The train shuddered under him and he pressed his face to the glass and it was cold with frost at the edges, in the corners. His breath came up on the glass like a storm and then was gone again. He held his fingers against it and outside the trees were passing them like ranks of soldiers, the sky over them the smoke from their guns, pounding with fire high in the clouds where the mountains could just reach.

His father was next to him and the boy was glad. He was glad for the warmth of the car and the warmth of his coat. He was glad that the train was moving with a sound like a hammer each second along the rails. He had his feet under him and a book in his lap and the train carried them and carried them.

“Father,” he said.

His father looked down and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the boy was glad for that, too. “You like it?” his father asked.

“I do,” said the boy.

“Good,” his father said.

“But how long?” the boy asked.

His father looked up and the boy followed his eyes. They were coming into the city along those endless rails and the buildings were coming up around them, solemn and gray and wearing heavy coats of snow. The snow was dirty and in the streets and people were walking with their heads down. The boy watched them as the trees were lost, and he couldn’t even see the mountains.

“Not long,” his father said.

“But some time?” the boy asked. Some time in the city, with that dirt and that gray. A place in which he would keep his hands in his pockets.

“Some time,” his father said.

The boy looked back to the window and wished for the trees in their ranks like soldiers. And then there were men along the wooden edge of the station; he heard the train’s whistle ahead of him and felt it lurch and slow beneath his seat. There were men in their own ranks, men with dark coats and guns on their backs and their arms in the air. A salute. All of them, their arms in the air.

The boy looked at them and he wished their arms were branches and their legs trunks and their feet roots. He wished they didn’t have their guns, in those ranks, and their hats and their boots and their flags with black spiders crawling toward the corners. He wished they didn’t have those flags most of all.

“Stop,” he said. His breath came again like a torrent on the glass and he didn’t wipe it away with his hand. “Let’s go back.”

But he looked at his father and his father was standing and smiling. His father was watching those arms in the air as the train slowed, and his smile was like the snow on the buildings or the clouds around the mountains with fire in them.

“We can’t,” his father said. “The train can’t be stopped until the station.”

“Yes,” the boy said. The book had fallen from his lap and was gone beneath his seat and he was suddenly very afraid. “We have to.”

“We can’t,” his father said again.

And then the boy looked at his father’s neck and saw the spider hanging there on the collar of his coat. He saw it swinging with the motion of the train as the men stood outside in ranks, and he knew the train couldn’t be stopped because it was a beast made of metal and gears and flames, and those kinds of beasts you couldn’t kill.

“Come,” his father said. And they stood and moved toward the front of the train and the boy looked back for his book, but it was lost.