All tracks lead home
The last car on the train is never the least important. On the Critter Line it is the whole railroad. Charlotte — black-and-white border collie, conductor of record — and Dolly — engineer, Goat Maiden, keeper of the farm — duck the caboose into wormholes and ride them backward and forward through time.
They do not collect magickal beasts. Those already have a home. Vance Randolph’s Ozark wonders live forever inside the Dodecahedron Dolly was given by the Snawfus, going in and out at will. What the caboose fetches are the ordinary ones: a barn cat left when the river rose, a pair of heifers walking a Dust Bowl fence, a crate of library cats from a century that forgot how to be quiet.
The caboose looks like a short red car on a spur under the oaks. Inside, it is larger than weather. Duckster, Dolly’s personal vehicle, sleeps in a side bay the way a ladle sleeps in a drawer. When a rescue is finished, the regular critters come home to Arkatype Farms. There the Dodecahedron’s company helps grant them intelligence and language, and the farm grows another voice.
