out of the tree.
She could lose some height to gain speed as she dropped down to track level, and then she was flying alongside the train, the slipstream of passing cars buffeting her. She’d memorized the cars leading her target, and as her grainer rolled alongside, she was nearly on pace with the train.
The next part was the trickiest. One more glance to make sure that there were no oncoming trains or any other obstacles to ruin her day, and then a quick snap to her right between the supporting bars of the grainer and its side. Confusing winds off the back of her grainer and the trailing car, and then her hooves were on the steel floor.
She’d barely had time to settle in when the train decided to go into a tunnel.
•••
When the train emerged on the other side, Sweetsong cautiously poked her head over the edge. The water was still on the right, but now they were headed southbound.
On the plus side, there were no roads or houses, only trees and tracks and a view of the water. She leaned up against the ladder on the car and after looking down the length of the train to make sure there weren’t any more tunnels coming up, gazed out over the sound. Off in the distance, she could see a suspension bridge that they would go under. The land to the south didn’t curve around as far as she could see, although she knew the train hadn’t gone westward enough to be at the Pacific.
The tracks were close enough to the water that she wondered if waves sometimes splashed the train. Today it was calm, but it was easy to imagine a strong storm washing up against the rails.
She’d gotten wet with rain, but never sea spray, not while riding a train anyway.
There were only a few places where she had to duck back down as the train hugged the coast, a few small clusters of houses or an industrial building. There was a chance that the engineer might spot her in his rearview mirror, but she thought that was unlikely—with all the trees and gentle curves in the track, he wasn’t likely to spot her muzzle or forehoof sticking out of the edge of the car.
A sailor might, but the boats she’d seen were staying offshore.
They skirted the edge of a town, passed a ferry terminal, and before too long were back in the woods again. An island off to the west had a ferry tied up to its dock.
Further along, she spotted a wreck jutting above the waters, a grey-colored hull with its upper works missing, no doubt torn off by waves.
South of that, at the base of the sound, the water started turning marshy, and became solider and solider until there was land on both sides and then there was a road, and she had to crouch back down in her car and watch the scenery pass from a lower vantage point.
Now the land looked more like the Midwest she was familiar with, although with far more pine trees. Fields and farms and towns, level crossings, and the train kept paralleling roads.
Judging by the sun, the train was headed generally south-southwest.
It waited outside a small town, and then when it continued on, it was on a single track.
A few miles further on, it slowed again, and she stuck her head over the side, quickly spotting the signals and an approaching yard.
It was getting late and she was hungry, so she hopped off the train alongside a lumberyard, stretched out, and flew into town to find dinner.
Destination Unknown Puget Sound and Pacific Admiral Biscuit
Centralia was arranged in a long line nestled in a junction of river valleys. Sweetsong’s first order of business was to do a quick aerial exploration of her surroundings and get an idea where she might be able to sing, if she wanted to, or where the best spot to catch a train might be. To find a grocery store so she could restock, a restaurant for dinner, and a place to sleep.
She flew over the railyard first, studying the variety of cars she might choose from. The bulk of cars weren’t good for riding, center-beam flat cars and tank cars, but there was also a good collection of grain cars and box cars. She also noticed a side track leading off almost due west, paralleling a city street.
Curious, she followed the spur track through town until it curved northwest and began to run parallel with another track. There was a river and clusters of trees; either of those would be good locations to catch out.
She followed the tracks back to the railyard, curving to the south to follow a busy road nearly parallel to the yard. Every town was laid out differently, and it was always a guess where to find the nearest food, but busy roads or highway exits were always a safe bet. It would also give her a chance to check out the south end of the yard, in case she wanted to take a train out that way. For all she knew, the track she’d been following was an industrial spur, leading to a lumberyard or big cement plant or something else a few more miles along. That was a mistake she’d made before, and as she’d flown out of her unintended destination to find a different train, she’d discovered that some industrial parks fenced the trains in.
Not really a problem for her, but that could get an earthbound hobo in trouble.
Her first stop was the B&D market, which had less of a selection of food than she’d hoped, but still more than enough to fill her saddlebags and keep her fed for a few days.
Further down the street, she found the Tiki Taphouse, which seemed popular, and she’d never had Tiki food before.
When she asked where Tiki was, her waiter informed her that Tiki was a theme, not a location or specific style of food, but their food was Hawaiian and Pacific Island inspired. The pizza was San Francisco style, which was something she’d never tried.
They also had a large collection of beers, including a barleywine—something she hadn’t ever seen in America before.
She could still fly straight after one or two of them, so she ordered one while she studied the pizza menu. Most of the pizzas had strange names, and she finally settled on the Spamango Bay, which was topped with Spam, mangos, onions, and potato chips. It seemed like an insane combination, but she was willing to give it a try. Other diners were enjoying their pizzas, at least when they weren’t glancing over at her.
Mostly she didn’t notice the stares she often got. Sometimes it worked to her advantage; when she was singing or playing her guitar, that got people’s attention, and they were more likely to stick around as soon as they saw that she was a pony. When she wasn’t performing, though, sometimes she just wanted to blend in, to be unseen, to not be an object of interest. Usually, she could tune that out, but as she looked around the restaurant and studied the strange totem poles and the decorative thatched roof on the bar she noticed people staring at her while pretending not to. She shifted around in her seat and then focused on her beer when it arrived, paying attention to that instead.
It wasn’t quite like a proper barleywine, but it was pretty good. Good enough that when the waiter brought her pizza, she ordered a second, then bit into the pizza.
Not only was it delicious, but the potato chips made it crunchy.
•••
On the east side of town, there was a tree-covered ridge which was a good place for her to overnight. A few blocks from the railroad yard, and a quick overflight showed it was uninhabited save for a few trails.
There were plenty of trees to choose from. She flew down to a promising cluster of pines and started sorting them by degree of softness and sappiness until she found a fir that she liked.
Tomorrow she’d have leftover pizza for breakfast, a proper bath, and then decide which train line was her best bet. For now, she settled into her tree-nest and watched the lights of Centralia below her, the spreading stars above her, and the yard locomotive shifting its final string of cars before tying up at the yard office for the night.
•••
She was up with the sun, and her first order of business was chasing off a squirrel who also wanted her Spamango pizza. He’d gnawed a hole in the box and already eaten part of a slice.
His smug look before he ran away tempted her to kick him off the branch, but instead she took out the partially-chewed slice and set it on the branch for him to enjoy after she’d left, ate another, then took flight again. She should have waited until today to shop for food; that way she could have carried the box in her saddlebags instead of in her mouth. It was too late now, not unless she wanted to cache her grocery store bounty in favor of the pizza.
The idea was tempting, but if she had to leave something behind to catch a train, better the pizza. That wouldn’t keep long anyway.
•••
The Amtrak station didn’t offer any passenger trains to the Pacific, not unless she wanted to ride down to California. That at least told her that going south out of town wouldn’t get her where she wanted to go anytime soon.
The tracks she’d seen heading west might, or at least get her closer. How far was she willing to fly to actually get to the Pacific? She could head west right now and be there in a few days; she had enough food in her saddlebags that even if she didn’t see a single restaurant or grocery store, she could make it.
But were there really no more convenient ports for ships than Seattle? Nothing along the actual coastline where they could load and unload? Ships meant trains; ships carried too much cargo for trucks to deliver and take away.
She walked back to the street and took flight, following the road until she was above the buildings. She’d find a train—she always did—and it wasn’t worth worrying about. For now, she needed a bath. Once she was clean she could go back to thinking about trains.
•••
She’d intended to go to the river, but once she’d picked up some altitude, she’d spotted a pond almost due west of her, the water clear and inviting. As she got closer, she discovered that it had its own little private bay, almost completely hidden from the view of the houses and hotels that crowded around the edge of the lake. Normally, she didn’t worry about that, but she was still thinking about the patrons at the Tiki Taphouse staring at her. Not rudely, they were just curious, probably none of them had seen a pony up close before. Was it wrong to want some time to herself? She had plenty of time to herself when she wasn’t trying to earn bits, maybe too much free time.
Sweetsong stripped off her saddlebags and hung them over a tree limb, rummaged around for her bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap, and then waded into the water.
One disadvantage of a natural bathing spot was the lack of places to dry off—sometimes there were sun-warmed rocks or a sandy beach; here there were just bushes and grasses all the way up to the water.
She shook off and strapped her saddlebags back on, grabbed the pizza box, and flew across the lake to land on the flat roof of a hotel. She spread out her army blanket—she’d learned shingles would shed grit into her fur—and got out her curry comb.
•••
Brushed and sun-warmed, and with one more slice of pizza in her belly, Sweetsong took to the air. She’d left the rest of the pizza behind on the hotel roof for birds to enjoy—or adventurous squirrels. She’d deposited the cardboard box in a wastebasket by the front door before flying off again.
The easiest way back to the western tracks was along the highway, and that would give her a chance to study the road bridge that crossed the tracks, as well. It had the typical wide girders and concrete abutments which made it a decent hiding place, although the area around it was more open than she liked—not a good spot to catch a train. Still, it gave her good information: one of the rail lines she’d seen stopped, and the other split off into both a northbound line and a westbound line.
The pair of bridges across the river she’d spotted yesterday were her best bet for boarding a train; there was thick tree cover and no houses, and it was close enough to the yard that the trains wouldn’t be going too fast. Plus, the two bridges were only a few hundred feet apart, which gave her the opportunity to pick from trains on either of the two lines.
•••
She’d mostly dozed off in a leafy oak that overhung the river when she heard a train horn off in the distance. It sounded like it was coming more from the east than the south, so she dropped out of her tree and skimmed the river, arriving at the truss bridge as the first locomotive rumbled across.
It was an older locomotive with a narrow front hood, lettered for a railroad she’d never heard of: the Puget Sound and Pacific. The second half of the road name was promising.
There were too many trees to get a good look at much of the consist; she was going to have to make a quick decision and hop the first car she could ride.
Seven cars back from the locomotive, she spotted the first good grainer to ride. Tempting though it was to board it before it reached the bridge, it was safer to fly across the river and pick it up after it returned to solid ground. There weren’t as many trees to act as obstacles.
Tucking her wings to clear the ladder and bracing was familiar, and she only realized as she set her hooves on the floor of the car that she hadn’t even noticed its road name.
There wasn’t time for that now; she knew the highway bridge was coming up and at least some running alongside a road. Sweetsong grabbed the army blanket out of her saddlebags and draped it over her back, disguising her shape, and settled into place as the car rocked across a switch.
•••
The train skirted the edge of town and a reservoir bounded by her tracks on one side, with I-5 and tank car storage tracks on the other.
As it headed into the countryside, it passed through an industrial park, a few scattered neighborhoods, and a trailer park that backed up nearly to the tracks.
The train was now also heading almost north . . . maybe it had come from the Pacific and was going back to Puget Sound.
That would be frustrating, but she could deal with that if it happened. She instead focused on the gentle rocking of the grainer, and the normal train noises.
There was a road inconveniently close to the tracks, and while it got rural to the east, there was a nearly continuous collection of houses and businesses behind her, close enough to spot her if she were to stand up and look around.
It wasn’t until the train turned back towards the northwest that she finally got to do some cautious sightseeing; the buildings thinned out and the track got obscured by trees and underbrush.
Unfortunately, there were roads on both sides, and that meant she might be spotted by cars going either direction.
•••
Sweetsong decided she would have had a better view if she’d picked a grainer with a hiding-hole in it, she could have seen more of the passing terrain than just treetops and the occasional risky glance over the side sill when she didn’t hear any traffic. On the plus side, the tracks were now curving steadily west.
•••
She finally got her chance to lean on the ladder and be queen of the grainer when the train left Rochester and curved into woods and fields along the undulating course of the Black River. It briefly paralleled an untrafficked rural road, then went back into the forest.
Her car was close enough to the locomotive that they might spot her in its mirrors if she leaned out too far, at least on straightaways. On curves, she could stick her head out and not be seen.
Parallel roads were mostly obscured by trees and underbrush, although occasionally the trees would thin out and she had to duck back down.
Sweetsong rocked on her hooves as the train went across a switch, a passing siding with no train waiting for them. Maybe they were going to stop. She kept her ears perked and didn’t hear the hiss of the air brakes. Maybe the train would run all the way to the Pacific without stopping.
All of a sudden, the side track rejoined hers. For some reason, it hurt her head to watch a parallel track merge into hers, and every time she stepped back as the rails crossed, as if the track itself was going to hit her car.
Through a hole in the trees, she caught a glimpse of an abandoned store, nothing left of it but windowless cement walls and peeling white paint.
When there was no tree cover, she kept her eyes on the road. Southbound traffic was no concern; they’d be past before they could get a look at her. Northbound had a chance to spot her, a few seconds where she’d be in view if they looked. They’d approach from behind and pass the train, which gave her an opportunity to duck down as the car caught up and passed.
Sweetsong played cat-and-mouse with passing traffic to all the way to the outskirts of Elma. The highway curved away for good, then she heard the hiss of the airbrakes and the train began to slow.
There were too many trees for her to see what was coming. A passing siding? A yard? The end of the line?
The train ran down in a shallow gully with a highway and city streets passing above it, and as it slowed to a trot, she heard wheels screech around a tight turn. A yard or industry, it couldn’t be anything else.
She had only seconds to decide to bail or stay on. There was still plenty of underbrush to hide her if she went straight over the side. If the train stopped in the yard, she might be stuck until nightfall. . . .
Sometimes her choices were a gut feeling. She had a good feeling about this train, about this car she was riding, even if she still didn’t know which railroad owned it.
Her gut wasn’t always right, but it had a good track record so far. She tucked down into the shadows under the slope sheet as her car bent into the curve of the wye and waited to see what the train would do next.
Sweetsong caught a glimpse of the railyard as the train bent around the wye, then heard the sound of wheels crossing a switch, surely the yard ladder. Any moment now they’d be in the yard proper, and if the train stopped, she’d have to decide how and when to bail out.
But the train didn’t stop. Her grainer crossed a road, the switch, another road, and they were alongside a storage facility, a home for the too many possessions people had. The narrow pole buildings were as good as a wall when it came to cover, enough time to risk sticking her head out the side really quick, to glance up and down the train to get an idea what was coming.
Another road crossing, for one. The train’s horn was almost constant as it was signaling traffic, but there weren't any cars waiting on her side of the train.
The yard was behind them, and she guessed if the train had meant to stop there, it would have gone around the other leg of the wye. She couldn't be sure of that: sometimes trains backed into yards. On the plus side, if the train started reversing she was likely to have cover when she bailed; on the downside she’d almost certainly be in somebody’s backyard. People usually didn’t like that; some of them were more protective of their plots of land than unicorns were of their towers. Especially golfers—they hated it when pegasi landed on their courses.
There wasn’t a parallel road but there were plenty of road crossings. Sweetsong moved out from under the slope sheet onto the deck of the grainer, allowing her to get a look over the edge while still remaining out of the sight of any cars that were waiting for the train.
To her north, baseball diamonds, one with the outfield facing the tracks. A long fly ball might land in a gondola and get carried away, and she wondered if any carman had found a baseball in one and wondered where it had come from. She knew about scraps of dunnage and bits of tarp and strapping that got left in cars, but how often did things fall in them randomly?
For that matter, what did the crews think of the litter that the cars—especially grainers—collected from riders? She knew that littering wasn’t the reason that railroads kicked hobos off the trains, but it couldn’t help. Aside from a few smudges in the dirt and maybe an errant hoofprint or two, nobody would ever know she’d ridden this car once she left it.
Sweetsong heard the locomotive throttle up, and a moment later could feel the train starting to accelerate. They weren’t going to stop in the yard, they were running through. An express train, as much as a freight train could be an express.
That wasn’t true; plenty of the double-stack trains were priority trains. She’d been sided out before so one could overtake her plodding freight, freight that might one day languish in a storage unit like the one the train had just passed. It was better to not have too many things.
How much further is the Pacific? There was no way to know, but the train was headed west, and every road it crossed was one road closer to the ocean.
Every now and then there would be a field that went up nearly to the tracks with no cover, but for the most part there were thick, luscious trees and bushes lining the route, plenty of hiding places if she needed to find one. She would have liked to be in a gondola, and maybe if the train stopped and she had some cover from the locomotive she’d go looking.
Or maybe not. It was usually best to find a car and stay put.
Sweetsong reached for her saddlebags, intending to get out her guitar, then thought better of it. A capella was better music for a forest, and left her nothing to pack if she did get caught. She hooked a hoof over the ladder and started to sing.
•••
She didn’t notice the parallel road on the south side of the tracks until she heard a horn honk. She snapped her head around, immediately noticing an old-fashioned convertible with a coffin-shaped nose. The driver waved at her and she waved back, then he accelerated and was gone.
Sweetsong ducked back down, her ears alert for the sound of brakes, but they didn’t come. The road curved away and the train continued on, passing diagonally through a small town before crossing a river on a short truss bridge. There was a highway to the south and another road to the north, and she guessed she was going to be running next to one or both of the roads before too long.
She got more of a reprieve than she’d expected; trees provided a nearly perfect screen. She could hear the cars and see flashes of sunlight off their chrome and windows, but there was no way that they could spot her blurring by. Aside from road crossings, the only place she had to hide between Satsop and the outskirts of Montesano was as the train passed the Vaughn company.
The train cut through the southern tip of Montesano, passed under US-12, made its way across a river, and then went back into farmland and trees.
Instead of continuing straight, now the track made a series of small turns, skirting along the edge of a hill. She guessed that they were generally following the edge of a river’s floodplain, and the few small creeks the train passed over were tributaries. A river was good; a river might lead to the ocean.
Sure enough, when the train came out of the woods, the tracks were perched on the edge of a hillside, right alongside a river.
•••
The tracks paralleled US-12 into Aberdeen, although most of the time the road was at a higher elevation or blocked by trees, letting her keep in the open. She kept glancing down the front of the train to check her cover, then went back to sightseeing out the south side of the train. She caught a glimpse of a lumber yard with a loading dock on the river, big enough for a ship to tie up to. This wasn’t the Pacific, but she felt like she must be getting close.
Then they got into town and the tracks were tucked between fast-food restaurants and US-12; if the train had been going slower, she could have shouted an order at the McDonald’s drive-through. Instead, she stayed in the shadows under the slope sheet: there were lots of cars and people and no trees to hide her.
Sweetsong got a brief reprieve as the train crossed over a swing bridge, then it was under a highway interchange and into a railyard.
The train was already slowing as it bumped through the yard ladder. Is this it? There was nowhere to hide; not even a screen of trees or bushes along the side of the yard. Just hard-packed dirt and hardy weeds.
They hadn’t switched off the main yet. She watched the yard pass behind them, industrial buildings on one or both sides. Storage yards, and as the train curved around a tight bend, she caught a glimpse of a boatyard with a barge dragged up on shore for refit.
Another tight bend and a few trees—they were on the outside of the curve; she could jump and the crew would never see her, or she could try her luck and ride on. She’d seen barge facilities on the Mississippi a long way from the Gulf of Mexico, after all. She could still be dozens of miles from the Pacific. Once her train stopped at a grain export elevator, then she’d know she’d gone as far as she could.
•••
Half a mile later, her train stopped for good.
Once she’d heard the locomotive uncouple and drive off, she stuck her head out the side to see what she could. Not much; the front of her train was stopped short of a road, as were all the other strings of cars on both sides. There was no cover at all, nothing but asphalt.
There would be people around, and probably cameras, too. Most likely this was a grain loading facility, although she couldn't tell from the end platform of her grainer.
After some mental deliberation, she abandoned her grainer and landed on the asphalt. It would only take a rail worker glancing down the tracks to see her, but that couldn’t be helped. Being down low gave her a chance to see under the cars, to get an idea where the closest cover might be. If there even was any.
There wasn’t any. She got a glimpse of skinny, decorative trees bordering a parking lot to the northeast, a metal warehouse of some kind, and stacks of wood on the river side.
The yard she was in would certainly have lights. She could wait until nightfall and fly above them—they’d spot her, but they wouldn’t be able to follow her. Or she could leave now and not worry about being seen. There was no chance of catching a train back out of here, so no harm in being spotted.
The other side of the river wasn’t as built up, as far as she could tell from looking under the belly of railcars. If she made her way between the cars—carefully, in case any of them were about to move—she might be able to get to the edge of a row without being spotted and have a better look at what was around her. And if she was noticed, a straight path south across the river was likely her best escape, although if she saw something better from the air, she could always change her plan.
•••
There were three tracks with strings of grainers, then an empty track, and then more tracks full of grainers. She took a quick glance in both directions as she reached the vacant track; now she could see the grain elevator to the west and thought she caught a glimpse of a ship, as well. There was nowhere nearby to hide, so she darted across two more tracks, finally boarding the end of a grainer on the outside track.
It was a suicide grainer, one that had no floor, just the center sill and a couple angle braces. That was okay, she had no intention of riding it; the car was the last cover she’d have before flying off.
Sweetsong braced her hooves on the side sill and stuck her head out, looking up and down the tracks. In front of her was an open lot with no cover for hundreds of yards in any direction.
From what she could see, flying across the river was still her best bet. Even better, closer than the other bank she’d seen from under the grainers, there was an island with scrubby trees and brush. That would be a good intermediate stop; if anyone wanted to chase her they’d need a boat or an aircraft.
She took one last look around. There were no trains coming, there were no people within eyeshot or earshot, so she jumped off the grainer, got a running start on the cement, and took flight, climbing above the light poles as quickly as she could. Anybody who was looking at her could see her, but that also gave her a better view in case there was a pursuit.
Once she was across the river, over the marshy flats she dropped down until her hooves were nearly skimming the muck, and followed the edge of the island to the west side, then used her momentum to coast up into the trees.
It wasn’t a great hiding place, but it gave her time to catch her breath and watch the grain elevator. Nobody on the other side of the river seemed interested in her; they were focusing on loading the ship instead. Depending on what the cameras covered, they might not have seen her leave the grainer, and might have just picked her up flying across the lot. If they weren’t paying attention, and the cameras were far away, she might have looked like a pink seagull.
Now what? There was no way she could get another car near the elevator, there simply wasn’t any cover. And even if she did, the best she could do was get a ride back to the yard she’d gone through a mile or so back. Maybe she could pick up a westbound train there, maybe not.
Maybe there was no more west. She hadn’t gotten a really good look on her flight, but she’d seen the mainland end on a spit of land with an airport. The river was widened out, her island had what looked like tidal flats around it; maybe she was practically to the Pacific already.
She turned that thought over in her mind as she snacked on a tube of Pringles and watched for airplanes or boats. Maybe she’d seen the land’s end out of the corner of her eye, maybe she hadn’t. But the river had widened out a lot, and rivers only did that near bigger bodies of water or behind dams. She could rule out dams since there was a freighter tied up to the dock. She had to be close to the Pacific.
By her estimation, Centralia had been a couple days flying from the Pacific. Even if this harbor was significantly inland, she had to be close. She could follow the north shore of the river, see if there were any more railroad tracks, and if she didn’t find a ride, she could simply fly all the way to the beach.
Her ears perked as a gust blew across the island, carrying salt air with it.
Salt air . . . the widening of the river could be fooling her, the seagulls could have been fooling her, even the big ship tied up to the grain dock could have been fooling her, but the smell of salt in the air had to be real.
She wiggled her rump and sniffed at the Pringles tube, wondering if she was just smelling potato chip salt. But that was a different smell, that salt was overlaid with fake cheddar, and once she put the lid back on the can and blew her nostrils clear, she could still smell the distant ocean.
Sweetsong shoved the can back in her saddlebags and crouched on the tree, kicking off the branch to take flight. Maybe the tracks went on further, maybe they didn’t; if she was close enough to smell sea salt she was close enough to fly the rest of the way to the Pacific.
What if it isn’t the Pacific, but another sound? Impossible. She’d seen maps of Washington and she knew which direction her train had been going; there was no way it could have carried her back to Puget Sound or any of the other sounds and bays she’d been to before.
She glanced around, just to make sure that there wasn’t a motorboat or helicopter headed for her island. Not that it would matter anymore if the bulls had a boat. She’d flown the coop.
Tempting though it was to circle around and cut in close to the grain ship, just to taunt it, she was a mare on a mission and focused ahead. She concentrated on the wakes of distant boats and where they pointed—a few were crossing from one side to the other or zooming around close to shore, but most of the wakes pointed nearly due west.
She was a few hundred feet above the ground as she crossed the west end of Rennie Island, high enough to start to see the difference in water color over shallows or deeper channels. To the north, another river fed the channel and a few hundred yards inland, a railroad swing bridge, turned to allow boats to pass.
There was also a huge overgrown expanse of broken concrete that clearly used to be something. A few circular patterns in the wasteland suggested tanks had been there, so maybe it had been a tank farm once.
Why were there so many abandoned buildings near railroad tracks? Some of them made sense; she knew that the big concrete coaling towers that often straddled the rails had been used to put coal in locomotives, and once the railroads switched to diesel locomotives, they didn’t need to put in coal any more. That didn’t explain all the abandoned industrial complexes she’d seen, some of them standing as ruins with broken windows and crumbling walls, others just overgrown foundations. Did people in the past buy more things and now they didn’t? Or had they been factories building things that people didn’t want any more?
Couldn’t something else have been put in place of whatever was here before? The pilings along the shore were a clear indication that there had been a dock here, and some other ship could have tied up to it, some other cargo could have been loaded. Or they could have built apartments or houses or even a park. Everything could be reused; if somebody didn’t want it somebody else would. Everypony in her village had shared what they had and traded it when they didn’t need it any more.
Humans didn’t always think like that, though. Most of them would put things they didn’t need into storage stalls or just throw it away rather than sell it or give it to someone else. They had so much garbage that some of it got hauled off by special container trains.
Some things were beyond her understanding. She focused her attention back ahead, immediately realizing that she was closer than she’d thought to the airport that jutted out into the bay.
That was something to pay attention to. It had one runway, labeled 24 on her end. That meant that airplanes might be flying towards her as they did their downwind leg, or crossing her path on the base leg. Sweetsong didn’t have an airplane radio, which meant she couldn’t listen to any airplanes that might be flying around, nor could call the airplane directors and warn them that she was flying near the airport.
The smart thing to do would be cut across the bay, far away from the airport, well out of the way of any airplane traffic. Or she could just keep her wits about her, watch for airplanes, and hug the shoreline. Keep low until she was well clear of the departure path.
Giving up altitude after gaining it was annoying, especially since she’d have to climb again, but it was the safest option. There was a lumberyard between her and the airport, and it had a big loading conveyor that extended out on a dock; if she dove down and flew under it, she’d be low enough that airplanes wouldn’t hit her. She could keep that altitude until she was well clear of the departure path and then climb again.
•••
One airplane did land as she flew by the airport, a high-winged propeller plane with blue stripes on it. Did he see her? He must have. She’d spotted him as he came in on his downwind leg, and heard him as he turned to base behind her.
There weren’t any other aircraft moving around the airfield, but Sweetsong still kept low until she was sure she was well clear of the departure paths. It was frustrating; she could see what she thought was a distant gap on the horizon, but wasn’t high enough to be sure. She’d seen other tree-covered islands and long sandy muddy reaches that were barely above the water; maybe she was being fooled by what she saw ahead of her, too.
Just the same, she doggedly kept flying west. That would get her to the Pacific.
•••
She was at seven hundred feet and climbing when she knew for sure that the break in the land she’d seen was a harbor outlet; from miles away she could clearly see that the nature of the water changed on the other side. It was still distant and hazy, but there could be no mistaking what it was.
She did a brief victory loop over a sandy island, then focused back on her goal. She would—
Sweetsong wasn’t sure what she would do when she got there. Gallop on the beach, splash in the water, sit on the sand and contemplate the waves rolling in . . . she’d had a goal in mind and she was about to achieve that goal; she hadn’t done a lot of thinking about what happened next.
Or where to go next.
It was too early to think about that. It was too early to think about anything, she wasn’t even there yet, she was counting clouds before they rained. Even planning which side of the harbor mouth she’d land on was still a problem for later. Right now all she could see in the distance was fuzzy trees and an ocean beyond; when she got closer one shoreline might be more appealing than the other.
For now, she would just set a straight course to the mouth of the harbor, and watch around her for any airplanes.
•••
Small fishing boats bobbed in the water below her, while bigger boats went for the ocean. Jet skis and kayaks mostly stayed near the shore. Seabirds circled around, looking for fish, and ducks and geese bobbed on the water, occasionally ducking their heads down for food. A distant shape on the horizon resolved itself into a ship, angling for the same passage she was approaching. She thought she would beat it there, and maybe when she landed after she’d galloped on the sand, she’d watch it go through the harbor mouth.
Was there a lighthouse near the entrance? She hadn’t seen one yet. If there was, she could land on its roof.
Below her, unnoticed, the water was moving inland as the tide came in, as sure a sign as any that she was in fact near the ocean.
•••
A spit of land stuck into the bay, a few miles inland of the actual harbor entrance. It was popular with people who were flying kites or surfing with kites, or just walking around looking down for interesting stones or debris that had washed up on the shore. Driftwood, beachgrass, and hearty shrubs on the high spots, a place she might have decided to land and sing if the coast wasn’t so close, almost clear now as she approached.
Sweetsong played with the kites, slaloming her way between them as she lost altitude. Once she was clear of them, she did a wing roll and then continued on to the final point of land between her and the Pacific.
The bottom of the point had a circular neighborhood; the angles of the streets made all the houses look haphazard, as if they’d just sprouted up among the beachgrass and evergreen shrubs. The land wasn’t very high above the ocean, and she wondered if the houses got splashed with spume when there was a storm. They might. In a big storm, they were in danger of being washed away.
She dropped down further, until she could reach her hooves down into the water, and skimmed along the shoreline. It was reinforced with a thick wall of boulders, protection against the waves and perhaps an errant ship, if the need arose.
A few people were walking the rocks, and she zipped by one photographer with his camera on a tripod. He was taking pictures of the mouth of the bay until he saw her, then he swung his camera around to take pictures of her.
Sweetsong considered buzzing him just for fun, but instead turned her focus back to the ocean. The Pacific wasn’t far at all.
•••
Half a mile later, and the jetty at the mouth of the harbor was behind her. While there was no clear delineation between Greys Harbor and the Pacific, nor did the water feel different when she dipped her hoof in it, it was different. There was nothing in front of her but open ocean, nor was there anything immediately to her left or right.
Sweetsong did a broad circle, her hooves splashing through the tops of some of the waves. The inbound ship was still a way off, further than she’d expected it to be.
Had their lookout spotted her? Or was he too busy watching out for other things to pay attention to a single pegasus among the vastness of the ocean?
It was still too far off to really make out any details besides the tall white accommodation block and the loading masts sticking up from the deck. She couldn’t tell if it was moving at all. It might be waiting for the tides to be right before coming into harbor. If she knew for sure, she could fly out to it, but her wings were getting sore and she was already lathering from her flight.
Sweetsong gave the ship one more look before turning back to shore. The ocean side was a nice, sandy beach that was popular with people. Some of them even had brought their cars onto the beach, while others were racing up and down the waves in their jet skis.
She climbed high enough to be clear of jet skis, her wings protesting. Now that she was focused on a landing spot, she started to feel fatigue creeping in—it had been a long flight from the grain elevator, and she’d only had leftover pizza and some Pringles to eat.
Not to mention, she hadn’t had a drop of water since she took flight, and now she was starting to feel thirsty, too. The ocean water was too salty to drink and she didn’t think she could get a water bottle out of her saddlebags while flying.
Some pegasi swore by Camelbaks, but she didn’t have one.
•••
She landed on the beach well away from anybody else, tucked her head down and unstrapped her saddlebags, then rolled on her back in the sand, not caring that it was sticking in her fur. Her wings were burning from exertion; this might have been the longest flight she’d ever attempted on Earth.
And most of it over water, too, which in hindsight wasn’t all that smart. Still, she got where she was going and that was what mattered.
•••
One bottle of water later, and a quick look up and down the beach to make sure that nobody was close enough to steal her saddlebags, and she galloped up and down the beach then trotted out into the surf, deep enough that the crest of the waves lifted her hooves off the bottom. The water was cold and refreshing, and she pony-paddled further out, then let the waves carry her, let the waves tumble her around until they’d pushed her as close to shore as they wanted to.
Each wave would push her in, then as it passed, deposit her on the sandy bottom, only to be tugged back out to sea as the wave receded, then the next one would arrive and repeat the process.
The ocean currents were like air currents, but slower and more insistent. Winds tried to blow things over then gave up, but the ocean took its time and wore things down.
•••
Sweetsong stayed in the water until she started shivering, then made her way back up to shore. She didn’t have a beach towel, but her army blanket served in its stead.
The ship finally entered the harbor, and she considered flying out to it and escorting it past the jetty, but instead stayed on her blanket and waved as it passed.
After the sun had warmed and dried her, she flew into town and got a peach and burrata pizza at Oyhut Bay Grill and Loft. Instead of eating it there, she carried it back to the beach, settling just above the tide-line to enjoy her meal.
One thing she hadn’t considered was where to sleep. None of the houses had flat roofs, although plenty of them had inviting balconies. That was too risky, as was sleeping on the beach.
She’d have to go inland to find any sizable trees. There had been plenty along the coast of Puget Sound, but it was different out on the ocean; the wind blew all the trees over when they got too tall.
The beachgrass would provide some concealment, and there were a few shrubs she could tuck down into. It wasn’t as secure as a tree nest, but it would be good enough.
That decision made, she flew north along the beach, where more kite-fliers were taking advantage of the winds. Her belly was full of pizza but she joined them anyway, darting around like a kite, letting the wind catch her wings and push her where it wanted to, and whenever she grew tired of letting it use her as a plaything, she turned into the wind and dove down to the water, then let the wind push her back up to kite-height.
One of the kite-fliers decided to try and mimic her, and she danced with his kite, weaving and bobbing in the wind, occasionally twisting around its cord as a reminder that the kite was tethered but she was not.
As the day and the kites dipped down, so did she, gliding down to an open spot of beach.
Sweetsong folded her legs under her and settled into the sand, watching over the waves as the sun set, the sky darkened, and the stars spread overhead.
Some people on the beach had fires, lit while it was still light out, and they were their own stars on the beach, different and more inviting than the twinkling lights of the town behind her or the steady sweep of the lighthouse on the southern spit; different than the firefly-lights on the buoys marking the channel, or the steady reds and greens and whites of navigation lights on the boats still out in the water.
The fires burned low and people left the beach, walking or driving. The moon climbed in the sky and the waves kept up their steady beat on the shore and she finally took flight again, not to the beachgrass like she’d thought she would, but instead to the rocky jetty.
The boulders still held the warmth of day and she found a nest where the wind would blow in her mane if she stuck her head up. It might also steal her blanket, so she left that in her saddlebags.
By the time she woke, the gentle night breeze had changed to a steady gust, accompanied by a louder crash of waves booming up through the rocks. She could feel that the air pressure had dropped since the previous night.
Sweetsong scrambled to her hooves and the wind caught her army blanket. She snapped her head around and caught it before the sea could claim it, and then climbed to the top of the rock like a sailor at the prow of her ship.
Her blanket trailed behind her like a cape.
She should have still seen the last stars in the sky, but they were covered by clouds as far as she could see, undulating ranks of grumpy grey clouds steadily marching towards the land.
Out in the water, the buoys bobbed and flashed, and the lighthouse’s beam swept across the ocean and the harbor beyond.
Soon enough, she’d want shelter. For now, she was content to stand on her rock, to let the wind ruffle her feathers and play with her blanket, to let the sea spray drift down around her, to stand on the shore she’d dreamed of reaching.
How long would the storm last? Hours? Days? She didn’t know. Human weather was fickle and changeable, unpredictable, uncontrolled and feral, and she shouldn’t have loved it for that, but she did.
•••
As the sky lightened, she looked back over the calmer waters of Greys Harbor. If she wanted to fly back to Aberdeen, now was the time; there was enough of a tailwind that she’d hardly have to work.
It was too soon. There was still more to see and do before she even considered leaving the coast.
She tucked her army blanket back in her saddlebags, made sure the straps were fastened tight, and held her wings out.
The slightest jump was enough to clear the rock, and then the wind caught her. Sweetsong let it carry her up and back, until she was once again over the beach. Then she rolled to her side and angled her wings, bringing the wind to her tail.
This time she cut across the inlet, heading for the so-far unexplored southern shore. The land bent around in a L-shape, making a protected harbor for small boats.
One leg of the L was lined with identical cabins, while on the other was a row of businesses, some of them with signs on their roofs.
She skimmed the observation tower at the point, and flew the wrong way above Westhaven Drive, landing right in front of Bennett’s Fish Shack. It wasn’t open, but two buildings down, Little Richard’s House of Donuts was, and there was already a line of customers waiting for their morning treat. Sweetsong got a raspberry fritter and a maple bar, then flew out towards the Pacific to eat them.
Instead of sitting on the beach and getting windblown sand in her donuts, she alighted on the balcony of a spindly beach-tower where she could watch over the water undisturbed.
Mostly undisturbed—despite the wind, a few seagulls found her and her donuts and swooped around the tower in the hopes of snatching a bite or two. After she’d eaten all she wanted, she tossed the rest into the air to let them fight over, and took flight again, heading inland long enough to circle the lighthouse before angling back towards the shoreline.
A few miles down the coast, the land curved in again, marking the mouth of another river. The beach was wide and sandy there; inland the terrain was flat and then it got rugged.
Out to sea, the clouds were breaking up, promising a more pleasant afternoon. The wind had dropped, leaving everything misty and wet.
Sweetsong circled inland, wondering if there might be train tracks nearby. There weren’t, but she found cranberry bogs and a horse hotel.
She flew back west, landing in the between-land that wasn’t woods and wasn’t beach and finished her tube of Pringles. Now that the weather was clearing, people had started to gather on the beach with buckets, shovels, and pipes with handles. They were massing at the water’s edge and digging into the sand for something.
Curious, she put the empty Pringles tube back in her saddlebags and flew in for a closer look.
They were hunting for clams, and she did, too, eventually managing to find and catch one. The clams were burrowed further down in the sand than she’d expected, and several of them had managed to elude her.
Sweetsong carried it back up the beach, smashed it open on a rock and ate it. It was salty and chewy, a flavor she could get used to. Some coastal pegasi swore by clams as an easy snack when fish couldn’t be caught. She wasn’t sure about easy; it had taken a lot of digging to just get one.
•••
She settled on the beach in the afternoon, settling on a skinny stretch of beach that wasn’t popular with the clam diggers. The waves had calmed down, and pleasure boats were taking advantage of the calmer weather and sunshiny skies.
It didn’t feel like time to head inland just yet, although she wasn’t sure where to go next. Nor was she sure if it really mattered.
A few miles to the south there was a small sandbar she’d seen from the air, and beyond that more land. Possibly another island—she couldn’t tell. It looked like it had trees.
She still had food in her saddlebags, knew how to catch clams now, and could probably catch some fish if she wanted to. She could head south along the coast until she found another port or a rail line. She could also go back north where she knew there were trains. Or she could stay here for the rest of the day and nest in the pine trees overlooking the Pacific.
Instead of doing any of those things, she got up and shook the sand out of her fur, then walked down to the surfline and dug up another clam, ate it, then waded back into the surf, letting the waves wash over her hooves.
•••
As the sun started to settle into the ocean, Sweetsong galloped along the beach towards a flock of seabirds, then took flight with them, watching as they wheeled away in surprise. The birds seemed to have gotten used to dogs chasing after them, but hadn’t anticipated being pursued in flight.
Not that she had any intention of trying to catch a bird. She was headed north, back towards Westport.
As the sky darkened, the sea below dimmed almost to blackness, although she could still see the lights on land. The boats below her had twinkling navigation lights, and she could also see the sweep of the Westport lighthouse. Above her, airplanes had similar navigation lights, some of them close and others far, far above.
What did they see, looking down at the ocean below? What did they see when the coastline was gone behind them? Whenever she turned her head west, the unknown was both frightening and enticing. Very few boats were out there, nothing compared to the spread of lights along the coastline. What would it look like to be in the middle of that?
Some parts of the Great Plains were nearly as deserted; sometimes she’d looked through the support beams on a grainer or over the gunnels of a gondola and seen nothing but waving grass and stars overhead. It had looked kind of the same, but it hadn’t been the same.
Sweetsong turned her head away from the lure of the ocean and focused back north, trying to spot the lighthouse. For a moment she thought she’d lost it, then its beam came around again. She cast one regretful look at the ocean and turned inland.
•••
Sunrise found her on the tip of the north jetty again, watching thoughtfully as a ship navigated its way out of the harbor. For its size, it moved fast, but not faster than she could fly.
