The Mermaid from Jeju

by Sumi Hahn

  He would find his wife in the garden, gathering wild onion shoots. He would give her the flour, with a kiss. For you, my beloved, he would say.

  One night, ten years after his arrest, he sleepwalked out of his cot. He was about to open the door to his house when everything turned dark.

  He had been shot in the back by a guard, who thought he was trying to escape.

  The beautiful shaman released Dr. Moon, who had wept in her arms like a child. “Your father found your mother, and they are together again.”

  Dr. Moon wiped his nose. “My mother—could I speak to her too?”

  The shaman suddenly became shy. She cast her eyes down at the floor, unable to look at Dr. Moon. She rubbed her hands, worrying her fingers, before she finally nodded.

  When she saw the empty flour sack, her chest seemed to rip apart. From that moment, her heart was a husk, and she hardly a person.

  Everyone begged her to come to her senses for the sake of her pitiful son. But she couldn’t bear to look at the boy, whose face looked just like his father’s.

  The child never complained about his mother, whose presence betrayed her absence. Buckets brimmed over while she milked, and pots scorched as the soup boiled away. Because she no longer felt hunger, she often forgot to cook.

  To survive, her son had to borrow beggar’s tricks. He drank rainwater to fool an empty stomach and chewed bark to pretend he was eating. He discovered which shopkeepers tossed tasty scraps to dogs and orphans alike. At night, he shut his eyes and pretended to sleep so that his mother would be free to cry.

  She endured her grief for as long as she could, until the bombing reached a lull. While the world pretended that the war had stopped, the fighting never ended for her.

  When her son finally reached an acceptable age, she allowed herself to give up. She dropped the firewood she was carrying as her legs buckled beneath her. She lay on the ground, not moving, until someone knelt beside her. She opened her eyes to see who it was, and her breath stopped in her throat.

  There he was, her beloved, holding out his hand to take her home.

  “Your mother is deeply ashamed. She begs you to please forgive her.” The beautiful shaman looked sad.

  An old tightness released in Dr. Moon’s throat, allowing him to respond. “She did her best in terrible times. I promise to honor them both with a proper ceremony every year.”

  The shaman smiled. “Your father requests peaches. Your mother, noodles.”

  All the tears he never shed as a boy, the tears that stuck in his throat and made it difficult to speak, burst out of Dr. Moon like a torrent. Alongside him, Dong Min sobbed with abandon, remembering how piteous his friend’s youth had been.

  The shaman resumed her dervish dance, stomping her feet with the thudding drum and shaking her arms to the cymbal. She tied the streamer into knots and shook out the mortal skein.

  A breeze blew open the door, fluttering the flags over the altar. The tips of the cigarettes and incense glowed red as smoke curled through the room. The voices of all her grandmothers whispered in the shaman’s ear like an eerie choir of sighs. Invisible hands lent their assistance as the shaman unraveled the tangle of souls that clung to Dr. Moon like burrs.

  The space between worlds is as thin as a shadow and as brief as a breath, difficult to cross without dying. Only mediums and seers can bridge this gap, yet even the most impervious of souls can sense it: shivers down spines and gut instincts; good dreams and nightmares; premonition, déjà vu, coincidence.

  Being possessed is like being loved: someone must want to hold you, and someone must return that embrace. Some spirits enter with kind intent, bringing the best of themselves. Others break in like thieves, with force, so greedy they drain their host. Lost souls wander through by chance, confused like babes in the woods. As one who moves between the realms, a shaman must host them all.

  But there are boundaries to respect and protocols to follow. For what happens in the world of spirits finds a mirror in the world of men.

  The two old men stared at the shaman, who was kneeling in the center of the room, head bowed and palms raised. She wasn’t moving, yet she seemed to be panting with effort.

  Dr. Moon whispered to his friend. “Is it over?”

  Dong Min watched the shaman, uncertain. “I’m not sure. Just wait.”

  The two men were about to stand when the shaman rose and brushed off her skirts. She walked briskly toward Dr. Moon, her mouth curving in a half smile. She placed her hands on her hips, her voice pitched down to a familiar alto.

  “Remember the nutmeg forest, yobo?”

  Dr. Moon’s jaw quivered. “Junja? Is that really you?”

  Dong Min swore under his breath. “She’s good, this one, spooky good. Even better than my mother.”

  Forty-One

  As she lay dying, Junja remembered how she had floated to the surface, pearl in her palm, her sea dream a trail of bubbles behind her. The years had unspooled like the sea king foretold, a ribbon of bright and dark. How her life ended she never knew, until the moment it happened. A bit of kindness from a god who had learned that a mortal who knew too much would always be haunted by death.

  She made the choice to survive and spent the war surrounded by soldiers. She sewed uniforms for the living while Gun Joo studied the cadavers of the dead. They huddled in the dark as air sirens wailed, waiting for the sounds of war. Would it be the sharp crack of bullets this time, or the flat bass thud of a bomb? They swore to each other that their children would never have to know the difference.

  In Philadelphia they lived in a Tudor, shaded by oak and dogwood. They drove cars, spoke English, played golf. Every fall, she and her church friends made kimchi in the shade of a Presbyterian steeple while the husbands practiced their putting. As the women brined cabbages with red paste, their eyes would prick with tears. Was it the bite of chili peppers that made them sniff? Or the sting of remembering all the women before them who had taught them how to taste with their hands?

  In the spring she planted seeds she had smuggled against her body—green onion, mung bean, chili, perilla, cucumber—that she fed to her family in the summer. She grew accustomed to the shock of eating meat every week, but her mouth always longed for the sea: the slip of kelp, the bristle of anchovy, the chewiness of squid.

  The work of surviving the present had spared no time for mourning the past. But as the thunder of war grew distant, she began to remember what she thought she had forgotten. Sometimes she heard voices in the dry whispers of falling leaves. The sight of a blackbird made her look twice. Whenever the first flake fell from the sky, her heart seemed to crack wide open.

  The gods of her mother and grandmother had failed her, yet she still found a way to persist. She brought to that new world an inherited conviction, a Korean will to believe. Her faith was more than a cultural habit; it was practical too. Why place all your bets on a mortal coil when divinity might offer a hedge? Between a life too brief and an endless death, it seemed only sensible to improve the odds.

  * * *

  Junja watched the beautiful shaman turn, arms open wide in welcome. Her spirit felt moved by that earthly embrace, its promise that her life had mattered. While the shaman stretched up to the sky, Junja reached down to the ground below. Together, the two women formed an ecstatic duet, a bridge between heaven and earth. As a swelling of voices rose in song from the depths, the skies thundered their timpani. Whirling and spinning until she grew giddy, Junja began to laugh, remembering that as many times as a life could end, it would start back up, all over again.

  Junja, Gun Joo, and Dong Min reached the nutmeg forest during the poisonous part of the evening, when the snakes guarding the trees roused themselves to go hunting. Junja sang out to the snake god to create a safe path for their feet. The three of them tiptoed past the warning signs into the hulking trees.

  They found a dry patch of ground in a ring of slender saplings. The three of them were so hungry that they gnawed on nuts scratched out from th
e snow. The strange medicinal taste made them dizzy, confusing the ache in their bellies.

  The girl listened to the branches as they fiddled in the wind. The boys danced a silly dance, giggling until they collapsed. As the forest played a wild lullaby, the three of them curled against the trees and closed their eyes.

  Junja woke up to find Gun Joo sleeping against her. While the trees whispered overhead, she touched his face to make sure he wasn’t a dream. He sighed as a tear slipped down his cheek. She caught the warm drop with her fingertip and touched it to her tongue.

  Love tasted necessary, like salt.

  As the threesome slept in the forest, moonlight crept over the rocky crevices, awakening the snakes in their burrows. The creatures slithered around the slumbering bodies, forked tongues flickering. The snakes didn’t taste any prey in the wintry air, so they slid back to their holes, curled up, and resumed their dreaming.

  The drum beat stopped. The dancer left the dance. The kut ended as it began, with the doorways to all the worlds fluttering shut. The incense, candles, and cigarettes turned into ash as the haze drifted out of the room. The food from the altar was shared by the living, who ate in memory of the dead.

  * * *

  The shamans and the monk bowed in farewell as the two friends drove away. Their small gray car looked like a beetle as it crept toward the silver sea. There it paused, by the water’s edge, to let the two men leave. Together, they walked on the beach, pants rolled, feet bare against the sand. The surf crashed over their murmuring voices, as mist stung their eyes. Seagulls floated overhead, crying as they circled. The water rushed toward the land, waves rolling over in the wind, white on black and black on white. The men held up their hands as they watched, waiting for a god to touch them.

  The three shamans and the monk drove up the mountain pass, which was once an old road before the Japanese paved it. Though the passage had changed with the years, the surrounding forest looked the same as it always had, the branches reaching out like arms. The vehicle turned onto a gravel road that faded into a rutted dirt trail.

  The drumming shaman turned off the engine and looked at the singing shaman, who nodded. The beautiful shaman and the monk gazed past the trees, up at the sky beyond.

  The first two shamans carried the drum and cymbals. The beautiful shaman and the monk bore the incense and offerings. The foursome stepped over sticks and small stones, venturing deep inside the forest, where the air was cool and still. As they entered the clearing, the ground began to slope, forming a deep depression. They picked their way through a sunken antechamber at the hidden opening of a cave. They set down the ceremonial objects to clear away fallen branches and leaves.

  The loneliness of that place made the monk fall to his knees. Weeping, he began to dig at the crumbling earth, which smelled sweet and stained his hands. More lost souls were waiting to be found, deep in the mountain’s heart.

  With the first beat of the drum, a horde of black exploded from the green, spiraling up high toward the blue.

  “Waw, waw, waw …”

  “Do you have any matches left?” The darkness seemed to be reaching into Suwol’s body, for his bones. He held his hands against his chest, trying to staunch the blood. He couldn’t stop shaking. It was so cold here underground.

  Lieutenant Lee didn’t answer. He was saving the last match for the bundle of homemade explosives. The bomb was likely a dud and would smoke them out, into the arms of their pursuers. If it made enough noise, however, some of these people might be able to escape. Unless the tunnel collapsed and buried them all alive.

  Outside, dogs were barking and soldiers shouting.

  “The fugitives are near! Get your guns ready!”

  The child whimpered. One of the women whispered to Lieutenant Lee. “Thank you, sir, for trying to save us.”

  The grandmother muttered a prayer under her breath.

  A man crawled to Lieutenant Lee. “Leave us, sir. Tell them we were holding you hostage. Escape while you still can, so you can help others.”

  Lieutenant Lee thought of his mother, who had sent him to Jeju to keep him safe. War, she had warned, was a demon, one that would try to steal his soul. Live as a man or die as a man, but don’t be tempted to survive as anything less.

  If he walked out and sacrificed these people, he would never be able to face her.

  Lieutenant Lee lit the match. He could see Suwol’s face, drained white. He saw the men, resigned. The mother’s anguish. The praying grandmother. The child, silent. And himself.

  The match died in his hand as he wept.

  Another light flared in the darkness. Suwol was holding a small lighter. The lieutenant wrapped his hands around the boy’s trembling grip.

  The flame touched the wick, as tender as a kiss.

  * * *

  The mountain cradled the boy, drawing him deep into her heart as his body relaxed against her. She murmured a lullaby to soothe the boy, water bubbling over stones. When the boy’s spirit began to wander, the mountain mourned, summoning the winds and the rain.

  The roots of trees grazed upon the boy’s flesh, while insects crawled upon the bridges of his bones. His thoughts turned to vapor, collecting as dew on the grass above.

  When the mountain began vibrating with drum beat and song, the boy’s ears flew back, to listen. Deliciousness scented the air, so his nose rolled back to sniff. His mouth watered as his questing tongue followed his yearning stomach, eager to end their long fast.

  The boy stretched. Every bone, sinew, and muscle exulted in their reunion.

  His reluctant eyes, the first to leave, were the last to make their return. He blinked at the yellow dog, which wriggled under his hands. Mother and Father were kneeling beside him, dressed in festival finery.

  His little sister pulled him up from the ground, laughing. She had found his hiding place at last.

  His mother and father embraced him, wiping the dirt away from his hair and his clothes. The little girl scrambled onto his back.

  As they approached the shimmering feast, the boy could see his uncles, aunts, and cousins, all tasting from platters piled high with food. Grandfather was peeling tangerines for the children, who surrounded him like baby birds.

  Sweetness upon sour—a contradiction only the living could taste. With every morsel, he remembered more of what he had forgotten. Anger burned. Regret was bitter. Love could be salty and sweet all at once.

  When the boy had eaten to fullness, he decided to search for the rest of his human longings, scattered over the mountain like leaves. He returned to the forest, where he found his secret trail.

  The path had been walked by someone before him.

  * * *

  The woman lay curled on the ocean floor. The waves kept time, a mighty pulse swelling and subsiding with the moon and stars. Currents rippled around her, caresses from the god of the sea.

  The sun shot beams through the watery dark, rousing the woman from her dream. She swam up, following the shafts of light. Sparkling motes glimmered in her wake, the dust of stars.

  She stepped onto the shore, wearing a veil of water. She lifted her face to the heavens and bowed.

  She began to walk. The ground rose to meet her feet with every step. Pebbles rolled in place as the earth massed to form a path that sloped, winding up toward the mountain.

  As the woman walked, her hair grew longer. Tendrils covered her shoulders, hunched from threading a needle, and crept past her breasts, spent from nursing children. The woman’s hair snaked past the sag of her belly and hid her wrinkled knees.

  When thirst parched the woman’s throat, a stream burbled up. When hunger hollowed her gut, branches dangled fruit.

  As she drank, she remembered who she was. As she ate, she remembered the lives she had lived before and the lives that were yet to come, all of them blossoming out from an ever-present moment that was here and now, forever. She remembered all the times she had traveled this path between goddess and god.

  When her passage ende
d, the woman knelt. She clasped her hands and closed her eyes.

  As the woman prayed, her hair twisted and turned as it continued growing. The strands burrowed into the soil, turning into roots that searched for succor and found it, buried deep. Gleaming sap traveled up the shaft of the woman’s hair, turning white into black. Luster returned to her skin, fullness to her flesh, strength to her bones.

  The mountain had more gifts to share, sending vines to twine up the woman’s body. Leaves unfurled to clothe her, and trees spread out their branches to create shade. Whorls of green looped and curled around the kneeling woman, waiting for her prayer to end.

  As the boy entered the clearing, the girl looked up. Her hands stopped in midair. Next to her was a basket, spilling over with ferns.

  Here is a secret: The dead, they dream too. Just like the living.

  * * *

  One Last Story

  Ten thousand years ago, the gods created the heavens and the earth and everything in between. Giants walked the land and swam in the oceans while dragons flew through the air, breathing fire and water.

  One night, the king of the seas rose up from the depths to admire the new stars. Amongst the twinkling lights, a young dragon played, so beautiful that the king of the seas wished to possess her. He sent forth a wall of water that rose to the heavens and ensnared the divine beast, bringing her down to the depths of the ocean, where her flames were extinguished.

  The dragon floated in the ocean, angry with the sea king, who dared rob her of flight. She stood on her new legs and rose to a massive height. She stretched out her arms and reached into the water to scoop the sand from the bottom of the sea. With seven mighty handfuls, she created the island of Jeju. When she finished her work, she lay down. She stretched to her full length as she gazed up at the sky, remembering her place among the stars.