The tickets had all kinds of destinations printed on them: ISLE OF WIGHT, LOWER SILESIAN WILDERNESS, SAGANO BAMBOO FOREST.… They sounded like they were from all over the world. Kate wondered why they could possibly be going to all those different places, and how they expected to get there on a steam train, but she didn’t feel like she could ask. Her job was to punch the tickets, and she punched them. She accepted a ticket from a largish feline—not a house cat or quite a big cat, but something in between. Its fur was partly spotted and partly striped, and it was a funny color, gray with a hint of olive green.

“Thanks,” it said.

“You’re welcome.”

Was it a bobcat? A lynx? Kate hadn’t studied for this.

“It was brave of you to come,” the something-cat said. “After what happened last time.”

Kate gave it a funny look. Or she? She sounded like a she. And if animals were going to talk to her, she supposed she shouldn’t think of them as its. Kate wanted to say that it wasn’t really that brave, since she didn’t know what had happened last time, and wait-a-minute what are you even talking about?! But she had a lot of tickets to take.

The last compartment contained more weasels—or were they minks? stoats?—that wouldn’t or couldn’t stop chasing each other in circles. There was also a big wild turkey and more bats and a wolf who looked like a demon in wolf form but was probably perfectly nice when you got to know her.

Then Kate was done. She took a deep breath and leaned back against the wall in the corridor. Whew. That went well.

At that exact moment a loud, excited chittering and squawking came from a compartment down the hall. Kate hurried over, straightening her conductor’s hat. A striking white bird with a black cap and an orange beak was perched on the luggage rack, glaring down at the compartment’s other occupant, which was the big porcupine.

“Get down from there!” the porcupine said. “Right now!”

“No.”

“This is my compartment, you unbelievably unpleasant bird!”

“I don’t see how my being here could inconvenience you even slightly!”

“If you don’t get down right now, I will stand up on my hind legs and—”

“Porcupines can’t stand on their hind legs,” the bird said.

“We can! For brief periods!”

Though he didn’t demonstrate.

“Look,” the bird said, “if we just agree that the luggage rack and the upper edge of the seat backs are my domain, and—”

“Why don’t we agree that you’ll get out of my compartment right now or I’ll quill you into next week!”

“I’m not even sure what that means,” Kate said. “What’s going on here?”