Rating is a green star and a pink star, according to Zap's Rating Guide

"Slant-eyed freak," they'd hissed with sour breath in my ear. "My Pop says y'all should'a died." I wanted to fight back, to throw at my tormenters words that stung more than the blows raining on my bruised torso. These words were slippery, though, short-lived and unpredictable as lit strings of firecrackers. My thoughts were even and precise, gentle murmurings that rose and fell with the lap, lap of the river on the shore. Useless thoughts in this angry, ugly world.

They soon departed, noisy and jostling along the sodden woodland trail, leaving me to nurse a bloody nose and bruised feelings. What was left of them, anyhow. Taunts flew in my shadow there days, competing with memories that threatened to eat my insides until I was hollowed out. A ghost. It might well happen. I'd seen it done before.

"Here". A fuzzy blue coat thrust itself into my face. No, not a coat. A hand-thing. There was a leaf skeleton dangling from the cuff, and the fabric smelled dangerously musky, of strange animals. "Are you all right?"

I took that question to mean my physical state. Carefully fingering my damaged face, I answered in the affirmative, fighting the nausea that rose with every movement of my head. I raised my good eye instead to meet the concerned gaze of my rescuer. It was a girl.

When I looked at her straight on, she drew in a sharp breath. I braced myself for the repulsion and waited for the hand to be withdrawn, but it only wavered for a second. "Come on." There was kindness in her umi-face. "I'll take you back to the house, and I'll 'phone for Br- for my friend." I grasped the damp hand-coat and clambered awkwardly to my feet, more unsteady than usual in the presence of this young lady. She brushed a few wet twigs from my sleeve and indicated that we should go into the woods, opposite from where my attackers had gone.

Trudging along, we were silent, listening to the squishing of rotted leaves under our shoes and the constant dripping from the morning's rainfall. "I'm Honey," she offered once. That confused me. I knew what honey was, of course, and the yellow bear and his band of menagerie animals. They lived in woods much like this, my uncle told me. Perhaps this was a code amongst my schoolmates. I wondered how I should reply when the girl spoke up again. "That's just a nickname, of course. People used to call me that because of my hair. It was honey coloured when I was younger. It's much darker now though. My real name is Madeleine." She stopped, shy.

I snuck a peer at her umi-face, rosy behind a curtain of shiny hair. The dying light made it hard to see the colour of her hair, but it did indeed remind me of honey. She looked up suddenly and smiled. I looked away.

Moments later we stepped from the woods into a clearing behind a large house. It was possibly the largest I'd ever seen. I wondered how many families must live in it. There were no signs of life around, except for some large animals off in a field. It looked like they had coats on too. I would never understand this place, I was sure.

The girl guided me inside to a long hallway. "Sit," she told me, and I did so, unable to think of a better thing to do. She shucked off her bright red jacket and got tangled up with her hands stuck inside. "Silly mittens," she muttered, tugging one off with her teeth. The other gave up without a fight and the offending mittens (for that was what they were apparently called), landed with a slight plop on the long bench beside me. "Be right back", she promised, and dashed off down the hall.

Alone, I realized I was tired. I wanted to be in my bed, my real bed back home, back before this all happened. I wanted my mother to kiss my bruises and sing them away with her warm hug of a voice. I wanted to smile and laugh and see my friends and not have to fight down the bubble of hateful anger that kept building in my chest, threatening to explode my gaigin thoughts onto the world. The door burst open just then, derailing the path my mind had wandered onto.

The boy was from school, I knew that. He hung around with that loud group of kids. I realized that the girl's jacket was the same colour as the ones they wore at school. The boy stared at me, suspicious, and his hair glowed like fire in the rays of the setting sun. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. I tried to come up with an answer, some phrase that would help dodge the inevidible punch or insult. My mouth worked, fish-like, the words slithering from between my fingers. "Where's Honey? Honey!" he bellowed, not waiting for my reply. "Sit," he ordered, for I had stood without realizing it. He kicked off muddy shoes and stomped down the hall, muttering things I could not and did not care to hear.

I did not sit, even though I had been told to more than once in this huge empty house. I opened the door. It was dark, and I did not know how to get home. I was completely lost. It made me want to cry.

"Oh, don't go," the girl implored. She popped up behind me. The electric lights were not on yet, and the hallway was in shadow. "Bri- my friend isn't home, but Miss Trask will be back soon, and she will tend to your face. And if you like, you can stay to dinner. We're having hamburgers. Mother and Daddy are away for the evening, so it will be just us kids. Jim would like to get to know you better, and so would I. Please, won't you stay?" Her umi-face caught the rising moonlight. Back in the house, I could hear the telltale static of a radio. A soft voice crooned into the still air. "Have yourself a merry little Christmas..."

"I must go home. I am sorry," I told her stiffly, hating the harsh grating sounds of the words. "My uncles require that I must come home."

She understood. "Let me write down the directions. Just a sec." While I waited on the steps, I watched the animals come in from the field. Horses. Their breath blew in white puffs as they snorted and tossed their heads, trying to throw off the straps that bound them.

The wooden step squeaked when the girl stepped on it. A handwritten map was pressed into my clammy hand, along with a torch. "You're cold", she observed. "Take this". She wrapped a muffler around my throat and offered me her mittens. "It's Christmas Break, so we won't see each other at school. Maybe you can come by sometime, now that you know where we are." I think she was offering me her friendship, a warming thought on that chilly night.

"Thank you, Mm- Laine," I managed, trying not to sound like a fool. It was suddenly important to get the words right.

"Are you sure you won't stay?" she pleaded, umi-face shining in the blueish moonlight.

"No, thank you. Good-bye." For the first time, the salutation did not catch in my throat. I turned, and walked to where she had pointed, down the steep drive toward the road. Behind me the house was dark and cold, except for a single light burning in one window. Stuffing the torch in my pocket, I clapped the mittens together, smelling what must be the horses in the wool.

It was a beautiful smell.

I turned toward the village, each step bringing me closer to what passed for home.

The End