Half World (12 page)

“A long line of scholars and archivists, you say,” Gao Zhen Xi repeated slowly.

Jade Rat, who had been lovingly grooming Gao Zhen Xi's straggly hair, pushed through the locks to stare at Melanie with one beady eye. “I was Gao Zhen Xi's pendant in the Realm of Flesh long, long, long before Ms. Wei was born. Gao Zhen Xi was studying transformations and transferring Spirit, in the tradition of foxes, just before she died. She placed some of her living spirit into the substance of my stone. It is only because I saw Gao Zhen Xi that I have remembered.”

The old woman nodded. In her profile, Melanie could see something of Ms. Wei.

“Iwas an overcurious scholar in my youth. Idabbled with magic and alchemy and herbology.” Gao Zhen Xi shook her head. “I wanted to see if I could leave a little Spirit inside stone. Because stone is inert. It did not breach the laws of the cycles. Jade Rat the animal was very old. I extended her mortal life but even I could not more than double her life span. I turned her into stone from which the amulet was carved. And when my death came upon me, sudden and terrible, I left a little of my Spirit inside the properties of stone.”

Melanie stared at the old woman. She did not ask her how she died. It seemed too intensely private to ask for the details.

Gao Zhen Xi's head sagged wearily. “Upon my death I entered Half World, as all must enter. But before I could attain Spirit, the great division occurred. And I have been trapped here, in Half World, these millennia. As everyone has been trapped inside the Realm, since.”

Jade Rat stroked the old woman's tangled white hair.

“Trapped how?” Melanie asked in a small voice. “Why did it happen?”

Gao Zhen Xi took a deep breath. “The Three Realms—the Realm of Spirit, the Realm of Flesh, and Half World—are meant to be connected. We should move from one to the other, in due time, as each individual lives, dies, half lives, then becomes Spirit. But someone or something divided the sacred cycle, dooming our Realms to an ungenerative deterioration. I don't know why! I don't know how! I only know that we are very close to complete disintegration. I have been studying long for the solution in my archives, but it is impossible to find the answer in unfinished books.”

Jade Rat murmured comfortingly as she continued to comb her claws through Gao Zhen Xi's tangled hair.

Melanie frowned. “Jade Rat?” she asked. “Have you always been able to go between your stone form and animal form? Ever since then? Why didn't you tell me more about Half World if you already knew about the Three Realms?”

Jade Rat shook her head. “I had a slow and quiet awareness, but it was a stone's awareness. I could not act. But the Life inside you, Melanie, is, perhaps, special. You have brought change. You have returned me to my old companion.” The rat's voice trembled with great feeling.

“That green light”—Gao Zhen Xi placed her palm upon her own chest almost wonderingly—“that was a little of my Spirit returning to me. And I am truly awake as I have never been before. Child, you cannot understand the endless repeating lives we must endure in this place. For eons upon eons we are caught in our Half Lives, repeating our moment of greatest trauma. Over the years some of the stronger ones have managed to extend their patterns, and make small changes, and in this way we have built societies and cities, occupations and some kind of purpose. But always we are yanked back to the Spirit-breaking moment, to begin the cycle once more. Some have never been able to break their pattern. They die and return and die like we breathe in and out the air.”

Melanie recalled the things she had seen as she had descended the mountain, the woman in the canal who leapt in only to reappear and leap again. Endlessly. For all time. Little children murdered. Women raped. Death and destruction in repeat for all eternity. Light speckled in her eyes, a roaring inside her ears. She weaved.

“Melanie, breathe,” Jade Rat said sharply, sounding like her bossy self. “Slowly. Deeply.”

Gao Zhen Xi rubbed her back. Melanie took slow breaths until her vision cleared.

Her parents . . . if they were truly from this nightmare place . . .

“How did my mother manage to break her pattern?” Melanie asked in a small voice.

“You must be mistaken.” Gao Zhen Xi's eyes narrowed. “I cannot see how your mother could be of Half World. There is no true birth in Half World as there is no true death. Half World was an intermediary place where the troubled could work through their mortal suffering before becoming entirely Spirit and move on to the Realm of Spirit. After time, those of Spirit returned to Flesh. I can see no way for your mother to have become pregnant in Half World.”

“But here I am,” Melanie murmured. She stood up and began to pace. She approached a large wooden table covered in papers and opened books, dust and pens. It looked an awful lot like Ms. Wei's worktable.

Melanie's eyes widened. “Ms. Wei! She had a piece of magic paper. It had words on it that talked about Half World. It said that if an impossible baby is born then it will stop the things that shouldn't be.”

Gao Zhen Xi's small dark eyes narrowed. “Magic paper,” she muttered. “Impossible baby? What could that mean?

“Wah!” she shouted, jumping upright. Jade Rat leapt from her shoulder to land atop the cluttered table.

Déjà vu washed over Melanie as she watched the old woman rifling through stacks of parchment, piles of books, as dust lifted into the air. Gao Zhen Xi scurried alongside the rows of books, her finger tracing the spines. Breathing hard, she came to a standstill. With shaking hands she pulled out an ancient tome.

Blackened with age, on the cover was a slightly embossed emblem. It looked like the yin-yang symbol, but instead of two pieces that nestled together there were three. Black, white, and gray spiraled into each other to form a perfect circle.

Gao Zhen Xi placed the tome on the table, saying nothing.

Melanie and Jade Rat drew close as the old woman began turning the pages.

“This is
The Book of the Realms
,” Gao Zhen Xi said. “This book is unfinished, as are all of the books you will find here, in the Archives of Unfinished Books. There are far more incomplete books than there are completed, and they eventually arrive here through means I do not know. Words are Spirit, also, and when they are written down there is a power. I have been studying these books these long years to seek a remedy to the separating of the Realms. For centuries I studied its pages, but it is a prophetic book, and it was impossible to decipher. After a thousand years I could not bear looking at its frustrating cryptic sayings. But I remember. There was one section that spoke of a child born in Half World. Because this is an impossibility I believed that it was symbolic.”

She carefully turned the almost transparent pages until she was two-thirds of the way through. “Ahhhh,” she sighed. “It is still here. Sometimes”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“the words have changed.”

All three drew their faces closer to the page. On it a flowing script undulated like a strand of ribbon upon moving water.

Gao Zhen Xi chanted the words aloud.

It was the last entry in the book. The rest remained unfinished, the pages empty.

The old woman clicked her tongue with frustration. “You see how vexing this prophecy is! How can a child be formed and leave unborn, then be born once more!”

Jade Rat did not respond. She was stroking her whiskers thoughtfully with both paws. Melanie's eyes caught sight of the torn place where she had bitten off her tiny digit to pay the Gatekeeper for their passage across.

Pay for their passage across . . .

A warm light seemed to expand inside Melanie's mind. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “maybe it means two different children.”

Gao Zhen Xi whipped her face upward to stare with burning intensity into Melanie's eyes.

Melanie flushed. Had she said something extremely stupid or offensive? Who was she to tell the ancient scholar what the words might mean, when she'd been studying the texts for thousands of years!

But Melanie could not shake off the
rightness
of what she felt. As if a puzzle piece had clicked into the deciding position.

“Go on,” the old woman said hoarsely.

Jade Rat sat upright, paws held close to her chest, as she listened intently.

To me! Melanie thought wonderingly. They were waiting to hear her ideas!

“My mum had a photo on her nightstand,” Melanie said awkwardly. Eagerly. “But it wasn't really a photo; it was a ‘Wanted' poster. I thought it was a joke, but it said that my parents were wanted in Half World for having become pregnant. That the baby should be aborted. I grew up in my world with my mum. But how could my mum have made up a poster like that, if she wasn't a part of Half World? She must have come from here. And if she did, I must be that first child.”

Jade Rat sneezed with frustration. “It is possible that you are the first child, but then who or what is the second?”

Melanie shrugged helplessly. “How can I be born a second time? It can't happen. So someone else has to be born.” A sense of dread began to grow inside Melanie's gut. No! No! Her mother would not become pregnant with another child . . . because whose would it be? . . .

Gao Zhen Xi had begun muttering something midway through Jade Rat's words. Melanie and the rat turned toward her and caught the tail end of what she said.

“—poster! ‘Wanted' poster! Hah!”

She ran to a wall covered in square cubbyholes, filled to overflowing with odds and ends, tiny bones, dice, tacks, boxes of matches, rolled-up parchments, and slips of paper. She pawed through them, scattering the contents upon the floor. She caught sight of something much too high for her to reach. Jade Rat scrambled lightly upward like she was climbing a ladder and retrieved the rolled-up gray sheet of paper that was tied with a bit of string. She carried it in her mouth like a dog. She deposited it in Gao Zhen Xi's hands, and the old woman unrolled the dirty sheet with shaking fingers.

A grainy image of a younger Fumiko and Shinobu. The lost look in her father's eyes. Her mother, pregnant, looking young and fearful.

It was the same poster that her mother had kept all this time. In the frame on her bed stand.

Melanie felt herself tearing up with a surge of mixed emotions, and her eyes glittered.

Her mum. She had done everything she could to protect her daughter.

She had been sick and weak her entire life, because she was never truly alive. . . . She had left her behind, and returned to Half World, in order that Melanie might have a life.

“Alive,” Gao Zhen Xi crooned. “You are alive in a Realm that is not alive; that is why you create change. That is why you are capable of breaking the patterns.”

Melanie raised her chin. Her gaze was steady. “If this is true, then I am going to save my mother.”

“Is it possible?” the old woman muttered to herself. “Can this child hold the key to reuniting the divided Realms?”

“Perhaps,” Jade Rat murmured.

“If only we had guidance.” Gao Zhen Xi shut
The Book of the Realms
. “Histories will only account for what has transpired. Prophecies only recount what may be. But what we need is a guidebook! Something that provides direction! Bah! I am so tired I cannot think.”

Directions—

The Magic 8 Ball! Its cryptic questions had meant nothing to Melanie, but maybe the learned old woman could shake some meaning out of it!

Melanie ran back to the pile of books where she had dropped her backpack. She carefully unwrapped the raccoon's gift and cupped the toy in her hands.

The old plastic seemed even more pocked and wretched than before. The surface looked as if it had been chewed by termites, and the slosh of liquid was slow and heavy, like a bucket of watery sand.

Melanie bit her lip. Help me now, she pleaded inside her mind. Be of use. We need direction. “This was a gift from a raccoon in my Realm,” Melanie explained. “It provides messages in the form of questions. I never know what they mean, but maybe you will understand.”

“I do not know, child,” Gao Zhen Xi answered. “Let us try your orb of power to see what it will ask.”

Melanie closed her eyes thoughtfully. The 8 Ball responded to the questions she asked. Could it be that the 8 Ball was not giving unhelpful questions, but that there was something wrong with what she asked? Maybe she wasn't asking the right questions . . . Until now, she'd been asking questions on the fly, all about what worried her the most. But maybe she had to think more widely.

It wasn't all about her and her mother.

There was so much more at stake.

Melanie took a deep, steadying breath and ever so gently shook the fragile ball. “What must we do to bring balance to the Realms once more?” she asked in a clear, strong voice.

She turned the little window toward her and waited patiently.

It took ever so long for a response to begin floating to the surface. It was scarcely a triangle at all, the edges were so worn down. The writing on it was so faded that she could hardly make out the fine print. Finally she read the message aloud: