by Jeremy Finn
As the village came into view through pine boughs and shadows, James was relieved to see it appeared deserted. Just as he was about to stroll out into the clearing around the cheebs, though, he heard a clatter and some voices speaking the local language from behind the rocks on his left. Cautiously, James bounded back to the thicker forest near the pool and took cover behind a tall rock. From this vantage point, he was able to see five men in black dragging something into the clearing around the cheebs. They dropped it and picked up spears that were leaning on a tree nearby. After one of them motioned and spoke to the rest, three of them began walking toward James. He realized they were fanning out to search the area around the hold. For a moment, James froze in panic as he tried to decide what to do. Running from them would likely lead him into another party who were surely circling around the other side, and on his right the forest quickly became a tangled mass of bushes with long straight trunks the size of shovel handles and twice as tall as James. He could not see how deep the bushes grew because their plentiful green leaves and marble size yellow fruit created a curtain that was so dense it almost blocked out the early morning sunlight. While he was considering the wisdom of attempting to slip back into the underwater tunnel, a course that, if discovered, would betray the servants inside, he suddenly realized he was not hiding behind an ordinary stone. Though it was weathered and worn, the stone had a rectangular shape, and he could make out some sort of writing on its generally flat surface. This must be the monument, he thought, and he scanned the area desperately for a sign of the trailhead. Sure enough, James noticed a slit in the wall of bushes to his right rear just wide enough for one man to pass through.
As stealthily as possible, James crawled on the ground toward the opening and slipped inside the bushes. After he followed the narrow trail for several meters, he turned back and could just barely see the men walking toward the pool outside the hold. Realizing that he may have left some sort of fresh mark on the mud around the edge of the pool, James turned and bolted down the trail ahead of him.
For well over an hour, James stumbled down the trail, which led over ridge lines and into valleys bringing him closer and closer to the base of the mountain. He was not able to see much because most of the trail continued to be bordered closely by the thick bushes with small yellow fruit with an occasional break where trees and ferns bordered the trail and he could catch a glimpse of the scenery below. The bushes were a blessing, though, as James tended to slip and fall more often as his legs became tired and less responsive to his demands for speed. Several times he avoided plunging down steep slopes into the valleys below him by grabbing onto the small trunks that surrounded him.
Finally, he reached the bottom of the trail, which dumped him out into the back side of a ginseng farm. After jogging down a dirt road for ten minutes, he came to a small village and was relieved to find a taxi driving down the dirt road that ran through the center of the village. James hailed the taxi and fell into the back seat with a painful sigh, ignoring the hostile look the driver gave his dirty, wet clothes. After managing to communicate his desired destination to the driver, James fell asleep in the back seat, his legs shaking uncontrollably from the recent exertion.
INTO THE FOG OF REALITY
Although invisible to our eyes,
even this space between you and me is the hidden world.
What we say is heard by an unseen entity.
What we do is seen by an unseen entity.
Because of this, we cannot do evil.
– Matsuura Shuhei as quoted by Yanagita Kunio, Senzo no Hanashi
James woke up in a hot, dry room and licked his parched lips as his memory reengaged. He returned to his apartment this morning after struggling to get the taxi driver to understand he just needed to go up to his apartment to get some money to pay the fare (his wallet and other personal belongings were abandoned in his cheeb at Hanasan Hold). But what time was it now, and was there something he was supposed to do?
Oh no! James remembered. I’m supposed to be at the park by dusk! He reached over and pulled the curtain back from the window to reveal a black skyline littered with the twinkling lights of the city.
For a few minutes he struggled with the decision of whether he should still go to the park or just forget about this whole unbelievable experience. In his heart, though, he knew the decision he made the other night was real, and he had to at least go to the park and see if anyone was still there waiting for him.
After throwing on some new clothes and a jacket and rummaging for some extra cash, James grabbed a sandwich from the refrigerator and went downstairs to catch the bus. It was a short trip to Taepyung Park, and he arrived there just after eight thirty.
The park seemed dark and uninviting now that the holiday lights were no longer hanging from the trees, and James kept a wary watch as he walked toward the lake in the center of the park. When he arrived, he quickly identified the tree where the Intercessor instructed him to wait, and saw with disappointment no one was waiting for him. After circling the tree once to be sure no one left anything for him, he slumped down against its trunk and sighed.
“Well, I guess that’s it for becoming a servant,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m sure they’re not too interested in a candidate who fails the very first simple task.”
As James was gazing sullenly at the moon’s reflection in the lake before him, he felt something light drop into his lap. Thinking it was a leaf falling from the tree, he lifted his hand to brush it away but suddenly realized it was a folded piece of parchment with a seal. He looked up to see where the letter came from, but all he could see above him was the nearly bare branches of the tree and the stars littering the dark sky like tiny jewels on black velvet. After breaking the seal, James read the letter, which was conveniently written in his native script:
You have chosen to become a Servant of the Light. This is no small decision, and must be made with integrity of heart and commitment of spirit. You will leave now for your journey. Do not stop to gather any provisions or bid farewell to loved ones. You must travel only on what you have with you now and on the mercy of those you encounter along the way. You will know the direction you must go, but not the destination. You will also know when you must arrive, but will not know the distance you have to cover. While this is not a test, you must not give up. Learn and grow as the Light leads you.
What? James thought to himself for a moment in stunned silence. That’s it? This is all the direction I get?
He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his wad of cash. He had about enough money left to buy two cheap meals. How in the world was he going to eat and travel? Especially if this journey was going to take him across the city. Just as he was about to lapse into another session of questioning his sanity, he suddenly felt an urge to head south.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” he said aloud as he tried to decide whether he was pulling a mental trick on himself, or whether he was actually being directed like the letter said he would. James stood up and started walking south back the way he had come into the park. Nothing felt very unusual, just a comfortable feeling in the back of his mind. Just to test things, he turned and started walking back to the tree. At first, nothing changed, then he started feeling like something wasn’t right. It was like a little, inaudible voice was whispering in his ear, “Wrong way!”
James turned back and continued walking south. Well, this is it, he thought. I’m just going to have to stick with the decision I made last night and have some faith in all this. I don’t really understand what’s going on right now, but I do trust Joe, DaNyang and the Intercessor, so I suppose I can trust this...feeling.
With his decision made, James picked up his pace and followed the streets south toward some unknown destination.
By midnight, James was starting to get impatient. He had been walking for three hours and nothing changed. The only thing he felt differently was a growing feeling in the back of his mind that he needed to get wherever he was going
by tomorrow night. Since he was tired of walking, especially since his legs had not fully recovered from his morning flight, he decided it might be best to use some of the cash he had to buy a bus ticket to a destination south of the city, and then just wait until he felt like it was time to get off. That way, he figured he could arrive at his destination early and maybe catch some sleep before whatever he was supposed to do happened.
James found a bus station and managed to identify a town south of the capital city on a map so he could point to it and communicate his desire to buy a ticket. It cost half his money, which was not encouraging, but he was really looking forward to resting his legs. Before getting on the bus, he called his office and left a message for his boss in which he tried to explain in vague terms that he was going to have to take emergency vacation due to unforeseen circumstances. He promised to call back within a day or two.
After choosing a seat near the front of the bus, he sat down gratefully and watched as the city lights streamed by. Stop after stop passed by, and James still didn’t feel any lessening in his subliminal desire to continue south. By about two in the morning, the bus was cruising through the southern outskirts of the city, and concrete and steel were slowly giving way to copses of trees and compact fields covering the flat areas. As James was despairing over his situation and hoping the next stop would have to be his, the rhythm of the bus and the warmth of the heated air lulled him into a sound sleep.
James woke hours later to an increasing feeling of uneasiness in the back of his mind. A bright morning sun pierced the windows and illumined endless fields of low crops on both sides of the road. He did not know where he was, but wherever he was going, he was heading in the wrong direction - he could feel it.
“Could I get off here?” James asked the bus driver who, by the confused look he gave him, obviously didn’t speak James’ language. “I need to leave…Stop please.”
The bus driver grew impatient and motioned for James to sit down. After some humorous attempts at sign language communication, the bus driver finally caught the basis of James’ desires and pulled the bus over to drop him off. With a quizzical look from the bus driver and all the other passengers on the bus, James stepped out into the middle of nowhere, and watched as the bus sped away into the distance.
Well, he thought, I guess I’m not the only one who thinks I’m going crazy.
James’ lips were parched and his stomach growled with hunger, but besides the road he was standing on, there was nothing to be seen in any direction besides the unfamiliar fields of crops. He thought he could make out the form of a low mountain range to the east (the sun was still low in the sky and allowed him to judge cardinal directions), but there was a low haze that limited his distant vision. Seeing that the road he had been traveling on continued south, he realized he was being directed to a new heading – west. How long he had been going in the wrong direction he did not know, since he was sleeping for hours, but hopefully the uneasiness that woke him just began recently.
The fields around him were actually sunken into the ground about a meter deep and filled with about fifteen centimeters of water. They were divided into huge square sections surrounded by dikes and linked with crude irrigation systems. The same crop grew in all the fields – a reedy plant that stood less than a meter out of the water and sprouted two to three clusters of dark purple grain on straight stalks. They were planted side by side in rows and were obviously ripe for harvest. The effect of being surrounded by such an endless sea of swaying purple was disorienting, and made him feel quite alone.
James walked down the road until he reached one of the dikes that ran in a westerly direction, and began to follow it hoping he would come to some sign of civilization before he was forced to drink the murky, stagnant water from one of these fields or attempt to dine on the fresh – whatever it was – growing all around him.
The sun steadily rose overhead until James was warm enough to take off his jacket. It was not quite winter yet, and it still managed to reach a decent temperature during the middle hours of the day. Just as he was about to give in to his thirst and find a spot where the water looked a little less brown, a bump on the horizon caught his eye. Thirty minutes later he came to a small farm house made of clay and thatch with a dirt road running past it. An old man was in the yard doing chores, and smiled when he saw James approaching.
The man motioned for James to come into the walled courtyard surrounding the farm house, and yelled something in the direction of the house. Although the wrinkled, tanned man spoke at length to James, he could not understand a word. At least he realized the man was motioning for him to sit on a pallet in the corner of the yard, and he complied gratefully. Soon afterwards, a similarly wrinkled woman bent permanently at the waist from a lifetime of labor in the fields scurried out of the house with a wooden pitcher and a tray of some yellow fruit. As she poured James a cool cup of water and began peeling the fist-sized yellow ovals, James reached into his pocket and offered the remainder of his money. Both husband and wife erupted in apparent protest, and the man pushed his money away. After realizing they had no interest in his money, James managed to sputter a passable form of the local word for “thank you”.
He gulped down cup after refreshing cup of the sweet water, and finished off about four of the small melons while he tried to look interested in whatever the old man was rambling on about. He interjected politely with an occasional grunt of agreement. As the sun began to dip in the west, though, James felt the repeated warning in his head that he only had until this evening to get to wherever he was going. So, with an elaborate series of repeatedly exchanged bows, James managed to slowly back his way out of the gate and continue his journey. Fortunately, the dirt road running by the house was going in just the direction he was feeling led.
As the sun swam on the horizon and was consumed by the ends of the earth, James started to worry about his progress. He was still surrounded by the same fields of crops, and he had only seen a couple similar farmhouses over the last couple hours. Was he going to make it on time? For all he knew, his destination could still be hundreds of miles away.
With the darkness of night came a creeping fog that rolled over the fields with an eerie silence and blocked out any light that might have come from the heavens. Soon, James was starting to get nervous and lonely. There were no sounds or lights at all, and he had to watch the road intently just to make sure he did not walk off it into one of the wet fields on either side.
As the night dragged on, James suddenly lost the sense of urgency and direction. He started to panic and believed he must have missed his mark. Now he was not only a failure, but he was hungry, thirsty, tired, and lost in the middle of nowhere.
Then, as he felt ready to cry in the agony of his stress, he noticed something glowing red in the distance to his right. James was stunned at first, because through the screen of the fog, it appeared to be a small village lit by red lanterns hung around the buildings – but he could have sworn it was not there just a minute ago. He would have noticed it, right?
Regardless, James had enough of chasing an invisible goal, and decided he better just go to the village and try to use the last bit of his money to get some food and beg for a place to sleep. Fall was turning to winter, and the night air caused puffs of smoke to float from his mouth as he struck out on a narrow dirt road leading to the village illuminated by a ghostly red aura.
When he approached the edge of the cluster of buildings, he realized the small town was composed of about ten thatched roof houses like the one he stopped by earlier in the day. The dirt road continued through the town and meandered between houses. The red glow he noticed earlier came from red paper lanterns hanging from the roofs of the homes. James also saw that all the homes were brightly lit from within, and his hopes of finding some help at this late hour increased.
He cautiously approached one of the homes and glanced briefly into a window. To his surprise, the house was lit and clean, but completely empty. Guessing this
must be a vacant house, he continued on to the next. After peeping into several homes, an eerie feeling crept over him. All the homes were like the first – well lit, but barren and devoid of life.
“Can I offer you some rest?” a voice suddenly cut the silence of the village street and caused James to visibly jump in surprise.
James looked down the dirt road and saw an aged but healthy looking man leaning against the wall of one of the houses with a seemingly knowing grin on his handsome face. He was dressed in the same manner as the couple he ran into earlier in the day, but his clothes seemed cleaner and fit him perfectly. He did not appear to have spent the day toiling in the fields like his earlier hosts. Everything else about him appeared normal except for his eyes, which seemed to have a very unusual golden tint.
After a brief silence in which James failed to reply, the old man continued, “You certainly look as if you have had a difficult journey, though I can’t imagine what brings a foreigner out to these parts, and at this hour of the night.”
With a start, James realized that, although the man was of local racial origin, he was speaking James’ language perfectly. The cut tones and slurred vowels that characterized DaNyang and, to a degree, the Intercessor’s use of James’ language were completely absent.
“Regardless,” the man continued, “I would be remiss to leave you out here alone on a chilly night like tonight. My name is Jaeil, and I welcome you to join me for a late supper, after which you may stay for the night by my hearth.”
