The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

It is as busy and chaotic as the rest of the train, but at the far end of the carriage, set into the wall, is a little shrine containing an icon of Saint Mathilda and a statue of Yuan Guan. A saint and a god to watch over travellers, and over rail people, who, while putting their trust in mechanics, in wheels and gears and oil, are also inclined to think that it can’t do any harm to give polite recognition to the numinous, just in case. Which of them, after all, had not seen things in the Wastelands more impossible than these saints who were once said to have done miracles? Weiwei sees one of the stewards bend his head then place something on the shrine, a surreptitiousness to his movements. He straightens up slowly, glancing around him as if afraid of being watched, then brings his hands together and bows his head again, before hurrying off. When he has gone she looks more closely to see what he left behind. A glint of bluish-green catches the light from the window; it is a small, perfectly round glass bead.