The Train Station Chapter Seven

Nobody felt like talking. All their focus seemed to be put into looking—looking both wonderingly at the surroundings and cautiously for unknown threats. Unconsciously they made every step as quiet as possible; the silence did not want to be disturbed, and every pebble clattering underfoot echoed dismally among the hollow stone structures. They followed the path of the carriage, two almost indistinguishable ruts in the ground, down and into the old city—more than old; incountably, magnificently old.

The buildings were dark and stony obstructions on either side of them now. The view that they had had of the city's expanse was no longer there: but its memory remained, and they all knew that what they saw of it was only the slightest portion of what this city really was. Jingle chose not to stare too much at the darkened interiors of the buildings; they gave her a funny unpleasant feeling inside, and the blueish lights along the road were more interesting anyway. They were usually supported by a pole, long and thick with odd carvings. At the top, it bent at a right angle, from the end of which the light dangled on an iron chain. Some of the poles had fallen or rusted through, and their lights were either entirely dead or flickering weirdly. One light was leaning so low against a rock that she could almost touch it, and she wanted to examine it very much; but at that point when she was about to broach the subject aloud to the others, they turned a corner and she forgot about the lights. They passed beneath massive bridges connecting the buildings with higher buildings, and connecting those higher buildings together. The bridges were crumbling and broken but Jingle could see that they were once very wonderful indeed. It was the sort of place that made one feel small and insignificant; especially to Gary and Beach and Jingle, who had never seen more than ten or fifteen houses in the same place. And so it is understandable that they didn't want to talk much.

This continued for some time, although they couldn't tell how long, since of course they couldn't see the sun. It could have been night time for All they knew. Still the end of the city refused to appear, and the tracks of the carriage went on winding through the maze-like structure without signs of stopping.  

Then, as they rounded a corner, they saw a strange thing. A long pipe, thick with dust, was stringing across the street in front of them, its end coming to rest in a wide trough that ran alongside the tracks. Something that looked like frozen black molasses was coating the inside of the trough and dangling out the mouth of the pipe, like something had once run through here but had since congealed and degraded away. It was the first of many such things they would see. As they went on, the more of them they saw: pipes running over the sides of the buildings and crossing the road over their heads, and the trough running alongside them was soon joined by another, and another, and they saw more crisscrossing other streets, and what might have been aqueducts joining them, and connecting them, and branching off them to create other aqueducts. It was all coated in an age-blackened layer of something. Soon they accepted the otherworldly plumbing as another curiosity in a place that was naturally full of unexplainable curiosities.  

Until that is, they were distracted by a strange dripping sound and a glimpse of bright yellow. Jingle stared in shock as she noticed the liquid that had caused this whole thing dripping out of a pipe and running along an aqueduct that disappeared somewhere above them. She pointed upwards at it.

“Look, there it is!”

The others were already goggling at it as well. The thin stream of yellow continued to drip until the drips became slower and the silence between them grew longer and longer, and finally it stopped entirely. The stream continued down the aqueduct and out of sight.

They looked at each other, awestruck.

“What's it doing here?” said Beach almost indignantly, likely remembering the innocent liquid’s part in their current predicament. Gary continued to stare. “That sure is funny stuff, Jingle.”

Jingle fumbled for an answer but found none. There were no words to fit the situation. Besides, she had the feeling that they had not seen the last of that chemical mixture.