Free Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox Page B

blast of steam, then it drew slowly out of the station.
     
    THE DELAYED PASSENGERS saw, with relief, the special train pass the detained express and that train begin to shunt out of the siding. The porters wheeled their luggage trolleys up to the red line where the baggage car always came to a stop. More attendants appeared with linen for the sleeping car and foodstuffs for the dining car.
    It had all been very interesting — especially those final moments when the men from the Dream Regulatory Body ran to retrieve Tziga Hame from the end of the platform. It had been interesting, but it was late and the passengers had a ten-hour journey ahead of them. Some were thinking ‘Hurry up’, others, though late, were content to go slowly, happy to see the smokestack of the special train recede up the line. ‘Let it get well ahead of us,’ they thought. ‘Let us not catch it up in the two-mile tunnel. Not in the dark. Not with our heads down on starchy railway pillows. Not asleep .’
    Whether impatient or prudent, whether thinking ‘Hurry up’ or ‘Let it get ahead’, the passengers were all looking up the line, measuring the distance between one train and the other. They all saw the dark girl, the Hame daughter, shrug off the adults who were comforting her. She slipped back through them. She was looking down at the tracks, or at something on the tracks. The girl jumped down on to the sleepers between the rails, then stooped and picked something up.
    Her cousin shouted, ‘Laura!’
    Her uncle rushed to the edge of the platform.
    The dreamhunter Grace Tiebold ran the other way, yelling, ‘Stop the train!’ and waving furiously at the driver, in his cab at the far end of the shunting express.
    The driver hadn’t seen the girl jump, but did see the woman waving. He put on his engine’s brakes and sounded its whistle. The brakes caught and sparked as the engine slowed. The wheels locked, but the engine kept sliding, pulled on by the momentum of its freight.
    Chorley Tiebold jumped down on to the tracks, picked up his niece and rolled her back on to the platform. He didn’t have time to scramble up himself, so he threw himself across the rails and tumbled down the slope on the far side.
    The train passed between him and his family, and finally came to a stop.
    Chorley got up and tramped around the back of the halted train. The driver climbed down from his cab. The stationmaster dropped his flags and hurried up the platform. Some of the passengers followed.
    Grace was shaking Laura, who knelt on the platform, hunched over something she had in her hands. ‘Put it down!’ Grace was saying. ‘Are you mad?’ She was furious.
    Chorley clambered back on to the platform, restrained his wife and got his niece to her feet. He moved her away from the converging driver and stationmaster and flung out an arm to ward them off. Then he gathered Rose to him too and strode away towards his car.
    Grace faced the stationmaster and, before he could speak, said, ‘Just name your amount, your fine forLaura’s stunt. Go on, give me a figure.’ She gripped the stationmaster with one brown hand, and put her other hand into her dustcoat and produced a wallet.
    The stationmaster blustered, ‘You think it’s enough to offer me money? This is a serious incident. That child needs a good talking to, at the very least!’
    Indeed, the child, the curious onlookers thought. What had she seen? Some dropped treasure, or injured animal? They imagined the extravagant childishness of a spoilt rich girl. They peered at her as her uncle hustled her past, pale and tear-stained. And some saw that what Laura Hame had in the fist curled to her chest was a large rust-stained rock. A rock from the trackbed.

Ten
    When the special train pulled away from Sisters Beach station something very strange had happened to Laura.
    She was walking along the platform with Rose, Grace and Chorley. She was dragging her feet, feeling defeated. Her father had gone, and she