She turns her attention to the window as the tracks split off and the overhead cables dip up and down. Then through the Gasworks and Copenhagen tunnels with the graffiti scrawls like scent markings. Past the grey high-rises, the neat bungalow suburbs, the bland expansive roofs of the industrial parks, the shrubs and scattered trees whipping past, the motley fields and the shallow hills drifting by—but never into the woods as such.

It must be something to travel through the Black Forest or the Taiga by steam, for hundreds of miles—to have an entire wilderness of forests and mountain ravines and cataracts and snowdrifts between your point of departure and your destination.

If she had the fabled wooden comb of Russian folklore right there in the palm of her hand, she’d fling it out of the window without a moment’s hesitation and watch it sprout a vast forest in her wake, ripping up the railway tracks and bursting through the asphalt, bringing down the power lines and telephone cables and the masts. But to go one better, mused Shaheera—never to be out-flown in a flight of fancy—her enchanted comb would have the fur of beasts snagged within its teeth, and as such, any magical forestation would also come replete with lumbering brown bears and roving wolf-packs. Definitely wolves, so they would come to know exactly how it feels. And the howling of wolves and the growling of bears would put the fear of Christ up ’em ...

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