Stafford railway station becomes a sudden point of arrival, recovery, and reckoning for Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingell. After an extraordinary journey, its platform gives them a chance to retrieve the Portable Door and forces Paul to explain what it can do—and what Sophie herself has done.

Arrival at the Station

The pair reach Stafford railway station aboard Dietrich Wurmtoter’s milk-white winged horse, which drops them onto the platform just as a train is pulling in. Their arrival follows an uncomfortable counter-inversion that gets them back to the office; the horse ride is no gentler in its own way. They travel high above the ground, over Birmingham at several times the speed of sound, and Paul would rather have walked. The horse needs no steering and, after leaving them at Stafford, promptly disappears from the scene.

The Portable Door on the Train

As soon as the train stops, Paul and Sophie hurry aboard and run along its corridor. They arrive in time to see the Portable Door being pushed into a cleaner’s black plastic sack. Paul hesitates, but Sophie pushes past him, snatches the door from the sack, takes him by the arm, and pulls him off the train just as it departs. The platform is thus not merely a place they pass through: it is where Sophie’s quick action prevents the door from being carried away.

A Place of Explanation

Panting on the platform, Sophie demands to know what the object does. Paul explains its function, and she is bitterly hurt that he had not told her earlier; he has no answer to that grievance. Before they go any further, he offers her the chance to travel back in time and stop herself from putting the substance in his tea, saying he will stay and keep the door open. The station becomes the setting for a consequential choice: alongside the recovered door, the pair bring into the open the injury and responsibility bound up with its use.