Making certain the scarf was secure about her body and the reticule about her neck, Rue swung herself up, legs wrapped about the cable, and began to shimmy along towards the train. It was challenging work. I should consider taking on labour as a deckling to improve my climbing skills, not to mention arm strength. Being not so very fit, Rue had to take it gradually, otherwise her muscles might give out. Even so, halfway along, her arms began to shake. But she made it – a fact that she noticed only when her head bashed into the trunk of the metal elephant.

The trunk disguised multiple guidance gears that fitted into tracks on the cable. It presented a bit of difficulty to Rue, who could no longer crawl dangling from the cable towards the head of the beast. And that was her objective since Quesnel had said it housed the navigation chamber.

She twisted this way and that, finally managing to flip herself over and on top of the trunk so that she could scoot up it, legs and arms desperately wrapped around the scales of metal, moving on her belly. Her poor tummy was entirely unused to the sensation of cold rough metal, or indeed any exposure. Imagine what Mother would say, thought Rue, of me brandishing my midriff to an elephant. She didn’t have to imagine. Mother would have called her all kinds of heathen and ordered her to get dressed immediately. Rue had the whole conversation in her head as she squirmed along.

“My daughter is a barbarian dressed in an orange peel!”

“But Mother, I am stranded in the middle of a tropical forest.”

“Pish tosh,” said imaginary Mother. “Trivial detail. Your reputation is a stake. What will they think of you?”

“Who? The local grubs?”

“How do you know grubs don’t have delicate sensibilities? Cover yourself this instant, infant,” was her mother’s illogical opinion.

“Oh, really!” imaginary Rue said in exasperation.

Funny that even in my fantasies I lose arguments with my mother.

Eventually, the trunk dipped below the cable and widened enough for Rue to crawl on all fours leaving the cable above her. She found herself face to face with one elephantine eye – an eye that was really a window through which the conductor might see.

Rue looked inside, shading out the moonlight with hands on either side of her face. The navigation chamber appeared to be empty. She supposed there was little fear of someone attempting to hijack an elephant train in the middle of an unpopulated jungle.

Rue wasn’t certain at what point her subconscious had decided to hijack the air train – probably while the rest of her argued with her mother. With language and nudity against her, her chances of convincing the crew of her point of view were slim. Plus she was too embarrassed to turn up in front of them making demands, like a barbarian in an orange peel.