I ROUGHLY TOSSED ASIDE THE ROBE I’d worn the previous night—my disguise, no longer needed, torn to shreds—and pulled a spare hanbok out from my traveling sack: a chima dress and a jeogori jacket, both made of silk. Angrily I shoved myself into the two-piece garment, grabbed my hair and plaited it, tying the end too tightly with a red ribbon.
I didn’t know how to wrap my mind around what Father had done. I didn’t know what to do with the thorny truth Maewol had placed into my hands. I didn’t want to think about it.
The disappointment was unbearable.
For the rest of the morning, I hunched over my journal, gathering my strength to focus on the investigation and only the investigation. I documented everything that had occurred, then tried thinking of all the names that circled around the Forest Incident and the case of the missing thirteen. Whenever my attention drifted back to Maewol’s story, I pinched myself hard. Focus.
Dipping my calligraphy brush into the ink, I rolled up my sleeve and wrote out the first name I thought of. Seohyun. She had died on the day of the Forest Incident.
The next name: Koh Iseul. Sister of Hyunok, the victim recently found in the forest.
Convict Baek. Known for his violence and for stalking Hyunok. He was also tied to Hyunok’s family in that he’d lent them—and likely others—money that would soon be steeped with interest.
Shaman Nokyung. The reason behind the family’s debt. She had claimed to have foreseen Hyunok’s doomed future, and had made her family pay for an expensive ritual that was meant to change her fate. In the end, she had still died a horrible death.
Village Elder Moon.
I paused, remembering his promise to help me investigate. He was responsible for reporting to the magistrate. He was the voice of the villagers, yet he’d failed to find enough evidence to sway the magistrate’s interest. Or perhaps he had found plenty of evidence, only the magistrate had still ignored the people’s pleas to find their daughters.
And, of course, there was the tyrant. Magistrate Hong. I wrote his name and circled it. He oppressed his people with heavy taxes and neglected his duty to wield justice.
Boksun. She was the piece to the mystery I couldn’t understand at all, the questions about her still unanswered: Where was she? How did she know Father? She had sent me Father’s journal, burnt and hardly legible. And in that journal there had been the fourteen names of likely victims.
I bit the handle of the bamboo brush. To solve a mystery spanning five years, I needed more. Thirteen girls had gone missing; behind each one, there had to be mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and rivals, acquaintances and witnesses.
I dipped the brush into the ink, hesitated, then wrote: Father. What had he discovered? Where had he disappeared to? And why?
As I stared down at the page, my attention drifted and I could hear sounds coming from far away. At first I thought I’d imagined it, but the longer I strained my ears, the clearer it became. The sound of pounding drums. Was this the public kut Shaman Nokyung had referred to?
A memory drifted into my mind: Learn everything you can. Collect every testimony, every rumor, every suspicion.
I closed my journal, then tucked it under my arm, picked up my satchel filled with writing equipment, and stepped out of the hut. I needed to gather as much information as I could, and where better to collect it than from the site of a kut? If many villagers were to be there, then among them was bound to be family, friends, or acquaintances of the missing girls. The more stories I had, the clearer it would become who was right, who was wrong, and who had the most reason to be suspected. That was what Father—
I flinched away from the memory of him.
I followed the noise to the foot of Mount Halla, where I saw white charm papers fluttering from a rope, marking the space that housed the ritual. Row after row of women on their knees rocked back and forth under the wide sky as they rubbed their palms in supplication. They moaned and wept, and a man fervently clashed the gong as Maewol beat the drum with all her might. She looked possessed the way her head swung from side to side. To this beat, Shaman Nokyung danced in circles, her hanbok flying around her, as did the red-and-white fan she held.
“We pray to my ancestral spirit!” she chanted. “Please listen to our prayer!”
The noise was so loud, so oppressive, I had no room to think, so it took a while for me to notice the obvious: Many of the kneeling women had pregnant bellies swelling out from their dresses. And Shaman Nokyung, I realized, was supplicating to the gods for sons. She prayed against the curse of daughters being born. A prayer that was uncommon among those living in the coastal areas of Jeju, where survival meant having daughters—for daughters became haenyeo divers who provided for the families, while men stayed home to watch the children or to drink their days away. But Nowon was not a coastal village. People of the mid-slope farming communities had adopted the ways of the sophisticated political convicts sent to live among them. The way of Confucius—one that was rigid and obsessed with sons. Daughters meant hardship and tragedy, which was proving to be the case here in Nowon. Too many mothers had loved and lost their daughters to the beast lurking in this village.
“Con woman,” I said under my breath. I opened my journal and took out my calligraphy brush and inkstone. Carefully I circled Shaman Nokyung’s name. Thanks to the lurking beast, to the disappearance of daughters, she had a public ritual packed with frightened villagers—and the jingling of coins.
I looked up to see what other details I ought to record, and it was then that my attention caught on a young man swaying through the crowd of villagers, the folds of his dusty robe billowing, a white ceramic bottle clutched in his hand, likely full of wine. It was Scholar Yu. He was irrelevant to my investigation, yet I couldn’t look away, observing the way he would pause now and then to eavesdrop on conversations.
When he wandered in my direction, I caught his sleeve. “What are you doing here?”
“Ah, good morning.” His eyes twinkled … too sharp and aware for a man who ought to be drunk. “Why am I here? As I always say, where there are large gatherings, there will be gossip.” He raised the bottle. “I must maintain my reputation somehow as Nowon’s gossipmonger.”
Taking a swig of his foul drink, he continued on his way, sauntering around the crowd of villagers. I watched him for a few moments longer, at his complete lack of respect for those who were grieving. What a waste of a life, and what a waste of my attention. I crossed the thought of him out from my mind.
I returned to my journal to record my observations of the people around me. When the ritual ended, the women lingered on their knees, still rocking back and forth with their hands pressed to their chest. How many here have already lost a daughter? I wrote in my journal. A sister? A niece?
Shaman Nokyung had disappeared, and Maewol was running back and forth, collecting and putting away the instruments, but she paused and looked up. Our gazes met for a moment, and I saw young Maewol again, standing alone in the forest.
One, two, three … I tore my gaze away, but I could still hear her small voice. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine …
“Why are you here?” Maewol’s voice startled me back to the present, and I glanced up to find that she’d drawn near, only a few steps away. Her face was pale, almost translucent, like there was a secret light glowing within her. And along her cheeks was a constellation of the faintest freckles. I’d forgotten about those.
I cleared my throat. “I need more testimonies.”
“Do you want help?”
I blinked at her, unsure of what she meant. She stared at me like nothing had happened this morning, like our honest exchange of words hadn’t affected her—
No, Maewol had changed. She had offered me assistance. The old Maewol would never have tried to help me.
“How?” I asked.
“Whom do you want to speak with?” she asked.
“I already spoke with Hyunok’s sister, so a family member of one of the other missing girls.”
Maewol surveyed the crowd, then pointed to a woman with a long, oval face. “Speak with her. She is the mother of Mija, one in the first group to go missing.”
“Group—?” Before I could ask my full question, I sensed a prickling sensation that told me I was being watched. When I turned, I saw it wasn’t one person watching me, but a whole crowd of women.
Maewol scratched her nose, glancing at me, then back at the crowd. She slipped out a cloth and began to wipe one of the cymbals while she walked away, retreating from me—the target of all eyes.
“Min Hwani,” the women whispered. “Is she Min Hwani?”
“She looks just like Detective Min,” one of them said. “She must be the elder daughter.”
“Kkotnim did say the elder had returned,” said another. “It has to be her.”
So the servant keeping Father’s house had a light mouth; she’d blabbered to the entire village already about my return. I just hoped word hadn’t reached Magistrate Hong.
“I am Min Hwani,” I said, but the crowd continued to whisper among themselves, as though they hadn’t heard me speak. I pressed on. “My father came to Jeju to help find your daughters, only to go missing himself. Please help me find him.”
I turned to look at the woman with the oval face, Mija’s mother, but she grabbed the wrist of a young girl—her other daughter perhaps—and whispered, “Let’s go home now.” She walked off in long strides, her daughter following along at a light run to keep up.
The crowd slowly dispersed as well, eyeing me suspiciously. It appeared everyone would leave, completely ignoring my request. But at length an old, lanky woman hobbled forward, hands gathered behind her back. Her wispy white hair was tied into a bun, and loose strands of it were dancing across her sunburned face. Her pale brown eyes shone like honey, and she seemed to stare into my soul.
“Do not mind the villagers,” she said in a loud, raspy voice. “Do not mind their silence. Over the years, they have grown silent in their fear for their children and for themselves. Our village was once warm and kind, but now everyone points fingers at each other. Everyone suspects everyone. So they dare not talk, not when everyone is watching.”
“Do you dare not talk as well?” I asked quietly.
“No,” she replied. “I have lived too long to be afraid.”
“Then … whom do you suspect, halmang?”
She pursed her lips and walked closer. “Some days, I think this is the person…” Her eyes darted to one side of the crowd, then shifted again. “Other days I think it is that person. But every day there is no answer.”
A long pause ensued as a faraway look glazed her eyes. Her gaze remained there, somewhere in the distance, or even farther than that—perhaps she was looking at someone from five years ago.
“Did … did you lose someone?” I dared to ask.
In a bare whisper, she said, “I have become skin and bones because all I can think of is my granddaughter and her friends. I wonder, over and over: How do five girls disappear at once?”
My stomach dropped. “Five at once?”
“They were all friends; they grew up together, our huts near one another. One morning, my twelve-year-old granddaughter runs in to grab her oojang. I ask where she is going with that straw cloak, and before rushing out, she tells me she is heading to the mountain to look for eggs. She didn’t come back.”
As she spoke, others drifted forward until I was surrounded by a small circle of haggard-looking women, shadows in their eyes, yet eagerness gleamed there too.
One woman with a forehead creased with deep wrinkles spoke next. “I remember that incident. Your granddaughter was one of the first few girls to go missing, wasn’t she?”
“She was,” the old woman replied. “We searched everywhere, then finally rushed to tell the village elder. He assured us the girls would likely come back the next day, yet they never did. So he reported the disappearance to Magistrate Hong. But when has he ever helped us? That wretched man.”
Another woman joined in. Her nose flaring, she angrily gestured at the air. “That wretched magistrate, I can’t stand him,” she spat. “He told Mija’s mother that the girls had run away. Then a year later three more girls went missing. Then one girl, and a few months later, three more. Hyunok was the thirteenth. They were all last seen near the forest, and a few times, witnesses claimed to have seen a man in a white mask nearby. Suspicious, truly suspicious. But do you know what the magistrate kept saying? That they’d run away, that they’d come back. Do you know why? Because he knew that if the girls had truly run away, it wouldn’t be his responsibility!”
“Do you remember the names of all the girls missing?” I asked, flipping to the page where I had transcribed the fourteen names from Father’s journal.
“Of course, their names still haunt me,” the flaring-nose woman said. Raising her hand, she ticked off each finger. “Mija, Dawon, Jia, Yoonhee, Boyeong.” She paused before moving on to the next group of missing girls. “Jiyun, Heju, Gayun.” She paused again to think. “Eunwoo. Then Bohui, Kyoungja, Mari.”
“And the last girl, the thirteenth girl. Hyunok,” I whispered as I crossed her name out. I’d crossed out all the names now … except one. “Is there a girl named Eunsuk in this village?” I asked.
“Eunsuk?” Flared-nose pursed her lips. “No, no Eunsuk.”
The women around me exchanged glances, all whispering among themselves.
“There is no Eunsuk, is there?”
“No, no, I don’t think so.”
“Isn’t that the name of Moonsun’s eldest daughter?”
“No, that girl’s name is Eunju—”
“I have lived in this village for seventy years,” the first old woman interrupted. “There is no Eunsuk.”
I rubbed the base of my neck, back and forth over my necklace string, back and forth as my mind narrowed in around a baffling question. Then who was this person, this Eunsuk whose name had made it into Father’s list of female names?
“Then,” I asked, “does anyone know a woman by the name of Boksun?”
Faces immediately lit up with recognition. “Yes, Boksun used to live in Nowon,” Flared-nose said, “but disappeared five years ago.”
A shiver ran across my skin, and it took me a moment to find my voice. “When exactly did she disappear?”
“The nineteenth day of the twelfth lunar month,” the old woman replied.
I wrote the date down, then paused. Most people couldn’t even remember the year the Joseon dynasty had begun, yet this woman remembered a date as obscure as this. Without glancing up, I asked as politely as I could, “How did you remember that date so easily?”
“Because it was two days before that tribute girl named Seohyun died in the same forest that you and your sister were found unconscious in. We all remember that date.”
I kept my eyes pinned to my journal, suddenly feeling naked.
“Boksun?” A small voice rose from behind the circle of women. “Why does everyone want to know about Boksun?”
The crowd parted, revealing a woman who looked so frail, she might have been made from bird bones.
“I work at the inn, and Convict Baek has been asking around there, asking each merchant and traveler whether they’ve seen Boksun. He even has a sketch of her face.”
Tension gathered in my shoulders at the mention of his name. “I suppose Convict Baek hasn’t found her yet, then…,” I murmured, half to myself. Then in a clearer voice, I said, “If I wanted to find Boksun, who should I go to?”
“Her hometown is somewhere in the far east,” the bird-boned woman said. “But from what I hear, a traveler who visited the place a few years ago said she is not to be found even there. It’s like she’s vanished from this earth.”
Just like Father.
The old woman grunted, and a wisp of her white hair blew across her face. “There is one person you could ask,” she said. Her gaze locked with mine. “You could ask the man obsessed with finding her, if you dare. Or…” Her gaze strayed to Scholar Yu, who I realized stood at the edge of the crowd, his ear turned to our conversation, even though his gaze was fixed on the hills as he took another swig of wine. “Or you could speak to our gossipmonger. He likely knows a little about everyone here in Nowon Village, even the dead and missing.”
“So, are you going to speak with Convict Baek?” Maewol said during our walk back to the shaman’s hut. “That halmang is right; he would be the best person you can speak with to find out where Boksun might have disappeared to.”
My mind was still lingering on the second name the old woman had mentioned: Scholar Yu. I had tried speaking with him before leaving the public kut, but he had been too drunk by then to assist me. It made me question whether I should rely on his testimony at all, for his knowledge was likely as wobbly as his own knees. “What do you know about Scholar Yu?”
Maewol shrugged. “A drunkard and gambler. He’s also very nosy, as you must have noticed. I always see him nosing about at the inn. And he has a soldier that visits his hut every day, to make sure he hasn’t tried to escape the island. He’s tried several times, apparently.”
“Why was he exiled to the island?” I asked.
Maewol waved her hand in the air. “I don’t know. Something to do with his father, a physician. Poisoned someone important. So they punished the family by sending them here.”
“And where is the rest of Scholar Yu’s family?”
“In another village. That’s what the soldier told me.”
Why had Scholar Yu left his family? And why was he so hungry for village gossip? It couldn’t be from sheer curiosity.
As I silently brooded, Maewol eagerly said, “You are going to speak with Convict Baek, are you not?”
I shook my head. “I doubt he’ll tell me anything—”
“You should search his house.” Maewol spoke so fast I knew she must have been thinking of this for a while. “I can’t think of any other way to find the truth from him.”
I restrained myself from rolling my eyes at this ridiculous notion. But then it occurred to me that she just might be right. Convict Baek might not tell me the truth, but his house would. At the thought of invading his home, my knees weakened and an uneasy laugh escaped me.
“Of course you’d think of this method,” I said, trying to hide the nervousness that twitched the corners of my lips. “You’re an expert at going through my things. You always did leave my room with my most hidden valuables.”
“I mean it. He won’t talk. He sliced up his daughter’s face when she was only twelve, and no one knows why still,” Maewol said, and I winced at this information. “A man with too many secrets doesn’t open up so easily. It would take time to coax them out. But you don’t have time, do you?”
“I’ll try speaking with Scholar Yu again, he’s the gossipmonger—”
“A drunk gossipmonger,” Maewol pointed out. “Not a truth teller.”
I took in a few deep breaths until the nervous twitches in my face calmed. “You’re right; I didn’t say you weren’t. But you’re not coming with me.”
She walked on ahead. “I absolutely will come. You need my help more than you know.”
I quickened my steps, trying to catch up with her. “Why are you even helping me?” After all, I was trying to find the father she so despised.
“If I don’t help you, you’ll get yourself killed, and then in the afterlife you’ll haunt me forever. I’m going to help you; don’t try to stop me.” She halted in her steps, her white hanbok billowing against the vast gray sky. “Then you’ll leave Jeju. And in one piece.”