Gilded (The Gilded Series, Book One)

by Christina Farley

  Empty tarp-covered stalls fill the beach side of the road, and even the concrete lean-to restaurants that line the other side look forlorn. The only signs of civilization are the telephone wires strung along the road like sagging tightropes. The restaurants have fish tanks out in front and large signs tacked onto their roofs to lure visitors.

  Where is everyone?

  I’m so weak right now, it’s hard even to think straight. A peak-roofed restaurant with the words KING MUNMU painted on a wooden sign across the front catches my eye.

  Inside, smells of cooked rice and sesame oil send my stomach growling. The restaurant’s walls are slabs of unfinished wood, with old-fashioned sconces holding candles and the far end is lined with windows that overlook the sea.

  Scenic paintings of Korea fill the walls. My shoulders relax as I collapse onto one of the low table’s floor cushions.

  A lady with long dark flowing hair glides to my table and hands me a menu.

  “Hello there, young one,” she says in a lilting voice that reminds me of crashing waves. “You look weary and hungry.”

  “Yeah, I’m starved.” I give the menu a quick scan and order noodles.

  I don’t wait long before she drifts back with a huge bowl of thick rice noodles, steam coiling up.

  “You have no idea how wonderful this looks,” I tell her, and slurp up a spoonful. “I noticed your restaurant was named after King Munmu. Do you know where his tomb is?”

  “Indeed.” She flicks her manicured hand toward a painting of a rocky island. “One of my favorites of the king’s final resting place.”

  She sighs and takes a moment to study each of the paintings in the room. I slowly lower my spoon as I follow her gaze. Every painting in the restaurant is of that same island. It’s kind of creepy.

  I say, “The tomb is on an island?” Why does everything have to be so impossible?

  “Down the path just outside my restaurant. Not far.” She pats my hand and pushes my bowl closer to me. “Now eat up, my dear. You look like a few pounds would do you good.”

  The noodles warm my body so that by the time I drain the last of the broth, I’m so tired I could curl up in one of the restaurant’s corners and sleep for a decade.

  “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.

  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.

  I haven’t done any kind of paddling since elementary school camp, which ended with me capsizing the canoe, along with three other girls from my class. Since then I’ve stayed clear of water sports.

  The boy digs his paddle into the sea, yelling at me over the waves to do the same. I grip my paddle and plunge deep, trying to push back against the waves. I don’t even look up for a while but focus on plunge, push back and lift, plunge, push back and lift. Then, from the corner of my eye, I notice black rocks jutting up in front of us like shark teeth.

  My heart sinks. I should be excited that I’ve been able to paddle so far out, but I’m not. How am I supposed to climb those rocks? What if I have it all wrong and this amulet will do nothing? Or what if I am right and it works, but then I fail when I find Haemosu?

  “I thought you said you could paddle?” the boy says, frowning at me.

  “Right.” I push away my negative thoughts and think about Dad’s obnoxious poster back home: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” This is me creating my future, I think as I dig my oar in deeper. Sea kayaking out to scale impossible rocks and trespassing on a sacred burial site.

  Yep. I’ve so got everything under control.

  We’re at the edge of the island, the volcanic rocks jutting up sharp and impenetrable. Water gushes against the island wall, spraying me, the salt burning my eyes. We float closer, and I examine the slopes for some way to get up on them. It’s not until we make the final turn before heading back to shore that I spot it. One rock section slopes just enough that I think I could climb it.

  “Let’s get closer!” I yell.

  “Too dangerous!”

  “I didn’t give you a hundred thousand won for nothing!”

  He shakes his head but shovels his paddle into the left side of the boat to turn us closer to the island. After a few yards the current makes it impossible to get any closer. I’ll have to jump for it.

  I set down my paddle and adjust my bow.

  “What are you doing?” the boy says.

  “I’m going to swim to the island.”

  “What?” His eyes widen as if I’m crazy. He has no idea.

  “If I can’t climb on, will you wait for me?”

  “This is a very bad idea.”

  Tell me about it.

  Before he can talk me out of it, I pencil-jump into the ocean, icy water stabbing my skin, and pop back to the surface, coughing up water. The current pulls, and I realize I’ll be swept out to the beach before I even have a chance to touch the rocks. I stretch out my arm and start swimming, fighting against the current, hoping I’ll reach the rocks before my strength leaves me.

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been swimming, but when I scrape my palm against the rock face, I know I’ve made it. The current bears down on me as I press my body against the rock and fumble for a handhold. My fingers are numb and white from the freezing water. The incline I noticed on the boat is just beyond my reach. I wedge my body into the rock, straining against frothing waves. I scream.

  And somehow, in a haze of insanity, I reach it. Notches are grooved into the rock face, and my fingers fit into them perfectly. Maybe I’m not the only one who has been on this rock. I pull myself up, and my feet graze the razor-sharp lava rock until I find a tiny ledge for them to stand on. Slowly I work my way up the slope.

  My muscles burn.

  My arms shake.

  I climb higher.

  The wind whips around me; my hair sticks to my cheeks, wet. I bite my lip, tasting a mix of blood and salt, and keep moving until I’m at the top of the rock. I cling to its surface and gaze around. The boy is still sitting in his kayak, waving his oar at me.

  It’s not exactly a happy wave. More like a you-better-get-over-here-or-I’m-going-to-get-you-in-big-trouble type of wave. I wave back.

  Back at the shore, the sandy beach, so safe and calm, feels like forever away.

  Looking around, I realize these rock walls form a ring. From the sky they would resemble a crown, and in the center of the crown is a pool just like the one in the kumiho’s painting, oddly calm in comparison to the surging waves on the other side of the rock walls.

  I swing my leg over the tip of the rock, which I’m sure is sending the boy into total panic mode. Slowly I climb down the slope, careful to place my feet so I don’t fall into the pool of water in the center of the rock crown. I stop midway, searching for anything that would look like the samjoko on the amulet.

  A cloud parts above me, and rays of sunlight trickle into the smooth pool. That’s when I see it. A golden plate, submerged beneath the water’s depths, ingrained into the side of a rock. I scale farther down the rock until I can find a ledge on which to stand. Carefully, I slide the amulet out of its pouch. I hold it up to the sun, comparing it to the golden plate below.

  How does it work? Only one way to find out. I slip the amulet back into its pouch and wrap its string around my wrist.

  I jump in.

  This water is slightly warmer than the surf outside of the rock crown. I push my way back above the surface for a quick breath and dive back under, swimming to the golden plate. Once there, I slip out the amulet and press it into the circular space on the plate, pushing against the water until the amulet sets in place. A perfect fit.

  Nothing happens.

  My breath is nearly gone. I press both hands on it, willing it to work.

  Begging it to work.

  It moves, slightly. I push harder. My lungs scream for air.

  The plate sparkles like diamonds shattered into a thousand pieces. It’s so bright that I’m blinded and lose my breath, choking on water. The plate revolves faster and faster, until the inside bursts open. The light explodes, and I’m dragged within. Once again I find myself sucked into a spinning, star-riddled vortex. Into another time and another place.

  This time I’m prepared when the swirling stops. I reach for my bow, relieved it’s still with me, and notch in an arrow.

  But I am wrong again. So wrong.

  The place into which I step is like nothing I’ve yet experienced. Stars glitter around me, as if I’m suspended in the middle of nowhere. Before me is an enormous tiger, sitting on his haunches, as orange as the deepest sunset, with black stripes darker than the darkest night. I drop my bow in
surprise. It floats by my side.

  “Where—” I stutter, my breath comes out heavy. “Where?”

  The tiger’s deep ginger eyes consider me, and he tilts his head to the side. Behind the tiger stretches a long thick golden thread, shimmering as it trails to forever. He roars, “I am the Tiger of Shinshi, the Warden of Three Thousand Li, the Defender of the Chosen, and the Guardian of the Golden Thread.” I clamp my hands over my head. “Who are you?”

  I lower my shaking hands. “I am Jae Hwa.”

  “What is your purpose, daughter of Korea?”

  I gape at his massive paws. “I am going to confront Haemosu.”

  “What of Haemosu?”

  “He has stolen the spirits of my ancestors and kidnapped my aunt, grandfather, and friend. I have to help them.”

  “The Spirit World is not for the living.”

  “But aren’t you supposed to protect us?” I don’t dare look at him. I’ve overstepped my boundaries. “My family hasn’t had peace for hundreds of years. Please allow me to go into Haemosu’s land. I have to stop him.”

  “Hmm.” His voice rumbles. “Impertinent girl. You know that no dream comes without a price. Are you willing to sacrifice?”

  My heart clenches like a fist. I lift my head. “Yes.”

  His eyes bore deep into mine. “Then go.”

  “Can you make sure my bow and arrows come with me?”

  “Your weapons will not save you.”

  “I have to try.”

  “So be it.” His paw reaches out and touches my hand, as soft as a cherry blossom. “Take this.” I open my palm, and he places an amethyst the size of my fingernail in it. It pulses warmth through my skin.

  “The soul of Korea. Let it guide you through the darkness.”

  Before I can thank him, he transforms into a giant topaz sphere. It rolls across the golden thread and disappears.

  I stand still for a moment, trying to grasp what I’ve just seen. There’s nothing around me but stars and emptiness. I’m lost. What now?

  Then I remember the tiger’s words about the gem. I strap my bow to my back and open my palm. The gem glistens, ribbons of light cascading from its surface.