CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PHANTOM TRAIN

From the first moment Terra set foot on shore she had a strong feeling that they were entering upon wild lands. She could not have said why—not yet, anyway—but her eyes involuntarily scanned the forlorn trees and the broad, flat, brown wastes of the Eastern plains.

"What are you looking for?" asked Calogrent, joining her. The other Returners were busy unloading the Mercuria.

"I don't know," said Terra.

"Not a very inviting place, is it?" he said. She made no answer.

Despite her foreboding, nothing of any real consequence happened as the Returners journeyed southeastward over the plains. Once, when the wind was dead, one of the horses got spooked by a rattlesnake in the tall grass. It whinnied and reared—thankfully, no one was riding it at the time—and upset some vultures and a flock of crows scavenging a large animal carcass, which circled angrily overhead before settling down again on their feast once the company had passed. Another time, the Returners were followed for a few miles by a pride of lions, which was unnerving (to say the least), but nothing came of it. Every night when they set up camp, they set watch-fires around the perimeter and rotating guards.

It was hot, to be sure, but they never went long without water, and wild game there was in abundance. Sometimes they had to scare jackals and hyenas away from the watering holes. And there were flash rains and thunderstorms, some of them severe. It was a great comfort to Terra to move with so large a company.

And all this time Terra grew closer to Sabin, who turned out, as she first suspected, to have an innate gentleness about him that could not be eradicated by the harshness of his past (of which Terra learned no more than what he'd told her on the ship). She had forgiven Edgar, who found, to his relief, that she was as quick to forgive as she was to anger. He still seemed to lack self-knowledge, though, as he could not for the life of him seem to understand why she preferred Sabin and Calogrent's company over his, she having known them for so comparatively short a time.

"Do you still not understand?" said Terra.

Edgar did not answer, however, for to continue the conversation and admit his jealousy would have required a degree of candor which he was incapable of.

I should also tell you that Terra attempted to use magic during this time. Nothing should be easier, she thought, than setting some dead, dry grass on fire in this heat. She tried only at night and only when she was by herself. The first couple of attempts only ended in frustration, but the third night, after a long time of murmuring, pleading, commanding, and praying, a handful of grass ignited under her hand. She quickly withdrew it before she burned herself, gave a short celebratory cry, and covered her mouth and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Thereafter she made several more trials, each time succeeding in causing a clump of grass to burst into flame. But it was tiring work, and the more she did it the more she felt that Dread Approach. Moreover, she felt that unless it served some purpose—which it didn't, as the Returners were well equipped to start fires by natural means—then it was somehow...meddlesome and capricious. So, content for now, she ceased practicing.

It was not until the end of their journey across the plains that Terra's foreboding proved to have some foundation. Before them the mountains rose up on either side, forcing them, if they were to continue, into the dark forest that lay in the valley. The Returners had crossed a great river on a wide, stone bridge which bore the unmistakable tracks of magitek tanks (unmistakable, that is, to Edgar; they looked to Terra like the tracks of some giant, three-toed bird of prey).

Edgar was kneeling to examine them. "You can be sure that imperial soldiers have been this way," he said, "and recently."

Just then a scout on a Chocobo came charging at full speed from behind, jumped off his bird, and ran up to Banon. "A troop of imperial soldiers is heading this way! Magitek tanks and about two hundred infantry!" A murmur rippled through the company. This announcement produced mixed results. Some men wanted to turn and fight, while others said that sixty against two hundred (plus the tanks) were hopeless odds, and that they should flee.

Terra overheard Banon arguing with Syan, the man with the eye-patch whose people Kefka had poisoned.

"I would not enter that forest by any means," said Syan in a gruff voice. "Especially not when I have a chance to kill Kefka."

Banon looked menacing. "Fool!" he growled. "We go to fight Kefka in Narsha. If we stay here, we will be destroyed. How then will you avenge your family?"

At last Syan conceded, and not a moment too soon, for behind them in the distance a dark mass came into view. It was the Empire! Terra heard a dull pop and then, moments later, a tree exploded somewhere nearby. It was a deafening noise, and dirt and splinters rained down on them. Terra was disoriented.

"Into the trees!" cried Banon. Most did not have to be told, but Terra, frozen on the spot by the tremendous explosion, was grabbed by Calogrent and Sabin.

"Come on!" they said, and led her, at a run, into the forest. Before they entered, Terra heard the distant popping again, followed by more explosions nearby. Once inside the trees, however, the explosions immediately died down, as if they now came from another world.

Somewhere in the trees she heard Banon cry, "Don't get separated!" But that was the last she heard of him. Edgar tried to return his call (for Edgar was with them, Terra now perceived), but there was no answer.

"Don't bother," said a gruff voice in a hushed tone. It was Syan. That made five. No one else could be seen. "Don't bother," said Syan, "no one will hear you. This forest is treacherous; it chokes the sound of one's voice and separates friends."

Indeed, though Syan was only a few feet away when he spoke, his voice was subdued. Terra felt as if she was going deaf. The dark trees absorbed all noise and dimmed the light. Her ears were ringing, as if to fill up the immense silence that had fallen.

"We will all go together," said Edgar in as loud a voice as he could muster. "No one must go beyond sight of the others."

Syan, Edgar, Sabin, Terra, and Calogrent moved slowly and in a tightly-packed group deeper into the woods. It seemed that the further in they went, the more the silence was absolute. Terra wondered how it was possible for the forest to reduce a group of sixty to five, without their seeing a single one of their companions, or finding a single footprint. It was uncanny. There was no wind, no birdsong, nothing—not even the sound of their footfalls. The silence pressed upon them until one had to shout into another's ear to be heard. All this filled Terra with fear.

"Stop it!" screamed Terra. And for a moment, the silence gave way a little. Terra's cry had been fully audible, and seemed to create a small sphere in which they could speak freely for a moment. But whether they moved outside that sphere or the weight of silence crushed it, the trees threw back Terra's voice, diminishing and echoing, "Stop it!" several times in rapid succession within that small space, before snuffing it out. The soundlessness was just as thick and impenetrable as before.

Consequently, no one was inclined to speak, and so all were left to his or her thoughts. It might have driven Terra mad if she had been alone. But despite the comfort of company, she did not look forward to nightfall, when they would be not only deaf and dumb, but blind. How would they prevent their separation then? If they lay down and didn't move an inch until first light, would the very ground they slept on move each of them forever beyond reach—beyond hope!—of the others? Terra prayed with her whole heart that the Espers would have mercy on them, that they would not allow her to be lost in these woods, to die, unsung, unloved, her life unlived! Who knows but that her fear was part of the enchantment?

At any rate, Terra did not have to spend the night in this Accursed Forest (as it was ever afterwards called), but whether the boon was better than the bane remains to be seen.

Through the impassable silence came a long, clear, high whistle. As far as she could remember, Terra had never heard the like before, unless it was a giant kettle. The Returners stopped and turned towards one another. Edgar said something which Terra didn't hear.

"What?" she mouthed to him.

Edgar leaned over and spoke into her ear: "It sounds like a train. A locomotive."

Terra had heard of such machines before but (as far as she knew) had never seen one. There again came the call. They nodded in agreement and moved towards the direction of the sound.

Before long, Terra and her companions saw a black train through the trees, partly concealed by the density of the forest, partly shrouded by a mist which made it appear slightly obscured. As they approached she saw that the mist came from the front car, which spouted long streams of it whenever the call went out. The whistle came now at shorter intervals, and (inexplicably) all of them were seized with the impulse to reach the train before it departed.

Thus they ran towards it, forgetting caution, and (altogether, thankfully) reached a stair leading up to a tiled platform. Their feet echoed on the steps as they leapt up them.

Up close the dark locomotive looked eerily translucent. Fog poured out of the spout atop the front car and crept down the sides and over the floor of the platform. The train tracks faded into nothing a few yards in front of the engine...

Just then Terra thought she heard voices down a ways on the platform. But when she looked all she saw was a line of eerie lampposts, which, rather than giving off light, seemed to take it away. They cast a shadow beneath them. Terra stared hard at the lampposts, at first seeing nothing, but then all at once she perceived shapes moving beneath them. They were the shapes of humans boarding the train.

A last, long, urgent call issued from the train. It was now or never. Almost the same instant, Terra thought she saw two familiar forms pass through the shadow.

"Arvis? Locke?"

The train began to move. She turned back to her companions just in time to see Syan cry, "Wait!" in desperation and jump aboard. The next thing she knew, all of them had followed him into the car. The door slid shut behind them, and, with a triumphant and haunting blast of the whistle, the train moved away from the station.