Lady of Dreams

by W. R. Gingell

  “Dae?”

  “Never mind,” said Yong-hwa, laughing softly. “I’m only teasing you. I’ll take you out again tomorrow, Clovis-a.”

  “Dae,” I agreed. It cost nothing to agree, since it was very unlikely that Yong-hwa would remember his intention tomorrow.

  As if he’d heard my thought, Yong-hwa said, “I should make sure not to forget.” His fingers were distorted with magic, like the shimmer of heat on a hot day, and I had barely enough time to wonder what it was there for when a small gleam of it rippled across the air from Yong-hwa’s fingers and wrapped around my wrist.

  “Ya!” I said, startled and immediately, tiresomely heavy. “Hajima!”

  It vanished in a moment, and Yong-hwa, as utterly astonished as I’d ever seen him, said, “You—you saw that?” He looked down at his fingers and then back at me, his eyes uncomfortably intent. “No, but I knew you can see magic, and I forgot it. Clovis-a, I’m really not so forgetful. What is it about you that is so hard to remember?”

  “I’m not hard to remember,” I said, leaning my heavy head against the tree trunk and feeling the weight of my wrist bearing down on my knee. “It’s just that I’m not around very often. It’s easy to forget about me.”

  “Ani,” said Yong-hwa, with the shimmer of magic still circling his fingers. “It’s not so easy to forget you, Clovis-a.”

  11

  When I was younger it was hard to tell Dream from Reality. I would slip so seamlessly from one to the other that I was never quite sure if I was remembering a Dream or a memory. As I grew older I tried to distinguish one from the other by examining the focus of the “memory”; in my Dreams the focus was always someone or something other than I. It occurred to me, far too many years later, that it was a faulty method of examination.

  After all, even in my Reality the focus isn’t myself; it’s my surroundings—the people, the things around me.

  Ya. You should stop asking questions. You’re interrupting me.

  All right, just one more.

  Have I had trouble distinguishing one from the other when I’m with you?

  Aniyo. Not for a while now. Don’t think it’s because of you, though. It’s been years since I got really confused about whether something was Dream or Reality.

  You’re not special.

  . . .

  . . .

  Ya. If you keep kissing me like that I’ll tell Eun-hee to lock you out of my sitting room.

  ***

  Yong-hwa did come back to see me the next day, much to the annoyance of Carlin, who had to make a mad dive through the washroom door and wait there until we left.

  In fact, he came to see me every day that week, to my ever-increasing surprise and rue. He found me in my sitting room, and when he didn’t find me in my sitting room, he found me in the garden—or in the conservatory, or in the library. He even came to find me when I was in Eun-hee’s rooms, thinking myself safe and comfortable. Eun-hee, traitor that she was, simply smiled at him and welcomed him to take me away, “For,” she said, winking demurely at a captivated Dong-wook, “Dong-wook and I are going to go for a walk, and we’d only tire Clovis out.” This, to my rather sour amusement, left Eun-hee in the eager company of her young lover, an outcome she didn’t seem to have considered when she was encouraging Yong-hwa to take me away.

  Yong-hwa, observing my sour smile as we strolled down the hallway, asked, “What are you smiling at, Clovis-a? Eun-hee nuna’s antics?”

  “Dae,” I agreed, catching a glimpse of Dong-wook. Taking advantage of the situation, he had curled up beside Eun-hee on the sofa, his head in her lap. He turned his head to smile adoringly up at the somewhat helpless Eun-hee, who was caught between laughter and exasperation. At last, acknowledging her own agency in the matter, Eun-hee laughed and stroked his hair, giving in to the inevitable. Dong-wook, gazing up at her dreamily, was content to stay where he was. I left them to their peaceful afternoon, and clung tighter to Yong-hwa’s arm to pull myself back into Reality.

  “Ah, Unni!” I said. “I did warn her.”

  That afternoon, after walking with Yong-hwa, I found myself sharing a meal with him. I would have returned to my rooms alone, but Yong-hwa, as sticky as the warmly clinging Dong-wook, remained with me. And the next day, he returned again. It seemed that, having learned to remember me, Ma Yong-hwa was determined not to forget me again.

  “This isn’t within the scope of my duties, miss!” said Carlin, after his latest wild leap through the conservatory window to escape Yong-hwa’s notice. “Why can’t he leave us alone?”

  “I thought you liked leaping out of windows,” I said, sipping my tea. “You’re always climbing in and out of them.”

  “Yes, but that’s of my own volition,” argued Carlin.

  “Or on my orders.”

  “Yes. Or on your orders.”

  “Well, just consider it another order, then. You must always leap through windows when Yong-hwa oppa is nearby.”

  Carlin grinned, but said, “You know you don’t have to call him Oppa when it’s just you and me, miss.”

  “I know,” I said. The truth was, I’d gotten used to calling Yong-hwa Oppa. “But I don’t want to slip when I’m around him. He makes a point of it.”

  “And you don’t have to go out with him every day, either,” said Carlin. “Does he own you?”

  I gave a small spurt of laughter. “That? I’m a sort of a fire screen for him. Or maybe I’m a distraction. I don’t know. He might even still think I’m Chajin tea, if it comes to that.”

  “Is he an idiot?”

  “No,” I said. “It would be easier if he were. But so long as he thinks I’m a piece in the game and not the maker of it, I should be safe.”

  “Well, I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  I gazed at him over the rim of my teacup. “What way?”

  “Like you’re his personal puzzle to work out.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? He likes puzzles. We’re trying to distract him from Ae-jung, after all.”

  “No, miss,” said Carlin. “That’s what you’re trying to do. I’m just doing what I’m told. I think we should pack up and go home.”

  “Don’t be boring, Carlin,” I said. “I can’t go away until Yong-hwa oppa is warm again.”

  “Why does it matter if he’s warm or cold?” demanded Carlin.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it does.”

  I Dreamed away that afternoon in the garden by myself, flitting between a bright, loud Dream of Jessamy and Hwan-chul as they argued incomprehensibly about composition and threw clods of grass at each other, and one of Yong-hwa as he strolled through the manor. Through the last week, Ae-jung and Hyun-jun had taken to working at the cottage instead of at the manor—most likely to escape Se-ri’s gimlet eye—and Yong-hwa had been looking more relaxed. Lately he was also looking less glazed and more alert, and more than once in my Dreams I saw a keener interest in his eyes when he delicately questioned Hwan-chul.

  “Soon,” I said to the Dream of Yong-hwa, “Soon you’ll be back to your bored old self.”

  It would make Carlin happy, and as for me, well—I’d go back to Dreaming the same kind of Dreams again. That would be restful. No more visits from an uncomfortably clever Yong-hwa, just the silence of my Father’s estate and my white-and-beige room by the sea in Scandia.

  “Why are you wandering around the manor anyway?” I asked him, irritably. “Jessamy-a and Hwan-chul are in the garden.”

  I followed him through the Dream and saw him start up a now-familiar stairway. Yong-hwa was approaching my suite. Oh. He was looking for me. He was smiling faintly, tapping his cane lightly against the carpet of every step, and it occurred to me that this was Yong-hwa in one of his more thoughtful moods, a puzzle in mind.

  He was strolling elegantly down the hall when the door to my suite began to open. I felt a cold shock of surprise—that was Carlin coming out! I scanned the Dream, a hiss of indrawn breath drying my lips, and wit
h more haste than precision knocked a small vase from the mirrored hall stand that Yong-hwa was passing. Yong-hwa looked around enquiringly at the shards, and then at his own elbow, his head cocked.

  “That’s right, Oppa,” I said. “You knocked it off yourself.”

  Yong-hwa brushed off his elbow and seemed to catch sight of himself in the hinged mirror. He turned his head left and right, then began to make adjustments to the yellow crisscrosses of his tie. There was a stirring of unease in my stomach, but it was needless fear: Yong-hwa was absorbed with his tie. Farther up the hallway, my door opened fully. Carlin had seen Yong-hwa now; he closed the door very softly behind him, while Yong-hwa remained at the mirror and made tiny adjustments to his intricate tie with his eyelids dropped. I felt my fingers close tightly around one another and forced myself to uncurl them. Yong-hwa couldn’t have seen Carlin exiting my room, so why was I uneasy?

  Carlin looked a little uneasy himself, sucking in a breath and straightening his shoulders before he started down the hall. He drew level with Yong-hwa, but it wasn’t until he passed Yong-hwa that I felt myself able to let out the breath I’d been holding. Carlin smiled, a small, derisive thing that lifted one side of his mouth, but as he put his foot on the second step, Yong-hwa wheeled away from the mirror and said, “You there.”

  Carlin’s head turned slightly; then, as he remembered that he wasn’t to be known as my servant and couldn’t be as rude as he chose, he sighed, stepped back up onto the landing and turned to bow to Yong-hwa.

  “Ye, Seonnim?”

  “I know you,” said Yong-hwa, studying his face, and I felt a shock that was at the same time faint and entirely body racking. “I know you,” he said again. His mouth wasn’t smiling, but I could see the sharpening of his cheeks. “You brought in my pressed clothes a week or two ago.”

  Carlin’s face immediately went blank. I would have felt relieved if I weren’t quite sure that his impassive-footman role wouldn’t work when Yong-hwa’s clever eyes had seen his normal, unguarded face just moments before.

  “How may I assist you, Seonnim?”

  “That’s a good question,” said Yong-hwa. “I’m wondering that myself. More importantly, I’m wondering how much you’ve already assisted me.”

  Carlin’s face, if possible, became even more wooden. “Seonnim?”

  “Are you one of Eun-hee’s men?”

  Oh. Oh. Be clever, Carlin, I thought.

  Bless him. He nodded and slowly said, “I take orders from Eun-hee.”

  True, though not all the truth.

  “Who told you to bring me those clothes?”

  “That? Well, I bring a lot of people their clothes,” said Carlin. “I don’t think I remember, Seonnim. Sorry.”

  “I see,” said Yong-hwa. “And do you happen to know anything about the tea vendor who was on the hilltop until a week or two ago?”

  “Ah. Not much, sir. He’s popular with the villagers, and with some of our guests.”

  “I see,” said Yong-hwa again. “Would Min-su jibsa know more?”

  “Most likely, Seonnim,” Carlin said. “Our butler knows everything that goes on in and around the manor.”

  Yong-hwa, his cheeks very sharp now, said for a third time, “I see.” He turned as if he would have continued down the hall, and paused to ask, “Is Kang Eun-hee’s young friend in her rooms?”

  “Ye, Seonnim?”

  “A young crippled lady, Sohn Clovis-ssi.”

  Carlin frowned, as if deep in thought, and I said quietly, “Well done, Carlin.” Yong-hwa was already very well aware that other people found it difficult to see me. It would have been suspicious if Carlin had remembered me straightaway.

  At last Carlin said, “I think there was someone like that staying with the mistress, Seonnim. Perhaps she’s gone now; I haven’t seen a young lady walking these halls in some time.”

  “This one might not have been walking, either,” said Yong-hwa. “She’s most often unable to walk.”

  “Ah, ye,” said Carlin, the picture of confusion. “Maybe Min-su jibsa would know, Seonnim.”

  “It’s unlikely,” said Yong-hwa, and with a slight smile he walked past Carlin and back down the stairs. I caught a brief glance of Carlin behind Yong-hwa as he descended, scratching his head and still looking vaguely uneasy.

  I was feeling less than comfortable myself, a lingering feeling that I had missed something important nibbling away at my stomach but not clear enough for me to know why it was there. At length I pushed away from that Dream and tried to regain my usual even keel of slight interest by slipping into one of Se-ri instead. Unusually enough, she had driven herself into the village in the lane puffer and was seated in the café section of the local telegraph office, rapidly sending off one message after another. It was a cool, efficient Dream with none of the subtle disquiet I’d felt in Dreaming of Yong-hwa, and I remained in it to watch Se-ri as she plotted, planned, and swiftly penned each message in a clear hand. I even saw one message addressed to my father. She must have been preparing and waiting for Hyun-jun’s capitulation for quite some time. Today she hadn’t painted her face in its usual soft pinks and peaches; she was all business. It was only when she looked out the café window and caught sight of Ae-jung and Hyun-jun walking down the street that something else cracked the businesslike set of her face.

  “Ah,” I sighed. So that’s how things were. Se-ri might tell Hyun-jun that she wanted a contracted engagement for the sake of the connections it opened to her—she might even tell herself that—but I knew that look. As much as she was capable of it, Se-ri actually loved Hyun-jun.

  I huffed a soft laugh. “You’re interesting,” I said. “I like you.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa’s voice.

  “Good afternoon, Oppa,” I said to the diamond glitter that was peeking through the Dream. Yong-hwa’s earrings were very useful in telling me where to address my remarks when I couldn’t see him properly. “Are you having a walk?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” he said. “I was looking for you in the manor, but you’ve made it all the way outside today.”

  “Eun-hee had me brought out with her,” I said. “The Contraption chair is somewhere around here.”

  “You’re not walking again?”

  “Nae.” One of the effects of pushing my Dreams to do my bidding had been finding myself more tangled in them than ever, even between Jessamy and Yong-hwa. I could still vaguely feel my feet, but not my toes, and there wasn’t enough strength in my legs to bear me up, even if I could have felt them. “I’m sunning myself today. Eun-hee will come back for me later.”

  “That settles it,” he said. “I won’t walk, either.”

  The glitter of Yong-hwa’s earrings had been joined by the twin glitter of his eyes; if I’d had to guess, I would have said he was having a very good day—or, at the very least, that he had been let in on an enjoyable secret that no one else knew. I didn’t find it a particularly comforting look, and I protested, “Don’t let me stop you, Oppa.”

  “You’re not,” he said. “My own laziness is stopping me. Will you share your seat with me, Clovis-a?”

  I huddled the excess material of my skirt against my leg more by feel than by sight, making at the same time a space for him to sit next to me and a buffer between us.

  “I always have the feeling that you’re looking right through me,” Yong-hwa said conversationally, as he sat down.

  “Ah, that,” I said, concentrating on making his face more than a blur with uncomfortably dancing eyes. “It’s hard to focus when I’m tired.”

  The folds of material between us pressed slightly as Yong-hwa turned on the seat to look down at me. “Shall I take you in?”

  “Ani,” I said hastily, withdrawing from that pressure. I was content not to walk for the time being; Yong-hwa’s particular kind of heaviness was more sudden and devastating than the heaviness I got from Jessamy, and although I was beginning to acclimate, I still preferred no
t to expose myself to it unless I was prepared for it. “I’ll stay until Eun-hee arrives to take me back in. Are Jessamy and Hwan-chul still in the garden?”

  “Ah, you’ve met our young friend, have you? What do you think of him?”

  “I think he must be very exhausting to teach,” I said. “And I think he must be very distracting.”

  “Yes,” Yong-hwa said. “He was very . . . distracting. That’s what interests me. He was a very timely distraction that was preceded by about three or four other very timely distractions.”

  “Oppa?”

  “I made some inquiries about him,” said Yong-hwa. “Among other things. But my inquiries about Hwan-chul were the only ones that produced any kind of a result. He’s staying with his aunt, who told me that someone from the manor told him to walk over on the day that I met him. They told him that he could meet me.”

  Probably Jessamy, I thought, quietly and deeply amused. It was a relief to know that even Yong-hwa could reach the wrong conclusions from his observations and questions. Perhaps I had been too fearful.

  “Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa slowly. “A month or so ago I succumbed to a kind of madness that has been clinging these last few weeks. I was searching for a way to make myself well again when someone began to play an interesting little game with me.”

  I gazed at him through a fine sheen of Dream that persisted in showing me Jessamy and Hwan-chul, and said, “This is a confusing story, Oppa.”

  “It was a clever little game, quiet and interesting. And I wondered,” Yong-hwa said slowly, “I did wonder if a softhearted young agassi had somehow found out about that momentary madness, and if it had occurred to her to send someone to arrange a few distractions for me.”