Half World (20 page)

The bird-headed man's feathers stood upright with great agitation. “He is our savior! He showed us how we could become powerful, even though we are thrown back to our original trauma once more!”

The eel-lady wrapped her slimy limbs around her lithe torso. “I would still be in the sea, drowning, if it wasn't for Mr. Glueskin,” she whispered.

The bird-headed man tilted his head to one side, his gray eye glinting, unreadable. “He must not be allowed to be born again. Not like this! It goes against everything that he has become! If one cycle is broken who can say what will happen to ours?” He took a step closer to them and Melanie heard a small
crunch.

“No!” Melanie cried out. She shoved the bird-man, hard, and he staggered several steps backward. Melanie crouched down, her heart thumping loudly.

A piece still remained attached to the length of red string. But half of the jade amulet had been crushed into fragments.

Jade Rat—broken.

Melanie's lower lip wobbled. I'm sorry, Gao Zhen Xi, she thought. I'm sorry, Ms. Wei. I'm so sorry, Jade Rat.

Melanie snatched up the string and wound it around her wrist, leaving the ends to be clasped inside her hand. She began backing toward the snuffling baby. She could feel her mother doing the same.

Melanie held out her free hand, palm outward. “Wait,” she implored. “Can't you see? We
need
to change the cycle. You have all been trapped in suffering. But it doesn't have to be this way!” With her peripheral vision she could see crows quietly hopping toward her.

“You
child
,” the eel-armed woman snickered. “This is our Half World. This is all that we know.” She bent down low, her eel arms writhing wildly. She dropped open her mouth to reveal a stubby black eel tongue. It had eyes and a mouth lined with fine needle teeth. “This is all that we want!” the eel tongue squealed.

Fumiko snatched Baby G from his shell and yanked the back of Melanie's dress. “Run!” she shouted just as all of the crows upon the carpet burst upward, creating a thunderous black wall of wings.

The party guests reared back from the burst of motion, and Melanie, the amulet clutched tightly in her palm, ran with her mother through the front door and into the corridor.

Stairwell, Melanie thought frantically. To the roof of the building. Back to the mountain and the bridge of crows.

The crows. Belated tears of gratitude filled her eyes.

She spun toward the sign that marked the fire escape.

Fumiko pulled her toward the elevator. “This way! I remember!” she choked.

They could hear the din of voices, snarling, bleating, the rush of wings.

Melanie, after a moment's hesitation, ran with her mother toward the paired doors.

“Down!” Fumiko cried.

Melanie pounded the button. “Come on!” she begged. “Come on, come on!”

From behind them the pitch of voices changed, growing jubilant and frenetic. For the first time, the crows began to caw. They cawed and cawed, the sounds of their cries growing distant, then disappearing.

Melanie and her mother heard Mr. Glueskin's door opening just as the bell tinged the arrival of the elevator.

They rushed into the car, and as Melanie pounded on the “Close” button they stared down the hallway.

The door to Mr. Glueskin's suite was open, but something was blocking the exit.

A strangely formed thing, holding back the mob with numerous triangle-shaped limbs.

It was the starfish-child; her bumpy armor top turned to the rage of the mob, Melanie could just make out her daisy face profile. She was smiling bravely. “Hurry!” she urged as the elevator doors began to shut. Just as one arm, then another, was ripped from the starfish-child's body.

Melanie sobbed.

Fumiko, eyes grim, Baby G clasped to the left side of her chest, pressed a button on the panel.

The number four lit up.

“No!” Melanie cried. “What are you doing! The fourth floor is evil!” She tried to push the “Emergency Stop” button, any button, but her mother seized her arm in a fierce grip.

“Stop it!” Fumiko said sharply.

Melanie recoiled. She had never heard her mother sound so forceful before.

Baby G began whimpering and Fumiko jostled him comfortingly. “I'm sorry, Melanie,” Fumiko said softly. “But it's the only way back to your Realm.”

Melanie sagged back against the cool wall. Of course. It made sense, really. She looked up at the ceiling, wondering how quickly the second car would reach the mob. “What are you going to do with the baby?” she asked. Her feelings writhed, complicated, confused.

Fumiko shook her head. “I don't know. But he cannot be left here to fall back into his cycle.”

The elevator seemed to cushion itself, and the bell tinged before the car came to a complete stop.

They were stopped on the thirteenth floor.

Fumiko looked at Melanie sharply.

“I didn't touch it!” Melanie exclaimed.

Futilely they pressed themselves against the back panel of the car.

The doors silently slid open.

A pale suit, outdated and too small, did little to hide an un-tucked dirty T-shirt, a beer belly flopping over the cinch of belt. A crumpled five-dollar bill had been crammed into the buttonhole. Clinging to the man's arm was a beautiful woman with long black hair, wearing a floor-length black gown. Her eyes were completely rolled back in her head. Only the whites showed, gleaming wetly.

The man leaned a little too far forward as he winked one of his small watermelon seed eyes. “We got off on the wrong floor,” he enunciated carefully. “We've been invited to a party in the penthouse!”

“Shinobu!” Fumiko cried, her voice as wild as a falcon.

The man reared back. His pale face blanched completely white. He blinked and blinked, shaking off his companion's hand to rub both of his eyes with the heels of his palms.

Fumiko thrust Baby G into Melanie's arms.

Instinctively she cradled him.

“I'm sorry,” Fumiko said grimly, and pushed Shinobu's date, hard. The woman fell backward onto her bottom.

Fumiko grabbed Shinobu's crusty lapels and yanked him into the elevator. She pounded the “Close” button and the car began descending once more.

Melanie stared at her mother and father. She had never seen them together. They both seemed like strangers.

Shinobu stood gaping at Fumiko. A light beginning to grow in his eyes. He blinked and blinked with confusion. Wonder.

Lips quivering, Fumiko smiled, beautiful.

Tears filled Melanie's eyes as she watched years falling from her mother's face as her mother continued gazing upon her father.

“Remember?” Fumiko asked him gently. She turned toward her daughter and stretched her hand to stroke Melanie's cheek with infinite gentleness. “Our daughter, Shinobu. Our daughter, Melanie.”

“She's alive,” Shinobu's voice trembled. He slapped his own face, hard. The sharp sound startled them all. “Is this happening? I've been lost for so long.” His voice began to crumble. “Fumiko . . . ”

Fumiko enfolded Shinobu with her arms. “It's been fourteen years,” she murmured into his dirty hair. “Our daughter grew up in Life, even though we do not hold Life ourselves.” She shook Shinobu and he raised his head.

Pride shone from his eyes.

“We have done well,” Fumiko murmured, “but it is not over yet.”

The elevator sagged then cushioned a few inches upward before it came to a stop.

They were on the fourth floor.

“Not again,” Shinobu's voice was low. Weary.

“No,” Fumiko whispered. “It's different this time.”

The doors began to slide.

Too late, Melanie remembered the barrage of awful noise. Her shoulders tensed instinctively, and the baby in her arms, sensing her change, stilled.

The doors opened to utter darkness. Silence.

Baby G gave a soft sigh.

Shinobu swallowed loud enough for everyone to hear. He cleared his throat. “Whose baby is this?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not mine!” Melanie said sharply, her ears burning. “It's Mr. Glueskin! He was born again!” As her words sank in, Melanie couldn't stop a small giggle from escaping.

The darkness engulfed the sound.

“Shhhh,” Fumiko cautioned.

The light from the elevator should have been cast outward, to reveal at the very least the floor of the hallway, but it was as if all light were swallowed. They could not discern any shape or shadow. They could not know if anything even existed beyond the open doorway.

Melanie's heart tripped. What was out there? There was no way to tell if a hallway existed at all. Maybe it was an enormous room and things, creatures, monsters were all staring at them, exposed like actors on a tiny, brightly lit stage. Maybe they couldn't attack until they entered the dark. They would be torn to pieces, limbs strewn, and devoured.

A mechanical grinding.

They twitched, hypersensitive, and stared fearfully at the darkness. As realization set in, all three simultaneously stared up at the ceiling of the car. The clinking and whirring were the sounds of an elevator car descending. . . .

The mob must have waited to see which floor they stopped at. And now they were coming.

Melanie squeezed her hand around the broken edge of the jade amulet. She glanced down at the pink baby in her arms. His eyes were closed and he had both middle and ring finger stuffed inside his mouth.

Melanie took a deep breath and stepped out of the elevator. Fumiko grabbed a small handful of cloth at the back of her dress, and Shinobu clasped Fumiko's hand so that wherever the darkness took them they would be together.

THEY SHUFFLED IN
the utter blackness. Even Melanie's Life had no powers to bring light into the unspace. That there was something upon which to place their feet, upon which to walk, seemed miraculous, and each foot raised was a surge of despair, each step placed a gasp of relief.

Melanie looked back, once, just as the elevator doors closed, the rectangle of light growing thinner until it disappeared. When she looked forward, she was no longer certain if it actually was the same direction they had been moving. In the absolute darkness there was no up or down or markers of time. The only intervals were their heartbeats. . . .

Melanie's footsteps faltered, came to a stop.

Baby G was warm in Melanie's arms. His living heat was an anchor. The rough, broken edge of the jade amulet felt real inside her fist. And the tug of her mother's hand at the back of her dress grounded her, if only a little bit.

“I-I don't know which way to go.” Melanie's voice sounded simultaneously insignificant and overloud in the absolute silence.

Fumiko flattened her palm upon Melanie's back. “I'm frightened, too. But I think this is the right way because it's not the same as before. Everything has changed.”

“You can do it,” Shinobu called from behind. “If you've come this far, if you've managed to change Mr. Glueskin's cycle, it can't be the wrong way.”

Melanie swallowed. They could not stand there, in limbo, forever. Or maybe they could. But she did not want it. After all they had gone through! To remain there, immobile, broken out of the cycle, only to be stopped by fear?

No.

Melanie took a step in the direction she thought was forward. Her mother, clasping a small handful of material at the back of her daughter's dress, came after. Melanie took another step. The ground remained firm. She took a third step. The fourth—

A vast roar filled the air. Their hair buffeted upward with the surge of wild wind. Melanie could not breathe. She desperately clung to the baby, who was almost ripped from her arms with the immense force.

The blackness that had completely surrounded them suddenly sheered away. The absolute darkness split apart into black strands against a slate gray sky. Crows, so many ribbons and ribbons of swooping, cawing crows, jubilant and raucous, veering away toward a far pale horizon.

Melanie could feel the slightly oily softness of feathers beneath her bare feet. The buoyant give of the bridge, beginning to wobble and undulate. At once familiar and awful. She began to run.

Panting, gasping, she pelted across the glossy backs of the crows, so dense she could not see the emptiness of space below her feet. But the bridge was narrow, scarcely five feet across. In the growing light she could see the lone mountainside, the rocky ledge in front of the Gate. She could no longer feel her mother's hand clasping the back of her dress.

Were they still there?