“You should rest, little one,” the lady whispers into my ear. I start and knock over my cup. She must have magic feet, she’s so quiet. “I have a room in the back. Rest for a moment until you are refreshed.”
A little rest would be nice. How can I face Haemosu when I can barely walk? I pick up my packs and bow and follow her to a back room. A yo with a soft white comforter lies on the floor, and in the corner there’s a bathtub with fluffy white towels resting next to it. It will be heaven to soak in a warm bath and really clean this stinky sludge off me. I move to step inside. The woman’s arm blocks my entrance, jerking me from my fantasy.
“The weapon,” she points to the dragon bow with her eyes, “stays outside.”
I’m not sure if it’s the glint in her eyes or the steel tone of her voice, but I reach for the pouch holding the amulet I’ve looped to my jeans. The blurriness of my vision, the ache in my muscles, the pound of my head all vanish as adrenaline charges through my veins. The amulet is practically screaming Danger!
“I can’t part with it,” I say. “It’s a family heirloom.”
The room crackles with static electricity. The woman standing before me is caught up in a windstorm, her hair and red skirts whirling around her. Her body contorts, and like fire, a red coating of fur spreads from her toes, moving up her body until it reaches her face. I stumble backward as her ears twist out slightly and stretch until they’re pointed. Then her nose elongates and sharpens until I’m standing under the beady black gaze of a woman who looks just like a fox.
CHAPTER 38
The fox-lady leers with sharp, dagger teeth. “I suppose you have never seen a kumiho,” she says. “Yes, we exist. It is just that no one lives afterward to tell the tale.”
How did I not recognize the magic of this place? After all I’ve been through. I should have known better.
She whips out a clawed paw, snarling. I drop the packs and hurl myself in a back flip, kicking out my legs as I do so. My feet snap-kick into her snout and send her sprawling through the open doorway. As I land, I’m already pulling the bow off my back and notching an arrow into place.
She charges at me, her tails—a bunch of them!—lifting up behind her like a peacock, ready to strike. I loose an arrow. It strikes her in the chest. She totters, her eyes roll once in her head, and then she lets out a shaman-like scream and dives at me. My pulse pounds through my veins, my vision crystallizing as I wait for just the right moment. Then I smash her with my front kick, then side kick, and I finish her off by twisting around for a jumping back kick.
She crumples at my feet and I breathe in relief, but one of her tails snags my leg and yanks me to the floor, pulling me closer to her snapping jaw.
“I must have it,” she whispers. Her black eyes have turned murky white. “Give it to me.”
If I remember the ancient stories correctly, kumihos must feed on human livers to survive. I grab the leg of one of the tables to pull myself closer and snatch up one of the lit candles. I’m so focused on it that I don’t realize how close her mouth has come to my side until I look back.
I scream, kick her salivating mouth away from me, and toss the candle at her tails. Howling, she lets my ankle go as her tails burst into flames. I count them now. Nine.
The putrid scent of burning fur and skin fills the air and that, mixed with her screams, sends me gagging and running to my bags and bow. I grab them and glance quickly at the painting next to me. It’s an aerial view of the tomb. The rocks create more of a ring than an island, because inside the rock ring is seawater.
The kumiho rolls across the floor, screaming, and starts to crawl my way. I race out the door and don’t stop running until I hit the beach. Once there I sink into the gravelly sand and take long, deep breaths to calm myself.
The deep-indigo ocean builds up and crashes on the shoreline. I stare out at the water, remembering the time I stood at Grandfather’s beach and first heard the story of Princess Yuhwa. I’d thought it was just a fairy tale.
I squint out at the ocean at something and catch my breath. There, rising out of the water, a golden palace appears. Haemosu’s palace. I know it. I take off running across the beach, sliding my backpack on and slinging my bow over my shoulder. The soft sand slows me down, and I stumble through it in my boots until I reach the water’s edge. The palace wavers in the sunlight like a mirage. Am I imagining it? I stretch out my hand, willing it to come to me, but instead it begins to fade.
“No!” I yell. If I could just get to it, I’m sure I could enter Haemosu’s land. I start wading through the water, the surf splashing up around me.
I dive in. Ice-cold water shocks my nerves. But when my head surfaces, the palace is gone. Treading water, I scan the horizon, but nothing extraordinary is there.
I missed it. Freaking missed my chance. If I’m supposed to have a connection with this stupid Spirit World, then why can’t I just walk into it? I punch the water and swim back to shore.
At the beach, I start walking down the shoreline. I’m so ticked I nearly pass a huge rock with a metal plate drilled onto it. I pause to read the plaque:
KING MUNMU’S UNDERWATER TOMB
King Munmu (661–681 AD) unified the three kingdoms to become the thirtieth ruler of the Silla kingdom. At his death, the king gave specific instructions to be buried in the East Sea so he would become the dragon that would protect the Silla from the Japanese.
An underwater tomb? I stare out at the ocean again and realize that there’s a rocky inlet not more than seventy feet in length about a hundred yards from the edge of the shore. It looks just like the fox-lady’s pictures. The barren rocks stick up out of the water with no apparent buildings or structures. But how am I supposed to get out there?
I take a handful of sand and throw it, frustrated, but the wind catches it and blows it right back in my face. I cough and spit out the grains. I start trudging down the beach until a small house with a low stone wall surrounding it catches my eye. Actually, the kayaks lined up on the lawn did. A boy about my age sprays them down.
“Hey,” I say in Korean. “Do you give boat trips out to the island?”
The boy, his black hair hanging low over his eyes, stops spraying and cocks his head, assessing me. “No one is allowed on the island,” he says, tapping the end of the hose against his jeans. “It’s sacred ground.”
“Really?” I rummage through Grandfather’s backpack until I find his wallet. I pull out a one-hundred-thousand won check, about a hundred dollars back in the States. I try not to think about how it’s all the money I have left. “How sacred?”
He takes the check and stuffs it into what looks like a waterproof jacket. “Can you paddle?”
I shrug. “Just get me to the island, okay?”
“I can take you for a quick trip. The island is nothing but tall rocks. But it’s sacred, so you can’t walk on it.” He points to a banana-yellow sea kayak. “Take an end.”
I empty my backpack of everything except my arrows and leave it all on the beach along with Grandfather’s pack. Then I kick off my boots, slide on my backpack, check to make sure the amulet is secured to my waist, and roll up my jeans to my knees. The dragon bow is last. I strap it to my back, hoping the water won’t ruin it.
Sand slides between my toes, cold and wet, as we drag the boat into the surf, fighting off the waves that crash and churn at our feet. Once we’re deep enough we shimmy inside, me in front, the boy in the back. I position my feet against the footrests and take the paddle the boy passes me.