Filander's Train

If ever there was a perfect time for the train to stop, it was my early adolescence.
I remember it as a dusty time, filled with sweat and hot days when it seemed the sun would never go down. It remained a great unblinking face over my home town, white and wavering above the shroud of its own warmth. Even the sign to our one street hamlet was bleached by many long days greeting only tumbleweeds.
There was only one way that people came past our town, and it was by train. Or so I had heard, for the great behemoth never stopped once in my life. But I had seen it go past many a time, even made a game out of it with my small town friends.
First we felt the rumble, just barely in our toes, but that was enough. We’d cast our parents and grandparents a meaningful look and we’d be off, sneakers slapping against the dirt road.  Those days were the best of all, sitting out on the hill over the tracks as the beating sun faded into cool shadows. We would gasp and ponder about the people passing us by, who they were, where they came from. Most of all where they were going.
I had never heard of a single person not from Eddebrooke. Everyone I had ever known came from my home town, all the way back to their furthest ancestors. In all my life I never thought that strange, never even second guessed it, until the stranger came.
The train stopped for the very first time when I was home. It was midday, and all of my friends were in school, resigned to the daily drone that I had excused myself from with feigned sickness. It was rather lucky that I had chosen that day to stay home, for I was the only child free. And adults never greeted the train, steeped in the idea that spontaneity was childish.
As such, I was the only one who ran for the station the moment I felt the ground begin to shake. I knew it was a different sort of rumble from the beginning, for I had felt the train pass many a time and never, never had the deep roar slowed. This unconscious sensation left me with a feeling of urgency, my feet kicking up motes of dirt.
I was halfway to the hill over the tracks when I saw that the train was actually stopping. Immediately I turned and burst through the station doors, marveling that I had never been inside before. Blue tiles lined the floor, lit from delicate chandeliers hanging between arced columns. The place was beautiful, open, and large, much larger than it seemed from the shambling exterior.
It was also much more eloquent. My mouth hung open as I walked through, studying the delicate designs drawn into the supports. Intricate molding lined the ceilings and floor, carved with images of oceans and creatures past. It was all completely unlike the town of Eddebrooke, as if I had stepped into a portal and found myself gaping at another time.
Strangest of all, the entire place was empty. But I hadn’t thought that odd either, at the time.
The train burst into the station screaming, steam billowing out over the tile. Its heavy metal struts churned and worked until the great beast slid to a halt, wafting heat in gusts. For some time the metal creature was completely still, only whining occasionally with the settling machinery.
I didn’t approach it, didn’t back away. I merely waited, completely at mercy to the great wonder unfolding before me. And though I wished my friends were there to see it, I was selfishly glad that I was alone. That moment felt like my moment, as though it had been dropped in the great galaxy of time simply for me.
When the train’s doors snapped and swung open I forgot about my friends entirely.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest cavity, fluttering against my ribs. Every breath was forced, in out, in out. Who would step from that door? What wonderful clothes would they be dressed in? How would they talk? What great places would they tell me of, what adventures?
In my mind’s eye I expected droves of people, but in the Eddebrooke style, only one man descended from that gaping maw and he was simple.
He wore a thin brimmed hat and a heavy brown suit, which was draped over with what looked like a scarf on his arm. In his left hand he held a cane carved into a lion’s head, which was stuck permanently mid-roar. In his right hand was a brown case, completely unassuming, but for the stack of books tucked under his arm. Papers seemed to fall from him ceaselessly, and I found myself running to help him.
“Hello sir.” The man greeted me, his voice a kind timbre. He must have seen my surprise at the title, for he corrected himself, “You’ll need to excuse me, I haven’t been to Eddebrooke for many a year.”
I would never forget the ageless lilt to his voice, and the way he spoke of my town as though it was an old relative he hadn’t had the fortune to visit in quite a while.
“Why not?” the words erupted from my mouth before I could stop them, and indeed I brought a free hand to my mouth.
The stranger chuckled, “I’m afraid I forgot about it.”
How forgiving and simple. How matter-of-fact.
“Who are you?” I bent down to retrieve the layer of pages coating the floor. Stacking them neatly, I caught only bits and pieces of the writing scrawled across every free inch.
“Ah, thank you.” He smiled, “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure to meet you before, which would explain your confusion. Others know me by another name, but you can call me Filander, or Fil for short.” His face split into a deep array of wrinkles when he grinned, from what I could guess was much past laughter. This stranger was a cheery sort, his smile never forgetting his eyes.
“Where are you from?” I continued my barrage.
“Everywhere.”
And on like that it went, until Fil came to realize I wasn’t ever going to run out of questions. Even the train took its leave, spouting more steam as it rolled out of the station. And eventually Fil took his chance to turn the tide on me, “Is the old inn still in business? I think I’d better find a place to stay before dark.”
“Nobody really visits, but it’s still standing. Ella abandoned the business when I was young. She lives there by herself now and bakes. I’m sure if you go in and ask she’ll let you have a room.”
“That sounds perfectly apt. Would you walk me there?”
And I did. Night was just beginning to spread its fingers over the town, the edges of the sun just beginning to fade into pink on the horizon. You could see for hundreds of miles in any direction near Eddebrooke, as the flat desert landscape went unbroken. The result was a masterpiece of a night sky, jeweled with the twinkling souls of an infinite nebula.
“What a pristine dark.” Fil wondered aloud as we walked.
I nodded, “sometimes I lay on the ground and watch the stars move for hours. If you lay there long enough it begins to seem that the world isn’t below you anymore, and the sky no longer above. More like you’re hanging on the side of some giant face, and nothing could stop you from falling off into the universe. It’s an odd feeling, can’t really describe it. But if you lay there too long the feeling snaps back, and the earth and the sky become one combined world again.”
“I’ve felt it. And you’re right, you can’t describe it. It’s one of those feelings, like standing on a massive mountain where you can see everything below you and you feel much closer to the world above. You feel all of existence at one, or as close as a human mind can get to it. The feeling of infinity. Beautiful thing. You’re a little poet, you know.”
“My father was a rancher.”
“Yes,” Fil began, “But you’re a poet.”
And I never got the chance to press him on the subject, for we had already arrived at the inn. Fil stood at the doors, one hand against the paneling, his features cast in sharp contrast by the small light above his head.
“Come visit me tomorrow and we’ll go for a walk. I’ll teach you some of what I know. What did you say your name was again?”
“Jake. My name is Jake.”


Autumn went quickly with Fil as a friend. I found myself joining him every day I had free, finding excuses for my parents. My friends I introduced to the stranger, and they found him quickly dull in comparison to the grand ideas they had of the world beyond. But he was new, and so their interest was held for a month or two before they moved back into their own lives.
Fil taught me everything he could put to words about writing. He told me about the worlds he had invented, and the journeys he had been on. He spoke of his characters like they were real people he had known well, as though they were separate from him.
My parents naturally distrusted the man for his age and his choice of company, though I knew Fil was in no way dangerous. He had chosen me for my nearness to creativity, and for my appreciation of his art.
“How would you describe an idea to me?” he asked me, during the waning dredges of autumn. Though the air was becoming cold, Eddebrooke’s sort of cold was only a dozen or two degrees from its summer temperature.
“An idea? A formless being that exists only in the mind of a living creature.” I responded idly, my focus on the bit of prose Fil had instructed me to read. It was his favorite author that I pored over, a long dead man who had been closely knit to the world of fantasy.
“But an idea can exist without, so long as that being speaks it or writes it or however the idea may take life. It can exist even when the creature is not thinking of it. It can change, just as the host changes, and the host may be surprised to return to it and find it very different.” Fil wasn’t lecturing me, only inspiring me to think for myself. He had a look in his eye as he said it, an expression that whispered of untold thoughts.
“That makes sense. I do that sometimes, think of a story and forget about it. Then when I remember, it suddenly takes on a whole drove of other elements I never expected. It takes on me, my life.”
“You see, you are not a rancher at all, Jake.”
And my father was disappointed to find it true.

Time waxed and waned, and the sun and moon raced across the sky so quickly that the sky seemed a permanent shade of purple, poised between night and day. My mind was so occupied with the ideas Fil had inspired me to think that I could no longer remember the old half of my life.
My studies began to dwindle, my family found most of my time occupied within books and writing, and my friends too saw me mostly with Fil. I was drawing away from my old self, changing into something the old residents of my life no longer recognized. But my mind, it blossomed. My heart and happiness too were both suddenly filled with extraordinary tales and journeys I had never been on, but in spirit had joined within the pages of a book.
I found a whole other side to life in words.
And eventually spring came, and summer, and it came time for Fil to leave. He had warned me many a time that he could not stay forever, and that once the scorching sun returned he would board the train and disappear back into that other universe he had told me so much about.
I begged him to stay, for I didn’t know what I would do with myself once he was gone. He had become a second father figure to me, much more so than my own blood relatives. We understood each other in a wordless way, which was amusing in its own right, a way that could not be translated by those who did not speak our language.
And in all this time I still did not know Fil’s true name, or how he had come to be the only stranger to visit Eddebrooke. He had spoken of these things in vague ways, poetic ways that really didn’t make sense to me. And he had hinted that he would tell me before he left, so I came to expect it when we returned together to the station.
I expected a lot of things when we returned. The first of which was the station itself, and the grand space and blue tiles. But when I entered, the tiles were terracotta red, and the ornate archways had been replaced by plastered struts. The decadent carvings were gone, their space taken instead by crude hand paintings of unfamiliar symbols and designs. The place which had once reminded me of a Victorian port city now reminded me of a tribal desert.
“Fil. What happened here?”
There was that familiar smiling sigh, “I think you know.”
I thought about it for a bit, churning the pieces of my thoughts until they fit in an orderly fashion, “It must have been remodeled. The station had been in a rickety state. I’m not surprised.”
“No Jake, think with your other mind. What is all of this?”
“Well it was once an idea,” and I understood at once, “and ideas change when you don’t revisit them for a while.”
He nodded, “You’re getting it now.”
Beneath us the floor began to shake with the approaching train, for the second time in my entire life. With it came the brooding understanding that my closest friend would disappear within the hour, and that I would be returning to the old state of my life. Or perhaps not.
“Please stay, Fil. Please.” I begged him, tightly clutching the stack of books he had given me to carry. Bits and corners of paper stuck out wildly from the pages, moved and torn by the swift passage of many fingers.
“You know I can’t.”
“But you haven’t told me who you are yet!” I protested.
“I suppose you’re right.” Fil relented, placing his hat on his head. The train stormed into the station, this time very different. Instead of the old steam engine this train was streamlined and white, printed with bright images and neon text. It too was completely unlike Eddebrooke.
“I am Stephen Fillander, and as you know I am an author. And I am on a journey to revisit many old things. But the real question is, what are you, what is Eddebrooke?”
It would have been cliché to say that I already knew. But I didn’t, the understanding came after the words. “An idea.”
“Yes, but whose?” And he cast me one last smile before turning for the train, disappearing behind his brown suit. The train split to welcome him, revealing posts and seats along the interior. Fil stepped lightly inside, grabbed onto one of the rails, and with his free arm he waved, papers spilling behind him.
“Yours.” I whispered, watching the door slide shut between us.
He gave me the slightest of nods, just like always, and slid off into the gaping light of the desert beyond.