Keep your temper. She remembered those words well.

The little snip of fungus tasted awful. Alice didn't eat the wretched morsel which was half the size of a dime. She merely bit down firmly on the spongy slice, squeezing the juice.

She had been told it would make her grow.

Yesterday's newspaper sat next to her on the empty seat.
The front page, dated 1901, touted the Pan American Exhibition.

A small article at the bottom of the page described a train wreck in Pennsylvania, but Alice didn't want to read about railway disasters, especially not now.

Foreign languages mingled with English in the lively chatter in the passenger car, but Alice, who had been silent since Boston, came across as the most outlandish.

She had sat in shadows for a long time, but as the train drew around a curve, the sun fell on her, giving the rest of the bored passengers a chance to look at her.

Suspicious glances and whispers.

"Musta come from Araby or some sech't place," Alice heard someone mutter.

Alice felt the fungus take effect. She got up from her seat. She had no luggage, but the long metal object under her robes betrayed a worrisome shape. She would need it soon. The fungus was an insurance policy in case she had to use what she carried on her side.

She swallowed and spat the morsel which was good for more a few more uses into her handkerchief and then pocketed it inside her concealing robe.

Clearing his throat, the passing train conductor, his gold-plated pocket watch ticking in his palm, cleared his throat and announced, "There'll be no spittin' seeds or anything else onto the floor, stranger. That's a train regulation."

"I getcha," she answered, trying to sound like an American of the region, but the drawl came out twisted and uneven, betraying clear diction with a British accent. "Say, y'all got the time, neighbour. I mean, nebber?"

"Ten minutes t' two. Kansas City Missouri's yer stop, ain't it?"

"Two o'clock!" Alice's head jerked up. She dug into her robes for her own watch. "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

"You're gonna be too late? Why, bless us and keep us, this whole train's runnin' 'hind schedule. But only by three minutes. Shoot! Once this train is on a straightaway, we'll pick up speed an' make up for lost time. Curves always slow us down."

Feeling herself grow even as she pushed past the conductor, Alice hurried to the baggage car.

"Hey! No runnin'! That's a train regulation!"

She felt herself growing inch by inch. Her legs grew longer, her feet bigger. She had to duck to make it through the doors. Along the way, she discarded her concealing garments. Once on the roof of the baggage car, she drew her sword.

* * *

Dorothy sat up higher, enjoying the sensation of motion.

The eastbound express train thundered out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania, whooshing and shuddering as a westbound train of equal size passed it on a parallel track.

"Uh, Ma'am," the swarthy porter said politely, "I gots to be free and clear an hour 'fore Pittsburgh."

"Shucks, I don't expect I'm makin' no unfair demands on your time?"

"Oh, no Ma'am."

"Y'all look plenty strong. I expect y'all are strong 'nuff to handle anything of mine. I ain't runnin' y'all ragged?"

"Oh, no Ma'am."

Dorothy had left Kansas City, Kansas two days early. She had rightly anticipated summer rain and those damned storms always made a mess of travel plans. Chances were good that at the next trestle, they would have to wait.

Sunny for the nonce, the sky outside the sleeper car's half-draped window glittered with a rainbow.

Rainbows made Dorothy feel childish and sentimental. She was sixteen now. If she had spent all her time in Kansas, she would be considerably older. But, events had transpired that freed her from the usual progressions of age. Dorothy had found it necessary to get away from people who had known her as a little girl and resume life elsewhere.
The hotel in Niagara Falls (she didn't care on which side of the border) was her destination.

Another day of travel. That was plenty of time.
Joel F. Gumm, oilman, land speculator and her husband-to-be was waiting to meet her in Erie for the wedding, but before they were hitched, Dorothy had a day to see to some unfinished business.

"I hates to tell ya' this, Ma'am, but this one might too much for me."

"Hold on with both hands...that oughta work."

"Yes'M."

Dorothy controlled her position with her knees. All the while, magic muscles, the function of which had never been known to before, massaged and kneaded the porter's throbbing phallus in a manner wholly delightful and utterly new to him. She lowered herself another inch and they both sighed their contentment. She began to rock her hips from side to side. He slid his lance backward, then drove suddenly into her honeyed channel, only to be stopped at the same four inch mark by tightly constricted muscles.

“Oh, yowza! Ah's never had dis in Kansas City."

"We ain't in Kansas anymore. This is call'd th' honey torture...Larnt’d from the heathen Sioux, I done. Ain’t it sump’n?”
Accustomed to the delightful game, he withdrew nearly to the end of his dark red tip, then thrust forward and swayed with the gyrations of her hips. “We could jest ‘bout sway this’n here train-car plum off’n th’ tracks if’n we keeps this up.”

She relaxed those mystifying muscular rings and plunged down on his last five inches. She shuddered with tingling pleasure at the welcome fullness of him so deep within her sensitive, pulsating passage and threw back her head.

Then bending low over him, Dorothy flocked his face with passionate kisses. "What's your name?"

She never learned. The rocking and shaking that followed didn't come from her rambunctious humping.
In the aftermath of the horrendous train derailment which left hundreds dead, her body was never found. Only her clothes and luggage, marked with the initial D.G. showed Dorothy had ever been a passenger.

Her disappearance was reported as a complete mystery.
* * *

Backing away in fear, the swordsman held his ground, waiting for the sun to be at his back before he struck his first blow. That was logical. But Professor Ergo Qed conceded he was tiptoeing into a realm of whimsy and nonsense where all calculations were off.

His newest nemesis could very well be a young girl.

Forced to hunker to keep his balance, he tried to anticipate the rocking off the surface under his feet.
Below him, the roof of the wooden passenger car wobbled and weaved as the train snaked its way through a long curve.

Far ahead, the steam locomotive pierced the rushing air with a long howl. Wisps of black smoke slithered around him. His study of sciences had taught him the train was moving at least forty miles per hour; too fast to jump off safely. The delicate items he carried would break even if his bones didn't.

He scanned the skies for the rescue he had summoned, but it was nowhere he dared look for long enough.

Help might yet come, but not in time.

Years as second-story man had given him some balance; that would certainly help. Also, he was no dunce with swords.
Military training came in handy there.

He was armed; at least he could put up a fight. But there was a complication. One he never seriously considered.

What are the chances? he thought.

Two vorpal blades had never met in combat before.

Therefore, he was at a disadvantage.

Until today, Qed had never imagined there was more than one. He had mere seconds to size up his opponent, but when the two blades made initial contact, all doubt in his mind disappeared.

There was the blade. Its wielder worried him more than the steel. He was used to facing opponents who didn't carry weapons that were the equal of his own. Victims was a better term; the bizarre long sword could lop off heads with a single, effeminate swish.

That included his head if the girl got in a lucky blow.

The professor had seen someone heavily robed and hooded board the train in Boston. The gabardine had been hurled away in moments, revealing a slender young lady with a primness to her carriage.

She wore a silvery gray dress, glaringly old-fashioned and too regal for train-travel. But there was nothing antique about the broom-handle Mauser pistol in a holster on her left side and an ammunition belt.

She was larger than he thought; what Qed had taken for her head under the cloak was a large crown. Now she was close to six feet tall. Her aggressive stride matched with her careful footfalls made Qed nervous. She was close enough now for him to read the inscription in her crown.

The crown was embossed with letters, some English, some he took for Cyrillic. Light brown hair flowed from beneath the crown's band. Her face was pasty white; out of place in the sunny expanses of America's West.

"Professor Qed, I presume," Alice said.

"So, that wasn't you in Chicago?"

"I know nothing of that incident. Only that there is a growing army pitted against your scheme. And not all of us hail from Nonestica. Your actions in this land will be opposed."

"And what land are you from?" Qed narrowed his eyes.

"Wonder, you may."

Qed's only defense was the sword. To his dismay, he saw she was left-handed; their sword-arms were both on the same side instead of being diagonally opposed.

When at the last moment she held her hilt with both hands, he did the same.

She was good.

Qed gave ground, wobbling each time their blades struck.

In less than a minute, she had grown taller still, and correspondingly heavier and stronger. At six and half feet tall, she was a menace to him rather than an obstacle.

Her reach increased by inches. A well-aimed lunge tore through his left sleeve, exposing his armor. The ingeniously-articulated vambrace gleamed in the sun as if it was sculpted from steel plates with an emerald-tinted coating.

Alice puzzled if there was a living arm left beneath the metal, or if the vambrace was enhancing a wounded limb of flesh. His glove hid anything more.

Qed changed his defense, shifting to compensate for the girl's new height and strength. If she kept growing, her blows would become irresistible.

Her new height, however, presented problems. Unable to duck an upcoming gantry, she had to run and vault the metal bridge as Qed threw himself flat and let it pass over him.

Qed put some distance between himself and Alice, but she caught up with a few strides and raised her vorpal sword high, ready to bring it crashing down.

Each combatant lost a chance to strike as the train weaved through another curve, this one, in the opposite direction.
Alice stood still. Qed crouched, knowing the train had decelerated. Multiple tracks glimmered on either side of the train as it neared the outskirts of a town outside Kansas City.

The train pulled straight once more.

The fight resumed; Qed jumped over one of Alice's horizontal slashes and ducked under a thrust. He felt a tap at his hip and spun. That unexpected lunge might have cost him a leg if he hadn't ducked aside.

The locomotive's whistle shrieked, mingling with the sound of brakes.

Noxious billows from the smokestack wafted around them.

It was just the distraction a coward needed.

Pulling an ugly black shape from his coat, he made a simple adjustment, stepped to a ventilator pipe in the roof of a passenger car and dropped it.

Alice saw it go down.

Professor Qed sheathed his sword. "Catch me...or do something about that bomb. You can't do both with the time you've got!"

In a desperate move to save himself from a losing fight, Qed disengaged and bolted toward the locomotive, intent on leaping onto a slow-moving freight train moving in the same direction.

He pushed off too early, crashing into blocks of baled hay that were tougher than they looked. Stunned, he realized his scabbard had torn free and it and the vorpal sword were somewhere in the loose hay.

Alice didn't follow.

She had seconds to find the bomb.

TO BE CONTINUED.