ON HORSEBACK, MAEWOL AND I rode through gusts of fresh wind, following the path outlined on the map. My sister was dressed in her shamanic garb of flowing white and the bright red of her sash belt. Her face was hidden under the shadows of her white cone hat. She’d even brought her fan and her ghost-summoning rattle. “In case I need to summon the gods,” she told me, then in a quiet voice added, “but really, it’s to show whoever crosses our path that I’m someone to reckon with.” As for myself, I had worn my hanbok, along with a silk jangot covering my head, in the hopes that my meek appearance might lighten the lips of any secret keeper we might encounter.
But for the first few hours of our travel, we didn’t encounter a living soul. There was no one to ask if we were heading in the right direction; there was only the wind, the persistent wind, driving the clouds across the sky, ruffling through the grassy landscape and pushing at our backs, as though urging us to make haste.
I held on tight to the fluttering map, trying to find my place, and then I looked around. Every direction looked the same. My attention stopped before a high oreum hill, one of the hundreds of small ancient volcanoes now covered in overflowing grass, shrubs, and trees. I steered my pony, ignoring Maewol’s “Where are you going?” as I followed the memory of Father’s words up the slope.
Study anything too close, he’d said, and you’ll get lost.
Father had gotten lost many times before, blown too far away by his investigations. At night he would travel by the stars and during the day by the sun. If he ever became absolutely lost, he’d find his way by climbing to the highest point to get a broader idea of where he was.
Look at everything around you from a distance, and you’ll find the way back home.
Once we reached the top, I found myself staring down at a deep pocket in the hill, a crater covered in grass and a circle of trees. Ponies were grazing below. Sometimes holes were found around these oreum hills—entrances into an extensive system of lava tubes, of abysses and endlessly long caves with ceilings decorated in limestone, and of mysterious lakes hidden deep in the earth. But that was the world below me, and perhaps it was only make-believe, these stories made by those with an abundance of imagination. I forced my gaze up and looked ahead. All that mattered was the world I could see, an undulating land carved by fire and marked by the wind, and beyond it, the faintest glimmer of blue, which was where we were heading toward. The seaside.
“We’re still far from the coast.” I urged my pony forward again. “What did you tell the shaman? She’ll have noticed your absence by now.”
Maewol ran her hand along her pony’s mane. “I left her a note. I told her I was going somewhere with you, and would return in two days at most.”
“She’ll be worried about you…” I paused. “You’re like a daughter to her.”
“We only have each other.”
“Didn’t she used to have a daughter?”
“She’s dead.”
“And you must know how she died…”
“No.” Maewol slowly shook her head. “She never did tell me. But she often has nightmares, and I see her weeping with such anguish. I sometimes worry she’ll die from heartbreak.”
“People don’t die from heartbreak,” I murmured, while wondering what fueled Shaman Nokyung’s nightmares. Grief … or guilt?
“You should hear it yourself. When she cries,” Maewol added sheepishly, “it sounds so painful I feel like crying myself.”
I forced my gaze back onto the map, afraid she’d see guilt flickering in my eyes. The old woman Maewol so cared for was the prime suspect listed in my journal. At some point, I would have to tell Maewol the truth about Shaman Nokyung’s possible connection to the disappearances. Gripping the map tighter, I fixed all my attention onto the illustration—
A rabbit dashed across, frightening my pony.
I nearly fell off, both my hands clutching the map, but I managed to steady myself at the last minute.
“Stop staring at the map.” Maewol snatched the crinkled paper from my hand, and the rudeness of her behavior left my face hot.
“Give. That. Back.”
“Follow me, Older Sister.” She urged her pony into a gallop. “I know how to get around.”
I rode after Maewol, the heat spreading to the tips of my ears. I chased her down the slope to the foot of the hill. The path continued on, winding into the distance, but Maewol disappeared into a field of swaying reeds.
“Maewol-ah!” My anger peaked as I waited before the reeds. “We’re supposed to follow the path.”
Silence.
Heaving out a sigh, I followed her in, the silvery-white plumes towering over me. It was loud here. The wind swept through, and the reeds rustled in all directions, as though I were surrounded by the crisp sound of hushing waves.
“Maewol-ah,” I called again, less angry now. “This isn’t the way we’re supposed to go.”
“It is, trust me!”
I followed her voice and caught glimpses of her, of inky strands of hair flying, her skirt loose in the wind. And a glimpse of her eyes, gleaming like black pearls as she glanced over her shoulder. “It’s a shortcut. The path will reappear on the other side.”
Reluctantly, I rode deeper into the field after my sister. Uneasiness knotted in my chest. I told myself that if we got lost, we could always turn back, and yet the field stretched on for longer than I would have liked. When we reached the end of the reed field, I quickly retrieved the map from Maewol and inspected it. I couldn’t recognize any landmarks in our surroundings.
“So?” I asked. “Do you know where we are?”
Maewol shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I sat up, tall and stiff. “We had a plan! We’ve traveled for at least five hours, all the way here, following the map.” I shook the paper in my hand. “We were supposed to stay on the path. We don’t have time to waste like this!”
“I’m sure we’ll find our way to Jeongbang waterfall,” she said. What gnawed at me most was that she sounded utterly unaffected and much too calm.
“You do not find the place you need to reach by wandering.”
“I do all the time.” She pushed strands of her hair away from her face, tucking them behind her ear. Then she urged her pony forward. “How are you ever going to solve a mystery when your nose is buried deep inside books or right up against that map?”
“Maewol, it doesn’t work like that. Maps are meant to be followed.”
“No, a map is meant to be used when we’re lost, and we are not lost.”
Maewol continued to ride on, and I continued to follow. Our argument went on in circles, myself convinced that we were lost, and Maewol convinced that wandering a bit would do our travels no harm.
I shook my head, trying my best to restrain myself from yelling. “We need to turn back. If you won’t, then I will—”
A faint hush sound expelled every thought from my mind.
I frowned, then exchanged a glance with Maewol. “It can’t be…”
I urged my pony into a gallop, passing by a line of squids left to dry out under the sun. Soon the grass turned to sand, and the sand into froth-capped waves that rushed toward me, then receded into the vast stretches of rolling waves. And on either side of where I stood were stone pillars that rose straight out of the sea, guarding the island’s edge like fangs.
Hoowi!
Hoowi!
I glanced farther ahead. The turquoise water turned a deeper blue, and I could hear the whistling sound of haenyeo fish-divers as they rose from the depths—a breathing technique passed down from woman to woman for generations. On this forsaken island of poverty and starvation, where the king sent his most unwanted ones, haenyeos had still found ways to survive by free-diving into the turbulent sea.
Some distance away, a group of haenyeos sat on the beach, clad in their swimming outfits of loose white cotton that bared their skin. Women who weren’t from the coastal villages of Jeju were often scandalized by their openness, but not me. I was more preoccupied by their ability to plunge into the unknown depths.
Nervously tugging the silk jangot over my head, I climbed off my pony and pulled the reins as I made my way toward them, hoping one of them might know the way to the Jeongbang falls.
“Excuse me.” I stopped before a middle-aged woman. “Could you direct us to Jeongbang waterfall?”
As though she hadn’t heard me over the crashing waves, she continued to sort through her mulgudeok. The bamboo basket was heavy with her catch, of abalone, sea urchins, sea snails; a blend of slimy, squirming things. Next to her was a wooden walking stick.
I raised my voice a notch. “My sister and I have lost our way.”
“Keep walking that way.” She gestured southward without looking up, like she was too busy to spare a glance my way. “You cannot miss it.”
A shadow fell next to me. “Ajimang!” came Maewol’s voice, and it was then that the woman looked up, revealing a square face with a pair of strong jaws, and an even stronger gaze. “Have you heard of a woman named Boksun?”
The ajimang’s hands stilled. “Why do you ask…?” Her attention drifted from my sister and fixed on something yonder.
I glanced over my shoulder at the wind-ruffled sea; someone was swimming to shore. At first, I thought it was a young woman, by the speed and strength of her strokes, but out from the waves rose a grandmother with dripping gray hair tied into a coil at the nape of her neck.
The ajimang next to me called out, “I’m coming, Halmang Sunja!”
Grandmother Sunja walked with a stagger and a bamboo basket full of her catch. She wasn’t the only old woman out at sea. I’d heard of haenyeos older than eighty still diving for fish. The sea made their limbs youthful again; that is what I had been told. In the sea, these old women knew no pain nor exhaustion, though they still maintained the wisdom that came with age and experience. That was why, even though Halmang Sunja looked like a frail woman on land, she likely claimed a high rank among the haenyeos as a sang-goon, the chief of the collective.
She might even be able to help us.
Eagerness thrummed in my blood as I watched the ajimang reach the shore, bringing the walking stick over. The stick went to Halmang Sunja, and her heavy bamboo basket went to the ajimang.
Both women made their way toward us now, and when they arrived, Halmang Sunja turned to me. A thousand wrinkles were carved into her face. “Nuge-kkwa?” Her Jeju dialect was strong, and it took me a moment to realize that she was asking who I was.
Before I could reply, the ajimang said, “They were lost and asked for Jeongbang Fall. They also asked about Boksun. Coincidentally.”
Coincidentally? Bewilderment beat through me as the two women exchanged glances, not only between themselves, but with the other haenyeos who were watching us. Suspicion lurked in their eyes.
“I am Min Hwani.” I lowered the jangot, letting the old woman’s gaze rest upon my bare face, and I knew what she saw: the deepwater-black eyes I’d inherited from Father. “Daughter of Detective Min Jewoo.” I cast a sideways glance to my right. “And this is my sister. Maewol. Our father went missing last year, and we’re trying to find him.”
“He went missing, did he?” The old woman pushed the dripping ringlets of hair away from her face. “A good man, he seemed like. Your father rode over to us haenyeos last year to ask the exact same question. ‘Where is Jeongbang waterfall?’ he asked. And he also asked if we knew of a Boksun.”
I held my breath, afraid that if I exhaled then this moment would vanish like the mist. It was hard to believe that in my sister’s off-course wandering, we had found our way to the very trail Father had walked. My skin pebbled as I glanced to my left, at the stretch of sand and twigs. Empty, and yet I could almost imagine Father standing there alongside us.
We rode far along the coast and up a steep slope until we reached a hamlet of lava rock huts. It was deep enough inland that I could hardly hear the thundering waterfall dropping into the sea. In fact, I couldn’t hear much at all. It was quiet here, like we’d stepped into a deserted and forgotten settlement, but then I heard a squeal of laughter.
Following the sound, we rode up to a large nettle tree with sprawling branches. Under it lounged those who did not dive, those who had stayed behind to watch the children; they were all men, except for one young woman. Shadows of branches seemed tattooed onto her pretty face. Then the wind stirred and the shadows swayed away, revealing a pair of watchful eyes. Eyes that weren’t observing the infant on her lap; they were observing us.
I urged my horse closer. The trotting hooves sounded too loud, drawing all attention my way. The male chattering shushed into silence, and all ears seemed to strain as I said, “We are looking for someone named Boksun.” My eyes locked onto the young woman’s. “Perhaps you could help us.”
The shadow seemed to move into her eyes, filling them with a horrible depth. “Who are you?” she whispered as she rose to her feet, clinging to the infant. “I said, who are you—” She paused, her gaze stopping on Maewol and her outfit. Her knotted brows loosened. “You are a shaman?”
My sister leaped off her horse, her conical white hat nearly falling off her head as she landed on her two feet. She set it right. “I am Min Maewol, the assistant to a shaman you must know. Shaman Nokyung.” She waited as recognition dawned in the young woman’s eyes. “And this is my sister, Hwani.”
“Hwani?” the young woman said. My name lingered on her tongue as her brows lifted, a spark of familiarity illuminating her face. A spark that seemed to light the faces of all those who had once encountered Father, as though Father had prepared them to greet me one day. “Hwani, yes. I know that name.” Her tight shoulders eased. “Detective Min’s daughter. You both must be his daughters.”
“Are you Boksun?” Maewol asked.
“I am … What are you both doing here?”
A mixture of relief and dread washed through me. “You sent me Father’s journal.” I dismounted, and with hurried hands, I searched the traveling sack that dangled next to my pony’s side. At last, I pulled out the charred book, clutching it tight to still my trembling. “That is why I am here.”
Boksun stared at the journal for a long moment.
My stomach churned, and I wanted to puke. I’d run away from Aunt Min, crossed an entire sea, driven by the questions sparked the moment I’d received this journal. Why had Father given his journal to Boksun? Why had she then sent it to me? Had he given her something more, like the answers to this investigation?
“Come.” Boksun led us away from the crowd of vigilant men. Shifting the child onto one arm, she reached out with her free hand and held the journal, pocked with fire holes and browned at the corners. “I should have sent it to you sooner,” she said, still in a whisper. “I hesitated for too long. And then a fire broke out. It nearly burned our hut to the ground, and it burned the journal too.”
“Surely…” I clung to a remnant of hope. “Surely you at least read the journal before the fire?”
“I cannot read.” There was real remorse in her voice. “I wish I could have sent something more to you than this ash of a journal.”
“So,” Maewol finally said, tilting her head to the side, her eyes filled with curiosity. “Why did you withhold the journal from my sister?”
Hesitation flinched across Boksun’s face. “Because…” She swallowed. “I was scared.”
I shook my head, frustration straining against my voice. “Why? In fact, why did he even give the journal to you?”
“Follow me,” Boksun said under her breath. “There is something I need to show you two.”
I tried to imagine what it was Boksun had to show us, but soon thinking became difficult as we climbed down the cliffside, the edge that dipped into a lashing of wind and clouds of misty waterdrops that rose from Jeongbang Fall. The wind blew so hard that my silk veil almost flew away several times; I clutched it tight against my chest, letting it flutter in a wild dance as I tried to take in quick sips of the air.
“Let me start at the beginning,” Boksun said at last. She was leading the way and she kept her gaze fixed ahead, the infant secured to her back in a wraparound blanket. She locked her arms behind her, under the child’s bottom, for added safety. “While your father was investigating into Seohyun’s case, he heard about how I had disappeared two days before her death. He’d also heard that Seohyun and I were friends. So he had someone search for me. He thought I’d run away because I perhaps knew something about how she’d died.”
“Did you?” Maewol asked.
“No. I didn’t even know of her death until Detective Min told me. But that was how he came to find me in the first place.”
“Then why did you run away?”
Boksun paused. “I haven’t told anyone, except Seohyun and the detective…” Another beat of silence passed. “I was collecting wood in the forest when a man in a white mask accosted me. He struck the back of my head so hard I could barely see, and when my world finally steadied, my wrists and ankles were tied up. And I was in a shed.”
Maewol and I exchanged glances. We’d been to that shed.
“He didn’t lay a finger on me. He just sat quietly with me, as though he were deep in thought. So I asked him where he was taking me, and he replied with such an odd answer.”
“What was that?” Maewol and I both asked.
“To the Ming kingdom.”
My brows slammed low. Ming? That was far across the sea. “Did you recognize his voice?”
“No.”
“Do you know Convict Baek?”
“Yes. But I never heard him speak, only saw him a few times.”
“What else happened?” Maewol asked.
“The masked man did leave the hut once, I think to scout the area, and that’s when I noticed he’d left a piece of paper behind. I managed to crunch it up so small that it could fit concealed in my hand…”
She was forced to pause as we struggled down the steep and uneven slope, covered in a twist of camelia trees, prickly pine trees, and dozens of other plant species, all so thickly gathered around us that I couldn’t see anything through the ripe green. But I could hear the great, thundering rush of the waterfall, growing louder and louder with every passing moment.
Once the climb down became easier, Boksun continued. “Then, when the masked man came back, I told him I needed to empty my bowels. He hesitated, but he untied me, and when he took me to a bush, that’s when I managed to escape. I immediately ran to Seohyun. She was like a secret older sister to me and other girls. Very protective. Convinced that our village housed a monster. She told me to come live here, that no one would find me in Seogwipo. I’d be safe in the village she’d grown up in. She told me to tell her relatives that ‘Eunsuk’ had sent her.”
“Wait.” Maewol came to a sudden halt. “Isn’t Eunsuk the name listed in Father’s journal?”
When had she snooped through it? “It is.” Dread hardened in my stomach, sensing that Maewol was about to discover what I already knew. Right as I thought this, Boksun said:
“Seohyun was Eunsuk. Shaman Nokyung’s daughter.”
“What…?” Maewol’s voice tapered away, and I glanced behind at her to see the color draining from her face. As she struggled to process this information, I asked Boksun, “So you live with Shaman Nokyung’s relatives?”
“Yes. Her whole family is comprised of generations of shamans. They are famous in this region, so much so that even Magistrate Hong heard of Shaman Nokyung all the way on the other side of Mount Halla.”
My interest piqued. “Did they ever meet?”
“Long ago, he would apparently send her a palanquin to bring her to his estate. He struggled to sleep at night. Perhaps ghosts were keeping him awake.”
Shaman Nokyung knew the magistrate, and something about this did not sit well with me. Figure it out later, a voice in me whispered. For now, I returned my attention to Boksun. She had to be in possession of evidence that might lead me to Father; I needed to know all that I could before answering other questions.
“So why did you wait to send the journal to me?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t want to stand out. I thought that if I tried delivering a parcel to Detective Min’s daughter, the masked man would be able to hunt me down—and do with me whatever he’d planned to do five years ago.”
I bowed my head, understanding seeping in. Boksun had lived for five years in the daily terror of being discovered. And someone had indeed been furiously searching for her: Convict Baek. Whether he was the masked man or not, I could not say, but he’d had a detailed map of Jeju, all the villages he’d probed for Boksun marked off.
“But why did Father give his journal to you?” Maewol repeated, impatiently this time.
“Please. You’ll understand everything soon.” Boksun waved at us, urging us to walk faster. “You’ll see.”
The trees thinned and opened onto a rocky shore. I shivered at the cold that seeped into my skin, for not only was the air damp with white mist, but it was further chilled by the cliffs that engulfed us in shadow. I could not fathom why Boksun had brought us here, but without asking, Maewol and I followed her until we were standing before the fall—water hurtling down from high above, crashing onto a rubble of giant rocks and the cobalt blue of where fresh water hit the sea.
“Wait here.” Boksun’s face, as pale as the bone-white sky, turned to me as she passed the baby into my arms. She then climbed the rocks and skipped from one to the next until she was so close to the waterfall that I could see the left side of her hanbok turn dark, drenched with water. She reached toward the pile of rocks, and her hand disappeared into a little crevice.
“She’s hidden something there.” I looked down at the infant’s face. “I wonder what this has to do with the journal—”
“So Seohyun is Eunsuk,” Maewol interrupted, her voice aggressive. “That doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make Shaman Nokyung a criminal.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon, won’t we?” I said, gesturing ahead with my chin.
Boksun was now skipping over the rocks toward us. Perhaps she had a secret message from Father, a map to his whereabouts. Or perhaps it was a page from the journal, an explanation of who was innocent and who was guilty.
Boksun landed safely on solid land, holding a little box in her hand. “I told Detective Min about the paper I’d taken from the shed. When I showed it to him, I begged that he take it far from me. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But he refused. He told me to keep it here.”
I passed the baby to Boksun and took the box from her, my hands brushing against her wet fingers. I opened the box, slipped out the paper and unfolded it.
“The moment your father saw the illustration,” Boksun whispered, “he seemed to understand it.”
Maewol leaned close to me, our heads nearly touching as we both stared down. On the thin, fluttering sheet of hanji were nine circles, circling one another. There were other symbols too, winding lines and dots that looked more like ink splatters.
“Oddly enough,” Boksun continued, “when I showed this to Seohyun the last time I saw her, she also seemed to understand. I asked her what it meant, and she said only two words: dusk and fog.”
Maewol’s gaze snapped to me, and a knowing, frightened look gleamed in her eyes. But before I could ask her anything, my sister turned her attention to Boksun. “Why would he leave evidence like this with you? And his journal … why didn’t he try sending it to my sister himself?”
A shadow of distress darkened her eyes, and I watched as she tried diverting our attention. “Now I remember! Maewol was the name Detective Min mentioned.” A sheen of sweat glimmered on her brow. “So you are the reason for his return to Jeju. He told me that those we love the most are often the ones we hurt the deepest—”
I didn’t want to hear any more of her babbling. “You keep deflecting this particular question,” I said. “Why did Father leave this evidence with you?”
Boksun lowered her gaze, like she couldn’t meet our eyes anymore, and at this, Maewol snapped, “You do keep avoiding my question. You said I’d understand everything, but I don’t. I don’t understand at all. What are you hiding from us?”
“I—I just didn’t want to tell you both,” Boksun whispered. “I’ve dreaded this moment for months. It’s the worst thing ever, having to do this…” Her voice was heavy, almost trembling under the weight of whatever secret she bore. “Detective Min left the evidence with me, because … because he didn’t think he would live much longer.”
A thousand needles slid into my chest, so deep I could feel the tips scraping against the bones of my being. “What—” I swallowed hard, barely able to speak. “What do you mean?”
“Your father didn’t look too well when he was here.” Her brows pressed together, distress knotting her expression. “He collapsed once and lost consciousness. He vomited twice. Your father … I—I’m sorry.”
“What was wrong with my father?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“Your father was poisoned,” she said.