Free Half World by Hiromi Goto

in the gray damp of it. Dense, flat, it did not puff and roil like clouds in the skies at home. It was like a vast quilt spreading to the horizon.
    Melanie could not see through the completely opaque layer. For all that she knew demons and winged monkeys crouched by her feet, chuckling, waiting for the best moment to trip her. Bite her. Gnaw her to the bone.
    Yelping, Melanie scuttled up several steps so her entire body was above the unsettling divide.
    What was below?
    The image of one of her mother’s Bosch paintings rose unbidden to her mind. It was a copy from one of the panels from The Garden of Earthly Delights . Hell . . .
    With creatures and naked people being tortured, pigs wearing nuns’ habits. Sawed-off ears and women skewered with harp strings. Why had her mum hung it up on the wall?
    Melanie shook her head.
    It must be so dark, beneath the layer of clouds. . . .
    How much could a person endure?
    Melanie took a shuddering breath and held it. She stepped down. Down, one step after the other, she descended through the obscuring grayness. For several seconds she could see nothing, and panic trembled inside her throat, threatened to burst out from her lungs. She did not want to breathe in the sickly clouds.
    But she could not see.
    She ran down several steps, then broke completely through.
    For a moment she almost fell over backward because the stairs were wrong, she was going down, but when she looked at her feet the steps appeared to be going upward. She sat down, hard, her heartbeat pounding inside her eardrums, and desperately closed her eyes. It’s only vertigo, she told herself. That’s all. Because stairs that go down can’t go up. It’s impossible.
    Except . . . except the Escher calendar prints beside the Bosch ones on the wall in their living room they had stairs going up and down, around and about, all in different directions.
    â€œOh, Mum,” Melanie whispered.
    Melanie kept her eyes closed, but she began scooting downward on her bottom. Like a little child she lowered her feet, then her bum, one step after the other. She continued this for a long time until the rough stone step was no longer. It felt smooth, flat, like tile instead of something hewn from a cliff.
    Melanie opened her eyes.
    The vista that lay before her was like something from a stranger’s dream. A place of dark shadows, jumbled silhouettes of cities and jungles, forests and villages. The light that managed to penetrate the overwhelming layer of clouds created a shadowy world, absent of colors and vibrancy. It looked like early evening on a completely overcast day.
    The city portions of the vista looked odd. Castle turrets beside skyscrapers, pagodas and apartment blocks, tents and stone ruins, warehouse stores and freeways. The glint of light reflected off water, a nonsensical system of canals leading nowhere. Were those horse-drawn wagons? She thought they were horses . . . with scooters zipping past them, or motorbikes, tanks rolling with the grind of metal, the crumping of mortar.

    It looked like every city and period in time were mashed together. Zeppelins drifted in the distant sky, and what looked like a flock of flamingos stretched toward a body of water.
    Streetlights, gas lamps, candles began to bob in windows. Neon signs flickered, a searchlight spiraled the flat surface of the clouds and a siren began to wail. Bomb warning? Melanie wondered. She realized the flickering pale lights farther off must be fires. Things were burning. The air was smoky with it.
    An unseen animal began to howl.
    This was Half World.
    Melanie’s lower lip began to wobble. She slipped her shaking hand into the deep pocket of her mother’s overcoat and fished for the amulet. When her fingers fell upon the smooth stone she clutched it tightly inside her fist.
    â€œJade Rat,” her voice quavered. “I’m scared. . . . ”
    The stone remained stone.
    Melanie’s lips twisted. “Sorry,”