Ashes by Anthology

get mixed up?
    That's how I was feeling. How could my eyes feel cold and glassy and big like that when I was asleep? But all I know is that Sung Li wanted me to look through her eyes.
    Sung Li saw the edge of the shelf, she felt the cold of the bronze shoes against her back. But the robe was soft and snug around her body, the sleeves as loose as pillowcases. She stretched out and then she was standing, raising up on those wiggly legs and walking to the glass door.
    She tripped over an ivory elephant that came up to her knees. The elephant fell over and landed on some of Uncle Theodore's army medals. The noise was so loud, it would have woken me up if I hadn't been dreaming so heavily. Then Sung Li crawled over a toy metal train that was old and rusty. Curly flakes of paint stuck to her robe.
    She pushed open the glass door to the showcase and jumped to the floor with something from the shelf, something that was dark. She landed on her little shoes, her head flopping up and down because it was so heavy. In my sleep, I heard a thumping and scratching down the hall, at my parents' door. Or maybe I was awake, because a dog was barking somewhere down the street.
    Then I heard Daddy's breathing, sort of long and loud, not the short and fast way it gets on Mom's library nights. Sung Li felt the edge of the blanket that was hanging down to the floor. She pulled herself up, the volcano knife tucked under her arm, and the next thing I knew she was on Daddy's chest and rocking up and down like a boat on the ocean.
    I don't know what happened after that, only I heard Mom screaming and I think I woke up and I was glad it was only a dream because I was scared. But Mom kept screaming and screaming, then I knew I was awake because my finger hurt where I had cut it.
    I cut it on the crack in Sung Li's head, just like I told you. Not on the volcano knife. I never touched the volcano knife.

Anyway, Mom screamed and then my head was hurting again. I went down the hall and looked in their bedroom. Mom was sitting up in bed, her face all pink and she screamed some more. I guess somebody finally heard her and called the police.
    The police I talked to before asked why I had blood all over my clothes. I told him it was because I tried to get Mom off the bed, away from what happened to Daddy. Maybe you don't believe me, either, and you'll make me keep telling Sung Li's story over and over, and about those library nights, and how my finger got cut.
    But just go upstairs and look in the showcase. Then maybe you'll quit looking at me like I'm an afterthought. You'll see two things right off. I know, because I did, and I'm only a kid.
    First, you'll see Sung Li right back in her old place in the center of the shelf, staring out with those cold glass eyes that aren't really glass at all, only that stuff they make plates out of. The ugly gnome is down on the bottom shelf, its face all chipped and scarred like the woodcarver got mad at the thing he was making.
    And there's one other thing, something Sung Li couldn't cover up. I don't know how she got the blood off her clothes. And she somehow got the ivory elephant back in place and wiped off the knife that's made of volcano stuff. The knife's gone now. One of those other police took it away in a plastic bag.
    But look on the shelf, and the second shelf, too. You'll see what gives her away. What she left behind on her way back to her old place in the showcase. Two little rows of dots in the dust, about the size of the ends of somebody's fingers.
    Footprints. She couldn't fix that, and I know why.
    I hid behind the door enough times to know that you just can't hurry dust.
    Can we go see Sung Li now?
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    SILVER RUN
     
    Silver Run #19 ain’t much in the daytime. A little longer than a football field, it’s about three miles from Cairo , West Virginia . Now, I don’t rightly know what a “football field” is, but that’s what I hear folks say when they lead tours through the tunnel. Walking