Chapter 7: Flat

A train

Outside, a coyote cried. Inside, passengers snored.

A face swam into Sadie Crane's vision, all cosines. It rearranged itself, strand by errant strand, into somebody they knew.

"How you feeling, space cadet?" De'afi asked.

"Bad," they replied.

They scrambled upright in their seat.

Viola took from her rucksack the canteen and offered Sadie Crane a drink. She wanted to make tea, but there was nothing to make tea with on the train. And she didn't know how anyway. Mama Sepirot always made tea and sugar cookies when people came over to the house.

"Drink," she urged softly.

They drank greedily, tilting their head back.

De'afi scribbled in hir notebook, drawing Sadie Crane's guardians from memory.

"Never been out this way before," Viola said.

"I have," said De'afi. "It's kinda....flat? In a good way."

A few people recognized Sadie Crane, shooting them looks of barely concealed vitriol and suspicion.

Sadie Crane made eye contact with the more aggressive starers, forcing them to look away.

A young man in the seat behind them hissed murderer under his breath, just audible enough to be heard.

They turned around to regard the young man, locking him with a stare that could have boiled water at fifteen paces.

"You wanna say that again?" they urged. "Louder?"

The young man, sensing he'd fucked up but unwilling to back away, looked them straight in the eye.

"Murderer," he repeated.

Sadie Crane's hand twitched on their barely concealed knife.

"Don't," Viola pleaded.

All six feet of De'afi rose from hir chair.

Perhaps it was realizing he was outnumbered, perhaps it was the disconnected three circle scarification mark on De'afi's right arm that symbolized hir taking down a wild boar. But the young man sank back into his chair and didn't bother them again.