Half World

by Hiromi Goto

  Fumiko and Shinobu closed their eyes, and the matter of their bodies broke apart into a thousand motes of red and lavender light.

  “Ah!” Melanie gasped.

  The motes of light hovered in human shape for several seconds before they began to flutter like a shower of cherry blossom petals falling from a tree. But instead of falling to the ground they shimmered and fluttered upward.

  Time had slowed. Perhaps it had stopped. But suddenly the portal began to close with a millstone grinding.

  Tears streamed down Melanie’s cheeks. She stretched out one hand imploringly.

  The crescent of the portal was waning.

  Suddenly, several motes of her mother’s dark red light flew away from the cluster that continued to rise upward. They flew apart then spiraled together to form a single larger ball of light. The dark red hinotama, her mother’s soul, no larger than a chickadee, darted through the last sliver of the portal before it closed. With a great groan the entrance to Half World was lost.

  The red light zipped and darted in the sudden grayness. It spun dizzy circles around Melanie, shot straight up, and plunged down into Melanie’s arms.

  It seemed to splash into Baby G.

  The light disappeared.

  Melanie was numb.

  Why hadn’t that part of her mum gone into her? Why did she choose the baby?

  It was done. That was what her mother had said.

  Melanie felt a thousand years old.

  Everything was gray. A mist, a fog, wherever it was, it was less a world than Half World. It wouldn’t even count as an eighth, Melanie thought. She was so exhausted. Of everything. There was a baby in her arms and it was growing heavy. It would be so nice to just lay it down on the ground.

  Somehow, she kept on walking in the dense gray mist.

  She had come upon a faint and narrow path. Her feet followed the whispery trail that faded in and out of existence. Her footsteps made no sound. She was uncertain why she followed the incomplete path, but there didn’t seem to be much else to do. She looked up once, but everything lay shrouded with a heavy mist that was neither wet nor cold. She lowered her eyes. She felt mildly uneasy.

  She had forgotten something, but she couldn’t recall what it was. The girl felt a small ache in her chest. She glanced down and saw that she carried a sleeping infant whose hands were clasped over his belly. How peculiar, she thought. I’m carrying a baby.

  She continued walking. On the path to every nowhere.

  She remembered nothing.

  She could have been walking for hours. She could have been walking for decades. Only the mild uneasiness inside her chest. Just placing one foot in front of the other.

  Something rippled.

  Like circular waves expanding outward, the small movement lapped at the girl’s body and her consciousness clutched at the change. Laboriously, she slowed her legs’ thoughtless motion and ground to a standstill. The path seemed to tug at her spirit, an aching compulsion to continue. She pressed her palm, hard, against her heavy chest. She should just keep walking like the path wanted her to. . . .

  The something rippled through the fog once more.

  Someone was calling.

  She turned around, heavily, as if she were deep underwater, and pain pierced her to the core.

  Melanie!

  The voice. So familiar. So far away. She could not say where she had heard it before.

  In the great noncolor of the mist, Melanie thought she saw a tiny flicker of dark red light. It did not seem to draw much closer. It bobbed rapidly back and forth, as if struggling against a strong current.

  Come back.

  The voice was tinny, as if coming through an old-fashioned radio. Melanie’s numb thoughts began to thaw. Curiosity threaded through her consciousness and she began to wonder. Was someone back there, holding a candle?

  A second flame flickered beside the first. A cool lavender orb. Then a third and a fourth.

  Melanie! Melanie!

  Several voices called, and the sound drew tears to her eyes. Straining with the last of her strength, Melanie took one faltering step toward the lights. Pain ripped through Melanie’s chest as she resisted the path’s beckoning, but the pain cleared her dulled senses.

  Half World.

  Her parents lost. Turned into light. Gone. Melanie left alone. With Baby G . . .

  “I don’t want to remember,” Melanie whispered.

  Senseless. To have lost all that she had ever known—lost what had been most precious to her . . . All the struggle and heartache, all for nothing. At least nothing left for her . . .

  And where was she now? Dead or alive. Or something else. Where did the path lead?

  She wanted to lie down and sleep for a long time. She was tired of running from danger. She was tired of heartbreak. She was just tired.

  The fog billowed encouragingly around her ankles. It crept up her thighs, leaching the last reservoirs of self-will she had remaining.

  Come back!The voices called again, thin and faded. We can’t reach you on our own. You have to meet us halfway!

  Melanie wanted so much to close her eyes.

  Why should she bother going back to her world after all that had happened? There was nothing to return to.

  What if there is? A tiny voice inside her asked. What if there might be?

  Melanie teetered on the cusp.

  Let go, the fog invited. It lapped around her knees, swirled gently around her torso, its numbing touch ever so slightly soft and so blessedly muffling. Forget everything, the fog said seductively, and you’ll finally find peace.

  Peace, Melanie thought dreamily. Peace would be very sweet.

  As if sensing her capitulation the fog swelled almost gleefully, clasping, clutching at her limbs, engulfing her. Creeping toward her face.

  Melanie! the voices called urgently. They sounded far more distant than they had before. She opened her eyes, and the tiny lights seemed like fragile candles burning in a stormy night. Forget, the fog seemed to whisper. Sending gentle tendrils toward her face. Peace forever.

  There was a flutter in her arms. The baby was gazing up at her with large dark eyes. He fluttered his feet once more.

  Dead meant no longer alive in the world she’d been born into. The world she had been trying so desperately to return to with her parents.

  Half World hadn’t offered peace for anyone she’d seen there. And who knew what the Spirits did in their Realm?

  To have lost all that she had known and loved so dearly . . . was there life, still, after that?

  A tiny flame flickered inside her.

  Yes, it said. Yes.

  Melanie tried to raise one foot, to take a step toward the voices that called. They sounded familiar. She wanted to know who they were.

  The fog writhed wildly, almost hissing as it tried to bind her. Melanie bore down hard, slogging through the thick tendrils. They clung to her arms and legs, and she forced her way through them as if tearing away from vines. She groaned at the weight, the numbing spell the fog tried to weave, but she took another step and inched a little closer to the voices that had called her name.

  The weighty fog focused upon her neck. It clenched and squeezed, pulling her back to the place of despair and exhaustion it had wrought.

  Melanie dug in, and reached deep inside herself. To that small, hidden place where she was so completely Melanie there was room for nothing else. Where she was as hard as carbon and more brilliant than a diamond.

  The fog squealed and screamed as it tried to pour into her nostrils, ears, and mouth. Melanie refused. She clung to herself and believed. Hope swelled inside her chest and broke free, streaming from her body in bright rays of light.

  The fog gibbered away, and in its wake Melanie found herself standing on loamy ground. It was slightly spongy, and the smell of peat and soil was richly brown. Although she could see, she could not pinpoint a source of light. It was as if she were in and among light though nothing shone.

  Four or
bs of fire, the size of two cupped palms, zigzagged and swirled toward her. Ember red, pale lavender, dark green, and seashell pink, the hinotama were warm as breath, cool as an evening breeze. They danced around Melanie’s head, swooping in to rain light kisses upon her upturned face, and she was suffused with sweet happiness.

  TWENTY

  MELANIE, A VOICE said wonderingly. Proudly. You did it.

  Melanie blinked back a sudden surge of tears. “Mother?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  Yes, the Spirit answered.

  And Melanie realized she wasn’t exactly hearing the words. She could sense them, and the memory of the voice followed.

  The Realms are reunited. The binding has been broken!a childish voice bubbled excitedly. She sounded familiar.

  Melanie blinked with growing joy. “Are you the starfish-child?”

  The pink light spun in dizzy circles, flying figure eights with joyful glee. Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m free!

  Oh, Melanie,Shinobu’s voice murmured. You saved us all.

  We, so long trapped in Half World, have become Spirits.The dark green light hovered in front of Melanie’s face.

  “Gao Zhen Xi,” Melanie sighed. “You, too.”

  Yes, her familiar voice said warmly. I thank you with all my Spirit. You are a wonder.

  “I don’t know,” Melanie said in a small voice. “What’s going to happen to me? Am I dead?”

  No,Fumiko’s Spirit said firmly. You have not lived out your life’s path.

  “Can’t I stay with you?” Melanie whispered.

  Oh, Melanie, Fumiko’s Spirit sighed. I know it’s hard to live. If I could but return with you to the Realm of Flesh. But if I did it would undo all that you have done to reunite the divided Realms. There is balance in the Realms once more. But this balance has been reached while you have suffered loss. Believe that you have a life still waiting for you in the Realm of Flesh and with that life all that is possible and yet to be. I know you’ll find joy again. You brought joy to so many. The Realm of Spirits has been filled with the light of those who’ve been trapped in Half World for too long. Joy will come back to you.

  “Can you promise me?” Melanie asked.

  The four hinotama pulled back simultaneously. They hovered before her, minute variations to their light. Dark green flames, flickers of seashell pink, threads of pale lilac inside a lavender fire, and the dark, warm depth of red in her mother’s Spirit.

  There are never guarantees in life,Gao Zhen Xi’s Spirit said sternly. Her “voice” softened. But for those who strive, who dream and believe, live with an open heart, and dare to love, it is almost certain that joy will come to you.

  “That’s a lot to ask, to live like that. I don’t know if I can anymore. I don’t know if I want to.” A shiver crawled up Melanie’s spine. She could feel the oppressive weight of the fog waiting for her to despair.

  It is for you to choose what you will do with your life. Rest, if you are weary. Hide, when it is prudent to do so. But try to live it fully. Live as you are meant to live! Her mother’s Spirit was jubilant. Darling girl! What you have done! Know that the actions of one girl can change everything!

  A shiver of wind. Like leaves rustling. The scent of green and growing things. The hinotama floated upward, like ashes above a fire. Melanie did not know if they were rising high above her or if they were simply shrinking. Baby G raised a pudgy hand as if to bat at the beautiful glowing lights. Suddenly, they arced across the sky like shooting stars.

  They were gone.

  The rustling grew a little louder, verging on the edge of a soft roar.

  Leaves. Small silvery leaves glinted on slender boughs. The sudden breeze smelled slightly bitter and sweet, like sap in the spring.

  Melanie stood in a glade of young aspens in the middle of a pristine vale. Growing here and there were small clusters of young, leafy trees, and brilliant stars lit up the night skies in oddly shaped constellations, though a light seemed to be growing, from which direction she couldn’t say. Time seemed to hover between dusk and dawn. The air smelled green.

  She inhaled deeply and the air tasted delicious.

  Her heart felt lighter.

  Baby G twisted inside her arms. When a cool breeze skated over his skin he began to shiver.

  Melanie frowned. She looked around but could see nothing she could use. She set the baby down on the soft grass and quickly tore several feet of cloth from the bottom of her dress. She awkwardly bundled up the infant.

  Baby G gurgled with satisfaction.

  What place had she come to now?

  It certainly wasn’t Half World. But it didn’t smell like her own Realm, either.

  Which way should she go, to find the way back home?

  One direction seemed have begun glowing a little brighter. She turned toward the light, when her foot snagged on something hard and she almost fell. Staggering, hopping as she struggled not to fall upon the baby, Melanie finally regained her balance.

  “Ouch,” she said belatedly. She rubbed the raw top of her foot against the back of her calf.

  What was that?

  It didn’t feel like the nature stuff in the rest of the glowing glade.

  It was definitely growing lighter, because she could see more details. There was something sticking out of the grass.

  It looked like a metal handle.

  Melanie tilted her head with thought. She experimentally tapped the ground with her heel.

  A hollow sound.

  Melanie knelt beside the metal handle and ran her fingers around the flat surface. Square in shape, it was a trapdoor made of wood. She experimentally pulled at the handle.

  It was stuck fast.

  Melanie moved Baby G several feel away from the trapdoor, then grabbed the handle with both hands. She heaved and strained, her temples almost bursting with the effort, until the seal began to give. She released her hold and took several deep breaths. Then she pulled firmly but carefully once more.

  The trapdoor suddenly popped open and fell out of her hands just as a vast, stinking beast roared in the space beneath her, clouds of black exhaust billowing upward.

  “AH!” Melanie shouted and kicked the door shut with her foot.

  Her heart pounded until the smell of the terrible clouds filtered into her consciousness.

  Exhaust.

  The exhaust from a vehicle.

  Could it be?

  Melanie crouched beside the hatch, pried it up, and held it partially open.

  Directly below them, around fifteen feet away, was a strip of broken white lines painted onto concrete. A dingy orange light cut through a film of automobile exhaust.

  The roof of a small sedan whipped past, followed by a dark pickup truck.

  Melanie’s eyes widened.

  She was abovethe Cassiar Tunnel.

  But not on Adanac Street, where she and Ms. Wei had stood so very long ago. This was a different place. Something new and growing . . .

  She gazed once more at the perfect glade, so separate from the din and pollution beneath her. She looked through the hatch for the way back to her noisy and messy world.

  Attached to the wall directly below the hatch was a small metal ladder. She could just make out a sign beside it near the bottom. SECONDARY EMERGENCY EXIT, it read. Sighing, Melanie clutched Baby G awkwardly to her chest. She took one last deep draft of the perfectly green-smelling air of her special glade.

  Maybe, one day, she would be able to find it once again. Melanie lowered her feet onto the rungs of the metal ladder. It felt disgusting on her bare toes, sticky, tarry with exhaust fumes and particles of oil. She curled her toes around the metal and stuck her free arm deep, so that she gripped the rung with the inside of her elbow. Using her elbow to hold her weight, she inched downward with her feet, almost dangling, as she held Baby G in her other arm.

  Just imagine, Melanie thought. To make it through Half World and come back home only to fall off a ladder in the Cassiar Tunnel. It would have been hilarious if it weren�
�t so precarious.

  The occasional vehicle whipped by. No one seemed to notice the young woman crawling down the inside wall of the tunnel. Melanie prayed that she wouldn’t be passed by a semitrailer. The tailwinds would certainly suck her to her death.

  Panting, keening from the pain in her elbow, Melanie made her awkward way down, Baby G keeping very still the entire way.

  When her feet touched the firmness of concrete she almost wept with joy.

  A driver caught her in the corner of his eye. The sound of the horn blared, amplified in the confines of the concrete tunnel.

  Melanie’s heart plugged her throat.

  She coughed in the aftermath of the exhaust.

  Baby G was coughing as well. She had to hurry and get out of the poisonous air.

  Melanie walked out of the garish orange lighting of the Tunnel onto the freeway.

  It was night.

  She had no idea what day it was.

  For all that she knew, time might have passed by more quickly, here. Who could say?

  Melanie’s eyes were dry. Her throat ached. Her feet were growing cold. Yes, it had been autumn when she first left her Realm. She remembered that. She had come here with Ms. Wei so very long ago.

  Ms. Wei . . .

  Something warm began to grow inside her chest.

  She would go to Ms. Wei’s store. Knock on her door. Ms. Wei would let her in.

  Melanie began tottering down the side of the freeway. She didn’t realize she was on the verge of collapse. That with each step she took she was that much closer to falling.

  A white car whipped past and slammed on its brakes, screeching wildly. It swerved a little as it hit a patch of gravel when it pulled onto the narrow triangle of pavement between the freeway and the feeder ramp.

  The slam of a car door. Pounding footsteps.

  The cops, Melanie thought dully. Oh, well. They could take her and Baby G to Social Services. She was an orphan now. They both were. It didn’t matter.

  A rough hand circled her back. It was enough to make Melanie topple. An arm stopped her forward fall and also plucked the baby from her.

  Melanie had not realized how heavy the baby was until he was gone.

  She looked groggily at her captor.