Words Kept in the Log

Mercy kept east beneath the fragment, following a black line that narrowed to the width of a rail and then widened again around a fallen stone rib. Oliver watched the gauge as the engine crept past it. No fuel had gone, but the line offered no new mark either. It held them where it could and stopped where it couldn’t.

Nadia stood behind him with one hand braced on the cab wall. The crack in the brass panel ran past her knuckles, thin and dark. She had not touched the core.

“How far until the track gives us a choice?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a choice, then.”

Tirra leaned in the doorway, eyes fixed on the route ahead. “There’s a difference between not knowing and pretending you can’t decide.”

Oliver eased the throttle lower. “I’m deciding to keep going while the track holds.”

“Good,” Nadia said. “That’s a sentence I can work with.”

The route dipped beneath a ledge and came out at a ragged opening in the fragment. Beyond it, another strip of stone hung across the sky, its underside marked by old iron brackets. The black line continued toward it, but the gap between the two pieces was wider than the one they had left behind.

Oliver brought Mercy to a stop before the edge. The engine gave a small shiver as he closed the regulator.

Nothing in the gauge changed.

“Same as before?” Nadia asked.

“Same as before.”

“Which means the route can hold us here. It doesn’t mean it’ll cross.”

“Exactly.”

Tirra looked back down the track. “And the note?”

Oliver’s hand had drifted near the whistle cord. He lowered it. “I’m not using it to send Ilyet’s message.”

Nadia turned from the gap. “You’ve decided that.”

“Yes.” He glanced at her, then at the cord. “I don’t know what the whistle says to Otta. I know what Ilyet asked me to tell her. If I sound it from here, I’d be inventing the rest.”

Tirra gave a short nod. “And if Otta answers, you’d have to decide whether she meant it for you.”

“I don’t want to make her do that.”

Nadia’s expression softened, though her voice stayed firm. “Then keep the words. Don’t add a meaning to them because the train has a whistle.”

Oliver went to the small desk beside the gauge. He pulled the logbook from its slot and opened to the next clean page. The train’s records usually held distances, pressure, repairs, and fuel readings. He wrote the date and the location as best he could, then copied the message exactly: Someone heard.