Closed Train to Neverland

11am.

A fated train departs King’s Cross Station, laden with one hundred and forty-three young boys and girls. Brick walls and concrete pass in a daze, the familiar markings of London’s thriving cityscape blurring by. Another train roars in opposition, scattering a flock of birds nested on the roof of the train as their tailwinds intersect. They screech, loud and rebellious, scrambling onto nearby buildings to perch and recover.

2pm.

Gradually, glass and metal turn to wood and shrubbery. A dense forest the eyes could barely penetrate, yielding only the endless track ahead. This train will travel for some time you’ve been told, to a fantastical land where travelers can do magic beyond phasing through solid walls. The thought is both exciting and terrifying, because beneath the promises of a wondrous world, one thought plagues you: What if it was all a lie? A look back through the compartment’s side window yields only an equally distant train track sandwiched between two walls of forest. You know that with each passing second, you’ve travelled further and further from the familiarity of muggle London. That you’re pioneering a path which the great majority of muggle-kind will never get to see.

Martin Luther King was a great man who advocated for equal opportunities and treatment for all races. Were the value of his words diminished, only because he was a muggle? You become faintly aware that your presence on this train has created an usness and a themness that you are now an unwitting part of. On this train, you can never turn back from what you’ve become.

Yet, you are also something else.

2.10pm.

Time begins to lumber like a sleeping giant. A soft rattling begins, of nails against the wall, and an anxious shuffling of worn-out soles sliding sharply. The compartment feels smaller than usual when one sits alone. Real company would be both louder and quieter than one’s thoughts left to boil.

2.11pm.

These children speak in odd tongues, who know the ways of the new world that muggles would not. They are demonic children, satanic children. Pastor David would’ve said such a thing, but you know better than to foolishly go along with the old ways. Besides, you’ve always found his prescriptivism slightly off-putting. So, no demon children. No rest for the restless. No activities on board the Hogwarts Express, and about an hour ago, your iPhone had started weirdly malfunctioning.

Now there’s nothing left to do but wait.