Vladivostok

On the seventh morning, the train was due into Vladivostok at 06:15 Moscow time, which was 13:15 local time. Polly woke at first local light, which was sometime around five.

Through the window, the forest had given way to a low rolling landscape of dry hills and grass. The Pacific was somewhere ahead. She could not yet see it, but she could feel it, the way you can feel a large body of water without being able to see it. The light was different. The air, even through the closed window, smelled different.

The woman in the upper bunk was awake too. She had been packing for hours.

The last station before Vladivostok was Ussuriysk. The train stopped there for fifteen minutes. Polly hopped down to the platform. A woman was selling smoked fish from a folding table. The fish were silver and the eyes were still clear. Polly bought a small piece with the last of her appetite. The woman wrapped it in newspaper and accepted no payment Polly could see. The exchange was, Polly understood, simply that the fish had been caught and Polly was hungry. Some markets work this way.

The train moved on. Slowly now. The Pacific appeared on the right side of the train at around eleven local time. It was grey and bright. The light off the water filled the carriage. Polly perched at the window and watched.

Vladivostok arrived all at once. The city is built into hills that come down to the sea, and the train tunnels into the city through one of those hills. The end of the line is right on the harbour. The buffer at the end of the tracks is forty metres from the water.

The train made its final stop. The clock above the compartment door, which had been on Moscow time for seven days, read 06:23. The local clock at the station read 13:23.

Polly hopped down to the platform. Vladivostok was a port city of low stone buildings and steep streets, painted in a mix of soft yellows and sea-faded blues, with the masts of fishing boats and the cranes of a container port visible at the bottom of every street. The air smelled of fish and rust and salt. Seagulls argued over something on the quay.

At the end of the platform there was a small white obelisk, similar to the one near Pervouralsk, but instead of EUROPE and ASIA, the inscription on this one read KILOMETRE 9,289. The end of the line.

Polly stood at the obelisk for a long minute. Seven days. Twenty-five million birch trees. Half a billion years of Ural rock. Twenty-five million years of Baikal. One crane. Eight time zones, of which the train had observed only one. One sea on either end.

She stretched her blue-teal wings.

The Pacific was just past the harbour wall. The wind off the water was strong. Polly lifted from the platform, climbed over the cranes of the container port, and out over the bay. Vladivostok dropped behind. The Sea of Japan opened in front of her.

Somewhere far on the other side of that sea was a small institute in Naples she had left two weeks before. Somewhere far on the other side of THAT was Moscow, where she had boarded a train. The world, Polly thought, was a real size. The train had been a way of feeling it.

She banked southeast and went looking for the next wind.