Where It Is Always Warm

Lush, green fields. Farmers work under the rays of the autumn sun, casting its warm rays. Farmers, women and men, work in fields dotted with rows of corn stretching into the distance towards the horizon, fields of large green cobs, inside which a gold mine is hidden. The time of the autumn celebration is approaching, people are preparing for the celebration of the gifts of nature. I look at all this from the carriage of a fast-moving train, holding, at the same time, a quill pen in my hands and a notebook. Travel notes. A personal journal, which, perhaps, someone will have a chance to read later, but I'm not sure about that. Do I want to open to someone a piece of my heart, my own feelings, emotions? Don't know.

I looked at the fields, busy thinking about the most different things. At this very moment, the compartment door opened, returning me from somewhere far away to the train that carried me from the east coast to the west across the country. I turned my head. Male, tall, blue-eyed, blond, young.

“Sorry,” he said in a voice that reminded me of a singer I recently heard on the radio. “Circumstances forced me to travel alone. May I ask you for company?”

“What?” I didn’t immediately understand what he was talking about, my thoughts took me too far away.

“Can I join?”

”Sure. Have a seat.”

I didn't mind such a promising looking company. The conversation, I thought, would not be superfluous. After all, there is enough loneliness in my life. Long nights when there is no one to call for help, only darkness and cold.

“I am Thomas Kane,” said the stranger. I would give him twenty-six - not much older than me.

"Emily van Dyke," I replied. Thomas held out his hand, which I shook.

”First time on such a journey?” asked the unexpected companion.

"Yes," I nodded. ”For the first time I am going from New Amsterdam to El Pueblo.”

"I've done it before," Thomas said. ”Would you like to hear a story?”

”Story?” I was interested. There was still enough time before dinner. “I’m all ears. Tell me a story, Mr. Kane.”

"Tom," said the young man.

"Tom," I nodded.

Thomas took a breath and asked:

"Have you heard the legend of the spirit of autumn?"

"Think I heard something when I was a kid. I don't remember anything, though."

Vague memories of my childhood - the time when I hid under the bed at night, not from the monster threatening to crawl out of the closet. From the screams of my parents on the first floor, which never stopped. This could go on for hours. And I was in company with a candle and a book - fortunately, there was enough space and the bed never burst into flames.

"The spirit of autumn comes every October and requires a sacrifice. Payment for the gifts of nature - pumpkins, corn and the like. You have to sacrifice your pet. And if you don’t do this, then the spirit of autumn will be furious. To argue with the spirit is a dangerous business and no one dared to resist, until..."

Listening to Thomas, I continued to look out the window. The fields of corn have been replaced by cozy farmhouses. Children joyfully playing near the house with a dog. A giant pumpkin ready for the fall festival. And the trees of gold and ruby.

"... the McGee family, namely, the head of the family, Dolly McGee, decided to refuse the sacrifice to the spirit of autumn. It made the spirit seriously angry with Dolly McGee and her family. It was the night before the autumn festival. The spirit left, threatening to return. Dolly McGee just laughed and told the spirit to get as far away as possible from them. The next day was the autumn festival, and the farmers measured pumpkins, whose pumpkin grew larger, heavier. They arranged a feast, pies, turkey, potatoes, bread and corn. McGee family was there too. The day after the celebration, the whole family disappeared. Without a trace. As if they never existed. In one night, all five, Dolly McGee, her daughters Molly, Diana, Vera, and eighty-years-old father Larry were gone. Nobody heard about them since then. That's the story."

A boy of about eight, wearing a farmer's hat, followed the train with a curious eye as it continued its journey from east to west. And I turned my head, meanwhile.

"Did you come up with it yourself?" I asked.

"This is an old peasant legend," Thomas answered. "They tell each other in the evening on a holiday, sitting around a large pumpkin."

"And where did you hear this story?" I asked.

"I've been to many places," replied Thomas Kane, smiling warmly at me. "I know a lot of things."

We talked a little more. Tom asked about me, about where I lived, studied and why I decided to take this train. He didn't say a word about himself.

Shortly before dinner, Mr. Kane, or Tom, as he asked to be called, left, leaving me alone. I watched the sun disappear below the hilly horizon, as if drowning in the green waves. And after dinner, which consisted of fried chicken, corn and sweet bread, I didn’t see Thomas. Must’ve been busy, I guessed. I didn't even ask what carriage he came from. However, after dinner, I was not really eager to see him again. I began to make notes in the journal, realizing after a quarter of an hour, however, that I could not stop thinking about his blue eyes. They seemed to hide something inexplicable, something mysterious, an unsolved puzzle.

The terrain changed the next day. I looked out the window and saw trees of all kinds and sizes. The cool winds of autumn, blowing from somewhere far north, swayed the branches in which small animals were hiding.

Trees, lots of trees. Quirky and weird. I have lived in one city for more than twenty years and now it was as if I have found myself in a completely different world. Limits untouched by man, realms of nature. But even here, people managed to lay railroad tracks that cut through the forest like a cold metal blade. I saw swamps, insects that rise and fall on the roots of trees, breaking out of the ground, stones, feasting on carrion stuck in the mud. Thomas returned, and we again talked about different things, but mostly about me. About the school I went to. I tried to quickly change the subject, as I didn't want to go into the details of my past.

The day dragged on quickly, and the beauty around stroke the spirit and imagination. The train sped past the blue lake, like a giant eye in the midst of rocks and trees. Rivers flowed from the lake, and deer grazed on the shore, chewing grass. I even wanted to find myself among them, in peace and tranquility, not thinking about what would happen there, in El Pueblo. And about what was at home in New Amsterdam.

In the afternoon, the whole world hid, leaving only an impenetrable forest. Trees and trees, the feeling that there was nothing left in the whole world. The trees ascended so high into the sky that they hid its blue canvas, the clouds that early in the morning sailed like sheep, basking in the warmth on an autumn day, well aware that another storm was coming the next day and the rain wouldn’t stop all day. After dinner, I again wrote in my notebook-journal. Thomas has arrived. It is not yet so late, but in the depths of the forest through which the train raced, it is almost always dark. Ahead loomed a station, where the train stopped so that the conductor and repairmen could inspect the train, fix something, if necessary. A lamp burned at the station, a warm and golden glow, and outside the station was almost impenetrable darkness. As if the night skies, devoid of all the stars to the last. No stars, no moon. Like a world of darkness and a train deep in it.

The conductor loudly announced that it was strictly forbidden to leave the train, even though maintenance work could take up to an hour. I wouldn't mind stretching the limbs a little. Out there, it was probably very cold, though.

"Wait," Thomas said. "They will appear."

"Who will appear?"

"You'll see."

Several minutes passed. Thomas didn't say another word. I looked out the window, at the light of the station lamp, then into the darkness of the forest. As if two different worlds collided in a furious struggle.

“Here they are,” Tom whispered reverently.

I took a closer look. And then everything inside me turned cold, because I really saw. Eyes. Two eyes, emitting radiance, but not warm, hugging light, but some kind of otherworldly cosmic flicker. I looked into those eyes that appeared in the darkness, and they seemed to be looking at me and goosebumps ran down my skin. Many pairs of eyes appeared then, emitting a yellowish glow. They surrounded the station and the train, they approached from all sides.

"Are we safe here?" I asked. "Are we safe in this train?"

"Who knows," Thomas shrugged.

"Tom!"

“Yes, we are,” he replied. His lips stretched into an enigmatic smile.

The eyes were getting closer and closer. I really didn't want to see who they belonged to. Since childhood, I was afraid of the dark, but sometimes the darkness is a grace-filled salvation. Maybe that's why space is so dark? So that we do not see what lurks there, in its unexplored depths?

“They,” Thomas said in a low voice, almost a whisper. "They live where there is no light. In the cold and darkness, where they are born and where their home is."

And while Tom was talking, I saw a woman in a hunting cap, holding a burning torch in her hands, come out from behind the wooden doors of the station. She started shouting, but I couldn't hear it through the glass. Tom watched in fascination. As did I. A spectacle unfolded before us.

The woman jumped off the platform, reaching the border where the warm, like a fireplace on a long winter evening, light of a lamp collided with the cold of obscure darkness. And there she went with a torch to the creatures hiding in the darkness. And in the harsh light of the torch, I managed to see one of the creatures. A monstrous spectacle. A small, hairless being, vile and nasty. It resembled a bat. I heard heartbreaking sounds. From them, thick glass could not protect. The woman waved her torch, which cut through the darkness like a scimitar. Eyes panicked. They began to randomly rush around the torch.

“They live where there is no light,” Tom repeated.

"How did you know that?" I asked. The spectacle on the other side of the glass frightened me in and I did not want anything in those long moments, except for the train to finally move on and leave the station and the grim creatures from the forest behind.

"I read it," Thomas said. I didn't ask any more questions.

Eyes in panic rushed further, deeper into the forest. The woman returned to the platform. The spectacle seemed to come to an end, and I was just glad that there was no continuation. And then the train started moving and that terrible place was left behind. And I was left alone in the night. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. The pictures I saw did not leave me alone, did not want to leave me for a second. And then also dreams, and in those dreams, terrible monsters from the dark forest were very close. I woke up early in the morning and turned to my journal, looking for some solace from my nightmares. Nightmares both in a dream and in reality.

After breakfast, mountain peaks appeared in the west, sharp peaks rushing straight into the sky. The sky today was all in the clouds, they joined together in a huge white canvas. Tom said it would rain. It was obvious. A real storm was coming, not just rain, as it always happens in autumn. Winter was approaching, its first heralds, arranging a grandiose performance in the high sky. By nightfall, our train began to cross a dangerous mountain gorge. Far below, a mountain river raged. And overhead a hurricane, lightning and thunder, the night became like a day in violent fires above, a downpour, a flood threatening to drown everyone and everything, leaving forever under tons of water. The night was wild, the weather was raging, and Thomas and I watched it all, finding beauty and purity in the riot of nature. Mountains, majestic, ancient, more ancient than mankind a hundred times, they shuddered. And people paced the corridors in panic, believing that under the onslaught of a storm, the rails could collapse and the train with the passengers would go into the abyss.

Behind us, I heard a tremendous noise, a drumbeat of unprecedented proportions. It was not possible to see anything from the window of my compartment - but I needed to see it, because so many people are not even able to imagine such a spectacle. I rushed to the dining car, and Thomas followed - people already gathered there, frightened, curious. Those who, like me, wanted to see the spectacle with their own eyes.

It seemed that the mountain was crumbling into pieces. A colossal avalanche, mud, stones and everything in their path were rushing down into the abyss. And all this to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning - a spectacle of madness, but in this madness, there was an amazing beauty, a charm that is difficult even to convey in words. This beauty was both frightening and inspiring at the same time, and I wanted to look at it without stopping.

That night, the collapse of the rails did not happen, fortunately, the train passed the gorge and continued along the plain.

Fourth day of travel from New Amsterdam to El Pueblo. I looked out the compartment window and saw how the landscape was changing once again. Majestic mountain peaks were left behind. They were replaced by the desert - stony dry land, cacti and bloody cliffs. A new world and new living beings, invisible to the eye.

The night has come. Thomas and I were busy talking again. While Tom was telling me about his favorite books, I noticed something incredible. Something bewitching. Giant figures of strange shape. They twinkled like starlight, stretching their long necks to the constellations above, as if copied from a book of paleontology.

"Ghosts," Tom whispered. "Ghosts of the desert."

And he added nothing more, but nothing more was needed. Dozens of shimmering figures, reminiscent of dinosaurs, aspiring upwards, into those unattainable limits, to which a person has not yet had time to reach out. Ghosts of a distant past, when the world was very young, and completely different stars shone in the sky.

On the last evening before arriving at El Pueblo, the end of the journey, the train stopped at the station for another inspection. But now the passengers could get off the train. Around the station there was only a plain and trees. For the desert was over. Tom and I were just lying on the grass, looking at the stars. Flickering patterns through the sky - what an incredible picture. Looking at the starry sky, you feel all the greatness of the cosmos, so colossal and unknown, mysterious, a little frightening, immensely beautiful. Like thousands of fireflies dancing in the heights to an otherworldly music of the Spheres.

“Would you like to know what is there in the stars?” Tom asked me.

"Yes," I answered quietly. "I would like to."

And neither of us uttered another word. We watched. We enjoyed. We breathed fresh air. And I felt how I was carried away to where the wonderful starlight was pouring from, it enveloped me, hugging me like the arms of a loved one, gave warmth, coziness, comfort. A fireplace in the cold autumn night.

And then the inspection of the train ended and it was time to depart.

I understand now what I saw in Tom's blue eyes. That was the ocean. Full of secrets that it reliably conceals, hides from any prying eyes. Ocean melody. That's what I saw in Thomas' eyes. Sapphires. I understood this when, at last, the surface of the water appeared before my eyes, disappearing beyond the horizon. An ocean so big, it's hard to comprehend. We finally managed to reach the west coast. The train arrived at El Pueblo. My old home, New Amsterdam, is now very far away.

I didn't see Thomas Kane again after we arrived in El Pueblo. He disappeared. Didn't leave any contacts. Dissolved like the spirit of autumn. And I could no longer find him in this gigantic city, where one million hearts beat in unison. But the memories remain. Warm and pleasant. And I intend to keep them. Fortunately, my journal is always with me now.

My first train journey left many memories. It was as if I saw a completely different world, so unlike the one in which I had existed for so long. Now I'm on the other side of the country, in sunny El Pueblo, where it doesn't rain and where it's always warm. Sometimes I look to the east and a warm smile blooms on my lips. Whoever he is, Thomas, I can't forget him, and especially his eyes. I will think of him and hope that someday I will meet him again. And he will tell me another story. In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate the autumn festival. The winds of winter will not reach the west coast, where it is always warm.