5:00 a.m., Sunday, September 15th, 1940
As a new day rose upon the United Kingdom, with the fires of Germany's forces still burning in the streets of London, the Awdry family tried their best to ensure survival on the very day that would be known throughout history books as "Battle of Britain Day". Margaret worked as hard as she could to patch up the planes that Hitler had ordered to destroy. On the lawn of their new home in Oxenholme, Hilary and Veronica listened to the news of the approaching fighters via radio, watching condensation trails from a dogfight between German and British planes. Uncle George, while washing the dishes in the mess hall, watched the other soldiers eating their breakfast at a quick pace. Wilbert read The Daily Telegraph in the same way he always did when he read it back at home, pacing or sitting down. He chose to sit and dabbled his eyes onto the details.
Together, the RAF stood tall and together they fought back in a large aerial battle that resulted in one such plane crashing directly into the roof of Victoria station. And while a general election was being held in Sweden, the engines on Sodor were being repainted into a nightly shade of black for the War Department had agreed to elicit war bonds that would help rebuild the towns and cities after the damage caused by the attack. The breakdown gang helped 98462 back onto the rails, but all that remained of Eagle was his tender, lying sprawled on its left side. He and 87546 were taken to the works, sparing the painters enough trouble to work on no more than six engines.
Being #1, it was fitting for the painters that Thomas should go first while Edward went second and third would be Henry, followed by Gordon, James and Percy. As he was nearing completion, Christopher, watching the procedure taking place from the hammock, gave his answer to the unsuspecting Thomas.
"I suppose they're painting you like this for night raids."
"Yes," Thomas sighed.
"But what about day raids?"
"They would not dare," Edward spoke from Thomas' left.
"You saw what happened yesterday," Henry bemoaned. "And now from what fireman tells me, there's a lot of these aeroplanes flying over the mainland, shooting at each other."
"A disgraceful display of bloodshed if you ask me," added Gordon. "A lot of our men from the regiment got hurt while trying to run from a bomb and here I am thinking they should have been trained better."
"Not to mention the loss of a brother," James said through tears at the thought of Eagle's destruction. "Now I'm the only red engine on the island."
"Not for long," said Percy doubtfully. "And besides, black is not just to prevent night raids, it can be used for other things, like mourning and espionage."
"And evil," murmured Thomas. "Or so how we see the color as. Coal is black, our funnels are black, even Christopher's hair is black. I even remember when James was black."
"And I am not going back to that stupid shade again," James whined under his breath.
"Would you rather be blown up like Eagle?" Christopher warned the soon-to-be-former-red-engine with crossed arms.
"No."
With that being said, James eventually changed his mind. Even the very mention of Eagle's name was enough to lower his spirits.
By the time Henry's paint was finished, he was selected by the Fat Director to take the bodies of the deceased from the regiment base to be buried at Tidmouth. The sad cargo of bodies were carefully encased in ice into a refrigeration van, which would last for more than the entire journey. In all the times that Henry felt sad, this was the most depressing. He was slow when he left on the return run and driver and fireman had seldom succeeded in pushing Henry to a more satisfying pace.
"This is nothing compared to what is going on outside the island," Henry said sadly to them.
Sad to lose a part of Sodor's fighting force, Henry arrived with his sad cargo of bodies at the goods platform of Tidmouth Station. First the bodies of higher ranks were catalogued into coffins while the lower ranks were wrapped in canvas bags and placed into coffins that looked cheap and rudimentary compared to the oak woodwork of the higher ranks, which looked rich and detailed with added flowers of lilacs and white roses.
The Fat Director held his own funeral for the humans while the engines paid their own respects with total silence and no eulogy, not even from Christopher who was all dressed in black for the event (using whatever he could find from his suitcase, of course). Even Hannah and Bradford were unusually silent for almost the entire day. When the wake followed, it was James' turn to be painted black and he was already complaining about the process as a painful experience, seeing his red paint be blackened by the livery he used to wear in his "younger" days on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.
"This is an outrage! A disgusting humiliation to my heritage!"
"To the attack?" Thomas asked curiously.
"No! My paintwork!"
"How many times have we heard about you boasting on and on and on about your paintwork?" Gordon fumed. "You act like a spoiled child whenever you do so, and I don't mean you, Christopher. I think, that you, James, need to expand on your horizons instead of being viewed as the center of the universe."
But Christopher seemed to take Gordon's "spoiled child" remark with a sour face of grimness and he huffed off to the fence that overlooked the sea. Thomas moved closer to him, hoping to seek solace from the boy who had seen death.
"You have all been so nice to me, and yet with all this attack and everything, I don't know what to do next."
"You could make James learn how to be nice to others," suggested Thomas. "He's not as vain as he appears to be, he's just upset because Eagle died and all. Deep beneath that Belpaire firebox of his, he's a very courageous engine whose kind to his friends."
Then Christopher looked back to Thomas and gave his voice to a thought that had been in the back of his head since he came to the island.
"Don't you ever wish to be free and see the world, going to places like Paris, Vienna, Rome, Rio, Helsinki?"
"If the Fat Director wanted us to, but never you mind about that. The war could be taking shape among those specific cities."
Christopher looked out into the sea.
"So I have been told."
Thomas did no more and he left, thinking that Christopher would make his own way back to the shed without his help. The misty clouds brought uncertainty for the boy, since his eyes and ears could hear nothing but peace compared to the attack occurring yesterday, making the peaceful nature of the scenery before him impossible to imagine without hearing nothing but planes and bombs…and bullets. Clouds in London lasted a lot longer than what he saw from his perspective, and they seemed like the perfect smokescreen for an enemy attack.
Christopher was still staring at the sky, thinking about his family even after Percy had his turn to be painted black. As he continued to do so all the way until the edge of the afternoon, the other engines on the island were explaining their views on yesterday's attack to each other. Stuart and Falcon, cleaning up some rubble in the mines, did not feel as young as they used to, even though they still were, no thanks to a different kind of weight called emotion.
"We should spend more time here," encouraged Falcon. "I figured it would be safest place to be in case those bombers come back."
"I prefer the shed," said Stuart. "Granpuff's stories always manage to calm me down whenever there's a panic."
"On the contrary, I did not see any damage done here since we were all hiding in the shafts. They didn't even get Stanley or Smudger."
"At least none of men who work here were killed. Without them, we wouldn't be here."
"If you mean by the mines functioning properly, I would say yes. But without workers, there won't be a war with no railways and sweatshops to run it."
"If we went on strike but the Germans don't, it's clear they will lose."
Now Falcon was at an impasse.
"Maybe Granpuff has the answer."
But for the time being, it had to wait. They had a lot of work to do.
At Summit Station, Ernest was looking up at the sky, waiting for Culdee and Catherine to pull in before taking the down train back to Kirk Machan. When they did, Culdee asked.
"How long have you been staring?"
"Half an hour. I just wanted to make sure those enemy planes don't come back. We have had enough of this war coming to the island to last us a lifetime."
"We can't look up at the sky for a half-hour," reprimanded Culdee. "Time's time, and the manager relies on us to keep it. Besides, we have to think about our passengers."
"Perhaps when the war is over, you will not think about such things," added Catherine.
"I see your point," Ernest said and he rolled back down the line, leaving Catherine and Culdee to their thoughts alone. Now it was his turn to look for enemy planes until the guard's whistle blew.
At Crovan's Gate, Skarloey came back from his morning run with Agnes, Ruth, Lucy, Jemima and Beatrice, who were full of passengers who had attempted to escape from the bombers, though one such time bomb had dropped into a refreshment shop at Lakeside and exploded, with glass and dust flying into the water. Rheneas was already there, waiting for his turn to take the coaches.
"How have the passengers been coping since the attack?" he asked.
"The Refreshment Lady is very livid about the bomb dropping on her shop and Mrs. Last has complained about the enemy for having such gall to disrupt the peace of our island. To be precise, it was the noise that she hated the most."
"How unfortunate for the both of them. Could you not talk her out of it?"
"It's been hard," sighed Skarloey. "She has been serving tea and cakes without realizing that her food supply is in need of being rationed so that the army won't starve. If the Thin Controller does not take action, she might pursue the matter without mercy."
"You'll have to break the news to him," said Rheneas. "And make sure that he intends on apologizing to Mrs. Last. After all, she is one of our best clients, she has taken your train more times than I have."
"I know that," Skarloey replied vapidly.
Skarloey left the coaches at the station and went off to the slate quarry with seven trucks while Rheneas decided to break the news himself to the Thin Controller, about Mrs. Last and the Refreshment Lady.
"I will speak to the Refreshment Lady about her supplies immediately," he said.
"I would expect that you do more than just speak to her," added Rheneas. "I think you should tell her to ration her meals from now on. We don't need any of our men die of hunger on the front lines."
As the Thin Controller went to speak to the Refreshment Lady, Thomas took Christopher back to Ffarquhar. The boy had seen and heard enough of death to be integrated into his memory to last him a lifetime. But Christopher was not up for sleeping in Diana's room, he wanted to be closer to Thomas; so he set up the hammock in Thomas' shed all by himself and tried to sleep. Fitful and depressed, he tried to think about home, his real home, and the times of London and Birmingham before there was even a war for him to worry about. Then, remembering the bombs that took the lives of his grandparents, wondered how his father felt while he was away from home. With one tear leaking out of his right eye, Christopher turned over to the sleeping tank engine in the darkness and whispered.
"Thomas?"
Without so much as a yawn in his voice, Thomas replied.
"I'm here."
"I miss Dad."
"I know, but the war isn't going to last forever."
"Then how long will it last? What if I never see him again?"
"You will."
It was there that Christopher found the strength to go beyond his limits.
"I want you to take me to him."
"Do you even know where he is?"
Christopher searched his memory.
"If you ever need me, I'll be in York," were his father's words.
"At York," came his reply.
Thomas didn't take much notice, for he had fallen asleep, leaving Christopher to weep until morning.
At Crovan's Gate, where 98462 and 87546 were being repaired, Hugo came to them. With the attack having commenced, he was now planning to get rid of the steam engines, including the two blues once they had served their purpose.
"I see you like to bully your fellow engines," he told the two blues. "I think this attack is just the beginning to deject their spirits into self-pity and regret. Once they are broken beyond repair, we can dump them into the sea, make it look like an accident and their controller will have no choice but to replace them with new and improved diesel engines from my Fatherland."
"And if he doesn't?" asked 87546.
"The Fuhrer will decide their fates once he has England in his pockets. In the meantime, we'll just have to destroy them all and run the controller over with our own wheels. His own fat will stain the tracks with blood."
Little did the unholy trinity knew, that Skarloey and Rheneas were also in the works for a check-up, having overheard the entire conversation.
"I think he's the one that should be derailed," Rheneas whispered to his esteemed colleague.
Their drivers came at once and drove the two engines out of the shed as quickly as they could. But it was Hugo who heard their huffs and puffs and with Skarloey safely out of view, all he could see from his vantage point was Rheneas.
"They could have spied on us!" he shouted. "Throw him off."
There was nothing for 98462 and 87546 to move as their drivers had gone home to bed, so Hugo started up and charged at the little engine before stopping, unable to have caught up with him in time. All he could do now, was watch him disappear onto his own side of the tracks, so to speak.
"Did you really think you could catch him on your own tracks," asked 98462 teasingly.
"I should have known it would be fruitless from the beginning," huffed Hugo.
There would be no accidents tonight, but tomorrow was just another day.
