Ashes by Haunted Computer Books

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?
    ###

    IN THE FAMILY

    "How could you even think of selling it?"
Gaines breathed on a brass rail and polished it with his jacket
sleeve.
    Mother should be proud, Gaines thought. But
her pride was in a new luxury sedan, twice-yearly trips to the
Mediterranean, face-lifts. All fleeting, mortal things. If only she
had more of the Wadell blood in her. Then she would find joy in the
only things that truly last: a proper memorial, a