07.

A - Then in October, the survivors took place aboard two Japanese corvettes, that would take them back to their homeland.

M - How long were they gone for?

A - Let’s see... Actually the two ships reached Istanbul in January 1891... So they returned after an eighteen months journey. And so many didn’t return.

He had been gone for much longer.

However the girl was pondering about something else. Was this the end of this tale?

M - What happened next?

A - At that time I was still young, but your father was already a man. He’s the one who told me about this story. He knew it very well since he was there at the time.

M - He had been on board these ships?

A - Oh no. But he was in the queen of the cities then, and he discussed it lengthily with some of the survivors themselves. He was curious about everything they had seen so far further in the East. So he learnt that story before they returned to sea, along with a few others.

M - What other stories?

A - Oh I knew you’d ask. It was a few tales and legends, from very distant countries. There was this one he liked above every other, but you already heard of it, haven’t you?

M - In a far, far eastern country...

Once upon a time...

There was a...

~

Mary-Esther slowly recovered consciousness. She was waking up from a very deep slumber. She felt as if she had slept for a month if not more. Her whole body was aching from that sleep in the grass now. Her muscles were feeling quite sore.

She moaned, barely remembering how she got there before. She found it difficult to open her eyes. She was tired and dizzy. Where was she? She could barely recall entering the summer garden, as if it was a very distant memory now.

Her pulse was feeling faster than usual she realised. Nothing was coming back to her mind immediately to explain her situation...

Oh, maybe there was one word. One colour. One short name.

M - Blue...

Dearest Blue...

She felt it moving close to her left hand. They were waking up at the same time. They were slowly remembering their own names, who they were and what their lives had been so far.

She felt grateful, ever so grateful. Mary-Esther recognised the blue bird from her past and was so deeply moved to discover that it came back to her.

M - Thank you Blue... Thank you!

Being reunited at last was a strong unavowed dream coming true. At a time when she needed help the most, her dearest friend had returned for her.

Mary-Esther sat, almost laughing with joy over their reunion. She didn’t dare to hug the easily spooked bird, afraid to hurt it or her.

Blue was quite a large specimen of bird now standing near her.

She offered the waking bird the most beautiful smile she could offer, welcoming it back with heart.

The blue bird stood taller and stretched its wide wings repeatedly. It shook its head. It opened its beak and a short shriek got out. A word she couldn’t understand. She was still utterly happy and reassured.

Mary-Esther regained all her senses and spirits, recalling rapidly who she was and where. She also recalled now that she had lost her precious friend before... Long ago? She couldn’t quite recall how nor when that had happen.

That thought would have disturbed her, had she not been simply too happy to have it again. Its sight was brushing most doubts and worries away instantly.

Her only true friend since childhood, since she was able to think... Even perhaps since before her birth...

Mary-Esther carefully patted and caressed its head and neck. The large bird of prey let her do so, perhaps even appreciating the petting.

She spoke again without realising it.

M - It’s been such a long time... How have you been?

The bird seemed to nod to her, but probably didn’t understand her words.

Blue stepped toward the left arm still resting in the grass and put one foot on it. It looked at Mary-Esther’s face, as if waiting for her to allow it to climb and cling onto her arm.

She told it that it would be her pleasure, without fully realising what it meant.

Blue shrieked shortly, and slowly began pushing its talon into the arm. The girl must have had forgotten about that pain and truth to larger birds. She needed a protection over her arm. The talons constricted the cloth and her arm, hurting her skin strongly.

Mary-Esther tried to endure the pain, holding her screams, gritting her teeth. She could do it, and that was worth it.

She finally stood up, keeping her painful left arm up, albeit a little unsteady and trembling. The bird was balancing itself on it, opening its wings slightly at times. Blue stood there without moving its talons too much. Perhaps it realised how doing so would be hurtful for her.

She felt quite a searing pain in her arm, and she was probably also bleeding she thought, but she was enduring it with unexpected courage. She was stronger now.

The summer garden was still as warm as a greenhouse, but she wasn’t feeling awkward anymore. She felt quite much better, and there were no more strange things in sight.

Mary-Esther left the garden along with Blue over her arm.

~

The tree stairway appeared warmer than before, as if some of the air from the summer garden had come along with them.

Mary-Esther was just so glad to have her beloved Blue along with her, she felt as if she could go anywhere now, without minding nor thinking twice about it.

She had to choose where to go, and more confidently did. The train was huge, but the number of wagons was hopefully a finite number. Although the little she knew about steam-powered engines led her to believe that it would most probably be a number closer to ten than a hundred, she wasn’t fully expecting this train to obey realistic laws. And if it was a diesel engine, then she wouldn’t even know what to expect.

Nevertheless if there was only one engine in the front as usual trains did, it could not physically be too long, and most things around were surreal but not unreal, so maybe there was a chance some logic remained. Betting on these unreliable odds, she chose to look for the head of the train and its engine room or control room.

It would help her find a way out, and she would learn more about whoever or whatever was leading this ship or possibly where to.

After the tree stairway, in the eleventh wagon and second floor, she found what looked like a sawmill. This was a surprise. A stockpile of logs were on one side, and workshops were set at different intervals along the wagon. Large electrical and manual tools were hanging on the walls and even the ceiling. Most of the blades were filled with sharp teeth that reminded her of kids’ drawings of monster jaws.

She noticed some sawdust heaped at the feet of each working station. A pile of various kinds of wood logs was also cluttering a large portion of the ground floor. A locked cabinet in one end held some paints, waxes, tar and varnishes she could smell.

It was an interesting place, but Mary-Esther was mostly interested in going further currently. She didn’t linger to look around every detail. She kept her left arm up and trembling, and the quiet Blue still and close to her there.

The large bird was quietly waiting, as if it had been used to be with her forever already. They were walking together as if they had never been separated at all.

Mary-Esther opened the next door a little more slowly than before, now that she had only one arm to proceed. Thankfully that was still doable.

In the airlock she stopped. She wouldn’t open the next door. She could see through the small window how there was a huge fire burning in the next wagon. The large flames and smokes were reaching the walls and flowing along the ceiling. Everything was ablaze inside.

Both her and Blue stepped back, becoming agitated. Seeing the fire was scary for the both of them. There was no way through this and a wider worry for the integrity of the train.

She felt a disturbing concern and sadness looking at that fire. But there was nothing she could do about it.

There was nothing for her there, and only the slight solace that the architecture of the airlock made it appear to her like the fire wouldn’t spread past it.

Beyond here, maybe it was over, and she couldn’t fight it.Even with Blue this was something she could never face. She wouldn’t open this door.

A little pained and uneasy, Mary-Esther turned back, leaving the fire to be. Blue as well took a last glance in that direction as she turned around.

~

She knew by then that if a passage way was closed in a level, it was probably still accessible from another. She had solely tried on the second floor yet.

On the floor above the sawmill where she went, she found again only a single room, albeit without any window to the outside. There was still a lot of light to look around, and figurative windows were hanging everywhere around in this gallery.

More than the paintings, the first thing surprising her was the absence of the crimson carpet. It was a more traditional and shiny wooden floor. The walls too were a paler colour.

Above each work shone a lamp to highlight them.

Mary-Esther was passing through initially, but a painting caught her attention. It was the boat she had seen before again. There seemed to be a volition to showcase copies of that one artwork in this train. Why did it keep coming back like a recurring bad memory?

She wasn’t really interested in it, but again surprised to see it once more. Returning to her walk, she however stopped once more, closer to the other end. Something else caught her passing gaze.

This painting was the depiction of a well done yet simple vase, filled with many different roses. It was a rainbow of colours and textures, from soft to hard and purple to white and bright red. Many a pink and subtle madders she couldn’t name, and yellow gradients all around. They were blending together inside her eyes, leaving the lighter and deeper greens of the world melt as well in their leaves and stems.

She felt like she was seeing a small world of every possible colour.

She was about to leave her reverie when Blue shrieked, making her look back at the painting with more focus. Had she overlooked something?

Looking at every roses in order, there were numerous pinks, yellows, stained whites, reds, purples, even grey and black, and one blue.

There was a lonely blue rose, hidden amongst the purple ones and many different other colours. It was a subtle one lost amongst many and easy to overlook as she did. But there was a blue rose reflecting inside her eyes.

Mary-Esther felt she was about to remember something about such flowers, but Blue suddenly moving along her arm caused her enough pain to make her forget about it. She was almost kneeling under the now echoing jolts of pain, but she managed to stand firm.

She had forgotten what she was thinking about and therefore left the gallery behind.

~

The next area was entirely burnt in the past, but no lingering fire or flames. It was another greenhouse, or rather had been one. There was soot everywhere and what was left of the bushes and trees looked like claws or skeletons. Everything around here was blackened by soot and a previous fire, surely akin to the one below.

Mary-Esther heard the noises of the train quite well there since many windows were broken, but the sight before thee sooty surfaces was that of a burnt house. Everything was shades of blacks and greys.

Like the previous greenhouses, that floor was two stories high. The walls covered with that lamp black stain rose high above her, reaching their broken shards and the sky.

The amount of sticky ashes over them was diminishing slightly with the height, but mostly the broken parts were plucking holes of sky through them.

The blaze had left deep marks over everything like a coating of paint everywhere. It was a strange place where even the sky appeared a little colourless now. It was grey, maybe because it was going to rain, or perhaps as it had gathered smokes.

Blue was nervous in this place and so was Mary-Esther. The air was different, and the bird’s balance remained unsteady. Mary-Esther stepped over things she didn’t dare to look at too closely and proceeded further, trying to shake the sticky uneasy feelings away from her.

In the next airlock she began to hear the loud sound of rain and storm. Opening the next door she found a sudden rain pouring down right after. The thirteenth wagon was holding another desolate garden or greenhouse. It was not burnt but nearly as dark from mud and waters.

The rain stuck to her, slowing her down. She went quickly through this ruined garden, leaning over her bird to shelter it miserably. She hurried and ran as steadily and fast as she could towards the next airlock.

A short while ago, it had been such a pleasant and bright morning of summer hot day. Now it had turned into a plain fall day. Not that it mattered as much as how she could still have Blue near her.

Inside the airlock, she took a moment to breathe off that same dizziness she would have got from a long shower... The cold water made her feel that dizzy way faster? Maybe it was because of all the perfumes of mud surrounding her, giving her that nausea.

Her head felt like it was spinning for a moment and she had to lean her back against the door to breathe.

Blue was looking quietly at her. Esther was trying to shake off that nausea like a strange water sickness she already experienced before. She took a moment to rest.

She had seen the seasonal gardens, but there like everywhere else the day outside remained the same. But under this garden’s downpour, it looked like even the real weather expected outside could change suddenly depending upon where she was. From summer warmth to cold autumnal rain in a matter of minutes...

She was feeling desperately lost for a moment, thinking that even the weather outside was seemingly turning strange... And the days she spent and could remember spending aboard that train appeared so short and wild...

It felt to her now as if time was going quicker on overall, but for some reason still meticulously working over some normal occurring details.

Along with her memories, her feeling over how time was running in here was doubtful... As she was not sure what she could do about it, what she could trust truly, she was feeling now a slight despair from before coming back to her.

Mary-Esther had to cling to Blue, protecting herself with its presences from bad thoughts and doubts... Blue at least was there with her...

~

At least she had always woken up where she had fallen asleep before so far. But now she began to fear that her perception of time itself could also be lying to her or stretched in meaning like this place was.

She held Blue tighter to reassure herself with its warm presence, brushing its feathers.

The bird let her surrounding her so without reacting.

In that humid airlock, Mary-Esther was losing her senses again. The already dark little place between two heavy doors was getting darker to her.

She felt herself falling on her bottom, and her head slouching above Blue. The bird jumped aside while its mistress was falling unconscious.

Mary-Esther fell to lie there in exhaustion, while the bird found its place near her left hand. She couldn’t move anymore, her eyes mostly closed as she couldn’t see anymore but was asleep. Her mouth partially open didn’t appear to breathe anymore. The bird sat near her, to sleep and wait for her next awakening.

The rain outside was still covering any other possible noise, sheltering them inside.

~

08.