Book of Eucalypt

My offering for the Spring Equinox – a short story based on the first card of the Major Arcana.

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Cass first saw the train at 11:59 p.m., waiting at a platform that shouldn’t exist.

She knew every corner of that busy stretch of road from its crooked streetlamps to its stinking bins, and the graffiti half-scrubbed from brickwork. She had walked it hundreds of times after her afternoon shifts on tired feet. Tonight, she spoke aloud to no one through her headphones, a trick taught by women before her to help keep her safe when out a night while music of her youth played quietly as she continued half-dreaming. Approaching the station, she could have sworn there was no stairwell or no handrail leading down on this side of the road, yet tonight there it was: worn concrete steps with peeling yellow paint at the lip of the first riser. A sign above upon the platform flickered faintly:

END OF THE LINE — SPECIAL SERVICE.

Her eyes burned. She rubbed them with the back of her hand, but the sign remained. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

Special service?

She checked her watch and found there wasn’t time to race back up and over to the other side of the road, to the platform she knew would have to exist, that did not extend beyond the stairs she had just descended. Cass didn’t realise a Special service would operate at this time of night, memories flooding in of riding with her mother on Sundays when engineering works meant diversions and unexpected detours. She used to love it then. She would study the map in an attempt to understand where the train may take her this time. Deep down she knew this was not a part of her usual line.

She stood for a long moment as she watched the stairs sink into shadow. Her body begged for her routine trip home into her own bed. The joy of her shoes being kicked off, her bra thrown into the pile on the chair in the corner as she accidentally forgot to plug her phone into the charger. But something inside her lingered beyond the curtains of exhaustion whispered, go down.

Her legs moved before she agreed.

The platform lay several metres below road level, ringed by cracked brick walls streaked with water stains. Faded posters clung in tatters: bands she’d never heard of, a smiling politician from decades back. Moss had crept into corners. The air smelled of rust and rain.

And yet there it was.

The train approached, it’s long and silver body hummed like something alive. Its windows glowed with warm, golden light that made the platform seem even dingier by contrast. There was no graffiti on the carriages, or symbols or profanity scratched into the Perspex windows. There was no sign stating the station name or a timetable hanging on the wall. No CCTV blinked red. The destination board above the driver’s cab was blank.

Cass stared. The breath snagged in her throat. She knew she should turn away and find her way home, but the stairs had disappeared. There was no way out but to board the train.

Restlessness gnawed her. For weeks she’d felt the unease like a sharp stabbing under her ribs: the sense of living someone else’s life by mistake. Sometimes it felt as though she was wearing clothes that didn’t fit, where she was no longer just going through the motions. Every order she fulfilled as she pushed the trolley for the ‘click and collect’ patrons at the supermarket where she worked had fed the thought: is this all?

She laughed under her breath, not convinced of her own thoughts.

Maybe she’d finally cracked. Maybe this was what exhaustion looked like. Maybe she was standing on a platform no one else could see.

And maybe, just maybe, that was exactly what she wanted.

She stepped aboard.

Inside the carriage the air was warmer. While her usual train home at this hour echoed of sweat, on-the-go dinners and spray deodorant, tonight was though someone had captured and bottled a beautiful spring garden. The floor was polished wood rather than linoleum and gleamed faintly in the lamplight. The stained fabric chairs had been replaced with old-fashioned wooden benches with their varnish worn smooth.

Cass was not alone on the train. The other passengers sat scattered, each alone, none acknowledging the others.

Nearest her was a boy in a white choir robe. He sat dutifully with his hands folded on his lap, his lips moving in silent rhythm. Further down sat an old woman who was gripping a leather-bound book so tightly her knuckles blanched. Across the aisle, a man in a tailored suit but no shoes tapped one bare foot against the floor, steady as a metronome.

None of them looked up.

Cass slid into the nearest seat.

Something lay there already: a card with its image facing up. A tarot card, The Fool.

Her throat tightened. It almost matched a card from her own, gifted to her years ago by friends she no longer spoke with. They would sit around the kitchen table with a glass of wine, a cheese platter stretched before them and pretend to read for each other. Sometimes they would look up the meanings, other times they would make up far-fetched scenarios, tapping into the subconscious desires they had shared with each other over time. This was the first card she’d ever drawn then too.

The Fool: a lone traveller stepping out into the open and almost off a cliff face, a bundle over his shoulder with a little white dog at his heels. The Roman numeral zero sat above his head.

Leap when you feel the pull, the old guidebook had said.

She shivered. The train jolted and without a sound, it began to move.

Stops came and went without warning.

The carriage’s first stop was to a sunlit orchard. Warm air spilled through the doors as trees stretched on for miles, their branches heavy with fruit as bees hummed lazily upon the flowers along the orchard floor. The choir boy’s face gleamed as he rose and walked out among the trees. The doors closed behind him.

The second stop was at a night market. Paper lanterns appeared to float in between the stalls as vendors called out their wares. The smell of spices competed among the street food vendors. The shoeless businessman removed his tie as he stepped down and vanished into the crowd.

No other people joined the train as it made its stops. The next was outside of a ground-floor apartment. The curtains were drawn back as a warm glow showed a family preparing for dinner, the muffled sound of laughter and cutlery drifting through the open doors. It felt like a scene from an old Christmas movie. The old woman pressed her lips to her book, set it on the bench, and stepped out.

Each time, no one returned.

Cass stayed seated, the card heavy in her hand.

Before the choir boy had left, she had tried to ask him where this train was going. But he had only smiled and replied, “Where you’d like to be.”

The words coiled in her mind like smoke.

At the fourth stop she saw herself.

As though watching a her life played out by a projector, she saw a version of herself in a sleek business suit. Her hair was styled and confidence radiated from her like perfume. That particular Cass hailed a taxi, slid inside without hesitation and vanished into city lights.

Cass’s stomach twisted. Her throat tasted of iron.

Is that who I could have been?

She pressed her nails into her palms until they ached and left marks.

The train moved on.

At another stop she saw another version of what her lift could have been. Her ex-girlfriend, the one she had almost married, stood barefoot on their favourite beach. The sand glowed pink under the rising sun as the waves creeped up to meet her. Standing in what would have been her wedding suit she raised her hand towards Cass. This felt both familiar and dangerous.

“Come on, Cass,” he called. “We can start again.”

Her whole chest ached at the sound of her voice. For a heartbeat she wanted nothing more than to run down the steps and to throw herself into her arms, forgetting the abuse and emotional manipulation that lead to their demise. What if that version of them was different? Cass wondered.

But her body stayed frozen.

The train hissed and the doors closed. The beach shrank away as her ex became smaller and forgotten, her face dissolving into the distance.

The passengers thinned until only she remained.

The golden light that illuminated the carriage began to dim and the air became heavier. Her skin prickled with anticipation. The benches creaked as if the wood remembered everybody that had sat there and every choice that had ever been made.

The intercom bim-bim-bimmed and a voice filled the carriage – deep as an echo yet as calm as a lullaby.

“Final station ahead. Riders who do not disembark will be unmade.”

Cass’s heart hammered.

She fumbled for the card.

It burned warm against her fingers and The Fool’s painted face had shifted. Her face stared back at her encompassing the Fool, her eyes wide and uncertain, about to step into void. The little white dog barked silently beside her with its mouth open wide, urging her on.

The train slowed.

The doors opened.

And outside: nothing and yet everything. It wasn’t a physical destination, but one of endless opportunities.

The sky was molten gold. A bridge made of air, wide as thought, rested before the open carriage doors. There was no street, no silent whispers of the city she had left behind. Just the hum of possibility that traced through her down to her bones.

Her body trembled.

She thought of her flat – the leaking tap and the mismatched curtains, the laundry begging to be done and the dishes waiting patiently to be emptied from the dishwasher. She thought of her upcoming roster of shifts where she would be paid to collect other people’s groceries, quietly commenting on each order and guessing what their own lives were like. She thought of her ex on the beach and the painful emotions that followed. Of the business-suited Cass, so confident in herself. Of all the versions of who she could be that had paraded past like ghosts in borrowed skin.

None of them fit.

None of them were hers.

But this – this terrifying, unshaped expanse where the sun glitters like gold – felt like it might be.

Like the Fool, she stepped forward.

Her foot touched air. It held her as water holds a swimmer as they push through the water; she was buoyant, the air was resistant, but she finally felt alive.

The carriage doors sealed shut. Its lights winked once before the whole train pulled away and vanished into brilliance.

Cass opened her hand.

The Fool card dissolved into grains of golden sand, slipping through her fingers like dust in sunlight.

Before her a thousand thousand threads shimmered, all as fine as spider silk. Stretching outward in every direction, each thread led to a different and endless prospective life. They swayed as if breathing.

A dog barked somewhere off in the distance, faint but clear and distinct.

Cass smiled.

She took a breath…and chose.