Another day in Fredonia. Cadfaël was sitting in his rabbit hole, bored (and disappointed that Wednesday morning’s carrot hadn’t been good). He decided to go and watch the trains go by. There were two sets of rails each separated by about twenty metres of open field. When a train had finished going by on one rail, he would hop over to the other one to see if there was one coming there. He found himself wondering where the trains were going. He had only ever considered the area immediately surrounding his burrow. He contemplated this for quite a while. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t notice somebody waddling up next to him.

“You must be pretty bored,” he heard in a heavy African accent. Startled, he shifted his body so he could see to his left and saw Adusa.

“I wasn’t bored, yo. I was just…” but he couldn’t determine what he possibly could have been besides bored, so he let his voice fade away. There was a moment of silence and then he remembered what he had been pondering,

“D’ya have any idea where the trains go?” he inquired of his colleague.

“They’re freight trains, the people use them to carry heavy stuff from one place to another.”

“Yeah, but where do they go?”

“I once had dealings with a badger who was acquainted with another badger, who had a distant cousin who spent his whole life following those rails. He never got to the end of them though, he had to return. He said that somewhere off in the distance there are even more trains and their rails all join together in a place called Pencilvein.”

“Strange.”

“Have you ever noticed that when you’re on a train, and you’re watching the ties, up ahead of you they’re still there, but if you stare straight down they seem to disappear?”

“I’ve never been on on a train.”

In that moment Cadfaël understood what he would have to do to end his boredom, he was going to get on train. Nothing could stop him.