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.
