by Hanna Alkaf
If you had very sharp eyes indeed, you might even have seen the grasshopper place one tiny foot against the little girl’s damp, tear-stained cheek. And if you strained your ears, you might have heard the words he spoke for her alone, the ones that made her close her eyes for a second and lean in close, just breathing the scent of him.
Then he slipped into the small jar she held in her other hand, and there was silence as she placed the silver lid on, screwed it tight, and placed it in the deep, dark hole she’d dug with her little trowel.
Nobody said a word as she covered the jar with the damp earth, packing it tightly so you’d never know it had been disturbed at all—not Mama; not Jing, cradling her arm in its cast; not Badrul or Salmah or even the witch, who all slowly began to fade as light stole into the cemetery.
She was sweaty and shaking by the time it was over, and her face was streaked with dirt and tears.
“It is done,” Suraya whispered. “The bond is broken, and this is the end.”
And as the sun rose over the cusp of the world, the ghost finally closed his eyes and died.
Epilogue
THERE IS A wooden house on the edge of green, green paddy fields, that rattles and shakes when the monsoon winds blow. There is a woman, tall and sometimes tired, her bun still severe, her face a little less pale; a woman whose eyes still harbor a certain sadness in their depths, but also often hold light and warmth, and shine when she smiles, and sparkle when she laughs, which these days is—well, not often, but much more than she used to. You’ll have to forgive her; she is out of practice, after all.
But there is also a child.
And the child is finally, finally happy.
Acknowledgments
I WAS GOING to start with my agent and editor, but truly, the first acknowledgment goes to everyone who, as a child, fed me with a steady diet of hauntings: the friends who whispered scary tales between classes, the booksellers who shoved ghost stories into my hands, the adults who used the threat of monsters to get us children to behave. Your enduring gift to me was the nightmares I’m still trying to pin down onto the page. Thanks, I guess?
Thank you to Victoria Marini, who took what I described as “my weird grasshopper ghost book” and embraced it wholeheartedly, as she does every one of my unapologetically Malaysian projects.
Thank you to Alice Jerman, who was not fazed when I had to delay our first chat by fifteen minutes because I was lost in Kyoto, and then somehow stuck around despite my incoherent emails and the ingenious pranks I kept suggesting she play on her colleagues. This book is what it is because of you and your incredible insight. I guess I can forgive you for making me take out that Ewok scene.
Thank you to the team at HarperCollins, including Jessica Berg, Gwen Morton, Alice Wang, Alison Donalty, Vaishali Nayak, and Emma Meyer, for all your hard work in turning this mess of words into an actual book, and to the amazing Anastasia Suvorova, who brought Suraya and Pink to life for the cover in the most stunning way possible.
Thank you to my crew of writer friends, especially Margaret Owen, Rebecca Mix, Casey McQuiston, SK Ali, Laura Weymouth, Karuna Riazi, Atikah Abdul Wahid, and Hamizah Adzmi, without whose DMs and WhatsApp messages I would probably still be in the pit of despair. It’s hard to finish writing books down there. It’s way too dark, for one thing.
Thank you to my parents, who never told me “this book is too scary for you.”
Thank you to my children, Malik and Maryam, who have taught me new fears every day since they were born, but also inspire me with the courage and enthusiasm with which they face this ridiculous, terrifying, wonderful world each day.
And thank you to Umar, the one person who keeps all my nightmares and daymares at bay. I love you.
About the Author
Photo by Azalia Suhaimi
HANNA ALKAF is a writer from Malaysia, where the legend of the pelesit originated. She is also the author of the young adult novel The Weight of Our Sky, and her work has appeared in Shape, Esquire, and Marie Claire, among others. The Girl and the Ghost is her first novel for middle grade readers. She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her family and can be visited at www.hannaalkaf.com.
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Copyright
THE GIRL AND THE GHOST. Copyright © 2020 by Hanna Alkaf. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2020 by ANASTASIA SUVAROVA
Cover design & lettering by ALICE WANG
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hanna Alkaf, author.
Title: The girl and the ghost / Hanna Alkaf.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Harper, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Retells a Malaysian folk tale in which a lonely girl, Suraya, inherits from her grandmother a pelesit, a ghostly demon, who proves to be a good companion, bringing both danger and hope.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040567 | ISBN 978-0-06-294095-7 (hardcover) Subjects: CYAC: Demonology—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Muslims—Fiction.| Malaysia—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H36377 Gir 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040567
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Digital Edition AUGUST 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-294097-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-294095-7
2021222324PC/LSCH 10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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