Page 64

The Prisoner

The cottage appears as the stars emerge, sparkling wistfully as I shiver in the night’s coldness, so hollow that I cannot even cry. Yet the longer I sit by the pond, waiting for my sister to return, the sharper that hollowness feels until I am not hollow at all. No, I am filled with a jagged darkness that rips me apart from the inside out until tears are finally sliding down my face and dripping off my nose. “I hate you,” Eunbi had said. She meant it, and I cannot blame her. A sob wracks my body, and as I hunch over in such visceral pain, that is when Yego appears.

I do not notice it at first, the chattering behind me, seeping from the deep shadows of the chogajip. Yet closer and closer it comes, and only when it is joined by the shuffling of bloated feet in the grass do I hear it. Closer and closer. My hand strays to the hilt of the firesword sheathed at my waist, yet my fingers falter, then freeze, just as they graze the cold metal.

“I hate you. I hate you.”

I do not…I do not draw my sword.

Hot, rancid breath steams against my neck, and I see Yego’s game with all such horrible clarity. Rui said that Dalgyal Gwisin are drawn to misery, like flies to sweet fruit. Yego…was waiting for this moment, waiting for me to overripen like a peach, the anguish immersing me so completely that I am weakened, softened. All it will take is one small bite to pierce my flesh.

Will I let it?

Drool drips from its maw, landing on the back of my neck. I close my eyes.

Foolish, foolish demon.

Does it not know that the sweetest fruit is rotten?

In one fast, swift motion, I unsheathe Rui’s firesword, summoning the blade of blue with a flick of the wrist. I rise to a crouch, the sword sweeping in a low arc as I spin, catching Yego by surprise. The Dalgyal Gwisin’s teeth chatter, panicked, and it lurches backward to avoid the graceful path of my weapon as it cuts through the air like a minnow might through a stream. I rise fully to my feet, my long hair rippling in a midnight wind as I narrow my eyes, surveying Yego in distaste. It stands unevenly, thrown off balance by its missing arm, the stub covered in dried, dark blood. Its rows of teeth are rotating hungrily, angrily, and when it cocks its head, its lank hair sticks to the sides of its sweaty, blank face.

I smile viciously and crook a finger at it. Come here.

It does.

Under the stars, we meet, Yego launching itself forward and I pushing forth to meet it. The blue blade of Rui’s firesword glimmers as I duck and dodge and stab. All those days, listening to Yego’s wetly rasped words, and believing every single one of them. Believing that I was worthless, that there was no chance at redemption for a creature as hideous and broken as me. I accepted Yego’s words as the unfailing truth; it made me believe that redemption was impossible.

I let those words gnaw me down into nothing but brittle bone.

But now? Now, I dart behind Yego so that our positions are reversed. The Dalgyal Gwisin’s back is to the pond, where the dark water awaits.

The harsh, bitter truth of it is that I will never reclaim those days I spent in the cell, with only Yego’s hateful hisses for company. But there could be more days ahead—more days to wash my hands of the blood they’re stained with. If I kill Yego. If we thwart the Prophecy.

Yego has never seen me fight like this, with the burning rage of a thousand suns. It knows—it knows that this battle is different than our scuffles on the stairs or in the snow. Perhaps it’s a glint in my eyes. Or maybe the way my teeth are bared as if I, too, am some feral beast. It staggers backward into the water.

I follow, barely feeling the chill of the pond.

“Just a taste,” rasps Yego. We circle each other now, like two sharks hungry for blood. The reflection of my sword glows blue in the water, which ripples with our movements. “My sweet morsel, my delicious mound of flesh…” Its throat is working, as if it is readying itself to release that debilitating scream. My eyes narrow and my sword arm draws back…

The first screech of that awful scream tears through the air, but so does my blade.

Released from my hand, it spears the Dalgyal Gwisin straight through the chest.

For a moment, neither of us moves. Breathing hard, I watch as the Demon looks almost comically to the hilt of the sword protruding from its body to me, as if it is in disbelief that its “sweet morsel” could have struck the killing blow. I wade toward it, wrapping my fingers back around the hilt. Blood seeps from its maw.

As I wrench out my blade, Yego falls into the dark pond, mouth slack. Its pale limbs shine as it floats atop the water before slowly dissolving into ash.

It is dead.

Washing the sword in the water of the pond, I run a finger delicately along the flat section of the blade. It’s inescapable, isn’t it? Yes. It is as Eunbi said: I am a killer. I have killed those who have deserved it and those who have not. I have run from this; I have hated myself for it.

Yet it follows. Always, it follows.

I stay in the pond for a long, long while.

…

Only when the tips of my fingers begin to grow blue do I trudge to the merrily crackling hearth and quilt-piled bed. I curl up atop it and stare at nothing, one hand wrapped around the three truths in my pocket.

Rui doesn’t come. Neither does my sister or the stairs. I do not know when I will be offered a way out from this level. Only that it must be tied…to Eunbi.

I have already realized that time passes differently in here, in this mindscape. What may seem an hour to me may be a day in the real world; what may seem like a day to me may only be an hour. I can only hope that time is moving slower on the outside than it is in here: with no staircase in sight, I am trapped, and I do not know for how long.

When I finally close my eyes and lose myself in the silent darkness, I float along the sea of unconsciousness, trailing a foot in its waters yet never sinking into it completely. On my eyelids, images of a smiling, curly-haired girl flicker and pulse like strobes of light. She spins and laughs and chases a butterfly.

Then she is running away, little more than a blur as she weaves through a kingdom of white mist and swirling cherry blossoms. Her feet pound on the uneven cobblestones. There are mountains in the distance, peaks of jade and onyx and quartz.

A small sigh escapes my lips as I let the vision tug me further down into the sea’s depths. Eunbi’s bare feet smack on the stones as she pumps her arms faster before skidding to a halt before a simple white hanok, yanking open the door and half tumbling inside.

“Sang,” Eunbi wails, barreling for the tearoom where the Talons sit around a low table on cushions, steaming cups of tea placed before them. The spymaster’s eyes widen as she sobs, launching herself into his arms. Chara and Chryse exchange concerned looks; Yoonho massages his chin grimly.

“Eunbi? What happened?”

“I don’t want to go back! Or talk to her ever again! She’s mean and—and evil !” Eunbi releases another desolate wail.

Alarm flickers in Sang’s hazel eyes. “Lina isn’t evil,” he says, voice almost hard. “She loved you more than anything in the world. Everything your big sister did, she did for you.”

“She killed people!” Eunbi fists the fabric of Sang’s tunic and glares at him.

“She thought she was protecting you,” Yoonho says sternly, and the tension bracketing his mouth is so real that it dawns on me that this is not a dream, not a dream at all. Somehow, I see Jeoseung, the underworld. Somehow, it calls to me, revealing this scene.

Why?

“Eunbi, honey,” Chryse says gently, “all Lina ever thought about was her little sister. Give her another chance. A lot of very, very bad things have happened to her.”

“She’s not the one who’s dead,” Eunbi weeps, clinging to Sang.

“No,” Sang agrees, “but some fates are even worse. Jeoseung…” He smiles a bit. “It is certainly no hell here. And Lina is hurting.”

“Do you remember your fifth birthday?” Chara asks. “The present Lina gave you?”

Eunbi’s fifth birthday was her first one after the death of our parents. I’d wanted to make it special, somehow. To make her happy or laugh for the first time in nearly a year. The twins had taken me to the Fingertrap, where I’d scoured the marketplace for the perfect gift. I’d almost settled on a storybook that was only slightly weathered, when I saw them.

A set of beautiful, porcelain dolls. Their hair seemed to be made from the finest, thinnest thread, and it flowed in waterfalls of inky black down their light hanboks. One of the dolls was small, nestled against the larger one, who stared down at her adoringly with meticulously painted eyes.

It was perfect. I’d rushed over to the merchant, eagerly fumbling for my pouch, but the woman took one look at me and laughed. The dolls, she said, were more yeokun than I could afford. Fifty yeokun for the small one, one hundred thirty for the larger one.

At that point, I hadn’t earned much with the Talons. The gang had money, of course, but I had very little for personal use, especially with the fees to keep Eunbi safely ensconced in the mountain school. Chara and Chryse offered to pool in their money, too, but I wanted this gift to my sister to be from me. Yet the merchant refused to haggle, and I’d left with a burning determination. Upon arriving back at the palace, I’d marched right up to Yoonho and asked how I could make one hundred twenty yeokun—the exact amount I’d needed to buy the dolls.

The answer was an assignment. My first one out of training. I’d never killed before, but I did that night, fueled by my own terror and childish, desperate need to buy Eunbi those godsdamned dolls. To make her happy. The man was a trafficker, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would grow to enjoy the others. I cried afterward in the twins’ room, but the next morning, I paid for the dolls in the Fingertrap, and Eunbi’s face when she’d opened the box had been… Gods , it had been the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I watch as Chara tells Eunbi the story, watch as my little sister swallows hard and listens raptly.

“She loved you so much,” Chara finishes hoarsely. “All she could talk about for weeks afterward was your face when you saw your present. From then on, she rarely bought herself anything. It was all for you, honey—for your school, for your clothes, for anything else you might have wanted. Your safety. She refused to buy herself new shoes for months, even when hers began to fall apart.”

My sister blinks glassily and mumbles something.

“What was that?” Yoonho asks gently.

“She shouldn’t have killed anybody for me. I never asked for that.”

“You didn’t,” agrees Yoonho, the lines on his face suddenly appearing deeper, “but I did.”

My heart falls as Eunbi glares at him, a stark reprimand in her shining eyes. Even Yoonho seems to wither underneath my sister’s unflinching judgment. It’s almost shocking, how the gang leader’s shoulders seem to hunch as Eunbi shakes her head in a depthless disappointment that goes far behind her years. Sang and the twins shift uncomfortably, staring down shamefacedly at their tea. Despite the pain in my heart, I fight back a small smile at Eunbi’s power over a gang of dangerous assassins, thieves, and spies.

The air in the room grows very thick, and only then does Eunbi glance away from the Talons. “Is she hurting badly?” Eunbi asks, staring down at her feet.

Sang swallows. “Very badly,” the spymaster whispers.

“And I can make it better?”

“If anyone can, it’s you,” Chara murmurs.

Eunbi draws a shuddering breath, leaving Sang and standing up straighter. “Then maybe,” she says, scrubbing at her puffy face, “maybe I should go. Again. She asked me to listen, but I didn’t.”

In a movement that reminds me very much of myself, Eunbi smooths down her hanbok and marches toward the delicate screen door…

On the bed, my eyes open. I stare at the cabin’s ceiling, breathing hard. My mouth tastes like cherry blossoms, and I can almost feel the white mist of the underworld coiling around my body. It calls me to it.

Not for the first time, I wonder what it means that these visions come to me. That Jeoseung seems to be… talking to me?

There is a hesitant knocking on the cottage door, and I freeze. Eunbi. It must be. Slowly, as the knocking continues, I inch out of bed. One hand hovering above the doorknob, I hesitate. Am I strong enough to face her? To look my mistakes in the eye and know there is nothing, nothing I can do to take them back?

What I would sacrifice to give Eunbi the gift of life once more. A bitter taste replaces the cherry blossoms in my mouth as Eunbi calls my name. Slowly, steeling myself, I open the door.

Eunbi stands there, avoiding my eye. “Chara told me about the dolls,” she whispers. “From my fifth birthday. I didn’t know about them.”

The lump in my throat is painful. Do you want to come in? the words ask, forming in smoke before me. Eunbi reads them before jerking her head in a tiny nod. My heart rams in my chest as she wanders in, looking around with a glimmer of her old curiosity.

“I don’t really understand where this is,” she says, more to herself than me as she stands in front of the fire, small hands outstretched. “It’s not…Jeoseung.”

It’s part of my mind, I think. The letters waver hesitantly in the air.

“Oh.” Eunbi glances at me only to read the words before averting her gaze again. “Your mind? Or the…the Prophecy’s?”

I’ve given some thought to this. Mine. The Prophecy breached it, somehow, but it’s mine. Just like my body is. This time, I float the words to her so she does not need to look at me. I shift awkwardly on my feet, unsure of what to do. The cottage is so small…

A slight thump to my right, and I turn to see a tiny wooden table, with two chairs across from each other, appear from nowhere. In the middle is a heaping plate of mandu, the very same sort Eunbi and I stole from her academy’s kitchen and ate in the closet. The smell of pork and scallions is mouthwatering, and it captures my little sister’s attention. Her eyes widen.

“You have food here?” she asks warily, but she doesn’t wait for my answer before walking to the table and stuffing one of the dumplings into her mouth. I want to tell her not to, that it’s impossible that the dumplings are really food and not some sort of mental idea of food, but what’s the point? Eunbi is dead. Nothing can harm her anymore.

The thought is so hideously relieving and yet so nauseatingly disgusting that I stumble back. Eunbi frowns at me as she settles into her chair, picking up the chopsticks that also appeared and beginning to eat. Cautiously, as if approaching a wounded animal, I slide into the seat across from her. Eunbi stiffens but continues to eat.

Are they good? I ask hesitantly. Eunbi pauses mid-chew for a long moment before slowly plucking one of the mandu between her chopsticks and stretching it across the table toward me.

My heart breaks in my chest.

“Here,” Eunbi said through a big mouthful of kimchi, scallions, and pork. “You can have my last one, Lili.” She pressed the mandu into my hand, ignoring my gentle protests—it was Eunbi’s favorite food. But my little sister shook her head stubbornly, dark curls bouncing. “It’s a present,” she insisted. “Take it! Take it, take it, take it!”

It was a silly thing, just a dumpling, but her generosity filled me with a love and happiness so potent, I pulled her into my arms and smothered her with hugs as she squirmed and giggled in delight.

“Take it,” Eunbi says impatiently, and I quickly oblige, letting her plop the dumpling into my palm. “You should eat something,” she adds after a moment passes, and I do not raise the mandu to my lips. “You look…” She shifts uncomfortably in her seat and lapses into silence.

Although my throat is painfully tight, I take a small bite just to please her.

Eunbi nods in satisfaction as I chew. The mandu tastes real enough, with the chewy dumpling dough and salty pork. Under Eunbi’s watchful stare, I eat the whole thing before picking up my chopsticks and reaching for another one myself.

We eat in silence for a long while.

How do you come here? I finally ask, and Eunbi shrugs, reaching for the last mandu. As soon as it disappears from the plate, two bowls of steaming seaweed soup appear before us. Eunbi blinks in surprise before answering my question around a large mouthful.

“Yeomra isn’t in Jeoseung,” she says. “So the underworld has no ruler.”

It is similar to what Sang said to me, all those months ago, after he visited me as a Gwisin in the Gyeulcheon Forest.

“I can’t visit Iseung. That’s harder to do,” my sister continues, and I remember that Sang mentioned that, too—being unable to stay for long in the mortal realm. “But I feel… I don’t know… I feel drawn to this place. Your mind,” she corrects, staring down at her bowl of soup. “Like a rope tied around my waist yanked me back and—and dragged me here. Not in a bad way, but in a…strong way. The Talons, too. Eomma and Appa didn’t feel it, but maybe that’s good. I think they’d be sad to see you like this.”

Do Eomma and Appa… I clench my chopsticks hard, knuckles turning white with fear. Do they hate me?

For a moment, Eunbi looks very sad. “No,” she says, finally meeting my eye. “I didn’t… I didn’t really tell them about what happened.”

My lips tremble, and I raise my bowl of soup to my lips in order to hide my face.

“I just…” Eunbi sighs. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell them, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I’m still angry,” she adds, voice hard. “At you and what you did. But I didn’t tell them.”

Thank you , I say to her. It means more to me than she could ever possibly know. My eomma and appa don’t know me like this. Who I became after they drowned. And I never want them to.

Eunbi scowls, but then her face crumples. “I didn’t need those dolls,” she whispers, voice breaking. “You shouldn’t have killed someone to give me a present. That’s so—that’s so awful .”

I know. I regret it. My fingers tremble around my chopsticks. I set them down and fold my hands into my lap. I do, Eunbi. I know it doesn’t change anything, but I…I was only trying to make you happy. I was—misguided. And despite my infinite love for Yoonho and the Talons, I can realize that now. Yoonho took a vulnerable, desperate orphan and turned her into a honed weapon.

And I let him.

Eagerly.

I…I was trying to give you everything you deserved, in the only way I knew how. That doesn’t make it right. It’s not an excuse. My lungs pull in a shallow, shaky breath. When Eomma and Appa died, I felt like I was drowning with them. I didn’t know how to care for you like I should have. I got desperate, and I was so frightened that I would lose you: to hunger, or illness, all because I couldn’t provide. So I—I took the easy way out. The quickest way out. But the most willing money is illegal, and when the yeokun started coming in, it was because I was…I was an assassin, yes. For Yoonho and the Talons. I…I killed, Eunbi. I spilled blood.

The confession hangs in the air between us, an ax waiting to fall. Will she scream at me? Will she leave? I watch, heart pounding, as she wipes her eyes angrily.

“I think I knew,” she croaks. “I just didn’t want to admit it.” Eunbi pushes her soup around in her bowl. “There were always knives everywhere. You never let me touch them, though. I remember running around with one. You were angry at me.”

Your life was supposed to be different. I swallow hard. You weren’t supposed to be like me. I tried everything to keep you away from this life. The mountain academy, the lies… I thought I was protecting you.

“Well, I wouldn’t have been like you,” she snaps. “Ever!”

Good. Trying to ignore the stinging hurt in my chest, I look down to my lap, where I open and close my fists nervously. The room is spinning around me. That was what I—I wanted. I’m sorry, Eunbi. I…I am more sorry than you will ever know. Yet it does not change anything. So you don’t…you don’t need to forgive me. I just want you to know…that I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you were born, and I’m sorry…I’m sorry that I wasn’t the sister you deserved.

My stomach churns as she looks at me, dozens of emotions flitting across her small face. Anger. Fear. Hurt. Confusion. “Well—” Her bottom lip trembles. “Well, I still hate you!”

I know. It is as if some sharp tool has reached inside of me and scooped out every single emotion. I am empty. I am hollow.

Eunbi huffs in frustration, scrubbing her face with her hands. Outside of the cottage, rain begins to fall, smattering gently across the window. We watch it fall together, neither of us speaking. Soon she will leave, I think, but she never does.

“I don’t like it,” she mumbles after a few tense moments of silence. “I don’t like being dead. I don’t want to be dead.” Eunbi slides out of her chair and walks to the window, staring out at the rain and dark clouds rolling over the hill lands. “Even though Yeomra isn’t there, there’s still the law where if you’re dead, you can’t go back to life. I tried it lots of times. I thought if I ran over the bridge between life and death, I’d make it, but I never did. Even when I went as fast as I could, something always pulled me back. I wish Yeomra would return so I could ask him to give me life again.”

He can do that? I ask incredulously. Eunbi frowns at me, turning slightly away from the window.

“I thought you were obsessed with the gods,” she retorts sourly. “Yeomra was the ruler of Jeoseung. He could control who lived in it and who didn’t. But now he’s not its king any longer, and so there’s no way for me to come back. Jeoseung has no leader. His throne rejects everyone who tries to take it. Which isn’t a lot of people, because apparently most of the dead just want to rest, but some would want to rule, anyway.”

With a jolt, I remember peering out from the Prophecy’s eyes as Yeomra stood before her in the Wyusan Wilderness with a sharp, predatory smile.

“I expect you will try to demand the return of your dead sister. It has been a long while since I have interacted with any of Iseung’s denizens, but this is what you usually do. So go on, I suppose.”

“I have travelled to your realm by spilling my blood and saying your name thrice, but my sister refuses to come into sight on the other end of the bridge. But—are you saying you could bring her back to life?”

“I’m not, actually. For I cannot reverse the effects of death. I abandoned Jeoseung long ago, and as such, my connection to it has slipped. Jeoseung, direly as it needs one, has no ruler. The throne is there, empty, yet many of the dead no longer have a wish for power. And to rule, one must first die. Therein, I suppose, lies the underworld’s problem.”

“Yoonho tried to take the throne, just to see,” Eunbi says with a hint of a bitter smile. “It kicked him off. He went flying.”

The words hover hesitantly in the air. My fingers play with the three truths around my neck. The three golden values. I frown, but… Surely not. Of course not. It doesn’t…fit.

Right?

Perhaps the throne wants something specific , I offer.

“Maybe,” Eunbi mutters. “I don’t care.” Yet her voice breaks as she says it, and then she is sobbing, as hard and fast as the storm outside.

And when I rush to her, when I gather her in my arms…

She does not pull away.

She does not pull away.

I hold her close as the storm brews outside, as the fire crackles and pops. She buries her face in the crook of my neck as I kneel down, hands on her shaking back. Eunbi’s tears flow earnestly, heavily, and she’s trying to speak in between the sobs.

“I…don’t really…h-hate you,” she cries. “I d-didn’t m-mean it… I just… I needed to say it…”

A tear slips down my own cheek as Eunbi pulls away to stare into my eyes.

“I d-don’t think it was your fault,” my little sister cries. “I’m just so angry , Lili, I’m angry all the time… And nothing makes it better, nothing! It hurts, and it won’t stop!”

I know , I try to tell her. I have felt the same anger . It destroyed me.

Yet she is crying too hard to read the floating words. Again, I try to summon my voice, and there is…there is something . Not the obliterating terror I am so used to feeling when I fumble for speech, but something else, something softer, something that is not so jagged and painful. A swell of it, of voice, rises in my throat, and it nearly makes it to my tongue before it falters and fades.

But still, it is—it is change. It is progress .

The hollowness within me is slowly filled by something brighter, something hopeful, as Eunbi’s sobs quiet. As she still clings to me.

Like I used to when she was a baby, I lift her up. She is heavier now, but I am still able to tuck her into the bed. To pull the worn blankets up to her chin.

She wipes her running nose with the backs of her hands and blinks tiredly at me. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m sorry, Lili.”

Don’t be sorry. You did nothing wrong.

“Sang says you’re hurting.” Eunbi takes my hand in hers. “Is it better now?”

It is , I reply honestly.

She smiles, just a little bit. “Good,” she whispers, and then her eyes shift to something behind me. “Stairs,” Eunbi says in awe, and as I turn, I see that the stairs have appeared, come to take me to the next level. Around my neck, another key appears: this one smaller than the others, with a charm shaped like a tiny cherry blossom.

I swallow hard, a nervous sweat prickling on my palms.

Something, some intimately innate feeling perhaps sent by Gameunjang herself, tells me that I am getting closer.

Closer to reclaiming my body.

To defeating the Prophecy.

“Are you going to go?” Eunbi asks quietly.

I have to , I reply, smoothing away her curls. So I can get my body back. So I can leave this place and fix…everything.

She considers this, looking at the staircase, the stone steps leading upward into shadow. And then she looks at me, scouring my face intently, a little furrow between her brows. “You’re scared,” Eunbi whispers. “I’ve only ever seen you scared once before,” she adds, and I know she is thinking of—of—

C R A C K.

I flinch, and Eunbi nods, as if coming to a conclusion. “I’m coming with you,” she says firmly and scrambles out of the bed to stand by my side. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Eunbi, I— My throat abruptly closes, and I shake my head, although I so desperately want to say yes. I cannot—I will not—put you in danger ever again.

She smiles, a little ironically. “I don’t think that matters anymore, Lili,” she whispers and grabs my hand. Looking up at me, Eunbi shakes her head. “Don’t cry,” she pleads. “I’m here now. And—and I don’t want to go back to Jeoseung just yet. So I’m not going to leave you until I know you’re okay. Please, let me help save you,” she says, and with a start, I remember the way she threw herself in front of me so long ago—the way she’d launched herself before me on the Gyeulcheon Mountains, taking the snowball Rui had meant for me with her small body, tumbling to the ground with a shriek.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I’d said then, heart pounding in alarm as I’d held her shoulders, scanning her for any injuries. Rui, competitive as only a Dokkaebi emperor can be, had a penchant for throwing snowballs at me with more force than even necessary.

Face caked in snow, Eunbi had stubbornly frowned. “Why not? Why can’t I save you?”

As if the memory also shines within her mind, Eunbi leads me to the staircase with a gentle tug. “Come on, Lili,” she whispers.

And we begin to climb.

Together.