“REST YOUR EYES FOR A little while,” Maewol told me.
My eyelids did feel heavy, like they were thick blankets. So I closed them. I meant to rest for a bit, but when I opened my eyes again, disorientation consumed me, for the sky was no longer pitch-dark; it was colored pink and purple with the rising sun. And I was not under the tree, I was in the storage room of Convict Baek’s home, wrapped in my jangot, wearing someone else’s straw sandals, slightly too big for me. Nearby was a cloth covered with bloody shards of porcelain, likely plucked out from the soles of my feet. And next to me was Father’s sword.
“You’re awake.”
I turned to see Gahee crouching before me. There were shadows under her eyes.
“I kept watch,” she said. “But my father didn’t return. So we thought you would be warmer in here than under a tree.”
“Where is my sister?” I asked.
Gahee paused, avoiding my gaze. “Your sister told me about Scholar Yu’s identity, and left to find him. She will return soon.”
“Where is my sister?” I whispered again, dread awaking in me.
“I told you, she went to get Inspector Yu—”
“You’re lying to me.”
The scars that slashed Gahee’s face seemed to redden as her cheeks drained. “I…” Her frightened eyes bored into me. “I told her it was a bad idea, but she wouldn’t listen.”
A cold ball of dread sank into my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
“She said she would send a note to Inspector Yu.” Gahee’s lashes remained lowered, her voice knotted with tension. “We are to wait here until he arrives with a physician.”
My body began to shake. I crossed my arms, trying to make it stop, but the tremors only intensified. I knew my sister—headstrong, rash, and loyal to a fault. “She left, didn’t she? She left for Yeonhadang.”
Gahee reached into her hanbok and placed a folded note into my hands, like the ones Maewol and I had slipped back and forth to each other between the doors. In quick, inky characters, she had written:
Stay alive, Older Sister. I’ll return soon with the evidence we need.
I closed my eyes against the swell of fury and horror. Foolish, foolish girl. I flung my silk jangot around me for warmth, picked up Father’s sword, and struggled to my feet. When a wave of pain knocked into me, I held the wall for support, then stalked out of the storage room while Gahee followed after me.
“If you’re trying to go after her,” she said, “you might die before you even reach the place.”
I shook my head, strands of loose hair falling over my face. “Maewol doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into. This man outwitted Father. She needs me.” I stopped, suddenly aware of Gahee’s desperate gaze clinging to my back. Slowly, I glanced over my shoulder at her, and a bitter appreciation welled in me. “You helped us, Gahee. Thank you. But, you know … your father might be involved in this.”
Gahee’s lips were pale and cracked. “I know,” she rasped. “I became sure of it when Maewol told me about the evidence pointing to Yeonhadang. I’ve secretly followed Father there before.”
I pulled out the sheet of hanji, which Boksun had given to me. I’d kept it on my person, not sure of its importance, but now I knew it was a map. “Does this make sense to you?”
Gahee looked at it. “The nine circles are the nine-peaked oreum hills. These lines must be rivers. And these dots must be villages. That should be Seonhul Village.” She pointed to the dot closest to the ring of nine circles. “And that is where Maewol is heading to, and finding her way to Yeonhadang from there.”
“How would she know where it is?”
“The Seonhul villagers know. I asked them questions about the mansion, and they all knew of its existence.”
I nodded, slowly digesting every word she said. “Did they mention anything suspicious?”
“Nothing. They said it was an ordinary giwajip mansion. Isolated, though.” Gahee folded the map and gave it back to me. “But this map is too vague. Your sister mentioned you were prone to losing your way. I will guide you there, but only up to the forest that looks out onto the mansion. I won’t go any farther than that. If … if my father is there, I don’t want him to see me.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said. “But why are you still helping me?”
“Because of your father.” A muscle worked in her jaw, and when she spoke, her voice strained into an aching whisper. “There’s something your father told me, which I’ve thought of every day since his disappearance.”
“And what is that?”
“He was the only one to truly see me. He saw my desire to help him, and he saw my fear. I didn’t help him in the end. Still, he called me brave. He said it was brave of me to be the daughter of such a father. He left me with a question, though: You can choose to keep silent, he said, but if you do, would you be pleased with that decision in the years to come?”
For a moment, I saw Gahee as Father must have seen her: Not a stepping-stone in his investigation, but a girl who had the potential to be so much, yet had grown confined within the terror wrought by the hands of her own father. Detective Min Jewoo had cared for Gahee, for Seohyun, for the missing thirteen.
Perhaps he had seen glimpses of his own daughters in them.
“The moment I chose to help you, I realized something.” Gahee finally lifted her gaze up to mine, and it was like seeing the faintest flicker of light in the darkness of night. “Doing what is right, it is so utterly terrifying. And yet so freeing.”
We traveled for three hours through small villages, vast fields of swaying grass and scattered lava rocks, and finally rode into a forest swamped in blue mist. It was cold and damp here. The path we followed sloped upward, and I wondered when the steep incline would end, when, at last, the slope descended into a forest that stretched across flatland.
“We’re near,” Gahee said quietly.
There was an eerie silence to this place. Neither the birds nor any sign of animal life could be heard. It almost felt as though a clear bowl had been placed over us, blocking out all sound.
I felt I had to whisper as well. “Where are we?”
“At the crater, and above us is the volcanic rim that circles around this basin.”
Clutching the reins with one hand, I craned my head back, staring past the canopy. Pine trees rustled across the nine peaks, which soared up for at least a thousand paces. It was like staring at a stormy wave about to swallow me into its deep green depth.
“Hurry,” Gahee said. “This way.”
I followed behind, and the deeper we ventured in, the colder the air became. Clouds formed before my lips. “You said you trailed your father here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was curious as to where he was always disappearing. He always left with a cotton sack.”
“What was in it?” A mask, perhaps.
“I tried to look once, and when he caught me, he said—” Gahee kept her gaze fixed ahead, and I knew that if I could see her face, it would have been as a blank as the cold sky. “He said he’d break all my fingers if he ever caught me again.”
I bit my lip, not knowing what to say to this.
“It is strange,” she went on. “Sometimes what fathers think is for our good, is not something we desire at all.” She paused. “I never asked Father to sell his soul for my future, but he did. He did it ‘for my sake.’”
I bowed my head, understanding. There were many things Father had done for Maewol and me that I wished he hadn’t—like risking his life to solve this case. For once, I wished he had been a selfish coward.
“Do you love your father?” It took a moment to realize that it was I who’d asked the question. I quickly added, “You don’t need to answer that.” Whether Gahee loved her father or not had nothing to do with the investigation, and everything to do with how guilty I would feel once Convict Baek was locked up in the prison block.
Gahee had not uttered a single word; I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she replied in a small voice, “I used to believe I loved him. And then I grew up.” She pushed aside a branch. “My father did all he could to provide for me, and whenever I think of this, I feel gratitude—and beat myself for it, for I also remember all his dark deeds. But when I think of him as a criminal … I can’t help but remember that he skipped his meals so that I could have a full belly.”
The weight of her answer hung heavy around me as we continued through the quiet forest. Father had once written in his journal that no one was completely good, just as no one was completely bad. I hadn’t fully understood his words until Convict Baek.
Finally, I saw an opening beyond the thicket of leaves, a glimpse of a treeless flatland. And at the far center of this field was a giwajip mansion, like the ones I’d seen on the mainland, only the black tiled roof looked blacker than any I’d ever seen. And the tile-capped stone walls stretched on and on for hundreds of paces, walling in the flared-roof houses.
Maewol-ah. I wished my sister could hear my thought. Are you in there?
Gahee and I arrived before the edge of the forest, and the silence felt heavier, pressing down on my chest. I wanted to vomit again, and I wasn’t sure if it was poison still lingering in me. I clutched the collar strip of my jangot tight, bringing the veil closer around my face. Beads of dew clinging to the purple silk dropped and slid down my face.
“Agasshi.” Gahee watched me, her eyes wet and the tip of her nose red. “This is where I bid you farewell. Please … please don’t make me regret my decision.”
My fingers were so stiff, it took several attempts before I finally managed to tether my pony, somewhere deep in the forest where the creature wouldn’t be seen. I slid the silk overcoat off my head and hung it over a branch. The leaves rustled as I pushed them aside with Father’s jukjangdo, making my way back to the edge of the forest, which gazed out at Yeonhadang.
I’d lost Father to the secrets contained within this house.
I couldn’t lose my little sister as well.
I readied myself to dash out into the clearing, but it looked so far to reach the mansion. And the crater was so flat, I’d be easily seen. I waited and waited, my mind racing for answers. Gradually, it dawned on me that with every passing moment, I was finding more and more excuses to remain hidden among the trees. Now, a voice in my head urged me, go now.
Terror hummed in my bones as I ran out. My legs and arms turned to water; I went stumbling onto the grass a few times, staining my skirt in mud and grass marks. No matter how fast I ran, the distance seemed to remain the same. Still a hundred paces away, the mansion was as small as my thumb on the horizon. Faster, I needed to run faster.
What felt like a half hour later, I found myself before the stone walls that circled the house. Maewol would have climbed over this wall. I took a few steps back, ran forward, and leaped, grabbing ahold of the tiled top. But after a night spent vomiting, I had little strength. Down I went, collapsing to the ground.
I tried a few more times, but in vain. There had to be another way in. I hurried along the wall, looking for something to step on. I found nothing, but I did notice the small gate, the one used by servants. It was slightly ajar. Common sense told me not to enter the house through a gate—I’d likely walk straight into someone this way, but I couldn’t think of another option.
I peered into the yard first. I caught a glimpse of steam rising from somewhere, yet I could hear no sounds of life. I clung to the jukjangdo, the bamboo slippery in my clammy hands, and stepped in. The steam was drifting out from an empty kitchen. But there was a pot on a clay stove, and when I glanced inside, the white eyes of a gray scaled fish stared out at me, frothing and boiling in a spicy paste stew of tangled vegetables.
There was something disturbing about this place.
Back outside, there was a raised platform covered in baskets full of garlic, carrots, fruits, and a mountain of corncobs wrapped in bright green husks. Then along the wall, there were large brown pots. I snatched off the lid for each, and all the pots were filled to the brim with pickled vegetables and plum wine. There was enough food here to prepare a feast, but where were the guests?
Leaving the servants’ courtyard behind, I traveled through a connecting gate into the next courtyard, for Yeonhadang was divided into several courtyards that contained flared-roof buildings, separated by low stone walls, like all other mansions. And the deeper I ventured into the compound, the eerier it got.
The place seemed deserted, like an abandoned village, yet the grounds were immaculately kept. All the yards and verandas were well swept. The hanji paper screening the latticed doors was intact, not punctured by the notorious rain and wind of Jeju. One of the doors, in fact, was slightly open. I glanced in to see light glowing against porcelain pots, lacquered furniture, and floor mats of golden silk, with lotuses embroidered into it. Then I realized the chamber wasn’t entirely empty.
Panic sharpened in me as I stood frozen, staring at the figure of Lady Moon, sitting on the ground before a low-legged table. If Lady Moon was here, it meant her father was also present. He must have traveled to this house right after my disappearance. I needed to find Maewol, quick.
I took a slow, retreating step back. My jukjangdo sword clacked into a pillar. Damnation.
Lady Moon cast a sidelong glance my way, then stilled when our stares locked. Tension prickled around us.
I licked my dry lips and whispered, “The soldiers are coming.”
The color on her cheeks turned a shade paler. “You’re lying. Only you are here.”
“Do you think I would have risked my life coming here without informing them? They know about Yeonhadang. They know your father poisoned me. My sister didn’t come here without notifying Inspector Yu first.” I quickly glanced around, making sure that I was still alone. “Tell me where my sister is. If you cooperate, I will tell the inspector to show you mercy.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you.”
“May my father be cursed in his next life if I am lying to you,” I said, and my own oath frightened me. Yet I was convinced that Maewol must have notified Inspector Yu. She was reckless, but she wasn’t a fool. “The authorities will come for your father.”
Lady Moon’s lips now looked as white as her cheeks.
“You helped me escape once, didn’t you?” I said, and when she didn’t object, my courage grew. “Help me find my little sister. I promise I’ll tell the inspector everything you did for me—”
“It wasn’t intentional. I meant to take the whistle from you.”
“And then you decided to let me go.”
She continued to stare at me, looking disoriented, as though confused by her own emotions. “What will happen when the soldiers come?”
“They will take your father, of course, and he will be executed.” I was certain of that, and I wanted to be there, to see her father drinking from a bowl of sayak. “No one survives killing a military official. And that is what your father did. He killed Detective Min, my father, with the same sort of arsenic that I was given yesterday.”
“No.” Her brows crinkled. “Father said it wasn’t him—”
“You may examine my father’s corpse for yourself. After an entire year, his corpse remained in a state of preservation. It did not decompose as it ought to have. It was because of arsenic.”
For a long moment, Lady Moon remained at a loss for words, staring down at the table. There was a steaming pot and, next to it, a bowl. “It’s cold,” she whispered.
I blinked. “What?”
“If you heat up the ondol furnace for me, I will let you go and not tell Father.” She paused. “I’ll even tell you where your sister is.”
She was either a scheming monster, or she was a reluctant accomplice of her father’s. I didn’t have a choice, either way.
I quickly darted around the building until I found a little furnace room below the structure. There was a weak fire already burning. I’d learned how to heat the ondol at Shaman Nokyung’s hut, so in no time, I fanned the fire to life and kept fanning so the smoke would spread beneath the ondol floor. Once I finished, I hurried out, almost expecting to find Village Elder Moon standing in the courtyard. But it was still empty, still quiet.
“I’m done.” I panted, having rushed through everything. “You promised to tell me where my sister is.”
“Don’t you hear it?”
Wings fluttered.
I whirled around, heart pounding. It was only a bird, descending from the sky and perching itself on the black-tile-capped wall. It whistled.
I gritted my teeth. What was she talking about?
The bird continued to whistle, a faint, piercing noise.
Whistling? Since when did birds—
My blood turned to ice. Birds did not whistle, not like this. But I knew what did make such a shrill noise.
“Where is it coming from?” I demanded.
No reply came. I turned to Lady Moon, who seemed lost in thought. “I said, where is the sound coming from?” She stared blankly down as she poured tea into a bowl, a bowl already overflowing with liquid and streaming across the table.
I didn’t have time for this.
The next moment I heard the whistling, I chased after it, a sound that would stop, then start again, as though Maewol was taking in deep breaths before blowing on Father’s police whistle. Beads of cold sweat washed my forehead as I scrambled around, trying to find the source.
A few times, I crossed the shadowy backyard of a pavilion, passing by a large, thick circle made of wooden slats and weighed down by a stone slab. It looked like the covering of a well—only it was too big to be a well. But when I returned to the spot for a third time, dread plunged into my stomach.
Surely she couldn’t be down there …
Then I heard it—a faint, faraway whistle.
I laid the jukjangdo down and crouched, and with all my remaining strength, I pushed at the wooden covering. I pushed and pushed, and with each attempt, the covering moved by a bare fingertip. Soon my dress was clinging to my sweaty back. Strands of hair dangled wet before my eyes. The stabbing sensation from last night’s poisoning hadn’t left me, and worsened as I strained myself. But I had to keep trying.
“Maewol-ah, I’ll find you,” I hissed through my teeth, gritted together as I leaned my weight into each shove. “I’ll find you and bring you home.”
My arms were trembling by the time the covering budged a quarter of the way open. A cold draft breathed against me, and I found myself staring wide-eyed into the mouth of a stairway made of large rocks. Picking up the jukjangdo, I crawled into the opening, where the stream of daylight illuminated the damp steps and the moss-covered stone walls.
“Maewol-ah?” I quietly called.
Silence.
I held my breath and descended, step by fearful step, into the pitch darkness below. Each time a flight of stairs ended, another began. My muscles tensed; I was ready to turn and bolt should the painted-white mask appear.
“Maewol—”
I nearly screamed when my sandal bumped into something. It was only a wood-and-paper lantern. Next to it was a flint box. My hands were shaking so violently, it took a few tries before I finally managed to light the lantern, its warm light glowing through the rice paper screens and illuminating a second gaping hole far below the staircase, staring at me like the mouth of a tiger.
A whistle rippled in the silence. Louder than before, but still echoing from somewhere far away, so faint this time I almost wondered if I’d imagined the sound.
Maewol-ah, I’m coming! I rushed down the remaining steps, ice-cold dread pumping through me. The air itself seemed to freeze into icicles. And when I passed through the rocky entrance, it was like stepping into the middle of winter.
Where was I?
Something wet dropped from above me in a steady beat. Drip—drip—drip. And the echo of each splatter resounded against the floor, the walls, and a ceiling that sounded too high up.
I slowly raised the lantern by its long handle. I could feel my breath vanishing from me as I craned my head far back. The darkness bared glimpses of fang-sharp limestone, and a cavernous tunnel carved out by lava from the ancient times. Yet the lava tube was so immensely high that I couldn’t even see its ceiling.
Shivering, I carefully trod across the slippery, uneven floor, using Father’s cane to keep me from stumbling. The cavern seemed to go on and on, seemingly endless and eternal, as though I had died and had woken up in the underworld. But someone had blown that whistle. My sister was here somewhere. Or the masked man might be hiding in the darkness, holding on to Father’s whistle. Perhaps he was watching me now.
Fear made me impatient. I breathed in deep, then yelled, “Maewol-ah!”
My voice echoed, rippling through the deep cave, only to be met with indifference.
“Maewol-ah!” This time my voice faltered. “Mae—” I couldn’t finish her name this time as burning shards filled my throat.
Had I only imagined the whistle?
Just as I had imagined Father’s return while living with Aunt Min …
So many times I’d jolted off my sleeping mat, thinking I’d heard the gate creak, thinking I’d heard quiet footsteps, only to run out into a shadowy hall filled with a stillness as impenetrable as death itself.
I crumpled to the cavern floor, and when I closed my eyes, it was to see Maewol lost in the woods, waiting for Father. One, two, three … She had believed then that family would never leave her behind. They would come for her if she counted to a hundred three times. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine …
I thought of the other girls, the missing girls, who had been counting away for a year, waiting for family to come find them. But no one was going to find them, were they, for everyone who knew the truth was dead or dying. Seohyun. Father. Hyunok.
Perhaps even me.
Helplessness settled into my bones, as heavy as metal. I couldn’t rise back to my feet; I couldn’t. Everything felt futile. Magistrate Hong had been right all along. The wicked thrived, yet those who strived for good, they were trampled over like flowers—
A sound came. Faint, yet not too far.
The whistling noise.
I hadn’t imagined it.
It pulled me to my feet, breathing strength back into my limbs. In steady and long strides, I pushed my way through the darkness. Maewol could be waiting at the end of that sound, or maybe not, but someone was calling for help.
I continued until the lantern light, and my own reflection, stared back at me. It was a deep, crystal-clear lake in the middle of a cave. And there was a boat too, with an oar resting over it. I’d never seen anything like this before. If I had come here on an excursion, I would have looked around in awe, but instead it was a knife’s tip that had led me here, and the sight of the dark waters only filled me with dread.
Swallowing down the nausea, I got in and began paddling. The water rippled with each stroke, the only sound that could be heard. I tried not to look down. There was something terrifying in not knowing how far I’d sink, if I fell. I didn’t know how to swim. I paused, lifting the lantern; on either side of me were the cave walls, narrow enough for the lantern light to reach both sides.
I kept on going until I saw a large, shadowy object on the other side of the cavern floor. With all my strength, I pulled the oar through the water, and even when burning exhaustion stabbed at my arms and shoulders, I didn’t slow down until the boat would go no farther. At once, I was on my feet, hurrying across the hardened lava floor until I saw it.
A wooden cage holding the silhouette of four girls.
Whispers emerged.
“It’s … it’s not her!”
“It’s not?”
“I thought it was her voice.”
“It’s not Lady Moon.” An achingly familiar voice. I raised my lantern, and the light illuminated the bruised face of the girl whose eyes gleamed with the fierceness of a military general. “It’s my sister.”
Relief rushed through me at the sight of Maewol, but came out as anger. “How did you end up in here?” I demanded, almost on the brink of crying. “Why would you come here on your own?”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
I shook my head, both incredibly upset and incredibly proud of my sister. “You should have waited for me!”
“I didn’t want to come on my own.” For once, there was a real sense of remorse in Maewol’s voice. “But I came here for you.”
I ran a hand over my face and the roaring in me eased. “Well, I’ve found you. Now I have to find a way to get you out.”