The railroad was a streak of fire, an iron scar that stitched through the gentle hills. At night, even in just the pale glow of the moon, it gleamed and sparked as if lightning still lived in it.

No trains traveled it, however; no, those coal-devouring, smoke-belching creatures, pumping, clattering, shouting in metallic voices, had long stopped traveling the rails. Now, they were forgotten, part of the lore of a past golden age; now, the hills were quiet, filled with sweet birdsong. Emerald grass shimmered like gentle silk cloth on them, whispering; oak trees shaded the gullies and dips. It was a good place he was traveling through now. The places the railroad led him hadn't always been good.

Matthew leaned against one of the oak trees now, taking a deep breath of the sweet air. Spring was here, far from the harsh mountain cold that had been only a month – a whole month – but no... the harsh mountain cold that simply had been. There: pine sap, tingling and exciting and startling all at once, granite, sheer rock walls and packed white snow. A sensation of ice in his very marrow. Here: nectar, quiet flowers, honey, bumblebees, but most of all a soft, thawing warmth. He took some smoked veal out of his pack and chewed thoughtfully.

Suddenly the bumblebees stilled, their golden whirring wings pausing. A morning-blue butterfly that had been sunning itself flapped once, twice, and away. It was a brief moment of silence, nothing more than a breath, but enough to notice. He tilted his head, listening close.

A rustle, the one that sap-laden stalks of grass would make if someone stepped on them, not crushing them, but brushing past hard enough for them to release a puff of aroma.

He took another bite.

There was a quite giggle, that somebody shushed. Matthew decided that it was, perhaps, a child's voice, both of them. And there they were, emerging from behind a tree.

They reminded him of deer, their expressions and softness of posture gentle. A bright curiosity radiated from them, like a beam of sunlight, but no fear. Shyness, but no wariness. He calmly gazed back at them. They were small and tanned deeply, into ripe acorn skin, and he guessed that they were one of the tribes from here, not travelers. Of course not – for all he knew, he was the last traveler.

“Who're you?” one finally chirped, then, bashful, hid behind the older girl. She lightly shoved her brother, then asked, “Yeah, who're you?”

“I could ask you about that, as well,” Matthew told them, gauging their behavior. They probably wouldn't startle or give their parents cause for fear, but who knew? It had happened before...

With hardly any reluctance, the girl said, “Kima.” Her brother just smiled.

“I'm Matthew,” he replied.

“Our parents said that you were a ghost, but we don't believe them,” blurted the boy. “Could I touch you?” Without waiting for a reply, he ran over, like a small brown bird, and lightly poked Matthew's shoulder. It reminded him of when he was younger, though he was not too old now. Kima joined her brother. “Well... I know some people say we're ghosts,” Matthew smiled, “but last time I checked, I was alive and kicking!”

Soon, his presence, like that of a single star in the sky when night begins to fall, had attracted more children. They clustered around him, touching him, tugging at his clothes, whispering voices rising and falling in cool creek tones. They asked him more questions, about who he was, where he had traveled. After a while, they settled down and he was the only one speaking, through no particular effort of his.

He told them tales that they only half-trusted, about huge deserts where the sands were baked dry and dusty like dimly sifting ashes, about the great roaring, salty ocean, about plains where not a tree was in sight for miles and miles. About dismal, smoky cities, twisted and burnt, about crumbling pale ruins that waxed and waned as the land about them shifted. He told them of kaleidoscopic animals they could only dream of, of people equally outlandish and strange. So many places were stored in that great cavernous memory of his, so much time! And all of it was along this very railroad, laid down like the binding of a book, connecting chapters and sentences of the great wide world, keeping it all stitched together and gently pulsing.

He spoke for a long, long time, and the sun bent its head to the horizon, and the shadows grew longer and deeper. A somnolence crept in on the children, their eyes half-lidded in the warm, murmuring air, until he went quiet. Then, one by one, they shook themselves awake, stirred, blinked. And one of them finally asked, “But where are you from?”

Matthew blinked, startled, at a loss for words. “Must I be from somewhere?”

The children exchanged glances, and another asked, “Well, then where's your family?”

“Must I have a family?”

They were uneasy now, and were suddenly bashful. The edge of worry that he had thought to be missing from them made an appearance now, and they asked again, now in a tumbling chorus of voices, “But where are you going to? Where are you coming from? Who're your friends?”

And...

“Why are you traveling?”

A midnight shadow passed over his face briefly, and an expression of eternal and strange melancholy, like a cool mountain lake, drew his brows together. Mutely, he shook his head, and offered them a sort of apologetic smile. The sun touched down to the edge of the earth, and a parent's voice somewhere past the summit of a hill called for them to come home. Murmuring, disturbed, they stood up and left without a word to him, confused at how lost he seemed to be, him and his pack. Until only the very first two were left. Kima shooed her brother off, and then came over to him. “I see why they call you people ghosts....” she started, then stopped, confused, seeming to forget what she was going to say. Her mother called to her again, but right before she left, her face lit up and she bent down to whisper something in his ear, and to press something into his hand.

Matthew smiled, nodded, took the item. Kima turned and ran back, satisfied, as he stood up and shouldered his pack again. Opening his hand, he saw that the gift was a slim gray and white feather. A tern feather; he could tell. How it had come to be with her, though, he couldn't very well say. Matthew stuck it into a seam of his pack, so that it stood up straight and tall. He could walk some more before total darkness set in. Glancing back towards the sun, he mused, to himself, “Yes... I suppose the rail's the answer to – to 'all of the above'....”

Squaring his shoulders, he set off along the railroad.