Ellanor and the Curse on the Nine-Tailed Fox

by K T Durham

  “Child, how in the world did you manage to get them taste just right? Not to mention having already made this many! Did you get any sleep at all?” she demanded, picking up another piece of dduk. Unbeknownst to Grandma, Elly had only gotten up an hour ago.

  That morning shortly after eight o’clock, a small queue formed at the street cart named Desire, and by ten thirty all three hundred pieces of dduk were sold out. Jong-Min was so excited that he suggested celebrating at Burger King. “I kept begging Father to take me, but he never did. Please, can we go?” he pleaded, and his grandmother smiled.

  “I’ve never tried eating there either! Let’s cross that off my bucket list!”

  Elly had no idea what Burger King was, but it didn’t sound very appetizing to her.

  So off they went to the busy shopping district of Myeong-Dong, and Elly marvelled at the vibrant hive of activity there. At Burger King, she fought to keep a straight face as she was being engulfed by the smell of cooked, greasy meat. She half-heartedly ate a lumpy salad while Jong-Min happily wolfed down an overflowing burger called a Whopper, and Grandma nibbled on a smaller burger and watched her beaming grandson contentedly.

  By the end of that week, they had garnered quite a following at the street cart named Desire. By ten o’clock each day, Grandma went home with an extremely heavy fanny bag. She patted Elly on the shoulder and grinned. “You are indeed our guardian angel! Look how much business has picked up in the past week since you popped up!”

  One night before bedtime, Jong-Min asked, “What is that book you carry around with you?” He glanced down at her belt. He noticed that Elly didn’t have any luggage except a small backpack, but she had at least three changes of clothes as well as pyjamas. How could all those clothes fit into that tiny bag? He was certain she was magical in some way.

  Elly patted her Royan. “This is my journal. It’s very private, so I keep it close to me.”

  He made a face. “You mean, like a secret diary girls keep with locks and stuff?”

  She grinned. “That’s right.”

  He cringed. “Then I won’t want to take a peek, thank you very much,” he declared. Elly burst out laughing.

  The local library, small and humble as it was compared with the impressive public libraries in London, proved to be quite a treasure trove of interesting reading material for Elly. Grandma had been more than impressed when she realized Elly not only spoke flawless Korean but could read as well. “Look here, Jong-Min! Elly could teach you a thing or two!” she declared, slapping her grandson on the head. Jong-Min envied Elly’s knack for languages. English was one of his worse subjects at school. But if he wanted to go to America, he better improve.

  What Elly read about Korea intrigued her. Dynamic, fast-paced, dazzling, and progressive were some of the words commonly used to describe Seoul, the vibrant, modern capital city of South Korea with a population of 48 million. Seoul enjoyed a high standard of living, though there were still extremes of wealth and poverty. Elly noticed this, too. Otherwise, why would Grandma have to sell dduk on the streets at her age?

  South Korea had made significant strides since the ruins of the Korean War in the 1950s, which tragically divided the nation in two, just as Horace had mentioned. As North and South Korea technically remained at war, the South Korean government ensured that they had a strong national army, and every South Korean male was subjected to two years of compulsory military training. Reading about this made Elly think of the guards and protectors tasked to defend Alendria.

  Then she went on to read that, as modern as South Korea was, it preserved a charming set of traditions, with royal tombs and palaces scattered across the country. Winters were harsh in Korea, which accounted for their heated flooring. The Korean music and entertainment industry was an international phenomenon, with millions of fans across the world. Elly thought about Lily and Maddy dancing to that funny Korean horse-dancing song.

  On Monday morning, the second day into the new year, it was nearly seven o’clock when Elly started wondering why Grandma hadn’t gotten up yet. Jong-Min had just gone into the bathroom to brush his teeth. She had finished making dozens of dduk. Throughout the night, she heard the old woman turning and twisting through the paper-thin walls while Jong-Min snored gently beside her. The pain must have been particularly bad last night. So she was startled when Grandma walked into the living room that morning smartly dressed in a grey pants suit, her face powdered and rouged.

  “We are going into the city today,” Grandma announced briskly. “I have an appointment with the lawyer to draw up some papers.” When she noticed Elly’s confused expression, she frowned. “I meant to tell you last night. But I was so tired that I fell asleep before I did. Don’t worry, we’ll put all that dduk in the fridge and sell them tomorrow.”

  Elly nodded and started clearing up the kitchen. “OK, I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes. What about Jong-Min?”

  At that moment, Jong-Min burst into the living room. “Aren’t we going to sell dduk together, Grandma?” he demanded. “What are you doing dressed up like that?”

  The old woman put her hands on her hips. “Aigoo! Jong-Min, I already reminded you yesterday! You need to go back to school today. Holidays are over!”

  He pouted and stamped his feet in protest. “But I don’t want to go!” he whined. “I want to stay with you and Elly! I hate school!”

  Grandma bounded towards him and smacked him on the head. “Ow!” Jong-Min exclaimed, rubbing his head.

  “Don’t you dare say such insolent things!” the old woman cried, stricken. “You don’t know what I would have given to go to school. A good education is the backbone of a good life. Go get ready for school before I smack you again!”

  Jong-Min hung his head and went off in a huff. Grandma sighed and looked at Elly, who was suppressing a smile. “Child, will you keep an old lady company today?” she asked, looking weary. Elly knew what that meant as she nodded wordlessly. Physically, Grandma was not well enough to go out by herself; she was asking Elly to escort her.

  Grandma started pulling on her gloves. It was below ten degrees outside. “One of our neighbours, Miss Choi, is a teacher’s assistant at Jong-Min’s school. She has agreed to walk him to school this morning. We shall drop him off before taking the bus into the city.” She paused and then smiled crookedly. “Miss Choi has seen you around the neighbourhood. I told her you are a foreign exchange student, and you’re staying with us for a while. She was mighty impressed when I told her you can speak Korean fluently.”

  Elly grinned. In many ways, she did fit the bill of a foreign exchange student.

  At the school gates, Jong-Min was stony-faced when they waved goodbye to him and Miss Choi, a thin woman with curly hair and gold-rimmed glasses. At the bus stop, a long queue of students and blue-collar workers stood hunched over in the cold, gloomily waiting to start another dreaded Monday. When the bus finally arrived, Elly and Grandma boarded and sat next to each other. They rode in silence for a while, Grandma staring out through the window, deep in thought.

  Finally, she turned to Elly. “I might as well tell you what needs to be done. You see, I am trying to get a nice family to adopt Jong-Min. It breaks my heart that it has come down to this, as Jong-Min is not even an orphan. He has a father who is stupid enough to be convinced that he doesn’t want his own son, and a horrible, selfish stepmother who wants to start her own family without Jong-Min as a reminder that she isn’t a first wife.” She sniffled, her eyes moist. “I would raise Jong-Min myself. But I can’t, as you know.”

  Elly nodded sympathetically. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a soft voice and wished she could help them. Then she frowned. Adopt. That word again. Jong-Min was going to be put up for adoption when he still had a living father? It seemed terribly sad.

  Elly had read that there were thousands of children in orphanages in South Korea, and untold numbers in private institutions. Altho
ugh many assumed – just as she had – that children who lived in orphanages were orphans, this was often not the case, with four out of five children in orphanages having at least one living parent and most having some extended family.

  Grandma took out some papers from her handbag. “Several foreign couples have expressed an interest in adopting Korean boys Jong-Min’s age, but Jong-Min isn’t considered a high-priority case since he isn’t actually an orphan. Most couples are looking at adopting much younger children, especially babies. I suppose they want the child to feel a part of the family as much as possible from an early age. I guess it would be harder for an adopted child to fit into a family once they’re past a certain age.”

  Elly furrowed her brow as an idea began to form. “You mean, any family from around the world can adopt Jong-Min? Even, say, a couple in London?”

  Grandma knitted her brow. “I suppose so. My lawyer told me married couples in places like Australia, America, and several European countries have expressed an interest.”

  Elly cocked her head, curious. “May I ask … what happened to Jong-Min’s mother?”

  The old woman carefully slipped the papers back into her handbag. “Jong-Min’s mother ran away when he was a baby,” she said sadly. “My son was a drunk and beat her. I couldn’t protect her, and I’ll always regret that. I’m glad she got away, but I wish she had taken Jong-Min with her, my poor dear boy.” She sniffled and retrieved something from her old brown wallet. It was a photo, faded with age and frayed with repeated handling.

  Elly looked at the photo. Jong-Min was a cute, chubby-faced baby with crescent-moon eyes flashing a gummy smile, flanked by his father and presumably his birth mother, because the woman in the picture did not look anything like the stepmother whom Jong-Min had described as “ugly as turd.” The smiling woman in the picture was quite beautiful, with long, flowing black hair, a fair complexion, and a mole on the tip of her nose. Jong-Min had her sweet eyes. But Elly thought the woman’s eyes looked sad.

  Grandma sighed nostalgically. “Soo-Min was lovely. She used to play the piano for the local church. I’m not even sure how she ended up marrying my son. But I suppose even he was once young and handsome, before the alcohol took him for good.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “I haven’t had news of her since she upped and left.”

  Elly stared at the photo. “Jong-Min takes after his mother,” she said softly. The woman looked familiar. Why did she look familiar? An alarm sounded at the back of her mind.

  Then it hit her.

  That mole on her nose. The sad eyes.

  Soo-Min. Sue.

  Miriam and Horace’s daughter-in-law, Sue. She was Jong-Min’s birth mother!

  The puzzle finally pieced together. Greymore rumbled. You figured it out, Ellanor.

  The Guardian wanted Jong-Min to be adopted by Charlie so that he could be reunited with his birth mother!

  But why? What was so special about Jong-Min?

  We shall find out.

  Grandma was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to take notice of Elly’s stricken expression. “Well, let bygones be bygones, I suppose,” the old woman muttered, putting the photo back into her wallet. Elly didn’t say anything for a long while, and soon the old woman started nodding off as the bus rocked on towards the city.

  The revelation had created an imperceptible shift in the air. Her heart pounding with anticipation, she whipped out Nebulane and sucked in her breath. The silver dot had been replaced by two – one blue, one red. A spray of glittering words sprang up.

  She was being beckoned to the south, to an island called Jejudo.

  Somehow, beyond her understanding, Guardian Graille knew that she’d pieced the puzzle together. And there, on that island, Graille would be waiting for her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In Gangnam with Sunglasses

  Elly was bursting with the revelation, but she contained it with a straight face. Her head teemed with thoughts as she sat out the rest of the bus ride, with Grandma’s head resting on her shoulder.

  Jong-Min was being put up for adoption just as Sue and Charlie were preparing to adopt a second child. This could not be due to chance. Somehow, the Guardian had set the wheels into motion for all of this to be happening at the same time. She was certain of it. What had Grandpapa said about the Guardians? “The Guardians are ancient beings that have existed far longer than we could fathom. It is entirely possible that they can travel through space and time, and they are aware of everything that could come to pass. However, even Guardians are not supposed to intervene in the course of the future. So they merely observe.”

  The Order speculated that the tiny old woman with the ferret (and a bizarre dress sense) whom Elly had met at the Berry Grove Park in London last year was one of the Four Guardians and that she could have helped set certain chains of events into motion. In fact, everything that happened to her in Gaya last year was set into motion the moment she encountered the ferret woman, who led her to Aunty Mabel’s bakery. There, she met Mabel’s daughter, Lily, who suggested that Elly visit Westminster Abbey. When she did, she met Maddy and Teddy. They got Hobbes the hamster back because of her. And that prompted Victoria to give Elly the Organoth blue amber to repair the broken portal, making it possible for her to return home to Alendria at last.

  Could that strange, old woman with the ferret be Guardian Graille? Judging by what was happening around her, it seemed like this Guardian was intervening in the course of human affairs, at least to a degree. Elly bit her lip. There was only one way to seek answers to all these questions: she had to head to Jejudo as soon as possible.

  She marvelled that Jong-Min’s birth mother was just a phone call away. How would he react to the news? She pictured Horace and Miriam reeling from the revelation that their daughter-in-law had a son halfway across the world. She had never met Sue, but what mother wouldn’t cry with joy knowing that she could be reunited with her child?

  Elly glanced furtively at the old woman next to her. Oh, how she wished she could tell Grandma about this extraordinary discovery! Jong-Min wouldn’t be left all alone, after all.

  But she had to keep silent. She had a strong feeling that she had to intervene without revealing her association with either party.

  Then suddenly the bus came to a halt, and Grandma woke up with a start and jumped up, startling Elly. “It’s our stop!”

  Once they got off the bus at a place called Gangnam, Elly felt like she had stepped into another realm. This district was very different from the homey, rustic suburb where Grandma lived. Here, the tallest building wasn’t a dilapidated four-storey office complex with peeling paint but a sleek seventy-four-storey skyscraper that stood glistening like a majestic beacon, surrounded by more gleaming buildings that looked like they had just been built yesterday.

  Then there was a blast of music and a clamour of shouts and screams as they stepped down onto the pavement. Grandma tutted loudly when Elly took her arm. “Aigoo! What’s all that racket?” the old woman muttered, putting her hands over her ears as she glared at the screaming crowd that had gathered in front of a makeshift stage in an open space. Elly looked over curiously. The crowd, made up of excited-looking young people squealing and waving colourful banners and signs, seemed to be waiting for somebody as a song blasted from massive speakers. Dozens of cameras flashed, leaving Elly with stars in her vision.

  Grandma tapped her hand impatiently. “Hurry, child. We’ll be late if we dilly-dally.” Then she threw the crowd a dirty look as they walked past, leaning against Elly all the way. “Aigoo! Don’t they need to make a living on a Monday?” she complained, tightening the coat around her. Elly had wrapped a thick scarf around her neck; it was freezing.

  They passed a cluster of sleek, shiny skyscrapers that looked like they had sprung from one of the science-fiction books Elly had read. She expected Grandma to lead her into one of those magnificent glassy structure
s, but they walked past them, and as they walked further away, the buildings became progressively less impressive. They came to a street with several small office buildings, and Grandma halted in front of a corner store, squinted at the name card she was holding, and patted Elly’s hand. “Well, here we are.”

  Grandma gazed up at a plain, brown-bricked five-storey building, and magnificent certainly was not one of the adjectives that sprang to mind. They walked up several flights of stairs and stopped at the fourth floor, where there was a door with Korean writing plastered on the glass: Lee Yong-Jun, Family Law. Elly peered through; there was a short-haired, bespectacled lady filing her bright red nails at the front desk. The office looked quiet and sparse.

  Grandma rifled through her bag and retrieved a compact mirror. She looked at herself critically before sighing with resignation. “Please wait for me while I speak to Mr Lee,” she said. “He was my husband’s lawyer. They were old friends, so he agreed to help me without charging astronomical legal fees.” She paused and peered into the small office. “I guess his business hasn’t expanded much in the past decade,” she commented wryly before turning to Elly. “Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to come in with me. I need some sort of written consent for a third party to be present at these meetings.” She handed Elly the name card of the lawyer’s office. “You can go downstairs and wander around a bit, but don’t go too far. Meet me back here in an hour and a half, at twelve thirty, OK?”

  Elly nodded, relieved that she didn’t have to stay in this dreary, sterile place. She’d much rather go out and explore this modern-looking district called Gangnam. But she had to talk to that lawyer about Jong-Min without rousing Grandma’s suspicion. The Guardian wanted her to do it. She hesitated a little before asking, “Grandma, where is this island called Jejudo?”

  The old woman looked up in surprise as she was pulling off her gloves. “Jejudo? It’s an island all the way in the south, famous for its abalone and as a honeymoon destination.” She shot Elly a questioning look. “Why are you asking?”