Half World (16 page)

“Come in! Welcome! We have a live show, today, and it's going to be spectacular!” He stepped aside so that the guests could file in. They caught sight of Melanie, the bright spots of blood upon her cheeks, and they stared with wonder as they began whispering among each other. The beauty pageant girl had somehow slipped away. She did not pass into the room. Maybe, Melanie thought grimly, she was going back to the kiddie zoo to wait for her friend to reappear once more.

The guests clustered together by the piano like a herd of nervous gazelle.

Mr. Glueskin stood back and stared at Melanie's housecleaning uniform with disdain.
“Che, che, che!”
he
tsk
ed. “You look so ugly and you have so little to work with. You need to
freshen up
. You need an
outfit
.” He began dragging Melanie toward a new passage. “You entertain each other for now,” he called back to his guests. “Fumiko, get her a dress.”

Mr. Glueskin tossed Melanie into the bathing room. It was enormous. Larger than the family living room of her home, it was completely covered in white tiles, silver chrome and black towels, the bathtub the size of a small swimming pool. A shower, large enough for a basketball team, took up the corner. Beside it was a lumpy white sack, like a laundry bag.

Mr. Glueskin spoke slowly and enunciated his words. “Bathe. Change your clothing. You're going to be the star of the show.” He mimed showering and scrubbing, blinking dramatically, his tiny pinprick pupils so disturbing in the large polished whites of his eyes.

Melanie backed away. His moods were so mercurial. She did not know when he would fall into a fit of rage. When his joking would veer into violence.

Mr. Glueskin bowed low, several times, as he backed out of the bathroom. The door
snick
ed shut.

Rage flared inside Melanie's chest, threatening to burst up through her head. Her face flushed bright red with it. She wanted to beat him to a pulp. She wanted to punch his face in. She wanted to stomp his body until he was completely broken.

Melanie breathed hard and fast—

She covered her mouth with a trembling hand. How easy it was, after all, to turn into a monster.

Well, he would deserve it! a tight, mean voice inside her spat. The hateful and vicious things that he did, he would deserve everything that he got! Everyone would think so. He should die the way he lived.

Half lived . . .

Melanie wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. She caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Dark shadows encircled her eyes. Her eyes were bruises, wounds upon her face. She looked like she was close to thirty, not a teenaged girl. . . .

She looked an awful lot like her mother.

Melanie gave a ragged sigh.

Movement.

The white laundry lump writhed, stretched, like a larva wrapped in rubber.

The hairs stood up on Melanie's neck at the grotesque wriggling and humping. Suddenly, something poked outward, and the material stretched thin, transparent. Melanie could make out a foot, a leg, trying to kick out of the confines. A hand pawed against the white fabric—not fabric! It was someone encased inside a skin of glue.

She rushed to the trapped creature and tore at the material. It was drier than the skein of Mr. Glueskin's tongue that had bound her wrist. Melanie scratched and ripped at the white material and it seemed to grow stiffer, and finally she opened a seam. She grabbed the two edges and pulled her hands away from each other, the skin tearing like damp canvas.

Gao Zhen Xi's wrinkled face was soaked wet and pale like a cadaver's. Her hair was plastered upon her head, and the hand she extended shook with weakness. Melanie made to grab her wrist, but the worn old woman shook her head. She gestured with her chin and Melanie finally understood. She extended her own hand, palm upward, and Gao Zhen Xi sighed as she opened her closed fist.

The jade amulet felt sticky against Melanie's skin.

Gao Zhen Xi's mouth worked but words failed her. She gestured to her mouth, her throat, and Melanie dashed to the sink for a glass of water.

The old woman, still encased in the white skin, drank like it was the finest liquid in the world.

“Ahhhh,” she sighed. “Thank you, child.”

Melanie, eyes wide, nodded with relief. Gao Zhen Xi was all right. And she wouldn't have to face Mr. Glueskin and his horrible friends alone.

Gao Zhen Xi's eyes narrowed. “What has happened?”

Melanie's eyes filled, a wave of emotion washing over her at the sound of a concerned and strong adult voice. To feel relieved and inadequate made her feel so young and vulnerable. She wanted someone else, someone better than she was, to take over.

“I've found my mum. But she doesn't know me anymore. Mr. Glueskin has caught me—” Melanie's choked words were interrupted as the door banged open.

Fumiko, completely expressionless, threw a white gown at Melanie's feet. “Mr. Glueskin said to change into this,” she said in a monotone. She returned to the raucous noise of the guests. Someone, not the program, was playing “Chopsticks” unevenly on the piano once more.

Melanie dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. “See,” she whispered. “My mother doesn't know me anymore. I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't have bothered!”

“Melanie!” Gao Zhen Xi snapped. Melanie reared back.

“Your mother is caught in a trap. Half World should not be a trap for all who suffer, but because the Three Realms have been divided we cannot help but fall back, again and again, into a cycle of suffering. It is the same for your Realm and for the Realm of Spirit. We need the Three Realms reunited for there to be balance and wholeness. Without it we are all trapped creatures, only ever partially ourselves. No one is whole.”

“What can we do?” Melanie asked, despairingly.

“What can you do?” Gao Zhen Xi asked softly.

“What do you mean?” Melanie crumpled beside the old woman on the floor. Her voice trembled. “Won't you help me?”

Gao Zhen Xi's head bobbed with weariness. “Child,” she said gently, “you know not what our Half Lives have been in this Realm. Those of us who have some strength have somehow retained self-awareness; we can carve out a longer pocket of Half Life before we are flung back to our breaking moment. When we are thrown back the trauma and pain of that time is every bit as awful as when it first occurred in the Realm of Flesh. That is why so many here have become monsters. It takes much time to reach awareness that we are caught in that same loop once more. The realization is followed by despair. Many in Half World cannot rise above the despair. This is why your mother behaves as if she doesn't know you. She
doesn't
know you right now. She is caught in her trauma. She has not yet woken. And I—” Gao Zhen Xi's voice broke.

Melanie blinked anxiously. It wasn't just the old woman's voice that quavered. For a moment her substance seemed to shiver in and out of existence.

“I'm being pulled back once again.” Gao Zhen Xi shook her head, her eyes more weary than ten thousand years. “Child, it is up to you. Only you are truly alive here. And with this Life you carry the capacity to change the pattern.” The old woman seemed to grow transparent.

“Wait!” Melanie cried out, unable to help herself.

By some extreme act of will Gao Zhen Xi seemed to hold on to the fabric of her being.

“What must I do? I can't begin to know what to do! How can one girl change three Realms? I can't even stop Mr. Glueskin. I can't even save my mother.” Melanie smacked her chest with the flat of her hand.

Gao Zhen Xi closed her eyes.

Melanie's rigid shoulders dropped. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. She did not want to add to the old woman's suffering.

Gao Zhen Xi's eyes flew open. They glinted, momentarily, with a jade green fire. “It is not a matter of knowing the solution to righting all the wrongs. That is an impossible task. Even for one such as you.” She smiled fiercely, and Melanie wondered at the respect in the old woman's voice. Respect, for her!

Despite the brief fire in her eyes, Gao Zhen Xi's voice began to grow faint. “It is only choice. In the end. When the moment comes. And it is a terrible thing. How will you choose?”

The elements that held the old woman together finally faded and she simply vanished, the sack of glueskin falling flat upon the cold white tiles.

Melanie slumped, alone.

No magic words, no cure-all potion, no ultimate key that unlocked the prize door, no sorcerer's sword or special super latent power inside her waiting to burst free to save herself and her mother's life and everyone else in all three Realms.

Everything hinged on choices.

Her choices.

A flutter of panic tried to burst from Melanie's throat at the enormity, the overwhelming responsibility that bore down upon her. She took a deep, long breath and released it slowly. Twice. Three times.

She felt calmer.

She was not responsible for righting all the wrongs done to the Realms.

She was responsible for the things she chose.

That was all.

She almost managed a tiny smile. It was simultaneously an incredible responsibility and almost nothing at all, she thought wonderingly. “How remarkable,” she whispered.

The jade amulet, still clutched tightly in her sticky palm, shuddered, and Melanie turned over her hand and unfurled her fingers.

The stone slowly shimmered from mineral to animal.

She was smaller than before. No longer the size of a small guinea pig, she was scarcely larger than a mouse.

“You're remarkable,” Jade Rat said respectfully. She even bowed, and Melanie found herself bowing in return.

Then, solemnity fled as Melanie joyfully clutched her friend to her chest. “Thank you! You came back,” she whispered. “You're so much smaller. Are you okay?”

Jade Rat snuffled Melanie's hand. “It is because much of the livingness of my Spirit was borrowed from Gao Zhen Xi's. Only a little remains within me. Soon I will revert to my stone self. But I will try to do what I can until then. I will try to seek help for you.”

Melanie raised the small rat to her face and kissed her delicate nose. “Thank you. From all my heart.”

“Don't give up your entire heart yet! I greatly doubt you have even fallen in love!” Jade Rat said sharply, sounding like her former bossy self.

Melanie blushed.

“I will turn back to stone. Flush me down the toilet. I'll escape out the septic system.” The rat sounded confident, but her tail gave a betraying twitch.

“Brave rat,” Melanie whispered. “Be careful.”

With a tiny click, the rat turned into an amulet once more. Melanie did not hesitate. She flushed the jade pendant down the toilet. Her mouth dry, she watched the red strings swirl in the water before they disappeared.

“Choices,” Melanie murmured.

Someone banged hard on the door. Melanie jumped around to face whoever entered, but the door remained shut.

“Ten minutes to showtime!” a muffled voice giggled.

Melanie stared down at her grubby self. She had nothing left to hide. She took a quick, hot, roaring shower. It felt amazingly good. She washed everything away, dried herself off, and put on the horrid white dress. It looked like something for a wedding, Melanie thought grimly, or for a sacrifice.

Her dark, wet hair hung straight to her shoulders. She parted her long bangs so that her face was revealed—so filled with Life, it shone like a beacon. Her cheeks were pink from the heat and her brown eyes glittered between amber and umber.

She would hide no more.

The party guests gasped when they caught sight of Melanie. In the black-and-white shades of Half World, she stood out like a golden candle in the darkest part of night. The sleeveless gown exposed her rounded arms, her ginger skin, and the flush of blood beneath the surface.

“Ohhhhhhh,” the guests sighed longingly, as if they wanted to be like her, as if they wanted to have her. Their beady black eyes glinted, beaks clacked with desire and tails thumped the floor with a heavy and excited beat.

Mr. Glueskin, who had been playing with Fumiko the single most overplayed piano duet in school gyms everywhere, rose up from the bench with a loose and awful grin.

“Isn't she loveleeeeeeee,” Mr. Glueskin sang. “Isn't she deeeelicious?” He released his tongue and it sailed fifteen feet across the room to land with a friendly
splat
upon her upper arm.

Melanie did not flinch.

He was licking her, she realized. He was trying to frighten her. That was his way. To toy with people, to trick them and terrorize them.