The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

She has no wish for social niceties, nor the curious, appraising gazes of men, already observing her black mourning garb, noting her solitary state. Let them note. All she wants is to be alone in her cabin, to shut the door and close the curtains and gather a comforting silence around her.

In summer the land is wakeful, hungry. It is too soon to take the risk. Not soon enough for her. But then again, she is too in love with risk, Alexei always says. “And who on this train isn’t?” she replies, and he has to acknowledge the truth of it; that they are—all of them—half mad with Wastelands sickness already, with a longing and fear that they would struggle to articulate but which beckons them to the Trans-Siberia Company. They are the ones who hear the Wastelands from the safety of their cities and homes, who cannot resist the call of the great train.

How will she go back home after this? Marya thinks. How will she sit in upholstered parlors, speaking of the latest recitals or the fashions at the palace, when she knows that there are landscapes made of bone, that there are murmurations of birds that fill the sky? How will she bear it when tedious young men speak of their grand tours, of their churches and museums, when she has seen these cathedrals of birches?