Prologue
A scream ripped through the red-drenched sky, scattering the birds. Billowing smoke blotted the sun balancing above gold-capped blue mountains. A mist that had draped the forest suddenly evaporated.
The locomotive pummeled by, the trees bracing in its wake. In the front seat sat an older man with a furrowed brow who appeared discomforted by the humidity crowding the cabin. His foot kept track of his conductor’s cap lest it slip below into the machine’s claws.
It was early sundown, and the engineer began to push onward at a desperate pace. Glowering, he pulled out his stopwatch in the fading light and squinted at the glass. He saw it was beaded with moisture, skewing the arms and bending the numbers.
“Bah,” he scoffed and went back to maneuvering his train through the thicket. This corridor approaching Kyoto was his least favorite; it was a place whispered to have lurking shadows that portended danger.
The train was now nearing the curve where his predecessor had been found, his body severed and draped across maroon-stained rails in a malicious attack the Imperial Palace took personally. The culprit—some suspected oni— hadn’t been discovered; but when he was given the job of replacing the unfortunate conductor, the frightening rumors were quelled, or perhaps drowned out by the roaring engine.
Danger be damned. The monsters they feared weren’t real.
The truth was that Kyoto itself, the old, stubborn capital of western Japan, was a city clinging to the last gasps of Edo Era traditions, and refused to adapt to the evolving eastern capital, Tokyo. In Kyoto he had put up with vile rumors: that his train brought disease, war, and demons and a grotesque charge—that it consumed blood for fuel.
Some believed their new emperor had betrayed his people by accepting foreign machines from strange lands and diminished them by introducing shameful notions that disgraced Meiji’s vision of a united nation and integrated world by the twentieth century. Someone had believed that slaying an engineer would stop Emperor Meiji’s machines altogether.
This was folly. To the old man, his sleek locomotive was beautiful and bore immense power as it traversed the land, carrying the future in its compartments far more swiftly than horses and old men with backs bent from their heavy sacks. He knew Japan would be left behind if it was not in motion with the world’s turning wheels.
He adjusted his posture, ignoring a pang in his lower back.
It was nothing compared to the importance of his duties. He owed this to a day he was hunched over his diluted barley tea, reading in a paper that the emperor needed fearless conductors.
The reward was his vantage point: he saw stretches of coastline dotted with black ships, sands of the west, and rising cities in the east. He huffed with pride over his role in what would someday be an esteemed history.
There were few locomotives, and only his connected the two capitals. This weekly pilgrimage ushered in a new era under Emperor Meiji, who boldly asserted old Japan no longer existed, and a better Japan would be born from his ascension.
The man’s reveries transported him to a daydream of smooth white steps beneath rippling green roofs where the emperor bowed to him in gratitude for driving the train even faster than the foreigners who built it. He had donned robes fringed in gold.
Crowds cheered when the emperor presented him his medals. At last, they had united Tokyo and Kyoto. He, the conductor, had done the impossible! His train alone had brought the ancient city of the West and the new Eastern Capital together.
His toothy smile wilted when a barbaric cry filled his ears.
His dream vanished. He jerked his head up and saw a train racing down his tracks.
His head felt cold with dread. There was nowhere to go. The trains were face-to-face on the same silver path. The engine’s stark blackness and a bright yellow eye were heading toward him. It was unmistakable.
Sweat and tears dripped from his eyelids. He had a fleeting thought that he wasn’t the fearless man he claimed to be.
He dug his heels into the floor while his hands fumbled for
the brake. The train was meters away. If he could pull the brakes fast enough, it might spare the machine. His sweaty hands were slippery. His throat narrowed and his ribs shook. The train was bearing down faster. It would be upon him any second.
A whistle shrieked in his ears as he clasped the brake with both hands and pressed his feet on the dashboard to use all his weight to stop the engine before it was too late.
His hat cascaded into the beast’s bowels. His calloused hands burned as he gripped the brake tightly and yanked with all his might. An unearthly scream escaped from behind his teeth. He curled into a ball to wait for the crash.
But he felt nothing.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his adrenaline still curdling his blood. The tracks were empty. When he stood up, his legs buckled from cramps. He grasped the door handle and cursed when the heat singed his palms. He growled and kicked the door open, spilling on the tracks below.
Behind him the train cars, rocking from the sudden stop, appeared to be intact. He glanced at the train’s front and leaned on the scraper. It was too hot to touch; he recoiled and looked along the tracks, imagining blood of former engineers’ running along the rails.
But there was no blood. There was no train. Only a forest of trees smelling damp, and the woodsy thick, hot air choking him.
Around the bend, the tracks were concealed by tall pine and bamboo branches, and the familiar breeze was absent. All around him was an eerie silence—even the frogs and cicadas held their breath. He instinctively held his ground, his limbs tingling and ready for the unknown.
He stumbled over the track ties, crunching the ballast as the sun’s final breath grazed the earth’s curves before darkness.
Something was wrong. He tried not to think about the last conductor’s fate.
He had heard screams. He saw a train. But this was impossible.
Schedules were so tight there was never an overlap. And if it had been there, where was it now? A train couldn’t disappear.
The alternative explanation, that he was delusional, was equally unacceptable.
A rustle in the cedars sent a chill down his spine, even as sweat pooled under his arms. He tried to prepare himself to leave, hoping to find a way to mend his torn courage, when a glimmer of gold caught his eye.
“This can’t be—!” what if the thing was under his engine, clogging the gears? He’d have to pry it off. It might have harmed his machine. What the hell would he tell Tokyo?
He scoured the edge carefully but found nothing amiss.
In relief, he straightened his suit, ignoring a voice that hissed a warning: his service could turn into sacrifice, just like his predecessor.
No, he told the voice. There were no monsters. An animal had only been grazed. It had not met its demise. His machine was not mangled.
He climbed aboard with a pinch of the hair between his fingers and relit the dashboard lantern to get a closer look.
He saw it was golden and firm and sparkled with an ethereal quality.
“Kitsune!” he shouted and dropped the hair. The floor was covered in scattered shards of a fox spirit; its needles seemed ready for a fight. He kicked the hair away in fear and disgust.
If a train had disappeared, and if this was fur of a kitsune, it could mean only one thing: the presence of yuurei. A shiver ran through his chest. He had to be resolute; it couldn’t be a ghost.
When he was growing up, he heard tales of seeing yuurei.
In those days, intimidating folklore taught children moral lessons in disguise. Later, when sipping cups of rice wine in dark bars, he had listened to engineers and conductors tell of yuurei taunting them after sundown. Stories about ghosts were not supposed to scare men who served the emperor. Yet he had seen the strange creature’s steam and heard its terrifying animalistic cry—just like a train.
He frowned. This folklore was from the Edo era of yesterday. The Meiji era stood for science, machinery, and a shining tomorrow. The presence of kitsune, yokai, and yuurei were superstitions of the old world. There was a rational explanation for what happened, but he could not pursue this now. Going
“What is this?” He bent over a cluster of what appeared to be fur and reached in gingerly to touch it. It bristled at his touch as if it were alive. An animal. But unlike any he recognized.
His train was slowing to a halt. Steam poured off its sides in heaves. His heartbeat pounded rhythmically with the final sputters of the locomotive. down that path could become a disease from which he’d never heal. He pushed aside his thoughts.
The sound of the watch tick-tick-ticking brought him to his senses. His deadline awaited him. Tokyo counted on him to improve the world’s image of trains—he had to show their power. The emperor needed him. It was time to leave the ghosts behind.
He sat up taller, settling his bones on the hard wooden seat where he’d be least likely bothered by aches, and cranked the gears.
At last, the machine’s belly grumbled and expelled a belch of steam, lurching it forward into the steeping darkness. The hums of the ancient forest returned.
The starry sky blinked above, and yellow eyes peered from the forest walls to watch as he rolled onward.
