“You said something before, about what happened last time,” Kate said. “With the train. What did you mean?”

“Oh, I thought they would’ve told you about that,” the cat said. “As part of your training.”

“But that’s the thing, I didn’t get trained! At all!”

Maybe she shouldn’t have admitted that, but it just came out.

“Is that right? How extraordinary.” The fishing cat flopped her heavy tail from side to side like a velvet rope. “Well, it was before my time—we live only ten or fifteen years, you know. But I do know that before this train there was another one, and it left one day and never came back. I don’t know what happened to it, but I doubt it was anything good.”

Just then the door opened and two more animals came in.

One was a very long, very thin snake with large, alert black eyes and skin so bright green it was almost fluorescent. Kate felt a powerful instinctive urge to run away from it very, very fast. The other was some kind of large wading bird with long legs and a curvy neck. If pressed Kate might’ve said it was a stork. Or a heron. Or a crane? Or were they all the same thing? You think you know something about animals, and then you have to conduct a whole train full of them. Anyway, it was a big fancy bird. Not the kind you see every day.

“Mind if we join you?” the bird said. She had a lot of long, elegant gray feathers.

“Yes,” said the cat.

“That’sssssssss too bad,” the snake said, sliding smoothly inside. “It’ssssssss because I’m venomoussssss, I know.”

He slithered up onto a chair.

“It’ssssss a common prejudiccccccce.”

(I’m not going to keep typing all the extra s’s, so just keep in mind that the snake hisses a lot when he talks.)

“A library car,” the heron said. “This is fantastic. Who would’ve thought?”

Kate glowed quietly inside: She would’ve thought!

With two beats of her enormous wings the heron flew up to perch on a lamp.

“You always say things are fantastic,” the snake scoffed.

“Well, you never do,” she said, “so I have to do it twice as much. And anyway, it is!” She turned to Kate. “Are there any cars with fish in them?”

“I was wondering that, too,” the fishing cat said.

“There’s no fish car,” Kate said. Like she would have a fish car! “But they might serve fish in one of the dining cars.”

The porcupine woke up and squinted sleepily at the cat, the bird, the snake, and the human.

“I thought I would be alone in here,” he said.

“And now we’re here!” the heron said. “Isn’t it fantastic?”