Читать книгу The Magic Misfits - Neil Patrick Harris - Страница 10

In the darkness of a train yard, somewhere on the far edge of town, a shadowy figure emerged from a thick curtain of fog. The person looked back once before dashing alongside several rows of empty train tracks.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you might flinch when imagining a shadowy figure emerging from a nighttime fog in a nearly abandoned train yard lit only by distant streetlights. But you needn’t worry here. It was merely a skinny boy named Carter Locke.

If you were to worry about anyone at this moment, it should be the man who was not far behind – the man who was chasing Carter through the train yard, bellowing: “Carter! Get back here! Don’t you run from me, boy! I ain’t going to hurt you!” This was a lie. The man very much intended to hurt Carter.

Thankfully, Carter knew it. So he pumped his legs and clutched his satchel and strained through the murk to see which line of carriages was chug-chug-chugging down the tracks and out of the yard. The wail of a horn blasted Carter’s eardrums, and he stumbled across a rail.

Several rows away, there came a familiar metal clanking. A rusty but colourful chain of carriages clacked by, catching speed and whisking away the mist. Carter could see clearly now. He jumped over the tracks and raced to keep up with the moving train. From down the yard, the carriages kept coming and coming and coming. Red, blue, green, yellow, purple, redder, black, orange, redder still.

The colourful train reminded Carter of the first magic trick he’d ever seen: a gentle hand coming close to his face and pulling a red silk handkerchief from his ear, which was tied to a yellow one, which was tied to a blue one, which was tied to a green one, and so on, and so on, and on and on. It was one of the few memories Carter had of his own father.

Instinctively, Carter touched his satchel, as if to make sure the small wooden box was still inside. It was.

Carter ran alongside the train, eyeing each passing carriage for a place to board. Behind him, footsteps sounded in the gravel. Then a gruff, cruel voice rang out. “Carter! Don’t you dare hop on that train!” The clanging and banging did not drown out the man, who sounded closer now than before – almost directly behind him. “I’ve got eyes and ears in every town between here and Timbuktu! You’ll never escape! Hear me? Never! ”

Carter tried not to think about what would happen if the man caught him. Instead, he focused on the locomotive. Light glinted off the heavy wheels below as they rolled upon the tracks. The problem with trains is that they are made of metal and each car weighs a literal ton, if not more. Once they’re moving, they move quickly. If Carter got too close – if he tripped – it would all be over.

A bright yellow train carriage was now edging past him. Yellow reminded Carter of a bird he once saw locked up in a cage in the window of a pet store. Weren’t birds designed to fly free? Carter took it as a sign that this was the one to reach for, the one that would take him far away from here. Its ladder was just out of reach.

Jumping a train in motion may have been hard or even scary for some – but Carter had done it so many times, it came as naturally as plucking a coin from behind someone’s ear or shuffling a deck of cards with only one hand.

Unfortunately, the man who was chasing Carter found it easy too. As Carter was about to clasp the ladder, the man grabbed Carter’s satchel and dragged him to the ground.

“No!” Carter yelled.

They both tumbled across the gravel, rolling beside the wheels of the yellow carriage that went bump-bump, bump-bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump-bump over the rickety tracks, echoing the flutter of Carter’s panicked heartbeat. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the train left without him.

So Carter didn’t stop moving. He twisted his body until the rolling turned into a somersault. As he pitched himself forward, head over heels, Carter yanked his bag away from the man’s grip, planted his feet on the shifting gravel, then leapt toward the train’s last carriage. A ladder hung down from the rear, next to an open door. Carter’s fast hands grabbed the bottom rung, his taut tendons holding him tight. Climbing up and onto the ladder, he pulled his feet up and clung to the back of the now-racing train.

After catching his breath, he moved all the way to the top, taking a seat on the car’s roof. The wind whipped his hair around. The train’s horn cried out again from up ahead.

Looking back, he saw the man kneeling by the tracks, arms raised in anger, screaming into the night and quickly shrinking into a dot that eventually disappeared in the murky distance. Carter waved goodbye. To the town. To Ms Zalewski. And to the man who was chasing him – though if it had been possible to wish the man a bad-bye, Carter would certainly have done that instead.

The sky turned a beautiful blue as the sun came up. After some time, the familiar rocking and loud metal-churning of the train calmed Carter’s heart and brought a yawn to his jaw. So he climbed down and into the train carriage. Inside, hundreds of boxes were stacked on wooden pallets. Plopping himself on the floor beside one such stack, Carter placed his satchel underneath his head like a pillow, then drifted off to sleep, dreaming about hope and fate and destiny and adventure, as well as a fleeting thought or two about the possibility of magic.