by June Hur
I ran a hand over my face, frustrated and not knowing what to do. My cheeks were so numb from the cold morning of wandering that I could hardly feel the touch of my own fingers.
Madam Song approached with a tray of bottles. “You again.” She served her customers, then turned to me, and her brows twitched as though in shock. “Look at the state of you.” Her voice was so brusque I thought she would send me away at any moment, but then she said, “Come. I know what you need.”
* * *
I sat down on the veranda at the rear of the kitchen, where huge crocks of soy sauce, soybean paste, and pickles were neatly arranged, and dried leaves that had blown down from the trees sat yellow against the glossy brown pots.
Madam Song soon returned with a small table that bore a bowl of fluffy white rice and a side bowl filled with doenjang stew. As she set the table before me, I saw my reflection in the irises of her eyes: my pale face and windswept hair. This woman pitied me.
“Eat up.” She waved her hand. “You’re twig-thin.”
She wasn’t wrong. A few days ago, when I’d had the rare opportunity to bathe, I had noticed my rib cage protruding enough that I’d managed to count each rib. My appetite had vanished ever since I had found the bloody robe. But as I stirred the stew, watching the tangle of zucchini, onions, mushrooms, and shellfish, my stomach growled with a hunger so fierce that the spoon shook in my hand.
“Go on, eat,” Madam Song urged.
I dumped the rice into the stew, mixed it, then stuck the spoon into my mouth. I was too famished to savor the rich and full taste, wolfing the meal down.
“It seems they don’t feed you at the police bureau,” she remarked, and when I remained silent, too busy eating, she spoke under her breath, as though to herself. “Perhaps you know more about the rumor circulating…”
My mouth full, I managed to ask, “What rumor?”
“It is about an edict. Catholic rogues will be condemned to death as traitors.”
I froze, my appetite disappearing.
“Have you heard of it? No? The police officers who stopped by here for drinks were sharing tricks on how to catch Catholics.”
I set my spoon down. “Tricks?”
“I heard that when Catholics are frightened, they make this strange gesture—touching their forehead, their chest, then each side of their shoulders. They also spend much time chanting on their knees, so the fabric in that area might sometimes be dirtier or more wrinkled than the rest.”
A frown crinkled my brows. Was it a coincidence that Woorim had disappeared the same week this rumor had spread?
“A sea of blood will flow if this rumor is true. It will be an especially difficult time for members of the Southerner Faction…” Her voice trailed off, and a faraway look of concern fogged her gaze. Perhaps she was thinking of Lord Ch’oi. She blinked, and the sharpness returned to her eyes. “On the day the edict is announced, you ought to return home. The capital will turn into a place of great disorder. No one will notice your absence.”
At the word “home,” a burning pain knotted my throat. I finally understood why my brother from years ago had sunk into a dark, grieving silence whenever the word “home” had been mentioned. Home, that place your soul longs for with an exhausting intensity, just as a bird might hurt for the sky, or as a flower might pine for the sun.
“Even if I had the chance, madam, I cannot leave,” I whispered.
“You have nothing here.”
“There is a friend here I promised to help … and I have responsibilities I cannot abandon.” I needed to be strong a while longer, so I ate another spoonful of stew, forcing myself to chew and swallow.
Madam Song rested her hand on the table, tapping it in a contemplative motion. “Me, I wish I had left this place. I did not return home and now my parents have left me, gone to the netherworld. They did me wrong; still, they were family. My remorse never lightens.” She glanced at me, as though to say that such would be the weight I’d carry if I didn’t return home.
“Then why did you stay?” I asked.
She tapped her fingers some more. “The truth is … I thought it would be enough just to be near him.”
I took another bite of my stew, slowly this time, allowing her words to sink in. She had loved Councillor Ch’oi deeply, yet she had still chosen to end the affair.
Her face tilted back, eyes squinting up at the sun. “I intoxicated Councillor Ch’oi one night so that he would tell me more about the pendant, which I knew he had been wearing for seventeen years. I wanted to know why he never took it off, why he always touched it whenever he was having his black moods. But perhaps I ought never to have asked … What I learned, I could not bear it. He spoke of a woman named Byeol, ‘Star,’ who had birthed his illegitimate child. He had not known of her pregnancy until thirteen years later, when she sent the necklace to him with a note. I can still remember it, for the words he recited to me were burned onto my heart.”
When she fell silent, I gently prompted her, “What did the note say, madam?”
“It read: ‘Since you left me, my mind was hopeless and I was resolved to die, yet was reluctant to commit the final act. There was my concern for our child’s survival, but now I think it would have been better if he never lived at all. Now nothing prevents me from fulfilling my lifelong wish: to escape shame.’
“Councillor Ch’oi wept and wept,” she continued, “calling out her name in front of me. That is the day I stopped receiving his visits. I couldn’t continue loving a man whose heart had never stopped weeping for another woman.” Her jaws locked as though she were biting back a rush of old feelings. “A man never forgets his first love, and I could not bear living in her shadow. How could I compete with her? The dead always look lovelier, warmer, and brighter. A living woman pales in comparison.”
I watched her wipe the corners of her eyes, and I wondered what it must feel like to deeply love another human being, so much that even after a decade or more, the memories of him still hurt her. After allowing her a moment to compose herself, I asked, “What did the pendant look like?”
“It was a horse-dragon pendant.”
I held back a gasp, my mind thrown into confusion. “Horse-dragon?” I repeated. The wooden pendant Officer Goh had found by the South Gate—also a horse-dragon pendant. “The pendant … it is made of wood?”
“It is made of jade.”
There were two? Two pendants of the same mythical creature, one worn by Councillor Ch’oi for many years, and the other found at the crime scene …
“So why did his lover, Madam Byeol, send him a horse-dragon pendant?” I whispered. “I heard that creature is from the ‘Mighty Infant’ legend.”
“How did you know it was that particular legend?” Madam Song’s brows knitted together as she stared at me. “I thought only I knew the story behind His Lordship’s pendant. It took him three bottles of wine to get him to share that story with even me, his closest companion.”
“Is there more than one legend about this creature?”
“There are many horse-dragon legends, and many are legends from Imperial China. But the ‘Mighty Infant’ myth is a tale that belongs to our kingdom.”
“What does the story say?”
“It is about how a particular mountain in the town of Goyang derived its name, Yongma. This name is a combination of two Chinese characters: yong for ‘dragon,’ and ma for ‘horse.’”
“Horse-dragon,” I whispered.
She bowed her head. “You will find many stables in Goyang; ranchers set up businesses there, hoping the spirit of the yongma will descend upon their horses. Madam Byeol was also from this village; her father was said to be a rancher as well.”
“But what does a mountain have to do with a ‘Mighty Infant’?”
She sighed. “I have not told this tale in many years…,” she said, then shared with me the myth of “The Mighty Infant.”
It was about an extraordinary child born into a lowly home. On the third day af
ter the child’s birth, the mother left for the kitchen to drink water, and on her return, the boy had disappeared. Surprised, the mother looked everywhere and finally found the child sitting atop a high shelf. She examined the child, wondering if he was hurt, and discovered a small pair of wings sprouting from his shoulders.
At once, she reported this discovery to her husband, who then told the entire village, causing a great commotion. The villagers debated fiercely, and once a consensus was reached, the chief elder declared, “A peculiar boy was born to a poor household, so when the boy grows up, he will most certainly not fit in and bring trouble to us instead. Perhaps he will become a dangerous rebel or a traitor, and then our village will not be able to avoid danger either. It is appropriate that we kill this boy.”
The parents of this child, fearing for their own lives, later crushed the struggling child with a sack of millet. The moment the boy breathed his last, a strange creature appeared at the back of a mountain—half dragon, half horse. This beast, sensing that the Great Master who was to ride him had died, raced to the village well, jumped in, and drowned there. Concluding the story, Madam Song said, “The boy was different from the rest, and in this kingdom, one cannot survive being peculiar.”
I couldn’t understand why Madam Byeol thought the horse-dragon creature so significant to her relationship with Councillor Ch’oi that she had sent him a necklace depicting it before her death.
As though seeing my confusion, Madam Song said, “Don’t you see? Byeol raised her child alone, the shame of the village. Her son was different from the rest, like the child in the legend, but in another way: he was fatherless and born out of wedlock. So she killed him, then killed herself.”
Silence filled me. After a few moments, I asked, “They really died?”
“Councillor Ch’oi went to the village and learned that his mistress had thrown her thirteen-year-old son into a well, then hung herself,” she whispered.
A loud male voice suddenly broke into our conversation. “There she is!”
Madam Song looked at someone over my shoulder, then frowned at me. “Are you in trouble?”
I looked behind and glimpsed a black hat with a hanging red tassel. A police hat. My eyes locked onto Officer Kyŏn’s. He charged toward me with the swiftness of a dark storm cloud, prepared to swallow me.
* * *
The police whistle shrieked behind me no matter how fast I ran. Turning sharply, I bolted in between two shops and into Pimatgol Alley, the peasant’s road that creased through the sea of shops. My legs burned, lit on fire as I pushed myself to run faster. But no matter how fast I ran, Officer Kyŏn was always close.
The row of rooftop eaves cast a shadow over me as I scrambled, looking for a hiding place. An alley appeared up ahead. Taking a chance, I rushed into the dark slit. Only a single ray of light reached in, illuminating a splintered wagon and a littering of fish bones. I ran deeper, but a sudden wall interrupted my flight.
A dead end.
I looked over my shoulder, cold sweat sliding down my cheek. I waited, but no one followed me in. A breath of relief rushed out of my mouth, and I pressed my forehead against the wall, my eyes closed. My hammering heart slackened into a deep and steady drumbeat. I was safe for now, but for how much longer? Where else could I run to? The longer I remained on the street, the more dangerous it would become, thick with the watchful presence of the police.
Lady Kang came to mind.
Hope sparked warmth in me. She must have returned home by now, and I would be safe with her. The law forbade the police from searching for me inside her home without permission, as noblewomen were immune to police attention. And more than anything, she needed me; I had witnessed Woorim’s kidnapping.
My decision made, I whirled around, only to freeze in my steps. From the alley’s entrance, a shadow prowled in, the dirt path crunching beneath his footsteps. It was Officer Kyŏn, his unsmiling face drenched in sweat and glistening in the dim ray of light. He carried a club in one hand and a coil of rope in another, the rope used to arrest criminals. His lips curled up into a sneer, revealing his chipped front teeth.
“Don’t think to run again,” he said.
I took a retreating step, only to back up against the wall. I was trapped with nothing—no weapon, nowhere else to run. All my effort to rescue Woorim and to find the truth behind the killings seemed to slip from my fingers. No one would listen to me; no one would believe me. They would lock me up and not care that a third victim was about to be killed. Just then, a memory of Inspector Han surfaced, like a chilling specter that sharpened my panicking mind. He’d said that one must grab a person by either their weakness or their desire. A method I was relying on more often these days.
Before Kyŏn could reach out to arrest me, I raised both hands in the air, palms out. “Wait!”
“Wait?” He grunted. “Wait for what?”
“I know what you need, and I can give it to you. E-evidence. I have it.”
His sneer flattened and his eyes narrowed on me. “What evidence?”
“I will tell you if you let me go.”
“Now you want to cooperate with me? Hah! First you tell me, then I’ll consider letting you live, inyeona.”
There was a surging opposition in me, an echo demanding that I remember the haunted house, the ghost under the pine tree. But I beat it down. My voice strained as I said, “There are personal chests inside the servants’ quarter. Mine is the one with a loose bracket, and inside, I hid an inspector’s robe. It is bloodstained.”
A frown shot over his brows. “Bloodstained?”
“On the night of Lady O’s murder, Inspector Han rode back to the House of Bright Flowers at dawn, and Maid Misu—”
“Who is Misu?”
“Madam Yeonok’s personal maid. She heard him say, ‘She is dead, she is dead.’ He then changed into a white robe, and Madam Yeonok had the maid hide his uniform.”
Silence filled the alley, so tangible that I could feel its weight press against my skin.
“So you are saying”—Kyŏn’s voice dipped low—“that the blood might belong to Lady O? Inspector Han might have killed her and gotten her blood all over his uniform?”
Guilt closed in around my throat, making it impossible to talk.
Kyŏn’s frown deepened as he rubbed his chin. “Inspector Han might claim that the blood belonged to his horse. An accident. He would say also that he had first left the House of Bright Flowers at around dawn, long after Lady O was murdered, which occurred around midnight. He had an alibi.”
“He—” I stopped, my insides trembling.
“He what?”
“Inspector Han could have left earlier. Much earlier.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think…” I hated how uncertain I sounded and wished to speak no more, but Kyŏn’s eyes urged me to continue. “I think Senior Officer Shim was lying about being his alibi, so no one can account for the inspector’s whereabouts around midnight.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Shim told Commander Yi that the inspector was wearing a white robe when he first entered the House of Bright Flowers, when in fact, he had been wearing his uniform. Even Maid Soyi encountered him on the street when he was in uniform. But Officer Shim saw only the white robe, which the inspector had not changed into until around dawn. And…”
“And?”
“And Maid Misu also said she didn’t see Officer Shim until around dawn.”
“Which means Officer Shim was not present for the entire night…”
“But would this be enough to convince Commander Yi?” I whispered.
“Maid Misu’s confession would be enough, along with something else I uncovered.” He looked over his shoulder, then took a step closer to me. “Your suspicion is correct. You are always supposed to interrogate the alibi, make sure his testimony is certain, but no one thought to question Senior Officer Shim. I took it upon myself and asked around. I discovered that at midnight, when Shim clai
med to have been with Inspector Han at the House of Bright Flowers, someone actually saw him returning to his residence. So Inspector Han likely made Shim lie about being the inspector’s alibi.”
“What? Someone saw Shim returning home?”
“It was the monsoon season, remember? Children were swept off the street and huts collapsed. His roof caved in under the torrent, and his neighbor looked in to see whether anyone was hurt. That was when he saw Shim return, and he had to hurry off.”
“And this man … Why did he not tell the police? Lady O’s death was so public … surely he must have heard that Shim was posing as Inspector Han’s alibi?”
“Because he was afraid. He should not have been outside wandering the street at that hour. It was after curfew.”
When no man was permitted to roam the streets except those in power—they were always an exception to the law.
“Maid Misu … she will be of use to me.” Kyŏn nodded his head. “Yes, she is enough.”
I clutched my hands together, tensing as the silence returned. “Have you … have you made up your mind, Officer? Will you let me go?”
“I have more than made up my mind. We ought to have been allies from the start. Here,” he said, slipping his hand into his robe, then holding out a folded paper. “Remember. I told you that if you joined my side, I would let you see the inspector’s letter. This letter confirmed my suspicion that Inspector Han was bent on killing the priest, and Scholar Ahn had told me that Lady O knew of the priest’s whereabouts. Was it a coincidence that she ended up dead? I think not.”
“And you have this letter with you?”
“Scholar Ahn gave it back to me, but everyone believes it disappeared with him. I’ve kept this close to me, ever since Damo Hyeyeon went through my belongings. Now, go find someone to read it for you.”
I held the letter, the one I’d wondered about since late summer.
Kyŏn backed away, still facing me. “You see, Damo Seol. I was right all along. No one will be by Inspector Han’s side in the end. No one.”
