by Hiromi Goto
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 rightnessof 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:
Gao Zhen Xi looked thoughtful. “The response is opaque. It is something to consider, but I know not its direct meaning. Do you understand the question, child?”
Melanie, sighing, shook her head. It would not help them immediately. But maybe it was something that would help her later. . . .
A flicker of shadow swung from the ceiling and Melanie caught it with the edges of her vision. She looked up.
One of the bare lightbulbs was oddly distended, hanging low and swinging back and forth as it drooped lower and lower. Like it was somehow melting. And growing.
Gao Zhen Xi and Jade Rat looked upward.
As if sensing that it had been discovered, the white blob began pouring through the small opening in the ceiling. Like liquid plastic it bulged and rippled, cascading down itself, stretching long and gluey. The bulbous tip began to grow, growing fuller, larger, bringing shape to the smoothness, the beginnings of a mouth.
A white tongue.
It whipped out blindly and struck down a mountain of books.
“Child!” Gao Zhen Xi shouted. “Here!” She pulled a key from a fold in her clothing and tossed it to Melanie. She caught it with one hand.
The tongue, furious, began whipping randomly about the room. It zinged past Melanie’s head close enough to stir her hair. She crouched low and crawled beneath the long table, the 8 Ball held in the curve of one arm.
“I found you!” Mr. Glueskin’s sticky gloating voice rang out. “Don’t you miss your mommy? Mommy’s been asking about her sweet little girl! She’s been crying out your name. ‘Melanie! Oh, Melanie!’” He mimicked her mother’s voice perfectly.
A snapping, whipping sound.
Jade Rat squealed.
No! Melanie crawled out from the protection of the table in time to see Jade Rat being pulled back toward Mr. Glueskin’s melty mouth. His eyes re-formed, white with strangely shaped black pupils, he caught sight of Melanie and broke into a loose smile.
Gao Zhen Xi threw a heavy book at Mr. Glueskin’s head. It struck with a splat, adhered for several seconds before sliding off. His head, flattened, looked so comical Melanie fought off the urge to giggle hysterically.
His eyes were enraged.
“Run!” Gao Z
hen Xi commanded. “You must not die. We aren’t able to die in Half World. Save us all by living!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Melanie dashed for the door, the key digging inside her palm. Her hand shook as she tried to fit the teeth into the great lock.
She did not look back as Mr. Glueskin roared, Jade Rat screamed, and the heavy books fell with great thuds.
She grimly ran down the long dark passage. “They cannot die,” she reminded herself. “They cannot die.”
Their curse, this time, was a blessing.
ELEVEN
MELANIE WALKED BRISKLY toward the employees’ wing of the basement. She remembered passing it before, and she had an idea if not a plan. She would dress up like a cleaning lady, for a disguise, and go look for Mr. Glueskin’s room.
It was not much of a plan; she knew that. In television shows and novels the heroes always had an amazing way to fight their enemies. They made elaborate traps out of ropes and twigs or built bombs out of baking soda and batteries. They apprenticed with a witch or a sorcerer and developed their special powers.
All Melanie had was herself.
No, she corrected. She had allies here, and back home. Gao Zhen Xi and Jade Rat were on her side. Ms. Wei was her friend, too. Her mother.
Melanie thought about the torn place on her father’s hand.
He was an ally, too.
And maybe Melanie didn’t have any special magical skills, but she had the power to make choices. She was alive in a place that was not. She was not caught in the eternal loop of suffering and resuffering the same trauma like everyone else in this Realm.
Gao Zhen Xi had said that was why she was capable of making changes.
To be able to bring change into a fixed world, Melanie thought. There is power in that. . . .
Melanie found the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY—STAFF RESIDENCES. She quietly slipped through.
The dorm was mostly empty. A few women and girls were either sitting listlessly on their cots or watching a television set up in the far corner of the room. They did not take notice of Melanie at all, trapped in a stupor of their repeat Half Life.
A young woman, not much older than Melanie, was picking at the stitches in her arm. Her dark raw scar ran from her wrist to the inside of her elbow.
Melanie fought the urge to tell her to stop. She cannot die, she reminded herself furiously. She will just repeat this over and over again. It was horrific.
This had to stop.
Melanie angrily began opening lockers. No one cared or noticed.
After several tries she found one that contained a cleaner’s uniform. It looked like it would fit. She grabbed the clothing and went into the dorm bathroom. Melanie could hear the sound of deep retching coming from one of the stalls.
She ducked into a changing room and closed the door. The room had a long mirror, and someone had left her toiletries, a curling iron, and a blow dryer on the ledge. A small sample vial of a perfume called Poison. Melanie set the 8 Ball on the counter and unzipped the large makeup bag. Inside were scissors, tubes and jars of makeup, pencil liners, and shadow. Melanie quickly changed into the nondescript uniform. Her name badge, she saw, said GLADYS.
“Gladys, Gladys, Gladys, Gladys,” she muttered beneath her breath so that she would remember. She turned on the curling iron and while it heated she brushed out her hair, all one length, so it fell in front of her face. She cut bangs so the bottom of the fringe came down to the middle of her nose. The bangs would obscure most of her eyes, but she should be able to see between strands of hair. She slathered on a new layer of makeup, reapplying the clay-colored foundation over every inch of exposed skin. She sprayed herself with Poison. She coughed at the sickly sweet stench, but it would serve its purpose. No one could possibly smell her Life underneath the vapors of a perfume so stinking! Curling iron hot, Melanie attempted to style her hair for the first time in her life.
She didn’t know which way to twirl the rod, so she ended up with odd kinks and cowlicks, as well as sausage-roll curls. It looked awful, but it was also perfect. She didn’t look like a teenaged girl; she looked like a frumpy middle-aged mother.
Melanie smiled sadly.
Would she look like this when she grew older?
If she even made it?
Melanie shook her head and stood tall. “Gladys,” she said again. “My name is Gladys.” Her eyes fell upon the fragile 8 Ball. It was beginning to look cratered and dry, like the surface of the moon. How much longer would it last? How many questions could she ask it before it fell apart? Every time she looked it was more wretched than before. Should she ask one more question, now, before it fell apart? Or were the questions themselves aging the orb so quickly?
Now, or later? Melanie waffled. Now, or later? She reached out to the ball, and when her fingertips touched the plastic surface it gave a tired pop, a zigzag crack spreading around the circumference. Melanie gasped and leapt back. Fine lines spread outward from the fissure until the desiccated pieces fell apart, like ancient pottery, releasing a mound of sand with a dry hisssssssssss.
Dismay filled Melanie’s heart. She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. Such a stupid, stupid way to use up the last question. There was no way she could put it back together again. Her last gift was now completely useless. Melanie angrily grabbed two handfuls of sand.
“Uhhhhh!” she exclaimed with frustration, flinging the sand down before grabbing two more fistfuls . . . when she felt a flat hard something. Melanie’s rage faded as she slowly brushed aside sand to reveal a corner of plastic.
One more. One last question.
Carefully clasping it between her thumb and forefinger, she gently pulled it out.
The flat piece of plastic was rectangular, not triangular. The size of a bank card, it even had a black magnetic strip.
Melanie frowned. Was it a bank card? She flipped it over and saw the ornate script of the Mirages Hotel.
Melanie’s eyes widened.
She’d never used one before, but she watched TV. Fancy hotels didn’t use keys anymore. They had key cards you swiped like at the bank machines.
The Magic 8 Ball had given her the final key . . . the key to find Mr. Glueskin!
“Thank you!” Melanie said fiercely. She turned the card over in her hands. But there was nothing else written upon it except the name of the hotel. Her heart sank. How would she find out which room Mr. Glueskin stayed in? How many rooms were in this hotel?
Melanie grimly pinched her lips. She would find it if she had to go to every door in the entire building.
A cleaning cart! If she had a cleaning cart she would have a legitimate reason to be trying different doors! Melanie slipped the key card into the pocket beneath her name badge pinned onto the uniform.
The cleaning cart she found was heavy and awkward, one wheel having the tendency to stick, and she pushed it awkwardly down the hall toward the elevator. The cart creaked overloud and Melanie wondered if it should be abandoned. Head downward, bangs sweeping the tip of her nose, she could not see if anyone else was around her. It was both comforting and terrifying.
She almost ran into one of the two elevator doors before she realized. Unable to help herself she gave a nervous giggle.
Hand almost steady, she pushed the button. As she waited for the car to reach her she decided she would work from the lowest floor of rooms and make her way upward. She got into the elevator and was waiting for the doors to shut when a sweet young voice called from down the hallway.
“Wait for me!”
Melanie peered from between her bangs.
A room service boy, a silver tray loaded with covered plates of food held high above his head, raised his chin in greeting and expertly entered the elevator. His black trousers and white shirt were immaculate, but his black hair was clumpy, stuck with clots of white.
“Could you please press the fourth floor?” he asked courteously.
Melanie blinked and blinked. The boy—he was the same one Mr. Glueskin had eaten
in the lobby of the hotel. It felt like a million years ago.
“Eh-hem,” the room service boy said, a trifle impatiently. “Uhhhh, Gladys, is it? Please press the fourth floor. Four. Four!”
Melanie broke out of her paralysis and awkwardly poked the button. The number four lit up in the panel and the car slowly began to rise.
The young man glanced at the panel, then frowned. “Which floor are you going to?”
Melanie gulped. If she spoke would her breath reveal her living odor?
She released her white-knuckled clasp of the cleaning cart and scrabbled for the key card, holding it up as if to prove her legitimacy.
“Gladys,” the young man enunciated slowly, “you have to swipe that. It’s for the penthouse level.” He sighed dramatically. “Dimwit!” he hissed. His tone changed, conspiratorial and mean. “I heard in the kitchens that Mr. Glueskin is organizing a party. He’s ordered canapés and a blood fondue!” The room service boy leaned slightly toward Melanie and whispered theatrically, “He’s in a foul mood. Don’t I know it! Be careful you don’t catch his eye!”
The elevator bell tinged tastefully for the fourth floor and stopped.
Door four, Melanie thought. The number triggered warning signals in the nape of her neck.
The silent doors slid smoothly open. The fourth level—
A deluge of noise smashed into the cavity of the elevator. Melanie clamped her hands over her ears, but the sounds of hooting, shouting, a high metallic shrieking stabbed into her eardrums. The piercing screams of a person being tortured. A deep, low pounding came from the walls as if someone were trying to break through. And a wheezy whining breathed in and out, in and out, like an enormous set of bagpipes. Wailing men, babies coughing, the sound of barking dogs. Melanie pressed her back into the farthest corner of the elevator, but she could not escape the noise.
And the worst thing of all was that the hallway was completely empty.
“My floor.” The bellboy finally smiled, revealing a dark, toothless pit. Melanie could hear a vast roaring from deep inside him. He exited the elevator and started walking down the empty, deafening hallway, the tray of food held high.
