The Silver Arrow

The story follows Kate, a girl nearly 11 years old who feels restless and impatient with her ordinary life. Her parents work constantly and never seem to have much time or money. She lacks a special talent and longs for something meaningful. Her younger brother, Tom, is energetic and sometimes annoying. The night before her birthday, Kate writes a letter to Uncle Herbert, her mother's brother, whom she has never met. She knows only that he is very rich and totally irresponsible. She mails the letter without a stamp or address, expecting nothing.

The next morning, a flatbed truck delivers an actual steam locomotive along with a tender, the car that carries coal. Uncle Herbert arrives in a banana-yellow suit and matching Tesla. The engine is stenciled with the name THE SILVER ARROW. Kate's mother is furious and demands that Uncle Herbert remove it by her own birthday, one week away. Kate and Tom climb into the cab but find it baffling, with no steering wheel and no labels on anything. Kate erupts at her parents and is sent to her room.

That evening, Tom notices firelight flickering in the cab. They sneak outside and discover the firebox blazing, the tender full of coal, and new silvery tracks curving away through the grass. Uncle Herbert waits in the shadows and tells Kate, "Perhaps the world is more interesting than it appears" (26). Inside the cab, levers and gauges begin moving on their own. Uncle Herbert shouts at them to get out, but Kate refuses. The brakes release, and the Silver Arrow rolls forward. When Kate asks if this is real, Uncle Herbert yells that it is magic.

The train plows through the woods behind their house and down a steep hill. Instead of crashing into the swamp below, it keeps rolling through deep forest that should not exist. Snow falls despite it being June. They reach a small train station where wild animals stand on the platform, each holding a ticket. A gray fox speaks, explaining that animals do talk but rarely find humans worth talking to. A hare directs them to a rail yard to pick up cars.

The Silver Arrow itself is sentient, communicating through a scrolling paper message system and teaching Kate and Tom to operate the engine. At the rail yard, Uncle Herbert warns them to keep the water tank full, never let the fire go out, and watch for another train called the Twilight Star. Kate and Tom select their cars, including passenger cars, a library, a candy car, a mystery car, and a caboose, then retire to the sleeper car.

Kate wakes in a conductor's uniform and begins collecting tickets as animals board at stations across diverse landscapes. She befriends a core group in the library car: a fishing cat with webbed toes, a white-bellied heron from India, an eastern green mamba from South Africa, and a grumpy North American porcupine. The fishing cat mentions ominously that a previous train once left and never came back.

At a rain forest stop, Kate finds a baby pangolin, the only mammal with scales and incredibly rare, curled up alone on the platform. At an unmarked station, a group of ticketless animals, including gray squirrels, a wild boar, and starlings, try to force their way aboard. Kate refuses entry, and the porcupine raises his quills to frighten the boar into retreating. The animals explain that the intruders were invasive species, creatures displaced from their native ecosystems that devastate wherever they settle. Over open water, Tom spots a starving polar bear swimming with the last of her strength, and they haul her aboard.

The Silver Arrow runs low on coal, and Kate takes the train into a silent forest of enormous trees, where the tender runs empty. She addresses the forest directly, and she and her companions transform: Their feet root into the earth, their arms become branches, and they experience weeks of tree life. When they return to their original forms, a pyramid of firewood waits beside the train, and the forest's voices echo: "Remember this" (153).

The journey grows more perilous. The Silver Arrow labors up a mountain and becomes a runaway on the descent. The tracks lead into the ocean, and the train travels through a luminous underwater tunnel before emerging on the Wise Island. There, anyone who digs in the sand finds one personal treasure. Kate unearths the glasses of Grace Hopper, the pioneering computer programmer and Kate's hero. Tom finds a beloved stuffed fox lost years ago.

As the passenger cars empty, the journey becomes grueling. One predawn morning, the train stops at a sheer cliff where the tracks curve straight up into the sky. Along an old siding, Kate discovers a rusted engine named THE TWILIGHT STAR, the previous train whose conductors gave up and went home. Nearly ready to quit, Kate returns to the library car, where the animals reveal the full truth. They are refugees fleeing human destruction. Humans make a dozen species extinct every day, destroy habitats, and heat oceans. The polar bear's station was made of ice that melted, leaving her stranded. Yet the animals express no hatred. The heron tells Kate that humans are capable of extraordinary destruction but also extraordinary good, and the fishing cat urges Kate to imagine what a good human could accomplish. Moved, Kate resolves to keep going.

Tom reveals that the mystery car contains massive rocket engines. He backs the train up for a running start, and Kate pushes a red button. The rockets blast the train off the cliff, through a complete loop, and onto tracks floating above the clouds. They reach a cloud station marked SOMEDAY, where the baby pangolin must stay because no safe place remains for him on Earth. Kate tearfully says goodbye.

One by one, Kate parts with her animal friends at their destinations. The mamba tells her humans must become a new kind of animal that ensures all others survive. The heron asks Kate to promise never to give up. The fishing cat tells Kate, "You are special, Kate. You are strong and smart and good, and the world needs you" (224). At the North Pole, the polar bear speaks her only words of the journey, warning that if humans let them die, they will never forgive themselves.

As the Silver Arrow heads home, a blizzard strikes over a frozen lake. The ice cracks, cars break away, and the train plunges into freezing water. The fire goes out. The train breaks through the lake bottom and falls into the Roundhouse, a vast underground facility where trains are repaired. Uncle Herbert is waiting. Kate relights the firebox, and the message system clicks back to life: "HI" (248).

Uncle Herbert reveals that he and Kate's mother were both conductors on the Twilight Star long ago but gave up when things got hard. Kate's mother has mostly forgotten, but Uncle Herbert stayed involved behind the scenes. The Silver Arrow returns to Kate's backyard, where only minutes have passed. Uncle Herbert formally commissions Kate and Tom as officers of the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway, the magical rail network they have been serving, and gives them silver train pins and a schedule for their next departure. The porcupine claims the nearby woods as home. Kate slips inside as her mother calls her for birthday dinner, looking out at the Silver Arrow in the moonlight and thinking of the heron's words: The old balance is gone, but it is not too late to find a new one.