The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic

by Unknown

  She'd done very well in PMR, leaving aside the B in BM. She'd got an extra A for Chinese even though neither of her parents spoke Mandarin, and she hadn't had extra tuition. The tuition classes had only started in Form 4 – her parents had thought she could do with the help, since it was such a leap from Form 3 to Form 4.

  What Su Yin remembered of Form 3 was a feeling of clarity. A sense of being capable of doing everything necessary.

  It was funny. She could remember the fact of being happy. She knew intellectually that life had once been easy, that she had once known she could do things. But she no longer knew how that felt.

  Now she lived on the edge of a volcano. Everything seemed fine above ground, but panic slumbered underneath. At any time things could go horribly wrong.

  As they did when Miss Yong gave up on her.

  Miss Yong did this without ceremony. She took the Grade 7 repertoire book off the stand and said, ‘This is pointless.’

  Su Yin's chin and shoulder hurt from holding the violin in place. She lowered her bow, not sure if she was supposed to stop playing.

  ‘If you're not taking this seriously, better don't waste both our time,’ said Miss Yong. ‘You're not practising. You think I cannot tell?’

  Su Yin took her violin by the neck so she could roll her shoulders. She mustn't cry.

  Miss Yong must have noticed her shock, because her face softened. She was a young woman with a temper and many an exasperating student had felt the sharp side of her tongue, but they had always got along before. She had taught Su Yin since Su Yin started playing at the age of ten.

  ‘Look, don't take this personally,’ said Miss Yong. ‘But might be better if you find another teacher. Maybe I have taught you so long, you are too used to me already. You're getting complacent. It's not that you don't have talent. But you cannot pass Grade 7 without practising. How many times a week do you practise?’

  Su Yin was silent. She rushed through her pieces every Saturday morning before she went to class.

  It wasn't that she'd thought Miss Yong wouldn't notice. There was just so much going on. Violin hadn't been a priority.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Miss Yong. ‘I'll talk to your mother. Don't look so upset. It's not the end of the world. If you start practising now and you're disciplined, you can definitely pass your exam. But do you want to perform at the concert or not?’

  The charity concert was in a fortnight. Su Yin was going to play one of her exam pieces. Her grandparents would be in town that weekend, and they were coming along with her parents to see her. They'd bought tickets weeks ago.

  ‘Yes,’ said Su Yin. She heard her voice wobble.

  ‘I'm not going to stop you,’ said Miss Yong. ‘But you're old enough to know whether you can do it or not. Do you think you're at a level where you can play for an audience? People are not going to be lenient, you know. I have a student, nine years old, this tall–’ she sketched in the air a child the approximate size of a garden gnome ‘–and she's the same grade as you. She's been practising every day for the concert. This year she's performed in public twice already.’

  ‘I can do it,’ whispered Su Yin. She cleared her throat. ‘I'll do it.’

  Miss Yong nodded, her mouth grim.

  ‘Let's finish early today,’ she said. ‘I don't think you'll get much out of the class if we go on also.’

  ***

  ‘I need another wish,’ said Su Yin to the still water.

  The white koi blinked a sleepy eye at her.

  ‘Still want more?’ it said. ‘One not enough meh?’

  ‘One more only,’ said Su Yin.

  She was seeing the world through a film of water. For a moment she thought she was in the pool, looking up through the green light at a girl with a huge pale face and puffy eyes. Then she was back inside her body, kneeling by the pool and dripping tears into the water.

  ‘I will pay,’ she said.

  ‘I was joking only,’ said the white koi. ‘No matter how much wishes you want also, I can grant. As long as got payment. You want what?’

  ‘Let me play well at the concert,’ said Su Yin. ‘Don't need until like Yo Yo Ma like that. Decent can already.’

  She had not even been decent for the past few weeks. It wouldn't make sense to be brilliant. She had to hide.

  ‘This will be more expensive, know,’ said the koi. ‘First time got discount. This time price is higher.’

  ‘Can,’ said Su Yin. ‘Anything also can.’

  This time she dipped both her arms into the water, up to the elbow. Her fingers brushed a passing goldfish. It shot off into the depths, a shivering gold droplet of alarm.

  This time she kept her eyes open. The white koi's gummy mouth looked soft. When the mouth touched her skin, it looked as if it was covering her arm with little sucking kisses.

  It felt as though hooks had sunk into her arm. They punctured the tender flesh of the inside of her elbow and tore their way through her skin, down to the wrists.

  Su Yin managed to take her arm out of the pool to steady herself against the ledge, though her vision was going funny. Blood stained the water.

  The koi had to do her other arm. It had to be slow. That was part of the magic.

  The slower it was, the better she'd be. The pain made her safe. It would make her good enough.

  ***

  Up on the stage, Su Yin had a moment of terror. She touched her bow to the strings and a screechy hiss came out.

  Her mother had put make up on her and her face felt heavy, unfamiliar. She looked wildly in the direction of the piano, though she could hardly see Miss Yong for the glare of the lights.

  Miss Yong had the decency not to grimace. She nodded at Su Yin, lifted her hands from the keyboard, and prepared to start over again.

  Su Yin had to perform. But nothing hurt.

  She took down her violin, pretending to have to flip through her score. As she lifted her right hand to turn the page, the sleeve of her blouse fell away. The welts stood out, red on her skin.

  She knew how she would do it.

  She pulled the sleeves up to her elbows and nodded at Miss Yong. Miss Yong started playing the intro again. Su Yin touched the bow to the skin of her left arm.

  The texture of the horsehair dragged across raw flesh was hideous. But it sounded beautiful. A rich round woody sound unfurled from her bow.

  There was a reason the fish had torn four lines down the length of her arm. Her fingers stayed on the fingerboard, dancing from string to string, but the strings were silent. Her bow scraped across the wounds on her arm, and the violin sang.

  What did the audience see? Surely not the blood, dripping on the stage. It saw an ordinary girl, playing a piece competently.

  Wrapped in the fish's enchantment, Su Yin was safe from being seen. She felt she could do anything.

  ‘That was very good,’ said Miss Yong after the performance. ‘Finally thought you'd practise, hah?’

  Su Yin's playing had been OK only for a Grade 7 student, but she could tell Miss Yong wanted to be encouraging. She nodded.

  ‘But are you all right, Su Yin?’ said Miss Yong. ‘You're a bit pale.’

  ‘I've been working hard,’ said Su Yin, and smiled at her distantly, ecstatically.

  ***

  Su Yin was drooping over the table at Puan Rosnah's house, waiting for class to start and sleep to take over, when Cheryl pulled out a chair next to her.

  ‘Eh,’ said Cheryl. She hesitated. ‘I want to talk to you. Are you free later?’

  Su Yin stared at Cheryl for a dazed moment before the words registered.

  She'd stopped doing the dolls; they were no longer interesting. But she still wasn't getting much sleep. These days she lay awake at night for hours, perfectly content, watching the patterns of light shiver and uncoil on her ceiling like ripples in a pool.

  ‘Hah?’ she said.

  She didn't know what to say. She was free later. She never had anything important to do. She wasn't free later. Her dad wa
s coming to pick her up, and then there would be dinner and homework and the latest Canto serial, and then the light dancing on the ceiling.

  Cheryl was smiling, trying to convince Su Yin it was nothing serious. The smile was a trap.

  ‘We so long never talk,’ Cheryl said. ‘What say we go kopitiam, have some snack, chat a bit? My mom can give you a ride home afterwards.’

  ‘Is this for, like, a CF thing?’ said Su Yin. Cheryl had been irritating in the past about inviting Su Yin to Christian Fellowship meetings.

  Cheryl looked relieved.

  ‘Yah! Want or not? Promise I won't talk about it too long,’ she said. ‘Come lah.’

  ‘But my dad—’

  Cheryl shoved her handphone into Su Yin's hand.

  ‘Quickly call him before class starts,’ she said. ‘We'll walk over to the kopitiam after class. I told my mom to pick me up from there.’

  ***

  At the coffeehouse Cheryl bought some kuih and a Horlicks ais. Su Yin wasn't hungry, but she ordered bubur cha cha to be sociable. When it came she dipped her spoon in the thick soup and lifted it out again, watching the yam and sweet potato bob to the surface on the waves she created. Any moment now the axe was going to drop.

  ‘Are you doing okay ah?’ said Cheryl.

  Su Yin tried to look surprised.

  ‘Yah,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Is everything okay at home?’ said Cheryl. ‘With your parents all that.’

  ‘Everything's fine,’ said Su Yin.

  ‘I know maybe, recently,’ said Cheryl. She was stirring her glass of Horlicks extra fast. ‘Like, maybe your studies have been a bit ... how to say, you know, like, maybe they're not going so smoothly. But you know, it's no big deal, right? It's nothing so important. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Right?’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Su Yin. Her plan had been to stay quiet, but some evil genius moved her to say: ‘What matters, then?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ said Cheryl.

  Say God, thought Su Yin. I dare you to say God.

  ‘Being happy,’ said new Cheryl. ‘Family.’

  Something in Su Yin's chest came unstuck.

  ‘What if they contradict?’ she said. She regretted it the moment she said it.

  ‘Su Yin, you are not doing okay,’ said Cheryl.

  It was too late to deny it. Stupid, stupid to have said that—

  ‘It's okay. I'm handling it,’ she said. ‘Like you said, doing badly in studies is not the end of the world.’

  ‘I didn't mean that,’ said Cheryl. She reached out too quickly for Su Yin to stop her, and flicked up Su Yin's sleeve.

  The red lines on her arm flared out before her sleeve slipped down again.

  ‘You are not doing well,’ said Cheryl. ‘This is not right.’

  Su Yin said, ‘It helps.’

  She didn't know how to explain about the fish and the magic. About how giving something small and unimportant like pain meant you got back big things.

  It looks worse than it is, she wanted to say. It's worth it.

  ‘I don't know how to handle this kind of thing,’ said Cheryl. She sounded scared. ‘Su Yin, you need better help than this. Have you told your parents?’

  Su Yin didn't need to answer that. She stared at her bubur cha cha. It would be cold if she ate it now.

  ‘They should know,’ said Cheryl.

  ‘You can't tell them!’ said Su Yin.

  ‘I have to tell somebody,’ said Cheryl. ‘You cannot go on like this. You think other people haven't noticed? I'm talking to you now because another guy in our tuition told me a few weeks ago you came in with a huge scar on your hand. You know when people start to gossip, this kind of story can spread very fast. Everyone at school knows why you don't wear short sleeve anymore. It's either your parents find out from me now, or a teacher tells them later.’

  Su Yin swallowed her heart back down her throat.

  ‘The teachers know?’ she said.

  ‘It's only a matter of time,’ said Cheryl. ‘Everybody knows already.’

  ***

  That night Su Yin did not sleep.

  ***

  When she saw her face in the pond again, it startled her. She had used to dislike her round face. She wasn't chubby, but she had a flat, broad peasant's face, full-cheeked.

  Now her face had fined down. The cheeks were hollow. Her cheekbones stood out. Above them her narrow eyes were ringed with dark circles, panda-like.

  She hadn't noticed how she'd changed. Even her parents, usually so attentive, had missed it. When you saw someone every day, you did not see them change, little by little.

  Small things, given time, become mountains. Fish bones lodge in the throat and choke you.

  She said to her reflection in the water: ‘I need help.’

  ‘What do you need?’ said the white koi.

  Su Yin thought about the hidden report card. The scars on her arms. Miss Yong dumping her as if six years counted for nothing. Cheryl's inexorable kindness. Her mother and father.

  Su Yin's hands were shaking. She whispered: ‘Hide me. Can you do that?’

  ‘For how long?’ said the fish.

  ‘Until it's over,’ said Su Yin.

  ‘Are you willing to pay?’ said the fish.

  ‘Yes.’

  The fish's mouth opened and closed, opened and closed again.

  This time there was no need for negotiation. In some mysterious way, Su Yin and the white koi wanted the same thing.

  ‘Leave your clothes on the floor there,’ said the fish.

  Su Yin took her clothes off. She knelt on the floor, wincing when the chill of the marble hit her skin. She reached out to the fish with bare arms.

  The white koi's mouth opened wide. It was a black hole into which air and water flowed. What came out was transfigured, a substance entirely new.

  What went in was hidden.

  Su Yin put her hand into the koi's mouth. It was warm and wet, but not unpleasantly so. She put in the other arm and closed her eyes and lowered her head, and let herself be swallowed whole.

  The koi's mouth was a dark place. Her body was being crushed, compacted, folded away. It hurt. But after this, Su Yin knew, there would be rest. After this, nothing.

  ***

  The girl climbed out of the pond with jerky movements, as if she was so tired she had forgotten how to use her limbs. It took her a few tries to get out. She lay limp as a landed fish on the edge of the floor, her hair unspooling in the water. Curious goldfish nibbled at the strands and swam away.

  She got up, holding her body like someone learning an unfamiliar dance. The clothes were a puzzle, but she knew what they were supposed to look like. She worked at them until they looked right.

  When she was done she walked out from behind the potted palm, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her.

  With every step her legs grew stronger. With every step her feet got more used to the ground.

  The students waiting in the living room looked up at her approach. Their eyes widened.

  ‘I fell in,’ said the girl.

  An Inspector Calls

  Kate Griffin

  The man drew my gaze because he didn’t watch the train.

  His eyes were fixed, forward, dead ahead. His feet were locked together, his knees slightly bent. The commuters waiting for the train watched the tunnel, the departures board, their newspapers, their phones. He watched the wall. I watched him. His trousers were black silk, his shirt was bright blue, his tie was knotted silver and grey. His face was at the respectable end of youth, his hair gelled bright and slicked back from his forehead, but his eyes carried the grey look I had seen only once, in the face of the mother who left the delivery room of the hospital, her arms empty, a bag of infant’s clothes unopened in her lap.

  The blast of cold air from the tunnel came first. Then the noise of the engine, winding down. Then came the lights of the train, curling out of the dark. It slid into the platform, letting o
ut an electric sigh, and as it neared, he ran, and so did I.

  He ran for the platform’s edge, a sprinter off his blocks, and, curiously unsurprised to see him go, I ran too, catching him round the middle, both my arms wrapped across his belly, and throwing him to the floor, a second before the train slid across the piece of track which would, a moment later, have held a piece of him.

  Those nearest, gasped.

  The rest of the platform did not, and quietly boarded the train. It was 7.55 a.m. at Bank station; suicide is inconvenient on your way to work.

  We sat, he and I, on the bench beneath the posters which suggested that travelling while inebriated might not be the way to go; and he did not weep, and did not shake, or tremble, or show any sign that here was an individual whose sole desire had been death by Northern Line. The platform manager hovered by the wall and hoped we would get gone soon, so he could focus on his daily task of shouting at those who crossed the yellow line.

  Not knowing what to say to a man who wanted to die, I tried the obvious.

  It’s okay.

  You’re alright.

  I’m here to help.

  As if rising to the challenge of these banalities, he raised his head, looked me in the eye and said, no.

  No one can help me now.

  ***

  My name, he said, is Jeffrey Parch.

  I used to be a wizard.

  I worked for a company called IMI International. We are lawyers – I was senior partner, the youngest ever made. An hour of my time was five hundred and fifty pounds; my annual end-of-year bonus was more money than you will make in ten years. I was the best. I knew I was the best. And I knew that I had cheated to become the best.

  I cheated when I scryed against my enemies, stared long into still pools of oil to learn their secrets. I cheated when I cursed witnesses who acted against me, when I walked into negotiations with hidden charms and pendants around my neck. A judge who ruled against me was struck down with disease; an intern with beautiful eyes and a jade necklace was suddenly overwhelmed by my presence. What I wanted, I could have, I could make it so, and no one knew my secret. Until the Inspector called.