But they wouldn’t have finished. That bothered Kate. It felt like the kind of thing the old Kate would’ve done, the person she was back before all this started. Being on the train had taught her to take responsibility for things, not just play things but real things. But some things were simply impossible. That was reality, too.

WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A WALK

“How’s that going to help?”

DON’T ASK ME, I DON’T EVEN HAVE LEGS

BUT HUMANS ALWAYS SEEM TO DO IT WHEN THEY NEED INSPIRATION

So she took a walk. If nothing else it might warm her up.

She didn’t leave the train. Instead she did something that everybody always wants to do but hardly anybody ever gets to, which is to walk along the roof of a train. Whenever you take a train you can clearly see there are ladders to get up there, but for some ridiculous reason nobody’s ever allowed to use them except train conductors and people having fistfights in action movies.

Now was her chance. She climbed up a ladder onto the roof of a passenger car and set off. It wasn’t even hard: The roof was about ten feet wide, though it did curve slightly upward in the middle, and there was a gap between the cars that was just wide enough to make her heart flutter a little. She wondered if she could do this when the train was moving. How cool would that be?

But she was just distracting herself. That was something the animals never did, she realized. People looked down on animals, but animals never made excuses or felt sorry for themselves. It would never occur to them. They always looked problems in the face.

Kate walked all the way back to the caboose, which she’d never even visited before. It was painted red, and there was a small stove inside, and bunks, and a desk. It was like a clubhouse. At the very back there was a balcony where you could sit and watch the track reel out behind you. She made a mental note to come back here later. Though then she remembered there probably wouldn’t be a later.

It was when she was walking back that Kate noticed a very old set of rusty-brown train tracks leading off through the grass and into a grove of trees. They were as old and rusty as the ones behind her house used to be. She climbed down and followed them.

It was still bitter cold, but at least the sun was rising now. She stepped from one thick old wooden tie to the next till she reached the trees.

She didn’t exactly find inspiration there. But she did find another steam engine.