The bubbling mixture inside the cauldron exploded, sending Magica flying backwards just as a raven flew in through a high window, cawing loudly.
"Who dares intrude on my solitude?" Magica demanded as he flew closer, snatching him out of the air. "Oh. It's you, Poe." She let him go.
He perched on the edge of the cauldron and smoothed out his ruffled feathers, well used to his mistress' manhandling.
"Well? Have you found anything, or is this another one of your social calls?"
"The dime! The dime!" Poe cawed. "The prince has the dime!"
"The prince? Which one? There's a whole family of princes! I had princes coming out of my ears when I worked at the Money Bin!" Magica threw some more ingredients into her cauldron. "The red one, and the green one, and the little blue one, and the big blue one. Even King Scrooge was a prince before he became king!" The cauldron popped and sizzled. Magica braced herself for another explosion, but relaxed when it didn't come.
"The green one! The green one!" Poe said, cawing twice.
"The green one?" Magica said in surprise. "Feh! The green one is dead!"
"The green one lives! Prince Louie lives!" Poe cawed.
"What?" Magica stopped throwing ingredients into her cauldron. "Prince Louie? Alive?"
Poe cawed. "And he has the dime! The dime! Caw! Evermore!"
"He does?" Magica started gathering some of her wands and spellbooks. "Poe, I need to you go find him and bring me a—"
Poe dropped a white feather in front of her. Magica picked it up, and an evil grin began to spread across her face.
"Excellent."
Lucas could hardly believe it. After years of watching trains leave the city, he was finally on one. They even had their own compartment, shut off from the rest of the world.
Lucas heard the conductor shout, "All aboard!" outside and frowned.
"Where's Gladstone?" he asked Lena.
"Don't worry. The train won't leave without him," Lena said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
"You seem awfully sure," said Lucas.
"Trust me," Lena said.
The whistle sounded and the train began to move, the platform inching away bit by bit. Anxious dread settled in Lucas' stomach like a rock settling at the bottom of a lake.
"What's wrong with you? We have to stop the train!"
"Relax." Lena slouched down further in her seat. "He'll be here."
"The train is moving!" Lucas said, gesturing to the window. "How is he supposed to get on the train if it's moving?"
"You worry too much."
"I worry too much? I don't think you worry enough!"
Lena opened her beak to respond, but just then, the train squealed to a stop, throwing Lucas across their small compartment.
"What was that?" he asked.
"Probably something on the tracks," Lena said. She glanced out the window and then turned back to Lucas with an "I-told-you-so" glare. "Here he comes," she said.
Lucas picked himself off the ground and looked out the window. Sure enough, there was Gladstone, calmly strolling up the train platform and boarding the train.
"He cut it pretty close," Lucas said.
"Eh, " Lena shrugged.
"Hello, comrades, and goodbye, Scotland," Gladstone said a few moments later as he entered the compartment. He slid the door shut with a click and sat down next to Lena.
"Nice of you to join us," Lucas said. "Having second thoughts?"
"Of course not," Gladstone said. He put his feet up next to Lucas on the bench across from him. "If this was a bad idea, I wouldn't be here."
Lucas snorted at the goose's confidence as the train started to move.
"So what was it that stopped the train, anyway?" Lena asked.
"A cow on the tracks," Gladstone said.
"A cow? In the middle of Edinburgh?" Lucas said.
Gladstone shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."
The train whistle blew as they started picking up speed. Lucas watched as the world outside whirled past, tall, dingy buildings blurring into trees and grassy pastures.
"Do you think you're going to miss it?" Lucas asked.
"Miss what?" Gladstone asked.
Lucas gestured out the window. "Scotland."
Gladstone looked thoughtfully out the window.
"Not really," he finally said. "How about you, Stripesy?"
Lena thought for a minute. "Meh, not really," she said. "I think I've outgrown it."
Lucas gave her a look. She had to be about his age; how could anybody outgrow an entire city so young?
"What about you, Green Bean?" Gladstone asked. "Are you going to miss it?"
Lucas fiddled with the coin in his pocket. His feelings about Scotland were very mixed. As far as he knew, it had always been his home, and at one time, his family must have lived there—and maybe they still did—but his life there had always been so hard. Hard labor. Meager wages. Cold and hunger. Not knowing who he was. Longing for a place he had never been, for a family he had never known.
"I guess it depends," Lucas said slowly, "if I find what I'm looking for."
Lucas slouched low in his seat, fiddling with the smooth metal in his pocket as the world whipped by.
Lena glanced up at him. "Some prince you are."
"What?" Lucas asked.
"What prince sits like that?" Lena said, gesturing to him.
Lucas slouched lower. "Royalty gets to sit however he wants."
Lena scoffed. "As if. Even I spent enough time hanging around the Money Bin to hear the constant nagging." She made a face and pitched her voice higher. "Sit up straight! Elbows in! Stop slouching! Don't slurp!" Her voice returned to normal. "You'd think that you'd remember that, even with your memory loss."
Lucas stuck his tongue out at her, but he sat up all the same.
Lena shook her head. "And quit fiddling with your pocket! Honestly, you're trying to convince Scrooge you're a prince, not a jitterbug."
Lucas acquiesced, but then a sneaky look crawled onto his face. He opened his eyes wide so they were big and innocent. "Lena, do you really think I'm a prince?"
"Sure," Lena shrugged. "'Prince Louie'—you better start getting used to that."
"Then stop bossing me around!" Lucas crossed his arms and scrunched down in his seat as far as he could. Across from him, Gladstone snickered.
Lucas gazed out the window, watching the world rush past. The rocking of the train was soothing, not unlike that of the many carriages he'd hitched a ride on to get from place to place back in Scotland. His eyelids drooped. It sure had gotten dark out all of a sudden. He wished he had a watch so he could check what time it was.
Gladstone slipped into the compartment, gently closing the door behind him.
"You know what I hate about this country?" he hissed, holding up his blue-inked passport. "Everything's always about gold."
Lena sat up. "Gold?"
Gladstone started to grab the luggage. "The baggage car tends to be quite nice this time of year."
"I think I'd rather get off the train," Lena said, taking her own bag. "Shouldn't your luck have seen this coming?" She shook Lucas awake. "Hey, kid."
Lucas instinctively flailed his arms out in front of him and made contact with something solid.
"Ow! Hey!"
"Oh, sorry, I thought—" he began, but stopped when he saw Lena holding her beak across from him. He shrugged. "Eh."
Gladstone grabbed his suitcase and handed Lucas' to him. "Come on. We've got to go."
"Getting upgraded?"
"Something like that," Gladstone said.
"I think you broke my beak!"
Lucas huffed and he shouldered his bag. "You're such a baby."
They left the compartment and hurried down the aisle, their own sounds of rushing footsteps punctuated with the whoosh of the wind rushing past and the train clacking over the tracks as they jumped between cars. Finally, they arrived at their destination.
"The baggage car?" Lucas said. "What are we doing in the baggage car?"
"Well, you see…" Gladstone began.
"There isn't something wrong with our papers, now, is there?"
"No, of course not!" Lena said. "We just felt—"
"Save it," Lucas said, setting his suitcase down. "I know a failed con when I see it." He made to sit down on said suitcase, but a sudden jolt of the train threw them to the floor.
"What was that?" Lena asked from somewhere underneath him.
"I don't know," said Gladstone, looking more disappointed than anything else as he watched the rest of the train fall away. "But there go the lovely plush seats, and the dinner upgrades, and the—"
Lena tried to get up and found herself stuck. "Get off of me," she said, struggling to untangle herself from Lucas.
"What does it look like I'm trying to do?"
"Uh, kids?" Gladstone said.
"Yeah?"
"I think there's something wrong with the engine."
Lena shoved Lucas out of her way and went up front. She peered through the window separating them from the coal car. Up ahead, the engine was billowing fire, bathing the surrounding landscape in bright orange.
"Uh-oh," she said. "That does not look good."
"Is anyone driving this thing?" Lucas asked.
"I...don't think so?"
"But can we stop it?" Gladstone asked.
Lena was already taking off her coat. "One of us has to!" She wrenched the door open and started climbing the coal car. "Wait here."
Lena pulled the door open and closed it behind her before climbing up and over the coal car.
"Hello?" Lena called, shielding her face from the spewing stove. "Is anybody here?" She looked at the controls and gauges, trying to find anything that would slow the train down, but the huge billows of fire spitting out of the fire box kept her from getting close enough. She shielded herself with one arm and grabbed the long break lever with the other, hissing in pain as the metal seared her flesh. Shaking out her hand, she took off her sweater and used it like a potholder, pulling on the brake with all her might...until the handle broke right off.
"Oh, boy," she muttered to herself.
With nothing more she could do to stop the engine, she tossed the broken lever aside and climbed back over the coal car.
"I can't stop it!" she said. "We have to jump!"
"Jump?" Lucas said, alarmed.
"Relax, kiddo, with all that snow on the ground, it'll be like jumping into...a...cloud…" Gladstone trailed off as they opened the door to reveal what had to have been a hundred-foot drop into a ravine at the edge of the tracks.
"After you!" Lucas said over the roar of the train and the wind.
Gladstone closed the door.
"We have to uncouple the car!" Lena said. She rushed back to the gangway connection only to find that the coupling had been melded together.
"It was definitely not like this before," she muttered as Gladstone rummaged around.
"Here!" he said, handing her a pickax while Lucas continued looking through the boxes littering the car.
Lena hacked away at the mess of metal holding the train cars together, but the ax soon broke.
"I need something else!" she shouted.
"Try this!" Lucas said, handing her a lit stick of dynamite.
Lena's eyes lit up. "That'll work!" She shoved the dynamite into the coupling and pulled Gladstone and Lucas behind a pile of trunks in the back of the car.
A flash of light and a loud bang tore their way through the car, blasting the cars apart. However, they still didn't seem to be slowing down very much.
Gladstone and Lena both rushed to the front of the car.
"The brake's out!" Gladstone said, vainly trying to pull the brake lever.
"It's out?" Lena cried, stamping out the small fire that had started in the explosion. "What do you mean, it's out?"
"I mean we aren't going any slower!" Gladstone said.
Lena looked out at the long stretch of track ahead of them. "It'll be fine! We'll just coast to a stop!"
The ground shook, throwing them to the floor, and Lucas could have sworn that, just for a moment, everything was bathed in an eerie purple light. The trio stood back up and brushed themselves off, but stood staring in horror as they realized that the bridge that had spanned the three thousand foot gorge they were coming up on was...gone.
"What was that you were saying about coasting?" Lucas said.
Lena's eye caught on a chain lying on the floor. "We have to slow down!" she said. She grabbed the chain and ran to the back of the car. "Gladstone, give me a hand with this!"
But instead, the train lurched, and Gladstone fell in one of the many crates filling what had previously been the baggage car.
Lucas followed Lena instead. She rolled her eyes when his head popped over the edge of the train car instead of Gladstone's.
"Of all the useless…" she muttered. "Hand me that chain!"
Lucas did so, and Lena tied one end to the car. Suddenly, she yelped as she lost her balance. Lucas grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back up into the train. Together, they pushed the rest of the chain onto the track.
"Brace yourselves!" Lena said. "One, two, three!"
The clawed end of the chain almost immediately hooked onto one of the railroad ties, the force throwing the trio towards the front of the car. The car itself turned sideways and skidded over the tracks, finally beginning to slow down. Lena, Gladstone, and Lucas grabbed their bags.
"Last stop! Everybody off!" Lucas shouted over the screech of metal against metal at 95 kph. They jumped into the soft snow with only moments to spare before both the engine and the baggage car dove into the gorge and landed in a fiery explosion.