IGMS Issue 32 Read online

  Ori was brought back to the present as Jwi screamed. Memory overlapped reality. She kicked and rolled, knocking a drum, but the old woman chanted and beat on. The bell chimed faster and faster.

  Then everything stopped. Jwi lay limp once more. The old woman uttered commands in a hoarse voice. The girl left, leaving his betrothed untended. Ori wanted to go to her, but the old woman kneeled before him, sweat beading along the folds of her brow. "Is she your sister?" she asked him.

  "No, mistress," he answered, distracted.

  "Your wife?"

  "Yes . . . well, no."

  "Merely betrothed, then? That is well. Our price is her. Find yourself another wife. I thought the tendency was to take older wives these days."

  "No. You can't --"

  "You don't want her anymore."

  Her directness gave Ori pause. "What is wrong with her?"

  "She was being dragged through the veil by a restless spirit. I've seen it once or twice in my long life. We stopped the process, but cannot reverse what has been done. She is halfway gone from us."

  With that enigmatic statement the mudang girl reappeared and the old woman said, "I suppose you'll have to give him your bed before he keels to the ground where he's kneeling. Feed him cold noodles as well. Barley, don't waste rice."

  "Ye, mistress." The girl bowed.

  "You may have one night to say farewell to your betrothed," the mudang offered Ori. "In the morning you will thank me, and tell me you understand."

  "I go where she goes," Ori insisted. He still had his duty; no one could take that away from him.

  "Tell me that again tomorrow morning," was the mistress's unsettling reply.

  The mudang forbid Ori from hovering over his betrothed while she slept. So it was that he fell into a fretful sleep apart from her, and then awoke to darkness and the silhouette of long, black hair hanging over him.

  "My name is Kyung-mi," said the young mudang girl.

  Ori remembered: where he was, why. "Please take me to my betrothed," he said, and the girl bowed at the waist.

  Nighttime insects chirred softly on the other side of the wall as they walked. Kyung-mi stopped before a rice paper door, but made no move to open it. "I will explain," she said. "You will want an explanation."

  "Let me see with my own eyes that she is okay, first." Ori slid open the door and stepped inside. His betrothed was there, standing, gazing out of a slatted window at the moon. Ori released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

  "At least let me warn you," said Kyung-mi behind him.

  Ori moved toward his betrothed. As usual, he didn't know what name to call her. They'd exchanged so few words in two days.

  "Don't touch her!"

  Ori looked back, shocked as Kyung-mi grabbed his wrist.

  "Warn me, why?" he finally said. He looked again at Jwi, who still gazed silently out the window, unperturbed by the commotion. An uneasiness stirred in his gut. "Why?"

  "She is deaf to this world," explained Kyung-mi without releasing his wrist. "And blind. It's as if she's stuck her head through the veil into the spirit world. She sees and hears only what is on the other side, but her body is still with us."

  "The spirit world," breathed Ori.

  He sensed more than saw the mudang nod in the dark. "She is caught between the two worlds. To her eyes, the sun gleams dully like copper, but moonlight spills into the room, bright as day, but white as death."

  "You've seen such a world," Ori observed. He pulled gently out of Kyung-mi's grip. "She can feel me, though, if I touch her?"

  "It would only scare her," warned Kyung-mi.

  Nevertheless, Ori walked up to his betrothed. She was squinting. He could almost envision the moonlight shining onto her face, as bright as Kyung-mi described.

  His skin crawled, standing so close and yet worlds apart. She couldn't see him. This discomfited him greatly, and he found his palm itching to reach out to her, to make a connection. Instead, he blew lightly on her ear. She flinched. He blew harder. She backed up, hugging herself and looking around. "Oppa?" she whispered shakily. Older brother?

  "Please," said Kyung-mi. "You're frightening her."

  "Is someone there?" Jwi swallowed, composing herself. "I . . . would be grateful if you could find my brother and let him know where I am." She must have believed she was speaking to a ghost. Was her brother deceased, then? Perhaps perished during the Japanese's invasion. Clever of her to realize where she was, brave to ask a request of a ghost. Ori was reminded that he knew nothing at all about her.

  Ori took another step forward. "Please!" Kyung-mi beseeched him, but he paid her no heed. He reached out and gripped his betrothed's shoulders. She sucked in her breath and went instantly stiff.

  Kyung-mi rushed out of the room. Alone at last. "Jwi," Ori spoke softly, just as her brother would call her. But of course she couldn't hear him, she could only feel him. He let go and watched her slowly begin to breathe again.

  How to reach her?

  "Can you find my brother?" Jwi breathed, shuddering. How incredibly alone she must have felt.

  Ori moved behind her. As gently as he could, he nudged the braid aside that hung thickly down her back and, with his other hand, traced a message. Jwi, he spelled.

  Are you able to read? he wondered. Did you learn hangul like a dutiful daughter? Or did you hide in the bamboo grove and make music for the gods instead?

  Jwi, he wrote. Jwi. Jwi. Over and over, until she recognized the repetition as language. Six strokes, the last a straight line traced down her spine. Then he had an idea. Her brother's spirit was likely not in the spirit world at all. Human spirits didn't linger there unless they had an untoward connection with the living, they continued on to the kingdom of the dead instead. But Jwi needed her brother. So Ori wrote: Oppa. Oppa. Oppa.

  Jwi spun without warning and hugged him tightly around the waist. "Oppa!" she cried. Bewildered, Ori squeezed back, keenly aware that from her perspective, she was hugging air. "I always knew you were watching over me. Why can't I see you?" But she didn't give him a chance to trace an explanation.

  While Ori's betrothed was still latched around him, Kyung-mi and the elder mudang walked back through the door. Kyung-mi looked anxiously between them, but the mistress appeared thoughtful.

  "Thank you, mistress mudang," said Ori, using the most honorable phrasing of the language. "I do understand now. And I have chosen to remain with my betrothed."

  Jwi was still awake when Ori reluctantly gave in to exhaustion. But in the morning, he found her asleep. To her it was night, since the moon had descended in deference to the sun. At some point her face had been washed clean of mud and her ceremonial gown replaced with a more serviceable but still elegant yellow and brown hanbok. How the mudang dressed her was beyond Ori, but the gift of such an expensive garment felt like a claim of ownership. Of a surety it had belonged to Kyung-mi, who was about her size.

  "I think you should leave," said the elder mudang, sitting over Jwi like a well-regarded prize. She didn't even meet Ori's eyes, but stared into the space just beside his head.

  Ori was indignant, but he swallowed it and asked, "Why do you want her?"

  "One who sees the spirits behind the veil? Whose eyes and ears are full of the other side, but who can still communicate with us?"

  "Very well. But what good does that do if you do not even serve a village? If you communicate with the spirits for your own amusement, or curiosity?"

  The mudang did look at him then with eyes as hard as pebbles. "We pacify the spirits before their mischief ever reaches your village. We implore the gods for rain that fills your paddies."

  "I am sorry, I . . . my tongue raced ahead of my sense. I'm very grateful for what you have done."

  "No one on this side can pull her back through."

  Ori nodded. Jwi was well and truly lost, then. He didn't think this could happen to him again. When he closed his eyes, three images overlapped each other in his mind: the resigned eyes of his father as h
is name was called for the national army; his older sister's blood-smeared hand hanging over the side of the bed, impaled by a Japanese katana, while Ori hid in the child-sized space beneath; and his mother's fevered gaze, her lips flushed red as blood, as she told him, "Truly we are the gods' playthings."

  Ori shivered deep in his gut, but he swallowed his grief and hopes alike. Oddly, for all of his anticipation of what his married life might hold, he'd only ever considered the inherent responsibilities: the husband-wife role that they would play out together, and perhaps someday father-child. He'd chafed at the idea that she might not respect him, but he'd never considered what he might think of her.

  Well and good, that road was closed to him now.

  When Ori opened his eyes, Jwi was awake and rubbing her own eyes. He tried to picture the room from her perspective: dark and disorienting since the moon was down, with perhaps a dull copper sheen cast by the muted sun.

  The moment she took her hands away from her eyes, she shrieked.

  Ori was instantly down beside her. She jumped initially at his unexpected touch, but then used his arm to pull herself up and trotted toward the middle of the room -- smiling. Apparently she had only been startled, that was all. She bowed somberly toward something unseen, and then glanced back in Ori's direction (almost right at him, purely by memory) . . . and winked.

  Ori's heart was still beating from the scream.

  "Mistress Mudang," he said, "it appears we are not alone."

  "We rarely are."

  Jwi wandered back in his direction, so Ori brushed her shoulder just to let her know where he was. She leaned into his touch.

  "Mistress Mudang," he began, voicing a thought that nagged him like a summer fly. "You phrased yourself very carefully before. Would it not be possible to push her back through from the other side?"

  Her face turned thoughtful again. It was an endearing expression, one that perhaps made Ori feel closer to her than was proper. "You're willing to die for her?" she challenged him. "Even though she is quite alive now, and her contribution to the surrounding villages could be considerable. We will not house or feed her if she can no longer see through the veil, you realize. Nor can you, if you're dead."

  Dying for her. He'd meant to phrase it as a question, but the mudang was right, he was offering. Perhaps foolishly.

  "Simpler, then," she pressed when he hesitated. "You would die for her?"

  Know her or not, Ori had nothing left besides Jwi. Perhaps he had been lying to himself that he never considered what manner of wife she would make, even now. And if there was a chance, however slim, then his duty compelled him to take it, didn't it?

  While Ori considered, Jwi tried to pull him off in some direction, but he held her hand firm. Now she looked quizzically in his direction, and then back at the space where she'd bowed. "Let go of me, then," she said, turning her back to him, inviting him to write an explanation.

  Ori couldn't stand to lose anyone else, not again. But that wasn't the whole of it -- for the first time in his life, he was in the position to save another person, rather than the other way around. And besides, Jwi was curious and optimistic. Life still had meaning for her. Whereas Ori was just . . . empty.

  "Yes," Ori answered the mistress.

  "I doubt you can keep your feet on the other side of the veil and hope to push her through to this side," she mused. "However, if you reached her on the spirit side and pulled her back through the veil along with yourself. It could perhaps be done if you died . . . but only briefly. And if I am wrong, at least I would have succeeded in getting rid of you." The mistress smiled wryly. "Are you willing to try?"

  Jwi shoved Ori playfully, since he still hadn't let her go.

  "I am, yes," he answered, regaining his footing.

  "I see. It is an herb I am thinking of. If I describe it to you, you can find it for me. The correct infusion will slow your heart to nearly, but not quite, stopping."

  Ori bowed at the waist, pulling Jwi down with him. "Thank you, mistress. You are eternally wise."

  "But consider the consequences of your decision first."

  "I will consider them truly . . . while I search."

  Ori didn't set out immediately. He allowed himself to sleep briefly while Jwi did the same. Then he fed her. This involved pressing the rim of a soup bowl to her mouth and encouraging her to tip it down her throat. The first time he tried this was the only time he'd seen her truly afraid. Even food was invisible to her; how does one reconcile that? Jwi chewed obediently, but then held her nose as she forced it down her throat.

  After eating she requested privacy by telling him to go away and then waving her arms around to convince herself he wasn't near. (He saw as he left, but leave he did.) Ori could have simply departed to search for the herb then, but he chose to wait. By the time Jwi sought him out, the day had waxed into early evening and both the sun and the moon shared the horizon. So Ori wrote a description of the leaves onto Jwi's back, curious whether plant life bridged their opposing worlds.

  So they looked together, while Jwi tirelessly commented on all of the spirits that they passed on their way. Silver dragonflies skimming the surface of a pond distracted her. A giant toad, she insisted, exhaled the breeze that Ori felt on his cheek. The spirit world was apparently an active place -- and undoubtedly a dangerous one as well.

  Ori did heed the mistress's warning. He noticed how content Jwi seemed just as she was. Most importantly, she had a place in this world. Ori had spent too much of his own life feeling like a Baduk stone on a chess board. But Ori's conviction still held: spirits were not to be trusted. Wasn't it a restless spirit that had stolen Jwi in the first place, probably on nothing more than a whim? What might they do to one who peeked into their secret world? No, leaving her like this was not an option.

  Perhaps Ori was too distracted by his thoughts, because it was Jwi who spotted the plant after he'd nearly stepped over it. So plants did cross through the veil. Since Ori still hadn't convinced himself that this was a bad idea, he plucked plenty of the yellow-speckled leaves. Then he yanked up the whole root, just to be sure.

  The young mudang Kyung-mi knelt before Ori, cradling his steaming death in both hands. He wished she wouldn't be so formal about it. He opened his mouth to thank her, but couldn't find the words. He was going to die today. Briefly or no.

  The sun had set by now. The two mudang were motionless gaps in the darkness while Jwi fidgeted with one bare foot upon the other, apt to wander off if he didn't act soon.

  "Mistress," Ori addressed her straight-backed shadow, "will I be able to see Jwi from the other side of the veil?"

  "I wonder."

  That was, of course, if his spirit didn't simply keep drifting straight to the kingdom of the dead, where deceased humans belonged. Their plan was speculation driven by desperation; the details hardly seemed to matter. Even if he couldn't see her, she'd be able to see and hear him, and he'd call to her and pray she listened.

  The mistress advised him, "The leaves would have been more potent after a rain, so I steeped them in hotter water. If you trust my judgment, then drink. If you seek my opinion, I would not trust anyone's judgment on this matter. But as it is your choice, then drink if you will."

  Ori nodded and drained the tea in one gulp. It was exactly as bitter as he would expect poison to be. Some moments passed, enough to worry that it wasn't sufficient, but then gradually a fist formed in his stomach and needles pricked his fingers and toes. His body felt profoundly wrong, and he knew that this was right.

  When Ori opened his eyes again, he didn't feel as if he were waking so much as slipping into a deeper trance. He knew intuitively that he had crossed through the veil. Moonlight filled the room with none of the warmth of the sun against his skin.

  The spirit world. A tawny cat picked its way across the ceiling on gecko feet. An iridescent beetle landed on Ori's sleeve. He noticed that the walls of the temple itself existed on either side of the veil, perhaps because it was so ancient, but all of
its inner contents were invisible to him, including the mudang.

  Ori turned his head and spotted ghosts: two of them, a man and a boy, huddled together like a family. Perhaps they were who Jwi bowed to. They belonged in the kingdom of the dead, yet here they lingered, watching Ori curiously.

  "Honorable ancestors," he greeted them.

  As soon as he spoke, he was distracted by movement at the end of the room. The movement was Jwi, probably hearing his voice. She looked insubstantial as fog -- her body made only a faint impression against the moonlight behind her -- but nonetheless, Ori could see her. She seemed to be saying something.

  "I cannot hear you," he told her. "Touch your palms together if you can hear me."

  She touched her palms, but distractedly as she looked all around. This time he read her lips as she said, "Oppa."

  "Your oppa isn't here. Jwi, please listen carefully to me."

  After a moment's more frantic hand waving, she remembered herself and bowed to Ori. He was, after all, her betrothed.

  Being dead, however temporarily, Ori had no need of breath, and this gave him the eerie impression that time stood still. Yet a tension deep in his muscles reminded him that his body yet had a claim on his spirit. He couldn't keep this up for long and hope to return.

  He talked quickly. "Place your trust in me a moment. I am not truly dead, I have a chance to return to my body. Allow me to hold onto you and do your best to hold onto me, and if the gods are merciful, I will be able to pull you back through the veil."

  But Jwi looked reluctant, and he instantly understood why: she didn't want to leave her oppa behind in the spirit world.

  He took a step forward anyway and she took a step back, visibly agitated and talking quickly. He saw that he had no choice but to explain. "Your oppa has already passed beyond to the kingdom of the dead. Jwi, I was the one looking after you. It was always me. I'm sorry."