Half World (9 page)

Melanie opened her eyes.

The vista that lay before her was like something from a stranger's dream. A place of dark shadows, jumbled silhouettes of cities and jungles, forests and villages. The light that managed to penetrate the overwhelming layer of clouds created a shadowy world, absent of colors and vibrancy. It looked like early evening on a completely overcast day.

The city portions of the vista looked odd. Castle turrets beside skyscrapers, pagodas and apartment blocks, tents and stone ruins, warehouse stores and freeways. The glint of light reflected off water, a nonsensical system of canals leading nowhere. Were those horse-drawn wagons? She thought they were horses . . . with scooters zipping past them, or motorbikes, tanks rolling with the grind of metal, the crumping of mortar.

It looked like every city and period in time were mashed together. Zeppelins drifted in the distant sky, and what looked like a flock of flamingos stretched toward a body of water.

Streetlights, gas lamps, candles began to bob in windows. Neon signs flickered, a searchlight spiraled the flat surface of the clouds and a siren began to wail. Bomb warning? Melanie wondered. She realized the flickering pale lights farther off must be fires. Things were burning. The air was smoky with it.

An unseen animal began to howl.

This was Half World.

Melanie's lower lip began to wobble. She slipped her shaking hand into the deep pocket of her mother's overcoat and fished for the amulet. When her fingers fell upon the smooth stone she clutched it tightly inside her fist.

“Jade Rat,” her voice quavered. “I'm scared. . . . ”

The stone remained stone.

Melanie's lips twisted. “Sorry,” she whispered. She unclenched her fingers and raised both hands to push her stringy hair behind her ears.

As she navigated the stairs Melanie no longer had to scoot on her bottom. There was even a handrail, though she couldn't say when it had begun. She continued with her descent, anchoring herself with the railing, as she continued to gaze upon the frightening dreamscape.

As she neared the ground she could make out people; strangely shaped creatures dressed in human clothing; dogs endlessly chasing their own tails; a woman jumping into the canal, only to reappear on the worn paving stones to jump again anew.

A man sat on an ox-driven cart, a tangled heap of scrap metal filling the back. What looked like children chased after the metal collector. The children lobbed things at him, jeering and shrieking. The man didn't care. He was missing his head.

The roar of a jet sounded in the distance. Followed by a terrific explosion. The cloud cover throbbed momentarily with light.

The children on the street began to clap and cheer.

The spiral sound of a siren was overcome by the wild clanging of church bells, the distant heartbeat of an enormous drum, a deep melodic gong rippling across the night sky.

A flock of pigeons burst off a distant rooftop.

From somewhere a burst of machine-gun spray clattered metallic.

The stink of fried chicken, oily and rancid. Putrid garbage, raw sewage thrown onto the streets. Rotting offal.

A train on a raised railway roared past in a stutter of yellow rectangular lights, and was gone.

Melanie stopped.

She was no longer descending a mountain.

She stood upon the rooftop of a tall building.

The mountain stairway was no longer there. She anxiously searched for the place she had come from, crisscrossing the expanse of the enormous featureless rooftop, but the access to the mountain high above Half World had disappeared.

Maybe, Melanie's thoughts babbled, maybe it will come back again. After a time. Like the woman drowning on repeat. Maybe things skipped. And the stairs could come back in time.

Because it was the only way home that she knew.

When she turned around she could not stop herself from gasping.

Before her was a rooftop entrance, with walls and a door, where there had been none before.

Melanie stood there, heart pounding, until she was able to breathe again.

She curled her fingers around the jade amulet inside her pocket. “Lucka, lucka, lucka,” she crooned as she opened the door.

She entered.

SHE SAT, PANTING,
upon the third-from-last step from the ground floor. As she had spiraled down, down the fire escape, she had considered at each landing exiting through the door into a hallway to take the damned elevator, but each time fear stopped her. She ran into no one, but sometimes there were noises she could not identify. So she had continued, soaked through with sweat, legs so exhausted they had become numb.

Now what?

Now
what?

She let her forehead fall into her dirty palms.

If only she were more clever. Like the smartest girl in her school, Eleanor Cortes-Quan. They were both in the same grade, but Eleanor had already skipped two years in a row, and she had placed first in the provincial math competition. If Melanie were smarter she could figure out what she should do; she could use her head and make intelligent decisions.

Or if she couldn't be smart, if only she were stronger. Like jogging-in-shorts-outside-even-in-the-middle-of-January Lali Vukov. Captain of the field hockey team and the cross-country running team, she could out-bench-press all the boys and half the P.E. teachers.

What could she do? Melonball Tamaki, pudgy and stupid . . . She groped for the jade amulet, hoping to touch the coarse fur of the rat, but all she could feel was stone. It felt colder than before. Letting the amulet fall from her shaking fingers, she turned to her last bit of hope.

The Magic 8 Ball felt a little different—the slosh of liquid that held the answers, the questions felt slower. More viscous. As if it were motor oil instead of water. Melanie clutched the orb in her lap. Don't let me down, she prayed. Please. I really need help.

She raised the ball to her ear and shook it gently. “What now?” she asked aloud.

Her voice sounded very small in the concrete stairwell.

She turned the 8 Ball over so she could peer into the window.

The triangle took ever so long to float to the surface.

Melanie hissed with frustration. The urge to throw the ball down the last three steps so it broke into pieces was a wall of red flames behind her eyes. Stupid, stupid raccoon! Why had it given her this useless thing? Maybe it was a trick. Meant to get her into trouble instead of help her! How was she to—

Melanie caught her breath.

The edges of the triangle were crumbly, as if they had been worn away . . . like the ball was beginning to decay. Melanie clutched the 8 Ball to her belly. Now that it was on the verge of disintegrating, it suddenly seemed precious. She had so few things left. Don't let this be lost, too.

No matter what, Melanie thought as she swallowed hard, the thing she had to do was clear. She had to find her mother. She had to bring her home. She replaced the plastic orb, reshouldered her pack, and stepped down to the landing. She turned the knob of the door, drawing against the heaviness to reveal a tiny crack, and held it open.

The noise assailed her first, the myriad scents rolling in immediately after.

It was a lobby of a hotel, but not like any hotel lobby she'd ever seen on television or in films. Across the enormous foyer, above the front desk, was a large banner: THE MIRAGES HOTEL. The sign looked as if it had been painted by students for a school dance.

The entire room was filled with the squawk of voices, loud, volatile, punctuated by raucous laughter. The shrieks of birds of prey, the hooting of lemurs, the jangle of coins and tooting horns. The rich aroma of cooking meat filled the air, and the enormous room was smoky with singed flesh and dripping fat. The acrid edge of burnt sugar, beer drying in the carpet, animal dung and cigarettes. Melanie felt simultaneously famished and nauseated.

The lobby was like a bazaar: a combination of a trade show and a market square. Businessmen with crocodile eyes slid payments of frogs and lizards into each other's pockets as if they were passing envelopes of money. A few finely dressed ladies had bird beaks instead of lips or reptilian tails trailing out behind their gowns. In little tents and booths merchants displayed their wares and shouted at potential customers, cajoling, begging, screaming for their patronage.

Sunglasses and thongs, flip-flops and wedges, silk scarves, razor blades, glass eyeballs, and skin grafts. Selections of breast implants were displayed on gleaming platters like rows of dead jellyfish on fun house mirrors. Dietary supplements were sold with promotional deep fryers and cotton candy machines. Rhino horns, tiger penises, knives, hourglasses, cuckoo clocks, helium-filled balloons, skewers of meat, candied ice, mini donuts, metronomes, rolls of lace, caged birds, snapping turtles, perfume or poison in small glass vials, and bottled water. Melanie stared, agog, with one eye through the crack in the doorway.

The wrongness wasn't just the freak show before her: there was no color. . . . Melanie closed her half-open mouth.

What she had thought were evening hues, the varying degrees of dark and light from her view atop the mountain, were also here, in the brightly lit lobby of the hotel. Everything looked like a black-and-white movie, Melanie thought. She didn't know if there was really color and only she couldn't see it because she was an outsider, or if it was colorless for everyone.

Melanie's heart caught in her throat.

She whipped up her free arm to stare at the skin of her hand.

In the dinginess of Half World her skin seemed to glow obscenely. Childishly, she thrust “the evidence” deep into the front pocket of her mother's coat. She bit her lip. What would she do? How would she walk around in this Realm? She might as well be wearing a neon sign around her neck!

“Oh, mercy me!” a wispy voice exclaimed, much too close to the door, and Melanie instinctively drew back as far as her arm would allow; to let the door click shut now would betray her presence.

“Vhat? Vhat?” a hoarse voice croaked.

“That Mr. Glueskin! He's so disruptive. I don't know why he can't just leave everyone alone to their cycles! I wish he lived at a different hotel! Look! That bellhop's going to get it!” The first voice, high and whispery, began to giggle.

“Not ghoot for bizness,” the hoarse voice growled.

Melanie's heart stopped.

Mr. Glueskin here. In this very building! This was where he lived!

She drew closer to the tiny opening of the door. She had to see.

Two figures stood near her exit: a small girl-child, in three-inch heels and a bathing suit, a beauty pageant sash draped diagonally across her back, stood facing away from her, and a wallaby-like creature, with a man's head, was beside her, the tip of his tail flicking with agitation. Beyond them, in the middle of the sunken market lobby, was a wide circle of spectators. As they moved about nervously, vying for a better position, Melanie could catch snatches of the drama.

There was a loud
crack!
The crowd pressed back, away from the center, to create a wide space between them and the source of danger.

A tall, overly pale man, with tousled white hair, stood in the middle of the sunken lobby. His face was gaunt but his skin seemed to hang from his bones, as if it were too loose. He wore a plastic raincoat that ended high above his skinny knees, and his sticklike legs were ensconced in large black rubber boots.

Everyone was staring at what he would do next. The circle of spectators. The beauty pageant girl and the wallaby-man.

It could only be him. Mr. Glueskin . . .

Melanie resisted an overwhelming urge to giggle. Stop it! a sober part of her mind snapped. You're in great danger!