Milo stepped aboard the blue-striped train and found a window seat. The countryside blurred past as the train picked up speed, and Milo pressed his face to the glass. The familiar fields and trees were already shrinking behind him.
The train slowed and stopped. Milo looked up and saw a sign above the platform that read the name of a town he had never heard of. Through the window, a bronze sundial towered over the station, and a pigeon wearing a tiny hat pecked at crumbs on the ground. The doors slid shut before Milo could step out.
Milo wandered down a street he did not recognize. A bakery stood ahead with a crooked awning and a door that swung both ways. He pulled out his train ticket and frowned. The station name had faded until it was almost impossible to read.
The boy looked up at the people passing by. No one seemed to know where he belonged or how to help him find his way. He tucked the ticket into his pocket and kept walking, his footsteps echoing on the empty street.
Milo climbed a tall lamppost to see past the rooftops. From the top, all he could see were unfamiliar windows and a cat watching him from a fence. He slid back down and gripped his ticket until the corners curled.
He had been looking for a long time, and still he did not know how to ask for help. The boy sat on the curb, his ticket crumpled in his fist, staring at the ground.
An older woman in a bright yellow raincoat pushed a cart stacked with folded maps and a brass telescope. She stopped beside him, pointed the telescope at the sky, and then turned it toward the boy. "You look like someone who needs a question answered," she said, unrolling a map with a red line leading back to his town.
Milo took a deep breath and looked at the map. The red line wound through streets he did not know, but it ended at the station he recognized. He asked the woman for directions.
Milo followed the red line through unfamiliar turns, past the bakery and down a narrow lane. The blue-striped station appeared at the end of the track, just as the map had promised.
Milo stepped onto the platform and boarded the blue-striped train. He found his seat by the window and looked back at the woman in yellow, who still stood by her cart.
The train doors closed behind Milo, and he pressed his hand against the glass. The woman in yellow raised one hand and waved, still holding a map in the other.
The train hummed forward and Milo smiled. The familiar countryside rolled past the window, and he knew exactly where he was going.
