“Ah,” the Stranger said. “Well, that’s a question, isn’t it.” He looked out of the window. High above, he noticed a line of Erlandson trees, tall, graceful trunks like vaulting poles and twisting branches shaped into hearts or arms or lightning bolts, and he thought he saw dark shapes dart between the high branches, but if so he could not make them out clearly. Yet they made him uneasy. The train continued to chug gaily parallel to the Nikulin down below. The air grew colder by degrees, and a flurry of snow blew down in a sudden gust of wind, never reaching the ground but bursting overhead in tiny flashes of sunlight and microscopic rainbows. “I mean, do we dream that other world, or does it dream us, do you think?”

The Kid shrugged, indifferent. He had no parallel. Sticks gave him nothing but a sickly hangover. “As much as I enjoy talking metaphysics,” he said, “I think I prefer playing cards.” When he spread his arms, Tarocchi cards leaped between his fingers. The Stranger caught flashes of wands and swords and rings, of Death, of Temperance, and of the Hermit. He said, “You seem to have a little of the conjurer in you, yourself.”

The Kid scowled. He got up smoothly, making the cards disappear. The wound in his side was healing nicely. Only a slight stiffness when he moved betrayed its presence. “I’ll be in the dining car,” he said, “if you’d like to join me.”

“I might, later,” the Stranger said.

The Kid grinned. “If only you played cards the way you shoot . . . ,” he said, and shook his head in mock sorrow. He disappeared down the corridor. The Stranger turned back to the window. The motion of the train lulled him to sleep and yet he watched uneasily as the river expanded farther ahead, how the mountains loomed, how dark shapes seemed to fleet swiftly between the vines and high branches of the Erlandson trees. The snow had gone as quickly as it had come, and what remained now in the air was merely the ghost or the idea of snow.

In time, the Stranger fell asleep. From high above the Escapement, the flock of caiques watched the little toy train with amused interest, and some of the birds surfed against the tree bark or the wet leaves down below, propelling themselves in play by their beaks, rolling and wrestling with each other. But the caiques were soon disturbed in their frivolity by the larger, fleeting shadows, and their chatter turned nervous and soon they took flight as one, an explosion of feathery colour, yellow and snow-white and green, as they followed the contours of the mountain.