In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  “I still think you’re wrong.” She couldn’t keep the pout out of her voice. “I think Daniel’s my friend. And yours too. And I bet he’s trying to help Dad right now.”

  “Okay, you believe whatever you want to, if that makes you feel better. But the truth is, there was more going on there than friendliness. He’s connected to this whole mess somehow, I know it.”

  A branch he’d just moved past whipped back into place, scattering raindrops and grazing her face. Mia nearly cried out in frustration. Simon always had to have the last word. It reminded her of how he’d teased her when they were little. Enraged, she would lunge at him, pummeling with her fists, and he would hold her at arm’s length, his body just out of reach. Once, he’d even picked up a book with his other hand and started reading while she swung at him.

  She moved several steps to her left. It was harder going, but she’d rather make her own path than follow her brother’s.

  They stumbled across the road without meaning to. They were pushing through dense growth when it opened up to a grassy bank, right above a dusty road. Mia hardly had time to register the sight before Simon turned and pushed her, hard. She toppled like a falling tree back into the brush.

  She landed on her backpack with a whoomp, the air knocked out of her. Simon hit the ground beside her face-first.

  “Don’t make a sound!” he hissed into her ear. “Soldiers!”

  As Sung-min rode in the back of the canopied truck, his stomach rumbled. The daybreak meal of thin maize gruel hadn’t filled him up — it never did — and the next meal wouldn’t be until evening. A whole day working on the roads with nothing to eat. It was all he seemed to think of now, the constant calculating of where and how and when he could find something to satiate the gnawing in his gut. He wasn’t starving — he knew the difference — but he was hungry enough to never be able to release his mind to other thoughts.

  The truck rattled and bumped over the rough road, surrounded by open fields. The day was clear and bright; that was a blessing. Even if the early-morning rain had continued, they’d have still headed out to work on the roads.

  They passed a stream where a young woman squatted over a large rock, wringing and pounding her laundry, her short braid shiny black against the white of her shirt. Sung-min thought of his own sister, helping their mother with morning chores before school began. She was only twelve, but with their father down in the mines and her brother gone to be a soldier, she’d carry a heavier load. When would he see her again? With luck and leave granted, he might get back to the village once or twice a year. By the time he finished his service, nine long years from now, she would be out of school, possibly married, perhaps even a mother herself. The thought made him tired, as if he were an old man whose life had already passed him by, instead of an eighteen-year-old on the brink of adulthood.

  He knew this thinking was wrong. He should be happy for this chance to serve. It was all he’d dreamed of as a young boy, to be on the front lines ready to defend the homeland from invading Yankee imperialist warmongers. Back in kindergarten, he’d felt strong and powerful during field day games, smacking imaginary foreign invaders with toy guns. From the age of nine, he’d marched proudly as a Young Pioneer, and with his friends, reenacted thrilling scenes from the movies the whole village watched in the theater each week, of North Korean spies outwitting the treacherous Japanese, and brave guerrillas winning impossible battles against the invading long-nosed Americans and their South Korean puppets. He’d been thrilled, as a teenage member of the Socialist Youth League, to practice on the shooting range with live ammunition.

  Now he’d achieved his vision of being a soldier — but all he could think of was food and where to find it.

  Next to him on the wooden benches, some of his fellow recruits murmured together in low voices while others dozed, heads lolling back against the green canvas. Even Chul seemed subdued, lacking his usual energy to devise torments. One small reason to be grateful for their inadequate rations.

  The rain had dampened the dirt of the road, so the truck wasn’t raising a cloud of dust. He had a clear view out over the rice paddies and beyond to the hills thick with trees, a bordering ribbon of autumn color. He saw how he could paint the scene, washing in yellow gold for the expanse of fields, filling a brush with color for the bright foliage, adding more water to sketch in the far blue hills. Finally, a brush tipped with dry ink would stipple in the rough stubble of the shorn stalks, as if the fields had been shaven.

  That was a job he hadn’t minded, helping the farmers with the corn harvest. There was always the chance of stray kernels to be palmed as he bent to lift an armload of stalks, then slipped into his mouth to soften and surreptitiously gnaw, or a grasshopper when no one was turned his way. He preferred them roasted to bring out the nutty crunchiness, but they were tolerable raw.

  A truck with a load of crushed stone was following their caravan today, so he guessed the detail was filling potholes. He’d be lucky if he could snag some grass stems to chew on. He thought about the day ahead, shoveling and spreading rock, summoning strength from a body winded by lack of fuel, and he wondered, again, about a way out.

  A few of his comrades, so malnourished they could barely climb out of their bunks, had been sent home to regain their strength. He had thought of pretending to be too sick to eat, played out the vision in his head of being shipped back to the village, of seeing his father and mother and sister again. Of finally eating a meal that filled him. Of resting, and of painting. But two things stopped him: The extra mouth to feed would be a burden for his family, as would their anxiety about his health. And when faced with a mess hall meal, no matter how unappetizing or inadequate, his hunger always overcame his resolve.

  They reached the hills, where the road met the forest. The truck slowed, pulled to a halt. Another group of soldiers was already there, carrying shovels and pickaxes. He rose to his feet and clambered out of the back of the truck to join his comrades.

  Mia froze. Above them, the grass and bushes grew waist high. Enough to hide them from the road, she hoped. She tried to breathe, calm her racing heart.

  “They’re just down the road, about fifty feet,” Simon whispered. “A couple of trucks. I’m pretty sure no one saw us.”

  They waited, still as stones. No one could possibly know they were here, unless … maybe the motorcycle driver had gone straight to some official and reported the strange girl. But then they should be searching the woods, not the road.

  “I’m going up there a little, see if I can find a place to watch them, find out what’s going on.”

  “I’m coming too!” Mia mouthed.

  He shook his head. “No way.”

  Simon wasn’t the boss here. Even if he had saved her from getting caught. When he started forward, she followed. He glanced back with an annoyed look, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop her.

  They crawled through the wet grass and bushes parallel to the road, as close to the ground as the brush would allow. A sharp sprig scratched Mia’s ear and she flinched, swallowing a cry.

  In the distance, faint voices called. On his belly in the grass in front of her, Simon held up his hand. He pointed his index finger at himself, then the road. Mia nodded. He slithered forward, heading toward a thick cluster of bushes still in full green leaf. Reaching the screen of foliage, he lay there, looking to the right, then for a long time to the left. Finally, he turned his head back to her. He lifted a finger to his lips, then beckoned her forward.

  The soldiers were just boys her age. Skinny middle-school boys, five feet tall or so, shorter than Mia. About twenty of them, all dressed in olive green uniforms and caps. They carried shovels and seemed to be filling holes in the road, not searching for foreign escapees.

  An engine roared, coming up from Mia and Simon’s right. Several of the soldiers turned toward it, facing in their direction. Mia gasped.

  They weren’t boys. They were young men. Older than Simon, maybe nineteen, twenty.

&
nbsp; But they were the size of boys.

  She’d seen Dad’s photos of little children who never got enough to eat, with bloated bellies, sores, and hair like straw. This was what childhood famine did to bodies that survived it.

  Simon turned to look at her, his jaw tightening. He caught her eye and tipped his head back. Let’s get out of here.

  Soon they were hidden in thick foliage and could stand upright. Mia fell in behind Simon, feeling spent. He seemed to be walking a line parallel to the road, so they could return to it when the soldiers were gone, she guessed.

  The ground was uneven, suddenly falling away, then rising up, jarring as her foot hit solid mass sooner than she expected. She felt jittery and trembly, each step an effort. Her mind was muddled. Maybe it was being so tired and hungry. Or maybe it was the sight of those young men, the thought of their hunger as children. Or their hunger now.

  “Mia, keep up!” Simon called in a fierce whisper, turning to frown at her.

  She stopped dead in her tracks and folded her arms, glaring at him.

  He gaped at her, arms outstretched. She stood her ground.

  Simon dropped his head back in exasperation, then stalked back toward her. “Mia, what the —”

  “You could go a little slower, so I can keep up! We were working together for a little while back there. Now you’re back in that stupid cave of yours. Surrounded by ‘Trespassers Will Be Shot’ signs.”

  “What are you talking about?” He was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “If we’re going to save Dad, we have to be a team. You’re only willing to accept me as a team member when you’re in charge of everything!” she raged at him. “You keep shutting me out!”

  “Squeak, I have no idea what this is about, but we don’t have time for this. If you’ll remember, we’re trying to escape from North Korea. And trying to help Dad get out of prison. So could you just keep up?” He turned his back on her and started off, still at the same pace.

  She felt like something in her would explode. She stomped along, pounding each step as if Simon were underfoot. She kept her eyes on the ground. He could just wait for her.

  After a bit she glanced up again. Her heart lurched. She couldn’t see Simon anywhere. She swallowed. Don’t panic. He had to be nearby.

  Then she caught a glimpse of his gray sweatshirt moving through the leaves, down at the bottom of a gully. Relief flooded through her. But he had gotten really far ahead. She didn’t think she could catch up unless she sprinted, and she was way too tired to run.

  This was dangerous. He should’ve checked to see if she was behind him. He was too far away to hear unless she shouted, and shouting was obviously a bad idea.

  Simon was moving around the base of a small hill ahead to her right. If she went over it rather than around it, maybe she could come out in front of him. That would show him.

  She turned and started up the slope, relishing for a moment the feeling of choosing her own path. The Scout, that’s who she was.

  By the time she was halfway up, she saw her mistake. The hill was covered with dense undergrowth, with tree trunks and boulders she had to weave around. It would take longer than going around. Maybe the other side would be faster, going down.

  The summit of the hill was a long ridge, covered in piles of flat rocks. She was out of the thicket but had to watch her step on the precarious piles. At least it looked as if the ridge was taking her in the direction Simon had headed.

  To her right, the ground fell away, rock platters spilling down the slope, as if the top of the hill had caved in. As Mia stepped on a large rocky sheet, she felt it wobble under her weight. Her body tipped to the right, then her feet slid out from under her. She tumbled off the ridge and down the steep side, dislodging loose rocks as she fell. She landed hard near the bottom of the scooped-out center of the hill, an avalanche clattering around her.

  A cloud of dust rose. She lay still, checking her body for damage. She was on her back, head pointed downhill. It smarted where she’d banged the back of her skull on hard rock. She was scraped and bumped and rattled in a dozen places. But she was okay. Her first reaction was giddy relief.

  Then she noticed pressure on her legs and pelvic bone. Several large, heavy pieces of slate had slid on top of her.

  She pushed on the rocks with her hands. They didn’t budge.

  She tried to raise herself. It was like trying to do sit-ups on an angled board with someone holding down her legs and hips. She tried to twist on her side to slip out from under the rocks. A sharp pain in her lower back stopped her. She lay back, the blood rushing to her head.

  Simon! Help!

  She stopped herself before the scream left her throat. He might not be able to hear her anyway. But if he could, so could someone else. He might have heard the rocks falling, but he wouldn’t know it was her. Or where to look. He was probably still forging ahead. How long would it take him to notice she wasn’t there behind him?

  The weight of the rocks pinned her down. She didn’t have the strength to lift them off or to crawl out from under them. She was trapped.

  The panic rose, a tidal wave submerging her. She could die here. She’d never get home, never see Dad or Mom or Simon again. And the longer she lay trapped, while Simon moved farther away, the more likely it was they would not survive. Simon could spend days looking for her, until he died of thirst or starvation…. She hiccupped a sob, tears leaking down the sides of her forehead into her hair.

  If Simon hadn’t been so awful, this never would have happened. He was the one who’d made them run, who’d made them get into that truck. He was the reason they were lost in the middle of a forest on a mountain in North Korea! He left her behind. If she died here, it would be all Simon’s —

  Stop.

  If she kept wasting her time blaming Simon, she would die here.

  She had opened the gift box and the phone against Mr. Lee’s instructions. She had followed Simon when he said they had to run. She was so busy being mad at him she hadn’t noticed him getting ahead of her. She chose to take the shortcut over this hill.

  She had gotten herself into this.

  She felt the weight of the rocks again. It was true. She was completely trapped. There was nothing she could do.

  This time, instead of panic, she experienced a sense of emptiness. Not like depression, like outer space. Vast and endless. And somehow, free. Her hand slipped off her mouth and dropped to the ground below her head.

  She lay there, still. Not fighting it. Just letting go.

  A picture floated into her empty mind: a bottle of soda. And a bottle opener, popping off the cap. It seemed so random.

  Then she saw.

  Her feet, legs, and hips were pinned, but her arms were free. If she could grab something to wedge under the rocks, lifting them enough to free herself … It would be like popping a cap off a bottle.

  She felt around until one hand found a medium-sized chunk of rock. Thin enough, maybe, to slip under the rocks pinning her. Strong enough, she hoped, not to shatter.

  The pressure in her head from being upside down was increasing. She focused on the image of the bottle opener. Find a place the rock would fit between the layer on top of her and the one below. Find something she could balance it on so there was room to maneuver it. Find the strength to wedge it in.

  She pressed the rock into the opening. Nothing happened. Then she felt it — a tiny bit more space. She shifted her body down an inch. She shoved the small rock in a little deeper. Pushed down on it. Shifted her body again. This would take forever.

  Her hips were freed for a moment, but her knee was now pinned. Then her ankle. Her backpack caught on the rocks beneath her. She rotated her body in tiny increments, looking for some bit of space where she could move. She remembered, with a shudder, a short story about a cave spelunker caught in a tunnel deep underground, working and working to get his body free.

  Sweat pooled at the back of her neck. She took a deep gulp of air. At least
she was out in the open. She was going to do this. She was going to get out of here. She was going to save Dad.

  And then all at once she was free. Her legs slid out from under the pinning rock. The sudden lifting of the weight was glorious. She rolled over onto her side, hugging herself and laughing. She had done it.

  Mia clambered shakily to her feet and stumbled back to sit on a rock, letting her head clear. She was dusty and bruised and scraped, but her clothing and pack had protected her from getting badly cut.

  Her watch read 1:17, but she had no idea what time she’d started up the hill. She needed to find Simon. Fast.

  She started picking her way up the slope, careful not to set off another avalanche. Along the ridge and down the hillside. Her legs felt wobbly after all the exertion. She forced herself to move slowly and carefully.

  As she started down toward the gully where she’d last seen Simon, she peered through the brush and trees, looking for any sign of movement, any blond hair or gray sweatshirt. Nothing.

  At the bottom, she turned in a circle, scanning the woods all around. No sign of Simon. He could have gone on ahead. Or retraced his steps to look for her. She sank to the ground against a small tree trunk, completely spent.

  There was a crackle in the underbrush. She leaped to her feet, whirled, looking wildly in every direction.

  Simon’s light hair flashed in the sunlight, coming down the hill toward the gully. She staggered to him, relief washing over her. He looked like the best thing she’d ever seen.

  “Mia! What the hell —” Simon’s expression was furious.

  “I went over the hill, but I fell and got pinned under some rocks. I couldn’t call out to you. It took me forever to get out!”

  He was shaking his head, swearing, eyes wild. “What were you thinking? Do you know how dangerous that was? I’ve been searching for you for ages! I might never have found you! You could’ve died up there!” As if he had rescued her.