The three children rode together for hours in bumpy noisy darkness. Immediately, Orion regretted all the time he'd spent fussing with his phone earlier. He only had a short amount of battery time left now, and the phone was their only source of light. To his dismay, he also noted that he had only one or two bars as they traveled along, and he suspected that his coverage would not improve as they reached more rural areas.
Quickly, he wrote a message to Brooklyn, explaining as succinctly as possible what had happened.
"Did you see any details about the outside of the boxcar?" he asked Lyra.
"Well, it was sort of a yellowish color? The paint looked pretty old. There was writing on it, but I don't remember what it said. I was more concerned about getting Bonnie out of it!"
"Me too," Orion admitted, "But Mom said that if we are ever kidnapped, we should try to remember details about the person who took us and where we were."
"Kidnapped?" Lyra replied in a worried tone.
"Well, we haven't exactly been kidnapped," he explained, "But the more information we can tell Brooklyn, the easier it will be for them to find us."
Orion felt a sick sensation rising in his stomach.
"I really messed this up," he realized out loud, "I was trying to help Sister and now I've made it worse for her. They're going to have to look for all of us now!"
Lyra didn't reply for a long time. Orion figured that she probably didn't have anything nice to say, so was choosing to remain silent, but finally she spoke.
"Ori, Sister needs their help more than we do," she said matter-of-factly, "Coldsteel might have taken her and she could be in real danger."
"Yeah," Orion agreed, feeling quite miserable and useless.
"Maybe the grownups don't need to look for us," Lyra continued, "Maybe we can look out for ourselves. Find our own way back home?"
"Yeah…" he replied slowly, thinking of all the things that could go wrong with this idea, "Or, at least, we could find a safe place to wait, until they have found Sister and got her home safe."
"Right!" Lyra agreed, "We can do that! Someone's going to unload this boxcar eventually. We might even be able to get ourselves out, once we go back to our normal forms. Even if we get caught, or get into trouble, what's the worst that can happen? They call our parents?"
Orion thought his younger sister might be rushing past any number of more devastating possible scenarios, but he did have to admit that he found it likely they would be able to free themselves and find shelter without anyone coming to their rescue.
"If things get worse, then we can always call for help later," he concluded.
"Right!" Lyra agreed, clinging tightly to him in the darkness.
Resolutely, Orion erased his message in progress and began a new one.
"Lyra, Bonnie, and I went looking for Sister and accidentally got on the wrong train. Don't worry about us. We'll make it home fine. Sister needs you more than we do. Her laptop and green notebook are on the counter in Lexington's lab. Those are probably clues to where she has gone. We'll get home as soon as we can."
Orion sent the message, then paused and looked back at it again, unsatisfied. The sick feeling in his stomach had not subsided any and he knew there was more to say.
"I know I shouldn't have taken the little kids and gone looking without you. I was afraid something bad would happen to Sister. I'm sorry for disappointing you. I love you."
Sending this message only made Orion feel worse. He hoped that Brooklyn wouldn't tell Goliath and Elisa about this, at least not until she was feeling better. But it made him all the more resolute that he would fix the situation and get Lyra and Bonnie back home safely. He turned off his phone so he didn't waste the battery life. They would certainly need it once they found out where they were going.
For hours, the train carried on. Orion felt himself dozing off several times, though the rough jolts awakened him periodically.
"Will it ever be sunset?" Lyra complained.
"Be careful what you wish for!" Orion warned her.
"What do you mean?" she asked suspiciously.
"You'll see," he replied cryptically.
Indeed, she did see, when the sun finally set and the stone statue beside them burst into a noisy, fretful hatchling.
"I can't see! I can't see!" Bonnie cried hysterically, until Orion turned his phone back on so the glow could illuminate their faces.
"Where are we?" Bonnie cried.
"We're in a boxcar, Bonnie," Orion replied a little snarkily, "You said you wanted a train ride, so here you go!"
"Where are we going?" she asked with a sniff.
"We don't know," Lyra told her.
Bonnie seemed to consider this information for a moment, then began to protest the situation in wails of disbelief.
"How can we get on a train when we don't know where it's going?" she accused.
"That's a fair question," Orion retorted, turning his phone back off so it wouldn't wear down the battery.
"Hey! Put that back on! I can't see!" Bonnie shrieked.
"There's nothing to see anyway," Orion replied irritably, "Just the inside of this crate which we are trapped in. And we need to save my phone's power to help us when we get out!"
Bonnie didn't take this information well at all and began the launching sequence for an epic tantrum.
"I wanna go home!" she screamed, kicking her small but powerful legs. Lyra had other ideas.
"We might be going someplace wonderful, Bonnie," she reasoned, "But you have to be good and listen to Ori."
"Ori?" Bonnie asked hopefully, "Can we go to Egypt?"
Orion sighed.
"I'm not the one driving it, Bonnie," he told her, "But I don't think you can get to Egypt on a train."
Bonnie began to sniffle again, but Lyra pulled her into her lap.
"Maybe THIS train can go to Egypt," she told her younger sister, "What would we do there?"
For the next couple of hours, Lyra kept them entertained by telling stories of a magical train that could go through the ocean and travel to any place that Bonnie wanted to see. They imagined pyramids and pharaohs, Hawaiian islands, and impossible voyages beneath the sea and back into time.
Bonnie listened enthusiastically, then quietly, and then began to squirm and complain of hunger. Orion had a lunch packed in his backpack, which he took out and, using the light from his phone, he distributed it between the three of them. He was grateful that the castle's kitchen staff always provided him with more food than he really needed, because tonight he needed it! He was also thankful for Lyra, who was clever enough to think of an almost endless supply of stories and games to keep Bonnie occupied, even in the dark. Orion felt his head beginning to nod and soon, despite his sisters' chattering, he fell into such a deep sleep that Lyra had to shake him awake.
"Ori! I think we're stopping!"
Indeed, Orion felt the train decelerate and come to a halt. They waited hopefully in the dark, until they began to hear movement outside. Loud clangs signaled the opening of the sliding door and for several minutes, they listened to the sounds of the freight being unloaded. Orion wondered apprehensively if someone would try to lift their crate with a forklift. If they did, they would soon be caught. He frantically pondered if it would be better to try to make a break for it, or if they simply let themselves be caught and turned over to the police. But to his dismay, the door was sealed shut again, before the workers even disturbed their crate. A moment later, the car lurched forward and they were underway again.
"Come on," Orion told Lyra, "Let's see if we can work our way out."
The hatchlings used all the strength they could to try to push over the crate, but it was still pinned to the floor by what they presumed was a heavy stack of freight. They had to settle for kicking out the side, which at least afforded them some fresh air and just enough of an opening that Bonnie could squeeze out and fetch her doll. She peered around the inside of the car, with Orion's phone as her light.
"There's a lot of stuff in here," she told them matter-of-factly.
"Can you get to the door?" Orion asked, "Maybe if we make this hole bigger, we can all squeeze out and make a jump for it when the train slows down.
"No, there's too much stuff!" her voice came from the darkness, amid lots of suspicious scraping sounds.
"What are you doing out there?" Orion demanded, "Don't lose my phone!"
"I won't, Ori!" Bonnie promised.
A few moments later, the flashing phone light returned to the opening.
"What's this?" Bonnie asked, shoving a can through the hole.
"Dinner!" Lyra exclaimed, snatching it and tearing it open with her talons.
"It's Chef Boyardee!" she announced after a taste.
Normally, Orion would be pretty unenthusiastic about eating cold, canned ravioli, but they were all hungry and he was inclined to believe some nonperishable food might come in handy later. Lyra opened a can for each of them and Orion placed a few in his backpack.
"It's been forever!" Bonnie complained, her small face smeared with tomato paste in the dimming cell phone light, "When will we get to Egypt."
"In thirty-seven minutes," Lyra told her, which is what Blaze always told the clan's hatchlings when they impatiently demanded to know how much longer something would take. Bonnie narrowed her eyes and replied with a humph as Orion turned off his phone's light to preserve what little power was left. He was frustrated to find that he still had no bars and he hoped this was due to the heavy steel walls of the box car and not an indication that they were heading deeper and deeper into the Alaskan interior, but the drastically descending temperature didn't serve to give Orion much hope that wasn't the case.
Then after what seemed like an eternity, the train came to a stop. The children waited apprehensively, and a few minutes later, their car changed direction and began to head in the opposite direction. Then there was an abrupt stop that shook them all.
"What's happening?" Bonnie asked as the car moved slowly forward, only to slam to a stop again.
"Is the train stopping?" Lyra asked worriedly.
"I think we're being shunted?" Orion guessed as the car lurched forward.
"What's that mean?" Lyra asked.
"They're disconnecting us, probably so the can put us on a different train."
"Another train!" Bonnie wailed.
"Come on," he told them, "If we can get out of this crate, maybe we can open the door and jump out while the car is moving really slow!"
The hatchlings used all their strength to break open the side of the crate, only to be met with a solid stack of freight.
"Come on, push!" he commanded, and he and Lyra pushed the stack with as much force as they could muster. The stack seemed to lean an inch. They tried again, in unison and the middle pallets budged just an inch. Working bit by bit, they managed to create a crevice between the tower and the crate, just wide enough that they could worm their way through. Then, one by one, they climbed to the top of the pile. Orion took out his phone again to cast some light on the door, so he could see how it might be opened, but the light had used up all the battery and the phone went dead, leaving them in blackness.
Anxiously, Orion held onto his sisters as the car was pushed to and fro, until it finally came to rest somewhere. After hours and hours of erratic movements and thundering noise, the sudden silence was unnerving. With nothing to stay his eyes on in the blackness Orion had a sickening sensation that they were still moving. It was like the sudden, unsettling lurch that sometimes woke him from a deep sleep, especially when he had that recurring nightmare of his wings disappearing midair as he glided over the city, and him suddenly falling past windows and light, to his death.
But they were not moving. The car was still and quiet, and the only sound was that of a fierce wind that seemed to beat on it from the outside. And then it was dawn. They knew because they felt their bodies changing into their human form. Orion's worrying that had persisted throughout this entire adventure was now rising to a panic. His phone was dead, he couldn't figure out how to open the door, and outside the car, they only heard the wind. How long could it be before someone opened the door?
"Ori?" Bonnie asked softly, "Can we get out of the train now?"
Orion felt tears stinging his eyes and he fumbled around desperately to find a way to open the door in the pitch blackness. What if it had to be opened from the outside?
"Ori?" Bonnie asked again, fretfully.
"It's okay," Lyra consoled her, "Ori is going to figure out how to open the door."
Orion gritted his teeth in fear and frustration. He felt he was on the verge of losing it, when suddenly he heard a sound. It was muffled, but he thought it was the sound of a vehicle approaching. Then there was a door slam and the sound of several men talking. For a moment, Orion considered some unpleasant possibilities of being found there by the authorities, but then facing with the grim current reality of him and his sisters dying of dehydration and exposure in a locked boxcar after not being discovered for days, Orion did the only thing that made sense. He began to bang on the steel wall of the boxcar and scream for help. Lyra and Bonnie seemed surprised at this abrupt change in strategy, but quickly joined in with their own piercing cires.