by June Hur
The two men dragged me as if I were a sack of rice, talking with a dialect used by those from the eastern coast. “Abooji, Abooji.” A young man’s whispered call for his father, tense with fear and uneasiness. “Her pulse, it’s beating still.”
“I told you, she’s dead. And that is what you tell Officer Shim too, do you understand me?”
“But I don’t trust him, Abooji.”
“What do you mean?” Panic and fury contorted the older man’s voice.
“The shaman, she recognized Officer Shim as Madam Byeol’s son earlier today. She called him a killer. What kind of man murders his own mother?”
“We do what we are told to do. It’s not our business to know these things.”
“He looked ready to beat me for calling him ‘Officer’ in front of that shaman. What if he murders me too?”
“If you keep on spewing nonsense, he will kill us both! Now pull harder!”
The odor that clung to their rags drifted into my nostrils. The gamy smell of lamb and blood. Only baekjeongs, the outcast group, butchered living things—whether animals or criminals. Through my dizziness, a realization pushed through, like a figure stepping out from the fog. The police bureau had hired baekjeongs to execute criminals. Had Officer Shim taken advantage of them from the capital, luring them with promises of acceptance and respect, if only they helped him?
It seemed entirely possible. I remembered Young Master Ch’oi’s words: Evil comes from the unfulfilled need for significance.
As I weighed the possibility, my body was hoisted off the ground, my head lolling in the air. How strange.
I blinked against the darkness of night, trying to clear the painful confusion beating in my head, but before I could figure out what was happening, I felt a rushing sensation. My entire body falling in cold air. My stomach leaving me. Weightless.
A loud splash fractured the silence.
Water filled my mouth and nose, rough against my blinking eyes. I grabbed onto something as I thrashed in the panic of pitch black. Whatever it was lifted me upward, and soon I broke the surface, gasping. Only when I caught my breath did I notice the complete stillness, save for the water lapping against the stone wall encircling me. My mind startled awake.
I had been thrown into a well.
High above me was a circle of night sky powdered with stars, illuminating the grimy wall and the ripples around me. And then I looked down at what I was holding. It was stiff and covered in fabric, slimy in places. I ran my fingers around until I felt tangles of hair.
Human hair.
My heart rammed against my chest. I pushed away from the corpse, which was floating facedown, rotating now in the small waves. I struggled to tread water, my robe wrapping around my legs, then managed to dig my nails into the crevices of the rocky wall. Please no, please no. I looked over my shoulder and stared into the shaman’s gray-filmed eyes, a hole where her nose ought to be, her lips a dark O. She started screaming; or rather, it was me screaming. In my panic I could not say which.
“She’s still alive!” the young man shouted somewhere outside the well. “Abooji, I told you!”
“Too late! We need to get back to Madam Byeol’s house before sunup. He told us to meet him there. Then we can relocate to somewhere safer and pretend all this never happened. Let’s go. Now!”
“But, Abooji!”
“Hush!” the father cried, his voice full of tremors. “Th-think. Just think! We’ll never have to shed blood again. He promised us. Promised!”
“But—!”
“She knows too much. You think we’ll survive if she lives? We’ll not only lose our fortune, we’ll lose our heads as well. Hurry, let’s go!”
Staring at the shaman’s missing nose, I reached for my own, and the moment I touched it, I felt pain. It was still there, but blood oozed from a deep cut. Shim had had every intention of slicing my nose off, but perhaps the sound of approaching people had stopped him.
I faced the wall and tried to climb up, but the rocks were so slippery I plunged back into the water, the ripples pushing the corpse up against me. I screamed again, a raspy sound, even though my throat and head pounded with pain.
I was trapped. Fear as I had never felt before gripped me. My teeth chattering, I remained still, my back to the corpse, clinging onto the wall. I dared not move, afraid that the corpse would awake, that her slimy hand would touch me, that her loosened black hair would creep around my throat.
“Orabeoni,” I sobbed. “Orabeoni!”
Sometimes we must cease feeling, he had once said, when we had lost our way in the rain, and think instead.
I took in a few deep breaths, trying to calm the shuddering in me. Then reason reached into me, asking questions to keep me sane.
Is the body dead? Yes.
So it is not moving? No.
Is there something holding your ankles? Yes.
Could it be your robe? Yes.
I became aware that so long as I did not move, my robe did not wrap around my legs, and the corpse remained still, not reaching out for me as I had imagined it was.
Breathing came easier.
I forced myself to look over my shoulder. The corpse floated, staring up unblinkingly at the sky. I had encountered drowned corpses before. Hyeyeon had explained why they were floating: When people suffocate to death, they remain floating for a while and then sink under. The fact that the corpse was still floating, after only a few hours since I’d last seen the shaman, told me she had suffocated either from the water or from being strangled.
Fear subsided, and I no longer saw a haunted corpse, but rather an innocent woman, killed because she had lived too long. She had known Officer Shim as a child, had recognized him still after so many years, and so Shim had had to silence her. Otherwise, her gossip would have traveled fast and could have reached Councillor Ch’oi in no time.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Craning my head back, I gazed back up at the sky. I would join the shaman in death if I did not find a way to escape. Already my fingers trembled, exhausted and cramped from digging into the crevices.
“I’m here!” Pain strangled my throat, like a blade jammed in. “Help!”
Only the distant fluttering of a wing answered. The hushing of leaves in the mountain wind. The water lapping against the stone wall. The unending and indifferent silence terrified me. There was no one out there.
I dug my nails into a higher rock, tried scrambling against the wall and pushing my weight up, but I slipped. Gurgling, I went under, my mouth filled with tainted water, waves closing over my topknot. I flailed until I managed to reach the surface, even more drained of strength as my entire life clung again onto the crevices.
I couldn’t give up now, so I tried climbing up again. It didn’t seem impossible, for the wall was rugged. But I only managed to barely lift myself out of the water with each attempt. By the time the circle of sky deepened into the darkest shade of ebony, I was trembling from exhaustion and cold. A haziness crept into my mind, and I wanted to let go and fall asleep.
I pinched my cheek hard.
I couldn’t die like this. Not after all that I had gone through. I had to tell Inspector Han that I knew who the real killer was. I’d never even had a chance to tell him, “Orabeoni, do not be scared.”
I struggled around the wall, desperate to find an easier way up. I needed more jutting rocks and deeper crevices. I pushed myself from one side to the other, and right then, I froze. My hands and feet, spread-eagled, touched the opposite walls. Moving one foot, then the next, quickly up, I braced myself with my hands pressed against the stones as I pushed myself farther up toward the opening. With my soaked robe and my already trembling arms, I felt as though I was hoisting up a sack of rocks with me, but it was working, the water releasing me from its icy embrace. Water from my drenched hair slid into my eyes, blurring my vision, but I could see it. The circle of sky above me was growing closer.
And even closer.
With every ounce
of my remaining strength, I pushed myself higher, and I was so close to the ledge that I could smell the fresh air, crisp with dried leaves and moss. Then all at once, I felt a popping in my shoulder, a bone twisted out from its socket. Sharp pain ripped down my arm, rendering it useless. Only my wobbly legs held me up now, and already, I could feel myself slipping. The sky was getting farther. Soon I would sink under.
A surge of sorrow replaced my panic. I was going to die, and one day a peasant was going to fish me out, a corpse bloated and unrecognizable.
A hand shot down and grasped me by the collar.
“Keep climbing, Seol-ah,” came a deep voice. “Take my hand.”
I looked up. Torchlight funneled down the well, illuminating the grimy wall, my blood-soaked hands. Inspector Han stared down at me with frightened eyes. For the first time in twelve years, I touched his hand, and his fingers wrapped around mine.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you go. You’re almost there.”
Fresh air greeted my damp face. Relief soared in my heart as, with a final lurch, I flopped forward onto the ground. I couldn’t believe it; I was safe now. Hearing footsteps rustle through the frozen leaves, I barely managed to turn and look.
Torches encircled me, the officers and Commander Yi all watching me with wide eyes.
“What?” Officer Goh cried. “Isn’t that Seol?”
“The scrambling noise was her?” another officer said.
“Who threw you in?” Goh demanded. “Was it Officer Shim?”
“H-he ordered it.” My right shoulder continued to burn as I weakly pointed at the well’s opening. “Th-there is one more p-p-person. Dead.”
Goh rushed forward and peered down, his torch raised high. “It’s true,” he called out over his shoulder. “A corpse, I see it. Who is it?”
“A shaman who dwells on the mountain—”
A startled sound escaped from the crowd. It was the old man, one of those who had used and abused Madam Byeol, who had shown me to the shaman’s hut earlier. He must have also offered to be the officers’ guide when they had ridden into the village.
“So Officer Shim has killed in total three victims,” Inspector Han said.
“There was a f-f-fourth.” My teeth chattered. “His mother. I know he k-killed her.”
Another stranger watched me. A man of regal stature, garbed in his silk riding robe of purple, stood among the officers. The darkness did not hide his features, which held the handsomeness of a soldier; brave, chiseled, and with honorable eyes. It was Councillor Ch’oi, and at the news of how his former mistress had died, he placed his hand over those eyes. “His own mother … You are certain Officer Shim is the killer?”
“There is no doubt about his connection to the murders,” Inspector Han said, and he looked my way. The scratch I’d left on his cheek looked red and raw in the torchlight.
Woorim. He hadn’t mentioned her name. My pulse quickened, beating hard against my right temple.
“When was the last time you saw Senior Officer Shim?” Inspector Han asked me.
The beating in my head grew stronger, making it difficult to think, but I still managed to reply, “Around midafternoon, sir.”
“Hours have passed since then.” He gazed up at the gray-blue sky, the moon still hanging over a cloud. “Shim wouldn’t have returned to the capital. He told a guard he’d come to speak with me, and he must have overheard my manservant through the hanji screens. The accusations against him. Wherever he went, he might already be too far for us…”
As the officers speculated, and as others dragged the shaman’s corpse out from the well, I stood still, unable to move. Woorim’s grip on my thoughts tightened, her fingers wrapping around mine in desperation, cold and sticky with blood. Seol, please help me, please, please help me. Her plea echoed and sent a ripple of bumps down my spine, her voice growing louder and louder until it was all I could hear.
“What is the matter?”
My attention snapped back to Inspector Han, and a light sparked in my mind. “Officer Shim … he might not be too far away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dead woman Byeol’s house,” I whispered, my eyes widening. “Officer Shim’s helpers, they mentioned that place, that they must return there. Woorim could be there as well.”
Once, my words would have fallen upon deaf ears. But at this moment, perhaps only ever this moment, my voice was like a torchlight raised against the darkness of night. There were no eyebrows raised, no rebukes flying my way for speaking out of turn. There were only men watching and listening.
“And where is this dead woman Byeol’s hut, Damo Seol?” Commander Yi asked gently.
“I … I don’t know, sir.” We would have to go from hut to hut, asking for directions, but we didn’t have time—
My panic stilled at the sight of the old man. “He must know.”
The old man stared at me, pointing his finger at himself.
“Yes,” I said. “That man.”
A soldier pushed the old man, and he came stumbling forward into Commander Yi’s periphery. He flicked a nervous glance toward the near mountain and said, “It is up there on Mount Yongma!”
“Well then,” Commander Yi said. “Lead the way.”
“Me, sir?”
“You offered to be our guide. Now lead.”
The officers, around twelve of them, mounted their horses and gathered into a line. As for me, horseless as I was, I fell behind, far from Inspector Han, far from the possibility of being stopped and told that my lips were too blue, that I ought to stay behind and search for shelter. He would be right to suggest this. And it did occur to me, as I gazed up at the jagged shadows of Mount Yongma’s peak, that I might not survive the icy journey if I followed.
Still, my feet moved forward, one step after the next.
Not because of fearlessness—no, my stomach ached with terror. I followed the officers because the moment I’d grabbed onto Woorim’s hand, trying to pull her out of danger, her destiny had bound itself to mine. I had seen desperation gleam in her eyes and I had touched her wound.
How could I forget? How could I turn away?
* * *
We traveled into the forest that covered the mountain, trees rising like the hackles of wolves. My damp robe had frozen stiff under the spare blanket offered to me, and strands of my once-dripping hair now hung on either side of my face like black icicles. With each step, I could feel my limbs less and less, the cold piercing so deep into the marrow of my bones that tears rolled down my numb cheeks.
As I wiped the wetness from my face, Inspector Han—who was riding ahead of us—slowed and looked over his shoulder. He said something to Commander Yi, then tugged at the reins and steered his horse around. Hooves tramped down the slope, and soon the creature came to a prancing halt a few feet away from me.
“Go back down to the village. I’ll send an officer with you,” he said. “The cold might kill you.”
I shook my head and gritted my teeth hard, to still their chattering. “N-no.”
He observed me, and for a moment I could imagine what he saw, a girl garbed in a frozen robe, whose fingers and toes would likely be lost to frostbite, but a girl who had risked her life by going against him—an inspector of the Capital Police Bureau, a military official of the fifth rank. He knew I would not change my mind so easily.
“Very well then, I won’t ask you again…” I followed his gaze, trailing past the trees and through the mist. “Can you manage?”
“I c-can, sir.”
He swung off his horse and the forest floor crunched beneath his feet. “Then get on.”
I accepted his hand and slipped my foot into the stirrup. He hoisted me up into the air with surprising strength, like I was his four-year-old sister again, and the next moment I sat perched on the horse’s back with one hand holding on to the saddle horn, and the other hanging uselessly, my shoulder burning after Officer Goh had forced the bone back into its socket earlier. As for Inspector Han,
he continued on foot, holding the creature’s reins as he led the way.
Venturing farther up the mountain, the servant ahead of us held up a blazing torch that illuminated the crystallized forest. The freezing cold had arrived so early this year, it seemed a spell had been cast over the land. Icicles gleamed orange. Snow-dusted pine trees soared high. Everything was still, too still. Even the glow of torchlight, which stretched across the frozen land, seemed painted there—never shifting, never flickering. Somewhere beyond the serene facade of the woodlands, surely a vile darkness awaited us.
My only wish was that Woorim still lived.
“There is s-something I do not understand, sir. H-h-h—” I gritted my teeth and tried again. “How did Officer Shim s-suspect that she knew something about the p-p-priest’s whereabouts?”
“Suspect whom?”
“Maid Woorim.”
Inspector Han let out a breath, a cloud of steam forming before his lips, and a heaviness weighed his voice as he said, “The safest place for the priest would have been the residence of a woman immune to police attention. I suspected Lady Kang, and so I asked Woorim why she was seen purchasing gentlemen’s clothes and shoes.”
“W-what did she say, sir?”
“She claimed they had a guest, her mistress’s father-in-law…” He held aside a branch of sharp needles, letting me pass without being whipped. “Yet I later learned that the father-in-law had never left the province, and I shared this with Shim. This must have led him to think that the maid knew the priest was inside.”
“And now the priest is m-m-missing again,” I said. “Officer Shim said so.”
“Then Woorim is more valuable to him now. She may still be alive.”
A burst of hope fluttered warm against my rib cage. “P-perhaps, sir.”
Silence settled between us, emphasizing the woodland noises—the hardened layer of snow cracking underfoot as officers pressed upward, the trees creaking like old bones.
