Dragon Pearl

by Yoon Ha Lee

  Copyright © 2019 by Yoon Ha Lee

  Introduction copyright © 2019 by Rick Riordan

  Illustrations © 2019 by Vivienne To

  Cover art © 2019 by Vivienne To

  Designed by Tyler Nevins

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-368-01519-6

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  This one is for Arabelle Sophie Betzwieser, my favorite Dragon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Pronunciation Guide

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Min is just your average teenage fox spirit, living with her family on the dusty backwater planet of Jinju.

  Oh, sure, like all foxes, she can shape-shift into whatever she wants: human, animal, even a dining room table. And yes, she has the power to Charm—to manipulate human emotions and make people see things that aren’t there. But that’s not very exciting when you’re stuck in a small dome house, sleeping every night in a crowded common room with your snoring cousins, spending every day fixing condensers in the hydroponics unit. Min yearns to join the Space Forces like her older brother Jun did—to see the Thousand Worlds and have marvelous adventures!

  It’s not like her mom will let her use magic anyway. Unlike other supernaturals, such as dragons, who can control weather, and goblins, who can conjure things out of thin air, fox spirits have a bad reputation. According to the old lore, foxes used to change shape to trick and prey on humans. Min’s family wouldn’t even consider doing such a thing, but due to lasting prejudice, they have to hide their true nature.

  One day, an investigator from the government pays a visit to Min’s mom. He brings horrible news: Jun has disappeared. Worse, Jun is suspected of treason—of abandoning his post to search for a fabled relic that has the power to transform worlds: the Dragon Pearl.

  Min knows that Jun would never desert the Space Forces. Something must have happened to him. He needs help! Unfortunately, nobody seems interested in what Min thinks, especially after she knocks the investigator unconscious for insulting her brother’s honor. Her family decides to ship her off to the boondocks to keep her out of further trouble, but Min has other ideas. She runs away from home, intent on following Jun to the stars. One young fox spirit, alone against the galaxies, will risk everything to find her brother and discover the mystery of the long-lost Dragon Pearl.

  Buckle up, fellow foxes. Get ready for epic space battles. Prepare yourselves for magic and lasers, ghosts and dragons, interstellar pirates and warlike tigers. The Thousand Worlds hold all sorts of danger, but there are also priceless magical treasures to be discovered. And if Min succeeds, she might not only save her brother—she might save her entire planet.

  Dragon Pearl will be like nothing you’ve ever read: a zesty mix of Korean folklore, magic, and science fiction that will leave you longing for more adventures in the Thousand Worlds!

  I almost missed the stranger’s visit that morning.

  I liked to sleep in, though I didn’t get to do it often. Waking up meant waking early. Even on the days I had lessons, my mom and aunties loaded me down with chores to do first. Scrubbing the hydroponics units next to our dome house. Scrounging breakfast from our few sad vegetables and making sure they were seasoned well enough to satisfy my four aunties. Ensuring that the air filters weren’t clogged with the dust that got into everything.

  I had a pretty dismal life on Jinju. I was counting the days until I turned fifteen. Just two more years left before I could take the entrance exams for the Thousand Worlds Space Forces and follow my brother, Jun, into the service. That was all that kept me going.

  The day the stranger came, though—that day was different.

  I was curled under my threadbare blanket, stubbornly clinging to sleep even though light had begun to steal in through the windows. Then my oldest cousin Bora’s snoring got too loud to ignore. I often wished I had a room of my own, instead of sharing one with three cousins. Especially since Bora snored like a dragon. I kicked her in the side. She grunted but didn’t stir.

  We all slept on the same shabby quilt, handed down from my ancestors, some of the planet’s first settlers. The embroidery had once depicted magpies and flowers, good-luck symbols. Most of the threads had come loose over the years, rendering the pictures illegible. When I was younger, I’d asked my mom why she didn’t use Charm to restore it. She’d given me a stern look, then explained that she’d have to redo it every day as the magic wore off—objects weren’t as susceptible to Charm as people were. I’d shut up fast, because I didn’t want her to add that chore to my daily roster. Fortunately, my mom disapproved of Charm in general, so it hadn’t gone any further.

  All my life I’d been cautioned not to show off the fox magic that was our heritage. We lived disguised as humans and rarely used our abilities to shape-shift or Charm people. Mom insisted that we behave as proper, civilized gumiho so we wouldn’t get in trouble with our fellow steaders, planet-bound residents of Jinju. In the old days, foxes had played tricks like changing into beautiful humans to lure lonely travelers close so they could suck out their lives. But our family didn’t do that.

  The lasting prejudice against us annoyed me. Other supernaturals, like dragons and goblins and shamans, could wield their magic openly, and were even praised for it. Dragons used their weather magic for agriculture and the time-consuming work of terraforming planets. Goblins, with their invisibility caps, could act as secret agents; their ability to summon food with their magical wands came in handy, too. Shamans were essential for communicating with the ancestors and spirits, of course. We foxes, though—we had never overcome our bad reputation. At least most people thought we were extinct nowadays.

  I didn’t see what the big deal was about using our powers around the house. We rarely had company—few travelers came to the world of Jinju. According to legend, about two hundred years ago, a shaman was supposed to have finished terraforming our planet with the Dragon Pearl, a mystical orb with the ability to create life. But on the way here, both she and the Pearl had disappeared. I didn’t know if anything in that story
was true or not. All I knew was that Jinju had remained poor and neglected by the Dragon Council for generations.

  As I reluctantly let go of sleep that morning, I heard the voice of a stranger in the other room. At first I thought one of the adults was watching a holo show—maybe galactic news from the Pearled Halls—and had the volume turned up too high. We were always getting reports about raids from the Jeweled Worlds and the Space Forces’ heroic efforts to defend us from the marauders, even if Jinju was too far from the border to suffer such attacks. But the sound from our holo unit always came out staticky. No static accompanied this voice.

  It didn’t belong to any of the neighbors, either. I knew everyone who lived within an hour’s scooter ride. And it wasn’t just the unfamiliarity of the voice, deep and smooth, that made me sit up and take notice. No one in our community spoke that formally.

  Were we in trouble with the authorities? Had someone discovered that fox spirits weren’t a myth after all? The stranger’s voice triggered my old childhood fears of our getting caught.

  “You must be misinformed.” That was Mom talking. She sounded tense.

  Now I really started to worry.

  “. . . no mistake,” the voice was saying.

  No mistake what? I had to find out more.

  I slipped out from under the blanket, freezing in place when Bora grunted and flopped over. I bet starship engines made less racket. But if the stranger had heard Bora’s obnoxious noises, he gave no sign of it.

  I risked a touch of Charm to make myself plainer, drabber, harder to see. Foxes can smell each other’s magic—one of my aunties described the sensation as being like a sneeze that won’t come out—but my mom might be distracted enough not to notice.

  “How is this possible?” I heard Mom ask.

  My hackles rose. She was clearly distressed, and I’d never known her to show weakness in front of strangers.

  I tiptoed out of the bedroom and poked my head around the corner. There stood Mom, small but straight-backed. And then came the second surprise. I bit down on a sneeze.

  Mom was using Charm. Not a lot—just enough to cover the patches in her trousers and the wrinkles in her worn shirt, and to restore their color to a richer green. We hadn’t expected visitors, especially anybody important. She wouldn’t have had time to dress up in the fine clothes she saved for special occasions. It figured she’d made an exception for herself to use fox magic, despite the fact that she chastised me whenever I experimented with it.

  The stranger loomed over her. I didn’t smell any Charm on him, but he could have been some other kind of supernatural, like a tiger or a goblin, in disguise. It was often hard to tell. I sniffed more closely, hoping to catch a whiff of emotion. Was he angry? Frustrated? Did he detect Mom’s magic at all? But he held himself under such tight control that I couldn’t get a bead on him.

  His clothes, finely tailored in a burnished-bronze-colored fabric, were all real. What caught my eye was the badge on the breast of his coat. It marked him as an official investigator of the Thousand Worlds, the league to which Jinju belonged. There weren’t literally a thousand planets in the league, but it encompassed many star systems, all answering to the same government. I’d never been off-world myself, although I’d often dreamed of it. This man might have visited dozens of worlds for his job, even the government seat at the Pearled Halls, and I envied him for it.

  More to the point, what was an investigator doing here? I could only think of one thing: Something had happened to my brother, Jun. My heart thumped so loudly I was sure he and Mom would hear it.

  “Your son vanished under mysterious circumstances,” the investigator said. “He is under suspicion of desertion.”

  I gasped involuntarily. Jun? Deserting?

  “That’s impossible!” Mom said vehemently. “My son worked very hard to get into the Space Forces!” I didn’t need my nose to tell me how freaked-out she was.

  I remembered the way Jun’s face had lit up when he’d gotten the letter admitting him to the Academy. It had meant everything to him—he would never run off! I bit the side of my mouth to keep from blurting that out.

  The investigator’s eyes narrowed. “That may be, but people change, especially when they are presented with certain . . . opportunities.”

  “Opportunities . . . ?” Mom swallowed and then asked in a small voice, “What do you mean?”

  “According to his captain’s report, your son left to go in search of the Dragon Pearl.”

  I wasn’t sure which stunned me more: the idea of Jun leaving the Space Forces, or the fact that the Dragon Pearl might actually exist.

  “The Pearl? How . . . ?” my mother asked incredulously. “No one knows where it—”

  “The Dragon Council has made strides in locating it,” the investigator said, rudely cutting her off. “And they would pay handsomely to have it back in their possession. If he found it, your son could have found the temptation irresistible. . . .”

  No. I knew my brother wouldn’t risk his career by trying to cash in an artifact, even one as renowned as the Dragon Pearl.

  Mom’s shoulders slumped. I wanted to tell her not to believe the investigator so readily. There had to be some other explanation.

  “Jun is not here,” she said, drawing herself up again, “and we have not heard from him, either. I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

  The man was not put off. “There is one matter you can assist us with,” he said. “Your son’s last report before he left—it included a message addressed to Min. I believe that’s your daughter?”

  A shock went through me when he said my name.

  “I have been sent here to show it to her. It may offer clues to Jun’s location—or the Pearl’s. Perhaps he wrote it in a code language only she would understand.”

  “Again, I think you have the wrong impression of my son,” Mom said haughtily. “He is an honorable soldier, not a traitor.”

  “So you say. But I am not leaving these premises until I have shown Min the message. Are you not curious to see his last communication?”

  That did the trick.

  “Min!” Mom called.

  I ducked back around the corner before she could spot me, waited a couple moments, then walked out to greet them both. My nose tickled again, and I stifled a sneeze. “Yes, Mom?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t been eavesdropping on their conversation.

  Mom briefly explained the situation to me. “This man has a message from Jun,” she said. “He’d like you to tell him if you see anything unusual in it.” I could hear the skepticism in her voice.

  I nodded sullenly at the investigator, resenting the fact that he had accused Jun of deserting. Still, there was a silver lining: The man seemed unaware that we were foxes.

  “Please, let me see the message,” I said, remembering to speak formally.

  The investigator looked down at me. If I’d been in fox shape, my ears would have flattened against my skull. His expression wasn’t condescending, as I would have expected. Instead, I could sense him measuring me. And now I could smell some suspicion coming off him. Did he think I was hiding something?

  He drew a data-slate out of a pocket, tapped on it, and showed me a message marked with Jun’s seal—nothing fancy, just his name done in simple calligraphy.

  I scowled at the fact that they’d been snooping into my brother’s private correspondence, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

  Hello Min,

  Don’t tell Bora, but there are even more chores on a battle cruiser than there are at home. I can’t wait until my first leave. I have so many things to tell you. I’ve made lots of friends. Together we’ve been exploring a new world, just like Dad. My friends help with the chores sometimes, too. Did I mention the chores?

  Love,

  Jun

  I blinked rapidly. I wasn’t going to cry, not in front of this stranger. I handed the slate to Mom so she could read it, too. Jun’s letters to us had been few and far between. The Thousand Worlds
lacked faster-than-light communication technology, so all interstellar messages had to be delivered by courier. I couldn’t bear the idea that this might be the last we ever heard from my brother. The investigator had to be wrong.

  Still, the message’s contents gave me hope. There was a hidden meaning in there, all right. Jun had never complained about chores the whole time we were growing up. He was trying to tell me that something was wrong. Who were the “friends”? Were they really friends, or troublemakers he’d fallen in with? Why hadn’t he included any of their names?

  The most worrying clue was his mention of Dad. For one thing, our dad had died seven years ago, when I was six. And for another, he had never been an explorer. According to Mom, he’d been a skilled technician. What was Jun trying to imply?

  How much of this did I want to reveal to the investigator, though? I didn’t trust the man. After all, I didn’t know anything about him or his motives. On the other hand, I couldn’t thwart him too obviously. That might get my family in trouble, and if he decided to investigate us further, our secret—that we were fox spirits—might be exposed.

  I’d hesitated too long. “Min,” the investigator said in a disturbingly quiet voice, “can you tell me anything about this?”

  “He’s just complaining,” I said, doing my best not to sound grudging—or concerned.

  His gaze captured mine. “That’s not the whole story, is it?”

  I wasn’t going to rat Jun out to some stranger. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I smelled an extra whiff of worry from Mom. She wanted me to do something in response, but what?

  “Many powerful people are interested in the Dragon Pearl,” the investigator said, as if I couldn’t have guessed that. “If it has resurfaced, it is imperative that it be recovered by the Space Forces and not some unscrupulous person.”

  I understood why that was important. According to legend, the Pearl could transform an entire planet in a day. Dragons controlled terraforming magic, but they were not nearly that fast and efficient—it took years for teams of trained workers to make a world fully lush and hospitable. As a citizen of Jinju, I was especially aware of that fact. Jun was, too.