The Boundless (30 page)

Maren pries off the lids of the paint cans. “How do you like them arranged?” she asks.

“Just here to my right,” he tells her. “I can use the lids to mix the colors. Can you find me some rags for the brushes?”

The touch of his pencil to the canvas has sent no spectral sparks through his hands. He wonders if this is all nonsense and Mr. Dorian has risked their lives for nothing. Mr. Beauprey is dead. Some of the brakemen are almost certainly dead. Will thinks of the man he sent over the edge. Is he dead too?

“Will?” Maren says quietly.

He realizes he's just staring at the canvas.

“Start,” Mr. Dorian wheezes.

He's terrified to start. The drawing's a fair likeness. He fusses with it a bit more but knows he's stalling.

After dolloping some red onto a lid, he adds white, mixing until he has a passable pink. The light is so poor, it's hard to tell how fleshlike the color is. On another lid he mixes red and green to make brown, and then adds a bit to his pink to tone it down. He thins the paint with turpentine. This way his lines can be finer and more careful.

With the smallest brush, using his drawing as a guide, he begins painting in Mr. Dorian's flesh. Maybe he should have made the color whiter, for Mr. Dorian's skin is terribly pale now. The brush bristles are hard—they haven't been cleaned properly. His strokes are impossible to control. Panic mounts within him. How will he ever manage the mouth and eyes?

He keeps staring up at Mr. Dorian, trying to force his eyes to follow and feel, but his eyes don't want to see right now. His head is filled with worry, crying out like a raven's ceaseless cawing.

“William, please hurry,” says Mr. Dorian, and he flinches again.

Will knows he needs to get the paint down faster, but he's worried about getting lost as he obliterates his drawing bit by bit.

With a rag he cleans his brush and switches to dark brown to make a start on Mr. Dorian's hair. Then he changes brushes and works on the shadows around the ringmaster's nose and eye sockets. With careful strokes he chisels deep hollows in the cheeks.

“Will,” Maren says, “are you all right?”

He stares at his work, and it's happening again, just like it always does.

“The painting's dying,” he murmurs.

“
He's
dying!” Maren reminds him.

“Stop being so careful, William!” Mr. Dorian says, wincing. “Look at me, and paint
me
.”

Will looks hard at the ringmaster. The shadows deepen and his pale face seems to hang, suspended in space. There is nothing but the blazing head in the darkness. And suddenly Will beholds Mr. Dorian for what he is, beyond his flesh and bones. It's like his whole life is pouring out of him, and Will sees all the desperation and fear and longing and a terrifying will to live—like a fire that will burn everything in its path.

Feverishly Will slops paint on a lid, mixing. He makes the colors he needs and does not thin them this time. He works wet on wet, putting more paint on the canvas, trying to keep it thick. The canvas seems hungry for more.

The ringmaster is wheezing now.

“Hurry!” says Maren.

Something inside Will gets unlocked with these bigger, faster strokes. It's as if he can feel Mr. Dorian's face with the brush. He is mixing hastily, not bothering to clean between colors, just putting the paint down on the canvas.

“I'm done!” says Will.

*   *   *

Brogan stares down at the coupling behind the funeral car.

“You can't do it,” says Mackie. “Not when we're in motion.”

“It can be done,” says Brogan. And he shows Mackie the vial of nitro he's been carrying in his sand-filled pouch.

Mackie's all he's got left. Chisholm disappeared in the tunnel, but Mackie had the sense to get himself hidden when the cavalry showed up with their stilts and throwing knives. They both retreated over the front of the funeral car.

“We've gone too far to stop now,” he tells Mackie, sensing his doubts. “You're with me or you're against me. Decide now, but know it's a bloody road we're about to take.”

“I'm with you,” Mackie says angrily. “I'm getting rich or going to hell.”

Brogan spent years blasting. Drilling the coyote holes in the rock face, packing in the powder or the nitro, and running out the fuse. He's seen men blasted to pieces more times than he can count. But he never got so much as a scratch. He's like a cat. Nine lives.

“We blow this coupling and leave the rest of the Boundless behind,” he tells Mackie. “We've got the funeral car, and then we take the locomotive.”

“How? There's the firemen and engineers!”

“We tell them to hop it. They'll hop it.” He shows his gun.

Mackie reminds him, “There's no bullets.”

“They don't know that. Would you risk it? And if they don't hop it, they get the knife.”

Mackie says nothing.

“Then we drive the locomotive into the foothills, near Farewell. We blow the funeral car to bits, get the gold out. We're away down the river and across the border before the Mounties even saddle their horses.”

He knows exactly what he's doing. He's bloodied but not beaten.

“And look at it this way.” He forces a grin at Mackie. “We got fewer people to share with.”

*   *   *

Will gazes down at the portrait. It's good. What he's painted is
good
. Despite his clumsy mixing, the colors seem startlingly vibrant. It is not careful and realistic. No one would praise its photographic accuracy. But it captures the man himself, his soul somehow.

“Show me,” whispers Mr. Dorian.

Will turns the painting round. It is a violent collision of colors and textures. Mr. Dorian's face is still as he beholds his portrait. He smiles and nods.

“Yes,” he says. “That's it.” He exhales deeply.

“Are you feeling better?” Maren asks.

“I am,” he says. He begins to stand, and without warning his entire body jerks and he cries out, clutching his left hand as though it has just been seared.

“Mr. Dorian!” shouts Maren.

But he can't hear her, because he is moaning, the most urgent and heartrending lament Will has ever heard. Mr. Dorian slumps over. Will helps Maren ease him to the floor.

“What's wrong!” Roald cries, hurrying over.

“It's not working,” Maren says, looking at Will in desperation. “Why isn't it working?”

“I'm going for the doctor!” Roald says.

“No . . . no . . .” moans Mr. Dorian, but Roald is already barreling down the carriage. “There's nothing to be done.”

“Is there something wrong with the portrait?” Will asks, stricken.

“Not the portrait,” Mr. Dorian says, wincing. “The canvas.”

“What?” Maren asks.

Mr. Dorian shakes his head, his eyes rolling back. His lips are bluish. He mutters something Will can't understand, then grimaces and sighs: “The trickster, tricked. . . .”

Several times his body twitches, and then is still.

“Is he dead?” Maren asks.

Will touches Mr. Dorian's cold wrist, tries to find a pulse, can't.

“His heart gave out,” Will says.

“I don't understand,” she whispers.

“The canvas,” Will says, understanding Mr. Dorian's last words. “There was nothing special about it. He was wrong. He got tricked.”

The sound of a huge explosion reaches him at the same moment the carriage shudders—so violently that Will thinks the car has been knocked from the tracks. It tilts as the left wheels leave the steel. Then it crashes back level.

*   *   *

Will climbs the ladder and crests the roof. He sees the funeral car up ahead and can tell, just by the gap, that the Boundless has been severed. The locomotive is slowly pulling its tender and the funeral car away from the rest of the cars. The back of Van Horne's carriage is disfigured from the blast, paint scoured off, the decorative plumes mangled. On the roof Brogan and Mackie are moving forward in the direction of the locomotive.

“How did they do it?” Maren gasps, hauling herself onto the roof beside Will.

“Nitroglycerine,” he says.

He is trying to judge the widening gap between the maintenance car they're on and the funeral car. If Brogan has explosives, who knows what he means to do. His father is on that locomotive.

Urgent whistle blasts pierce the mountain air, the alarm to bring the train to a halt. Will can only hope that there are enough good brakemen left on the severed part of the train to slow it down—for it's headless now, and there are surely steep turns and trestles up ahead.

Brogan and Mackie have jumped across to the bunk car where the firemen and engineers sleep when off shift. And beyond that rises the back of the massive tender, heavy with coal and water. To cross over top would be impossible. But along the right side runs a narrow catwalk to allow the crew to pass between the locomotive and their bunk car.

Will starts to run forward, hunched over.

“Will!” Maren shouts behind him. “What are you doing?”

“I need to get across!” Will hollers back at her. “My father!”

He reaches the front of the maintenance car. The gap to the funeral carriage is more than fifteen feet now, and growing. He knows he can never make that jump.

“Can you get me across?” he asks Maren, who has run after him.

She looks ahead. Will sees a long stretch of straight track. Without a word she takes her spool of wire and starts to swiftly unwind it across the gap. She hooks the grappling hook around a ladder rung at the back of the disfigured funeral car, and latches her end to the rooftop. The Boundless is connected once more, briefly, by tightrope.

“We're at fifteen feet now,” she tells him. “There's thirty feet in the spool. We don't have much time. You're going to have to walk with me. You'll need to trust me, Will. Can you do that?”

“Yes. You can do this, right?”

“I've carried an anvil. I can manage you. Go. I need to be behind you.”

His will falters a moment.

“Go!” she says. “Just walk and don't stop. Don't look down. I'll do the rest.”

He takes his first step, and then another, and he's about to teeter off when he feels Maren's hands, one on his waist, another on his opposite shoulder, guiding him. Instantly, amazingly, he's steadied. He forces himself to keep going, looking only at his destination—the shuddering back of the funeral car. It takes concentration, but more than that, surrender.

“Don't fight me,” she whispers.

He wasn't aware he was. He tries to breathe.

“You're doing well,” she whispers into his ear.

Their destination looks just as far away as it did when they began, but he knows the gap between the cars must be growing, their tightrope line paying out, foot by foot.

“Will, I need you to go a little faster,” she says in his ear. “Just a little. Good. . . .”

In his peripheral vision something tumbles past on his right and is gone. Moments later another shape flashes by, and this time he realizes it's a person. He catches a glimpse of the overalls that the firemen wear.

“He's forcing them off the train!” Will gasps.

“Don't worry about that now!”

A third person rolls past. Will doesn't know if they're dead or alive. Were any of them his father? He doesn't think so, but— He feels Maren roughly push him.

“Will!” she says. “Pay attention!”

Up ahead he sees the track begin to curve. “We're going to bank to the right,” he gasps in alarm.

“I've got you. Keep walking. Just look at the end of the wire.”

The train starts to lean, and Will feels his body teeter. Maren's hands are firm, pressing, nudging. He looks down—he can't help himself. He's going to fall! He's going to be crushed between the cars!

“You're okay, Will,” she says. “We're straight again. You're walking straight. And we're almost there.”

He lifts his gaze to take in the back of the funeral car. They're getting closer, but it still seems that for every two steps he takes, the train moves ahead one.

A shock travels through the wire. Suddenly it softens underfoot.

He's aware of Maren, looking back over her shoulder, but he dares not do the same.

“Run!” she's shouting. “Just
run
!”

And he doesn't need to look back, because he can see it in his mind's eye. The wire has gone as far as it can, and has snapped, and is sailing through the air behind them, falling swiftly.

He runs, Maren's hands guiding him, her body so close that he feels like they're one person—one person with four legs in perfect synchrony. The wire is as soft as snow beneath his feet, and they're running uphill now as the wire sags to the tracks.

“Go!
Go!
” Maren shouts, and he puts on a burst of speed, accelerated by her body behind him.

He reaches out for the mangled ladder at the back of the funeral car and seizes a rung. He swings to one side to make room for Maren. Glancing back, he sees the tightrope wire dragging behind them on the tracks, sending up sparks. The rest of the Boundless seems impossibly far away.

“Not quite Niagara Falls,” he pants, “but close.”

“No one's ever done
that
before,” she says with some satisfaction.

Mountains, their peaks bathed in the rising sun, tower around them, old as the planet. With Maren he runs across the roof of the funeral car and jumps to the bunk car.

“We should check inside,” he says. His father might have been off shift, but he doubts it. He would've wanted to be at the controls through the mountains. And if Will's right, Brogan and Mackie cleared out the bunk car and forced the men off the train.

He hastily climbs down and sees the knob smashed apart, and the door ajar. He enters. Empty bunks, breakfast dishes shattered and food scattered on the floor.