Three months later
THE FIRST SNOW FELL IN fluffy white flakes, drifting slowly down onto the secluded hill that overlooked the distant sea. Mother had been buried here, so my sister and I decided that Father, too, would be buried on this hill.
There were many more decisions we ended up having to make in the period leading up to the funeral, for I was the mat-sangju, the chief mourner, and Maewol was the sangju, the principal mourner. Father had followed the ways of the former era, leaving his entire estate to his daughters, rather than being bound by the new male-oriented heir system. In doing so, he had made it our duty to carry out the pre-burial and funeral rites, and every year on the midnight of his death, we would have to perform a jesa ceremony.
The preparation for Father’s funeral had, fortunately, kept my mind occupied. And as soon as the funeral came to an end, Maewol and I were swept into the inquest investigation, spearheaded by Inspector Yu. As he’d suspected, Village Elder Moon dragged everyone down with him in a grief-stricken rage: Convict Baek, Emissary Lee, his eighteen servants, and the name of every high-ranking father who had begged him to find a replacement girl for their daughters.
Weeks later, when the verdict was made in accordance to the Great Ming Code, Village Elder Moon accepted his fate with a stare as blank as that of the dead. He was to be decapitated for having committed murder. Convict Baek, his accomplice, was to be punished by strangulation. As for the emissary and the high officials who had solicited his assistance, Inspector Yu promised the king would deal with the culprits accordingly.
“It’s over now,” Inspector Yu said, as the main courtyard emptied of all the spectators who had come to view the sentencing. “You should move on and learn to live again. Have you thought of what I told you?”
I gazed at the chair where the village elder had been sitting moments ago. His white hanbok stained in blood. Strands of his black hair hanging over his gaunt and empty face. His torso tied to the back of the chair. “What is that, sir?”
“About putting your mind to use in the palace. I’m leaving for the capital tomorrow and, if you wish it, I can try to win the king’s favor for you. There is no guarantee, but perhaps he might find a place for you in the palace. There is always a need for bright-minded young women like yourself.”
I bowed my head. “Thank you, sir, but it is not what I want.” The path into the palace was a treacherous one, filled with men like the village elder who would sacrifice many lives in pursuit of selfish ambition. And it was far away from Maewol.
“Then what do you want?” he asked.
I shook my head, unsure. “For all my life, my only desire was to please Father.”
The corner of his lips rose, his eyes gleaming with amusement. A flicker of annoyance crossed through me. He was looking at me like I was an ignorant child.
“You are not so conventional as you think you are,” he said softly. “Conventional girls do not run away from their aunts to cross a thousand li of seawater, nor do they charge into dark caves and wrestle killers into lakes.” He paused as he examined my face, then the bemused look eased away. “You have a knack for solving mysteries. I’m sure you can solve this one on your own. Perhaps you’ll find the answer here in Jeju.”
I wasn’t sure what Inspector Yu had meant until, one morning, a villager ran into Shaman Nokyung’s yard. Not to seek good fortune, but to seek my advice.
I was only eighteen—no, nineteen now. I couldn’t understand how I could possibly help until the villager whispered, “It is a mystery I cannot solve.”
My mind creaked awake, and a tingling sensation hummed in me.
“Someone stormed into my home and broke all the jars, and I think it was out of revenge. I had an argument with one of the villagers…,” she whispered as my heartbeat quickened. “I didn’t know who to bring this incident to but you, mistress.”
In that moment, I’d realized what I wanted: to be like my father, not because he was my father, but because I had grown up reading his journals and had discovered, here in Jeju, that I had a knack for untangling knots. And with each knot I untangled, it felt like I was making a bit more sense of this world and all its seemingly arbitrary heartaches.
I brought out my own journal, laid it open on a low-legged table, and raised my ink-dipped calligraphy brush over the hanji paper.
“Tell me,” I said, “what time of day was it when you returned home?”
Winter in Jeju remained gray and mild. It seldom snowed, and while the wind was chilly, I didn’t feel the need to bundle myself as I’d had to do on the peninsula. Then spring arrived—not quietly, but with an explosion of sweet-scented canola. Brilliant yellow flowers carpeted the roads, the fields, the high hills, layer after yellow layer. They lit up the island and lit my mind with memories of home.
“Do you want to visit them?” I asked over our morning meal of seaweed soup. “Mother and Father?”
Maewol shrugged her small shoulders. I thought that was an indifferent no, and so later in the day I garbed myself in my best mourning hanbok and made my way to the kitchen. There I prepared a bottle of makgeolli and a drinking bowl, for rice wine was Father’s favorite drink after a long day of investigation.
“I’m ready.”
I looked outside the kitchen to see Maewol, dressed in white, though her hair was loose and tangled.
I sighed, taking her by the wrist. “Let me.”
Inside my room, I sat cross-legged behind my sister as I untied her sloppily plaited hair and combed through the tangles.
“Ow,” Maewol hissed, raising the bronze hand mirror to glance at me. “That hurts.”
Once the comb ran through smoothly with each brush, I took a hairpin and used the tip of it to part Maewol’s hair sharply at the middle, then divided the thick cascade into three neat strands. Holding them tight, I braided her hair down along her back.
“It’s already been several months since the inquest ended,” Maewol said, her voice too light and apathetic, like she had practiced this tone of indifference many times before. “Do you still plan on returning to the peninsula?”
My hands paused, remembering the letter Aunt Min had sent me, ordering my return. I had no intention of obeying her, and I didn’t care to leave Maewol. But a shyness crept into me and instead of the firm truth, I answered, “I haven’t decided yet.”
Maewol shrugged. “You can go if you prefer the civilized peninsula life, with all its rules. Not being able to freely leave your home. Not being able to manage your own inheritance. Aunt Min or your future husband would take over.”
“But I don’t prefer it,” I said quietly.
She waved her hand. “Then why even think of returning?”
I continued to plait her hair until I reached the end, tying the braid with a red daenggi ribbon.
“I couldn’t live like that, with all those rules.” Maewol ran her thumb up and down the rim of the bronze mirror. “It’s different here in Jeju.”
It was true. Life in Jeju was indeed rough, rife with poverty and hardship, and perhaps because of this, the Jeju people did not bother being so rigid and strict. The women were freer. Many of them were haenyeos; they worked outside the house, earning money independently and sometimes traveling far from home. The boundaries of what I could and could not do would be less marked.
“It’s not that I haven’t considered staying in Jeju,” I confessed at last. A glance at my sister’s reflection showed her biting her lips with poorly restrained delight. “These days more villagers are coming to me with their mysteries, most of them trivial ones.”
Maewol expelled an excitement-laced sigh. “The village still hasn’t elected a new elder. They have no one to turn to but you.”
That was what Inspector Yu had mentioned as well.
From the corner of my eye, I could see the shape of a book resting on my table. The inspector sometimes wrote to me with updates on the search for the other missing nine girls, likely hidden deep in the gilded cages of the Ming court. Only once in those notes did he ask me how I was faring, so I’d told him about the new cases I was solving in Nowon and how much I appreciated the distraction. In response, Inspector Yu had sent me The Muwŏllok, a forensic science handbook compiled by Wang Yü, to “aid me in future investigations.”
I blinked, returning my attention to Maewol. “If I do stay, I could perhaps go live in our old home.” Father’s estate now belonged to me. “It’s too small here for all three of us.”
And too loud. In the middle of the night, I’d wake to the sound of Shaman Nokyung shaking her rattle and Maewol beating her drum while a villager moaned and wept.
“You should speak to Gahee and Bohui.” Excitement bubbled in Maewol’s voice. “You could hire them as helpers, if they wish it. And I’m sure they do. They’re in need of work.”
“And you?” I rose to my feet as I imagined this new life here in Jeju, living in Nowon Village, Maewol not too far away. Crossing the room, I collected the wine bottle and bowl. “What will you do?”
“Continue to assist Shaman Nokyung.”
“And one day become a shaman?”
“Eung,” she answered.
“Do you truly wish to become one?”
Maewol joined me on the veranda. “A frog in the water sees only a portion of the sky and thinks it knows the universe.” Crouching, she slipped her feet into her straw sandals. “Grief and darkness, sometimes that is all the villagers here can see…” She straightened and gazed out at the blue sky, the rolling field, the large black rocks stacked into fences that wound their way through the billowing grass. “But I am a different type of frog, and I realize that’s why I was called to be a shaman. I see the portion and try to imagine the rest. That is why they come to this fortune-telling hut, the villagers; it’s because they want to see more.”
“And what more is there?” I asked quietly.
Maewol sighed. “I don’t know for certain yet. All I hear are echoes from the other world; there is more than meets the eye.”
We set out on horseback and arrived at the peak of a high hill where Father’s burial mound was, protruding from the earth like a great tortoise shell, and surrounded by a double wall of stacked stones. Maewol filled the bowl with rice wine and passed it to me. Rolling back my long sleeve, I poured it over his grave.
Afterward, for a long time we sat leaning against the stone wall, watching the sun blend into the canola flowers and gleam against the swaying grass.
“Are there any cases you need help with?” Maewol asked.
“Hm.” I took out my journal, which I always carried with me. I flipped through it, then stopped. “Here’s one. Someone broke into Villager Seobi’s house and broke all the jars.”
Maewol tapped her lips. “Hm.”
Our heads bowed together, we shared ideas of what could have happened and why. Then she smiled. “It’s like when we were young … you always had a knack for finding answers, and I’d follow you everywhere as you solved cases. That’s why Father called you daenggi mŏri tamjŏng.”
“And Father called you musuri.”
“A palace servant? I forgot about that. It’s because you treated me like your slave.”
A laugh escaped me. “That is not why Father gave you that nickname. He told me it was because you never refused any challenging or dangerous work and always maintained a positive attitude.”
Maewol nodded, looking pleased and content, and in the ensuing silence, I gazed around. We had lost so much on this journey. Yet I noticed now how the sky seemed a pure, brilliant blue, the trees below the hill a deeper green. Grief had carved out a valley in us, allowing a warm breeze to pass through. A warmth that made the rustling grass and the twittering birds sound like music, and the land under my feet feel like fire.
A whisper like a gentle breeze passed by. Hwani-yah. Maewol-ah.
I jolted a glance around. There was no one except my sister, but she was frowning, as though she’d heard something too. The long grass danced. Birds chirped. It had been another trick of the mind; we had been imagining Father’s voice everywhere these days.
Then I heard it again, the wind that sounded so familiar—Father’s voice, deep and melodic.
Jal itgeola.
A farewell.
And a request that we be happy.
I raised my hand to shield my eyes as I squinted past the sun, at the shimmering blue water, the shadows of the lava rocks tracing into the sea. The white frothy ripples of the waves moved and crashed with a rush of life.
Father was gone—truly gone. He would not even linger on this earth as a chuksani, a spirit that wandered restlessly, unable to move on to the next life because of their unjust death. Maewol and I had solved the case that Father had begun. Together.
“Maewol-ah.” I rose to my feet, dusting the grass off from my skirt. “Gaja.”
“Go where?” she asked.
I took in a deep breath, then sighed as a lightness filled my chest. For whatever world Father had left for, I wondered if he could see us now, and if he felt at all surprised to witness, at last, his lifelong wish come true: his daughters, together at last.
“Let’s go home.”