Young-hee and the Pullocho

by Mark James Russell

  “Just some simple pies and cakes, m’lady,” said the dokkaebi, preparing to launch into a great sales pitch, when he did a double take. “Oh my, you’re a bear child. A human female, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. People seem fascinated by that.”

  He looked at her hard for a moment, calculating, and then all at once seemed to lose interest. “It’s not my business. I just don’t see many of your kind, is all. Is the old stone your master?”

  “My master? You mean Grandma Dol? She’s my friend, I guess. The jangseung in the forest just introduced us.”

  “Jangseung, pah,” spat the dokkaebi. “Uptight, self-important prigs, thinking they control who comes and goes. Never trust ’em. You can be sure they are only nice for their own reasons. Besides, there are other gates the jangseung don’t protect.” The goblin rooted in some boxes stacked under a cracked wood shelf, before finding a package wrapped in simple, gray cotton. A pull on the cloth corner revealed a stack of yakgwa honey biscuits. “Here, take one. They’re quite good. And just one cookie will keep you full for a year.”

  Full for a year, she thought, pretty amazing. Would it work in her world, too? “Wow, that’s pretty neat,” she said. “But will I just feel full, or actually be full?”

  “I can guarantee that for the whole year, you would be satiated and healthy,” said the dokkaebi, waving the biscuits before Young-hee. They smelled rich and flavorful.

  Intrigued, she reached for them. Surely, one taste wouldn’t hurt?

  But just before she touched the cookie, a stony, chalky hand reached from behind and gently grasped her wrist. “What he means,” said Grandma Dol—and despite the Boonae mask, it was clearly her—“is that if you take just one, you will belong to him for a year. You would be taken care of and well-nourished, but bound to him.”

  “If I ate just one?”

  “If you ate just one bite. If you even took it. All exchanges contain obligations, even gifts. You cannot take something without giving something else.”

  The dokkaebi shot Grandma Dol an angry look, its fleshy, gray lips quivering slightly. “She would have been safe, interfering rock,” he said. “Is that any worse than what you have planned?”

  On hearing the accusation, a suddenly straighter, taller Grandma Dol glared at the goblin. “That is quite enough of your nonsense, goblin. Our business is done.”

  The dokkaebi’s lip curled in anger as he grumbled foully. But he retreated into his stall.

  “I’m sorry for that, Young-hee. Not all creatures here are as honorable as we would like.”

  As Grandma Dol led Young-hee away, the narrowness of her escape grew clearer by the minute. She could have been stuck in this world for a year. Or longer. Who knows if the dokkaebi would have ever let her go? And then she thought the dokkaebi, too, had a point—she didn’t really know her new companions—except what they had told her. How could she know if they were honest? What if they had something terrible planned for her, like the goblin?

  “This place is so scary,” Young-hee said, as worry tapped across her brow. “Please keep a closer eye on me. This is your world, and I don’t know its dangers.” Young-hee was unsure where all this bitterness was coming from, but once out, she couldn’t stop it. “It’s kind of irresponsible,” she charged.

  The face and posture of Boonae or Grandma Dol were neither upset nor angry. They remained polite as ever. And yet … Young-hee felt them growing colder and more distant.

  “I am sorry you feel that way,” said Grandma Dol, or Boonae—or both. “If you do not think we have behaved appropriately, we do apologize. Perhaps it is best if we left now.”

  Young-hee knew she had offended them. She had been scared, but it was too late. “I should probably go home,” she said, half-heartedly. “I’ve been here quite a while. My mom is probably worried. I should go back. If I can.”

  “That is your choice. But maybe it is for the best.”

  So Grandma Dol led Young-hee back to grove of jureum trees, where the jangseung stood guard. As they walked in silence, Young-hee felt a soft, persistent ache of regret in her chest. After wishing for escape from all the boredom and sameness, she had finally gotten the excitement she craved. But she ruined it, in just a few hours. She wished she could explain to the old stone woman how she felt: Sometimes people just react badly, especially when scared or hurt. And getting angry doesn’t mean someone’s a bad person. She wondered if the old stone woman was offended by her outburst, or hadn’t liked Young-hee all along. It was too depressing to think about, so Young-hee did her best not to think at all.

  Soon they came to the jangseung, standing guard at the edge of the forest. Behind them was the dark wooden door embedded in the massive tree root. She thought if she could just say the right thing, like she had to the jangseung, everything would be all right again. But she didn’t know what to say or how to say it, so trying not to sound sarcastic, she said, “Thank you very much for showing me around and spending the day with me. Oh, and thanks for the food. That was really good. And for keeping me safe.”

  “You were my guest,” said Boonae cheerfully. “A guest always deserves proper hospitality.”

  “And it was good to know there are still bear children in our realm,” said the lady guardian. “It has been a long time.”

  The silence was awkward. Tell them you’re sorry, she shouted at herself. Tell them how much you like it here. Tell them! “Okay, well, thanks again. I hope we can meet again.” She gave a half-wave, but saw they were not going to wave back, so simply turned and walked to the stairwell door. It opened easily. One last chance to ask to stay. But after a brief pause, she walked through the door into the garage—a normal parking garage. There was her ball. As she picked it up, she saw that the bracelet from the rabbit, was just a knotted ring of dead flowers. She gently took it off, but even that soft touch caused half the leaves to fall to the ground like dust. When she turned around to mark the door, so she could find her way back, there just a normal blue steel door. It was locked. She looked at her phone—three bars (and still no messages), and the time said that less than an hour had passed since she first entered the basement garage. Spotting the wall marked 804 in white numbers, she walked toward her building and home.

  The Pullocho and the Sanshin

  There once was a man named Kang Manseop who lived in the Dharma Flower Hills of the ancient Gaya Kingdom, close to what is Mount Jiri today. Among the many powerful mushrooms, roots, and herbs in this incredibly fertile region, was insam, wild ginseng roots much prized for their medicinal and magical powers. Kang came from a family of simmani, people who wander the hills and valleys, looking for damp, secret places where insam grows. Like all simmani, Kang never drank alcohol or ate meat or fish before heading into the mountains, and was careful never to offend the mountain gods. A single large root of the best insam could bring enough money to live on for a year, so over time more and more people tried their hand at insam digging—people who drank and ate before they dug and did not care about the mountain gods. Gradually the insam grew smaller and smaller, and ever harder to find.

  So Kang Manseop decided to stop hunting insam. He had a more special prize in mind—the pullocho, a magical root said to be so powerful, even the heavenly spirits feared it. While many people hunted insam, nobody dug for pullocho—for the good reason that it was nearly impossible to find. In fact, Kang had only seen one once in his entire life, and even then it was a small piece, the prized possession of a great lord in a nearby county. But he had seen pictures of pullochos and he read much about them and knew that while a good insam root could feed a family for a year, a single pullocho would make him wealthy for life.

  Kang began searching all over the Dharma Flower Hills, but of course had no luck finding the magical ginseng. Determined to change his life, he walked every inch of those hills—from the rocky peaks to the deepest valleys—and waded every stream, in case pullochos liked the wet of the flowing rivers. But he never discover
ed even as much as a stem or a leaf of one. Weeks, months, years passed without any success, and eventually Kang had exhausted nearly all of his family’s money.

  But rather than grow discouraged, Kang grew angry. He was from a family of great simmani, and he worked harder than anyone else. This failure couldn’t be his fault, but must lie with the mountain spirit. Perhaps it was angry at all the impious people who had dug up the insam. So Kang went to the governor of the Dharma Flower Hills and he complained about the lack of pullochos. “Your excellency! The mountain spirit who rules Dharma Flower Hills is too cruel! I have been hunting for years to find a pullocho, but he refuses to grant my small request.”

  The governor looked at Kang with surprise and annoyance. “What should I do about it? I am the governor of the physical world, not of the heavens and spirits. If you have a problem with the mountain spirit of Dharma Flower Hills, ask a monk for help.”

  “Your Excellency, I believe you are mistaken. As governor, your responsibility is true and profound. In a well-ordered kingdom, the heavenly realm and the physical are as one. You are responsible for everything that occurs in the Dharma Flower Hills. Even the spirits must obey.”

  “What you say is true,” nodded the governor. “Come and we’ll see what we can do.” So the governor took Kang to the biggest temple on Dharma Flower Hills, and the shrine dedicated to Sanshin, the mountain spirit. There, the governor carved a petition to Sanshin on the sacred tree in front of the shrine:

  To the Sanshin of Dharma Flower Hills:

  As governor of Dharma Flower Hills, I command you to answer Kang Manseop’s sincere prayers and allow him to find a pullocho. If you do not comply, I will send you into exile.

  —Governor of Dharma Flower Hills

  That night Kang dreamt of an old, bearded man, in simple clothes and with a serene expression. The old man apologized to Kang for making his life so difficult, and promised that if Kang followed the Three-Fingered Brook up the mountain to its source, where the Empty Forest meets Turtle Rock, he would find a pullocho growing in the wet shadow of an old, broken pine tree.

  The next morning, Kang awoke early. He hiked all day until he found Turtle Rock and the broken pine. Just as the old man promised, in the damp roots of the tree, was a precious pullocho root. In fact, it was one of the largest pullocho he had ever heard of, and Kang cried with happiness.

  When Kang returned to the governor’s residence, he thanked him for his help and showed him the amazing pullocho. He told the governor how the dream led him to the root. The governor nodded solemnly. “I, too, had a dream last night, Kang. But in my dream, the Sanshin said he would follow my order immediately, but asked me to remove my petition. He said that he had been living in Dharma Flower Hills since before the first men emerged from the cave on Mount Taebaek, since before Tiger and Bear fought for the right to become the first man, before the great spirits divided the heavenly realm from the physical world. He couldn’t bear to leave his mountain and the petition was a terrible burden. So I returned to the shrine this morning, removed the petition from the sacred tree, asked Sanshin to forgive me, and promised never again to order such a noble son of heaven.”

  The blaring television grated on Young-hee’s nerves. Her school-books and homework lay scattered across her desk, poked at like a picky five-year-old eats peas. Bum raced through the apartment with some plastic robot toy, making sputtering noises somewhere between a jet plane and a machine gun, but Young-hee couldn’t even summon the strength to yell quiet. She was beyond annoyed.

  It was all because of the other place—the strange land of the jangseung. At first, memories of that realm, its market and creatures, filled her with a dizzying marvel. She could hardly believe there was something so much bigger and better than her dull little life. Her dull little world. Sure, that world was strange and scary, but also more vibrant, more alive. No wonder they called this place a “mud world.”

  Gradually, though, the flat, beige dullness of everyday life ate away at those memories. Bum’s whining and pestering were worse than ever. Schoolwork felt more pointless. All her online apps and networks seemed so inane, she rarely bothered to log on. Everything felt like a dull shadow of that other world. Soon, everything annoyed her, and then became worse than annoying. The rains of jangmacheol were giving way to the heat of summer, turning those downpours into sticky, gooey humidity. The days burned and the nights stayed thick with moist heat. Everyone was miserable from the suffocating temperatures and the lack of sleep—sometimes, Young-hee wondered if her own bad mood was somehow making everyone else more surly.

  Her mom asked what was wrong and tried to cheer her up but, stymied, went back to work. Bum just hoped Young-hee would please get over whatever was bothering her. Young-hee knew she was beyond getting over anything.

  As the scare of the goblin market faded, she wanted more of the “strange land.” She spent weeks searching every inch of the garage—at different times of day and days of the week, on rainy days and sunny—but she couldn’t find the magical brown-green door; the lighting never changed, the colors didn’t fade. When Young-hee was honest with herself, she was not surprised or even much annoyed.

  She searched for clues, wandering through the five-day market where old people sold vegetables and side dishes that were tasty, but nothing compared to flower-scented gim or butterfly wings or acorn kimchi. She went to the supermarket, Internet cafes, the hillside park beside her apartment, but, there were no gateways to magical worlds.

  Other times, she searched online or at the library for books about tradition and traditional stories—tales of silly tigers, powerful monkeys, mischievous goblins, and more. She read all the folktales she could find, famous and obscure alike. She combed the parts of Seoul where clueless tourists go to buy cheap masks and prints of old paintings. But everything seemed like a fake, a dim reflection in a tarnished mirror.

  The boring, ugly sameness of daily life surrounded her without end, a desert of dullness. After a while, she began to doubt whether there even was a Strange Land, or just an afternoon dream born of boredom. She would occasionally look at the dead flower petals that used to be her bracelet, which she had hidden in a handkerchief in her T-shirt drawer. But after a time, they only seemed to be teasing her, so she stopped looking. She looked less and less often for a way back to Strange Land, and returned to her schoolwork and her life. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to break things. She wanted everyone to just go away. She wished she could just go away too.

  One day, after another fruitless search of the garage, Young-hee plunked down on a short, stone wall at the edge of the apartment complex near the plastic jangseung totem poles. One looked more bent than before. The sun was so high and harsh that it bleached out the colors, and she hoped that the glare would burn away her foul feelings. The hum of distant people going about their regular lives, complaining, playing, walking, living, sounded so very far away. “Feh,” she said in quiet distain.

  Just then, a shadow passed in front of the sun. “Is everything okay?” asked a warm, old voice. Young-hee tilted her head up and squinted.

  “Hello, Mr. Gyeongbi,” she said, trying to be polite. “I’m all right, I guess.”

  “You guess? Because I’ve seen you walking around endlessly the past few weeks, like you had something on your mind.”

  “No, it’s not that. … I just lost something,” she said.

  “Oh? What was it?” He sounded genuinely interested. Young-hee liked Gyeongbi Shin for always seeming to listen and care. He may have been older than anyone Young-hee had ever known, but he was full of life. Too many people fade as they age, she thought, but Gyeongbi Shin was as vivid as a teenager, only without all the spazzy nervousness.

  “It’s hard to explain. But I lost it and can’t find it anywhere.”

  Mr. Shin thought for a bit. “Well, have you tried looking in the last place you saw it?”

  “That’s the problem,” Young-hee said, “I can’t remember where I lost i
t. I was lost when I lost it.”

  “I see,” he said, although Young-hee thought he didn’t see at all. “Well, if you lost something while you were lost, maybe you need to be lost again to find it.”

  It seemed like a silly thing to say, but Gyeongbi Shin’s warm laugh made Young-hee feel a bit better. She smiled, which seemed to make him happy, too.

  Just then, the orange kitten walked by. He was bigger than last time, but he still surprisingly friendly for a stray. The kitten crept out of some bushes and walked bravely to the guard. Gyeongbi Shin bent over to scratch it behind its ear. “All cats are really tigers,” he said, laughing some more. “Even cute little kittens, so you need to be careful.”

  Young-hee reached into her pocket and pulled out a hairband and dangled it. The kitten instantly went crazy over the elastic toy, batting at it furiously. Young-hee remembered their first meeting, when the guard was telling Bum that silly story. “Mr. Shin, do you know a lot about fairytales? Tigers and goblins and magic things like that?”

  “Sure, a bit, at least,” he said. “My grandmother always told all sorts of old stories—‘The Tiger and the Rabbit,’ ‘The Nine-Headed Ogre,’ ‘The Crying Green Frogs,’ ‘The Dragon King Under the Sea.’ Before comic books and animation ruined the imagination, we had to imagine what everything looked like. But my grandmother could really tell a good story—about ghosts and dragons and dokkaebi goblins, and all sorts of creatures.”

  “Yeah, but aren’t they scary, too?”

  “Scary? Yeah, magic creatures can be cruel and capricious,” he said. “If I got scared, she’d say that there are three rules to remember in those old fairytales: Don’t accept any presents or eat food—except from friends, of course; never leave a path you are following; and, no matter whom you meet, be reverent and polite, because you never know who they really are.”

  Young-hee nodded solemnly. “And those rules keep you safe?”

  “I guess so. Maybe. Sometimes,” said Gyeongbi Shin, looking at Young-hee more deeply. “But in old stories, you’re never really safe. I mean the real stories, not the boring cleaned up versions they teach in school—all mixed up with Western nursery tales and stories from other countries and other religions and things. The real old stories are always wild, but that’s what makes them so exciting. If you want safe, you could just tell the story of Hanbit Mansions and the Incredible Shopping Discounts.”