Page 6 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
She traces the scratched characters, puzzled. No idea why she’d have her own name etched into her skin like a wound. Or who made that wound in the first place, or why she can’t remember more.
She examines the gold tiger charm on its plain bracelet chain. The sort of thing given to mark the zodiac of one’s birth year. But what year is it currently? That’s the real question. If she knew that, she might know her own age.
As for the rest, she has little enough to go on. She was swimming… where? A green place, on the ocean. An island, yes. Mei Chi can picture it, just, though the details slip away when she tries to focus on them.
A raging storm.
A girl who loved the sea.
A statue, standing in darkness.
Thesomethingshe did, which she should not have done.
That is it. The full extent of her fractured memories.
Exhaustion is conquering her, and she can’t keep awake much longer. It feels as if she has been swimming for decades without rest. Maybe tomorrow will bring more answers. She lifts up the overturned boat and crawls beneath it, curling up.
Confused and exhausted, Mei Chi slides into an uneasy sleep.
Her first night is a difficult one. Initially, her dreams are a jumble of drowning-related things and screaming faces of sailors. Regular nightmare stuff.
Then, without warning, she wakes abruptly. Something is wrong. Instead of sand, she lies on a bed of lotus blossoms and curling vines, as if she has appeared in the middle of a forest. It is stuffy and hot in here.
Lifting up the boat, she finds the beach is a bleak landscape; the vines exist only under the boat. The beach is now a place where the desert meets the sea, ash-white shore on one side (no trees, nothing for miles) and black water on the other. The sand rattles like bones and the waves are turgid, barely moving, as if the water is too heavy for currents.
A woman stands ankle-deep in the surf, hair blowing in a wind that Mei Chi cannot feel. Her skin is the color of light jade, her nails unnaturally long and sharp-edged. She wears rags, the fabric drenched; rivulets of water run down her arms and drip from her limbs. Strands of kelp wrap around her ankles, and her feet are caked in sand grains. The scent of brine overpowers.
The woman is speaking now. Or rather, she is screaming—the same phrase, over and over. It’s oddly difficult to hear because the air is thick, distorting and muting all noise.
“I can’t hear you,” Mei Chi says. Her words are distorted, too. She walks closer to the green-hued woman. Movement is difficult; it’s like trying to wade in thick jelly.
“SEA… SISTER!” The woman cups her hands around a wind-chapped mouth to holler. “SEA! SISTER!” Her eyes are impossible to see, hidden by her hair.
“Sea Sister?” Mei Chi says, with an uneasy spark of recognition. She should know the answer to her own question. The fact that she doesn’t sends a thrill of panicked anxiety down her spine. “Who is Sea Sister?”
The green-hued woman throws back her head. The hair streams back from her face and her eyes are solid orbs, glistening and dark, like a sea lion’s. Inhuman, yet oddly beautiful.
Then she lunges for Mei Chi, who yelps and leaps backward.
There is no ground behind her, though. Only blackness. She steps into that blackness and falls forever and a day, while the green-hued woman shrieks from an ever-growing distance.
In the shadow of an overturned boat, Mei Chi wakes with a gasp. Just a dream.
Even so, she bursts into tears. Outside, the rainstorm has taken a turn for the worse, battering the hull. The noise is tremendous. Eventually, she drifts to sleep again, and this time the night lets her rest.
In the morning, her already scant memories feel even more shaky and uncertain, like something she merely imagined. Mei Chi (if that is her name) easesout of the overturned boat into a brand-new day. The beach is quiet, which strikes her as odd. There should be fishermen going about their business; this boat should be in use.
Fishermen. So. She knows about their habits, their life. That only amplifies her frustration with what is unknown. It’s as if seeing things she should know helps trigger the memories, but she can’t summon them of her own volition.
It’s too hard to think; the distractions are mounting. She is hungry, but has no food. She is thirsty, but the ocean isn’t drinkable. Find those things first. Once she is safe and warm, that will be a good time to examine the half-remembered echoes which fill her with inexplicable fear.
The scratched name on her arm stings as she walks; she pulls down her tattered sleeve to cover it, and tries not to think too hard about anything for now.
There is an overgrown trail, leading away from the beach and through clusters of trees. Mei Chi follows it until she emerges through leafy foliage at a small village. A few houses, some chickens. If anyone is awake, they are still inside.
Well, except one. A man is crouched down, trying to fix a broken fence. Next to him are barrels which look to be full of rainwater; Mei Chi’s thirst intensifies.
She hobbles over. The man stiffens at her approach, turning to regard her with a wary expression.
