In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  Soon-ok picked up a twig and scratched a wavy line in the dirt, from the straw, past the stone. “Shi-neh.”

  “Must be the stream,” Simon said from the porch, watching intently.

  Soon-ok added more stones, bits of grass, strands of straw, some weeds. The questions and simple words went back and forth. Tree. Mountain. Road.

  “Ma-ul,” Soon-ok said, placing a group of stones together. A village or a town. A cluster of green leaves, the forest. Gradually, a colorful design of natural textures appeared on the ground, like a woven rug.

  “Nice,” Simon said. Despite his wariness, he was getting drawn in. Maybe because they were getting so much information.

  Soon-ok took the stick and drew lots wavy lines at the very edge of the patch of dirt. “Ba-da.”

  “Must be the ocean,” Simon said. “So we’re pretty close to the coast. That’s good news.”

  She placed a handful of pebbles in one heap. “Sonchon.”

  “A town? Or a city? Maybe it’s a proper name,” Simon said, reaching over to pick up the guidebook. “Here it is. The town of Sonchon. And it’s only about forty or fifty miles from the border! We’re not far off course at all.”

  “Choon-gook?” Mia asked.

  Soon-ok cocked her head, studying the design. She took a few steps backward, then a few more. With the stick she drew a long wavy line in front of her. Then she pointed to where her feet were, on the far side of the river border. “Choon-gook.”

  “She says that’s where China is,” Mia told Simon.

  “Awesome.”

  Soon-ok looked up and her eyes met Mia’s. I wonder, thought Mia. Has she ever imagined crossing the river?

  The other girl moved back toward the porch, motioning to the path. She picked up her basket, plucked a small bunch of dirty brown roots from the top of the pile, and held it out. “Oo-ung.”

  “Oo-ung?” Mia repeated.

  Soon-ok nodded. She held the plants up to her open mouth. The roots must be vegetables of some kind. She handed the bunch to Mia, who bowed her thanks.

  Mia checked the dictionary for a final word. Nae-il. Tomorrow. Mia gestured to Simon and herself, made walking motions with her fingers, and pointed to the map. “Sung-mi, Simon. Nae-il ka. Choon-gook.” Soon-ok nodded her understanding.

  They exchanged good-byes with many bows. Simon even remembered how to say thank you. Soon-ok moved off down the hill, along the side of the stream and out of sight.

  Simon was shaking his head. “I sure hope she’s not running straight to the nearest police station.” He turned to Mia. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go off on your own. Now someone knows where we are.”

  “I couldn’t help it, Simon. She saw me.”

  “That’s just what I was afraid of. This is so messed up.” He was running one hand through his hair, still looking down the path.

  “She’s not going to turn us in. I just know she’s not.”

  He turned back to her, scowling. “You don’t know anything, Mia. There may be a reward, she might get brownie points from her local Workers’ party leader, she might hate Americans. There could be all kinds of reasons, things we can’t imagine.”

  Simon must really be better. He was back to being a jerk.

  Mia shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think she really wants to help us. And I think we have to accept help, or we’re not going to make it.”

  He blew out a breath. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.” He turned to the plants Mia held in her hand. They looked like dry brown carrots, with long roots and hairy tendrils, covered in dirt. “What is that? Looks like a pile of dirty sticks.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “If it’s a vegetable, it’s just what we need. What did she call it?”

  “Oo-ung, I think. I wonder what we do with it.”

  “Try washing it first. And it wouldn’t hurt to boil it.” Now he was ordering her around again. She reminded herself that she had wanted her brother back, just the way he was.

  She searched the dictionary until she found what she thought was the right spelling. “It says ‘burdock.’ That doesn’t tell us anything. Where’s Google when we need it?”

  She washed the vegetable, whatever it was, in the stream, then cut it up with the knife and boiled it with the bits of remaining snake meat and a little more fresh water.

  “Soup!” she called, when the vegetable pieces seemed soft enough. They took turns spearing the chunks of vegetable and meat with Simon’s knife. The roots had a strong earthy taste.

  “Sort of like medicine,” Simon said, “but could be worse.”

  OCTOBER 8

  “Yuh-bo-say-yo!”

  Mia woke up with a start, her heart leaping into her throat. Simon was crouched on the floor beside her. She scooted back against the wall of the room. There was nowhere to hide. They were trapped.

  Simon eased over to the wall by the door opening and peered around the corner. The tension in his body slackened. “It’s only the girl.”

  Mia let out her breath and joined him at the door.

  Soon-ok was standing in the yard a few feet from the porch, carrying a bundle wrapped in a blue cloth. Setting it on the porch, she uncovered a basket holding several covered bowls. The big one held something that looked like porridge. Two smaller ones were vegetables, one a kimchi with a red pepper sauce. Soon-ok held out two pairs of metal chopsticks.

  “We can’t take her food. Her family might not have enough,” Simon said.

  “We have to. It’s really impolite to refuse hospitality.”

  They tried to get Soon-ok to join them, but she shook her head, saying something and pointing down the hill. She’d already eaten — or would eat — at home. Mia hoped it was true.

  “I think it might be potatoes,” she said, sampling the porridge. The vegetables were seasoned with soy sauce, wonderful on her tongue. It was the first salt they’d had since the peanuts.

  “Shouldn’t we leave some for her?”

  “No, it’s good manners to eat it all, to show you like it.” They cleaned each bowl. Soon-ok smiled with pleasure. She wrapped up the dishes, then sat on the porch, waiting. Apparently, she intended to lead them out of the woods herself.

  It was time to go.

  “You need to get all those wrappers and bury that bowl,” Simon said. As they took a last walk around the little house and the yard around it, covering up any evidence that they’d been here, Mia felt a tug of sadness. The farmhouse had been a safe island in a dangerous sea. Everything ahead seemed uncertain and uncomfortable, if not impossible and life-threatening.

  Soon-ok led them down the hill in single file.

  “How’s your leg?” Mia turned to ask Simon, bringing up the rear.

  “It’s okay. The heat really did the trick.”

  The day was cloudy with gusts of wind. Mia shivered in her thin jacket, stamping her feet to warm up as they walked. After the flat patch along the stream where she’d met Soon-ok, the trail dropped steeply, zigzagging down the mountain.

  Simon was the first to notice the cluster of roofs through a gap in the curtain of trees.

  “Hang on a sec,” he said. They were on a curve of the path, looking across toward another ridge. The village lay in the valley below.

  “Soon-ok?” Mia touched her shoulder, pointed at the roofs. She held up her hand while she slipped off her pack to pull out the dictionary.

  Danger. “Wi-hum?” Mia pointed again at the village. Soon-ok’s expression was puzzled.

  “Simon, she doesn’t know anything. That Dad was arrested, that the authorities are after us, that we’re in danger …”

  Simon was sitting on the ground, stretching out his leg. “Yeah, it probably hasn’t been broadcast. It would only embarrass the regime. Though you gotta know they’ll publicize the hell out of it if they catch us!”

  Mia shivered. She ripped a page out of her journal and tore three pieces into rough human shapes, one small, two taller. Mia. Simon. Dad. “Sung-mi.
Oh-bba. Ah-buh-ji. Pyongyang.”

  They acted out Dad’s arrest, running away, the officials chasing them. Then walking, hiding, the mountain, the house.

  Soon-ok was nodding. Her eyes were shining with tears. She gestured to herself. “Oo-ri ah-buh-ji.”

  “Something about her father.”

  Soon-ok began to speak, punctuating her words with actions. She showed hands being bound, stern-faced people issuing orders, someone being taken away.

  “I think her dad got arrested too. What do you think happened?”

  “Maybe jail. Maybe a labor camp. Although I thought they usually sent the whole family to the labor camps,” Simon said. “Maybe it was one of the reeducation camps. People can survive those.”

  Mia had to focus on what they needed to do now. She pointed to herself and Simon, then toward the village, and shook her head.

  “Mi-gook sa-ram.” Americans. “Wi-hum.” Danger.

  Soon-ok nodded, her face serious. She signaled for them to wait, turned down the path, and disappeared around the bend.

  “You don’t think she went to tell somebody about us?”

  “I don’t think she would turn us in, Simon. Not after whatever happened to her father. Anyway, if she was going to, wouldn’t she have brought someone to the farmhouse last night?”

  “You better be right on this one,” he said, frowning.

  Yes, I certainly better be right. As the minutes went by, Mia pulled on her lower lip, watching the path for any sign of people. Simon paced up and down.

  Then, there was Soon-ok. Alone, coming back up the trail, carrying something black in her hand. As she reached them, she stretched out her hand toward Simon.

  “Mo-ja.”

  It was a black cap with a short brim, the kind that schoolboys wore. Simon placed it on his head, then pulled his hood up over the back.

  “That helps a lot, especially with the profile. And the blond hair,” Mia said. “From a distance no one will be able to tell you’re a foreigner.”

  “Kam-sa-ham-ni-da.” Simon ducked his head to Soon-ok in appreciation.

  They resumed their trek, Soon-ok leading them on a path winding around the village and on down the mountain. An hour or so later they came out onto grassy hills, fields stacked like a staircase for giants. In the distance a man moved through a dry field with an ox and plow. A little later a woman crossed a far hill, carrying a large bundle on her head. Then another turn, and below, between tall bushes, they could see a stretch of paved highway.

  Simon stopped. “She should go back. It’s not safe for her to be seen with us.”

  Mia pointed at the road. “Wi-hum.” She gestured to Soon-ok that she should return up the path. Then she took out the package of Starbursts and offered Soon-ok one of the last pieces. Strawberry.

  “She’s got to eat it now. It could be dangerous to her.”

  Mia used her awkward basic vocabulary again. Danger. Americans. Eat. Then she unwrapped a lemon Starburst and put it in her mouth, gesturing to Soon-ok to do the same.

  The two girls gazed at each other as they chewed.

  “Get —” Simon began.

  “The wrapper. I know.” Mia held up her own wrapper and held out her hand, feeling foolish. Soon-ok nodded and put the pink wrapper in Mia’s hand.

  Then it was time to let her go. Mia felt her throat tighten. She took both of Soon-ok’s hands in her own.

  “Kam-sa-ham-ni-da,” she said. “Man-hi, man-hi kam-sa-ham-ni-da.” Lots and lots thank you. It wasn’t the correct way to say it, but she knew Soon-ok understood. Tears stood in her eyes, mirroring the ones in Mia’s own. They bowed to each other.

  Mia and Simon watched Soon-ok move back up the path. Then it was just the two of them.

  After Soon-ok left, they settled in a small grove of trees on the hillside above the highway to wait for dark. They’d been mostly under cover as they descended the path with Soon-ok, but now, near the road, there was almost nowhere to hide. The light and open space all around them were disorienting after so many days in the forest.

  Lying back on the scrubby tan grass, Simon propped his leg up on a slender trunk.

  “How’s it doing?” Mia asked.

  “If I keep it up for a while, I’ll be good to go.”

  Mia nodded and lay down under a nearby tree. Maybe she could doze for a bit.

  “So, Squeak, do you think about being Korean a lot?” Simon’s voice surprised her. “I mean, are you kind of conscious all the time that you’re, I guess, not white?”

  Mia opened her eyes to look at him. Where had this come from?

  He was gazing up at the sky, not at her. “I’ve just been noticing how, since we got here, I think about being white — or really, being not Korean — all the time. Because everyone keeps staring at me. Or like now, it’s so much harder for me to hide than it is for you.” His face was turning a little red. “It makes me realize how, at home, I never think about it much. I guess I don’t have to think about it. So I’m wondering … what it’s like for you.”

  Mia considered his question, mostly feeling the strangeness of talking about race at all with Simon. Her family acknowledged her Koreanness through their actions — taking her to Korean school all those years, to the Korean grocery store, to restaurants — but they didn’t talk about it much. And she couldn’t remember ever discussing their being white.

  “Daniel and I talked about that,” she said, “how different it was — how good it felt — to not stand out here. But yeah, back home I pretty much never get to forget that I’m Korean. Every time I stop noticing, someone does something to bring it to my attention. Even in our family,” she went on. “I’m not saying I don’t want to be Korean, or I don’t want to think about it. But the way our family handles it, especially Mom, it’s like something extra I have that no one else has. Like the rest of you guys are normal, but I’m special. I mean, you never got special foods or, I dunno, tiny German or English things in your Christmas stocking to remind you of your heritage. Even when I was little, I didn’t want to be special, I just wanted to be ‘normal’ — like everyone else.”

  He nodded, looking as if he was mulling it all over.

  “So …” he began, then stopped. This was different, seeing him off-balance, unsure of himself. It struck her that this was a subject she actually knew more about than her brother did. “So — I don’t know how to say this — is there something I should be doing? To, you know, help you or something. Be on your side.”

  Now she was really surprised. She rolled over on her side to face him. “I don’t need help. But it’s nice to not be the only one seeing it.”

  “Okay,” Simon said, looking at her now. “I’ll keep that in mind. It’s just kind of weird that I never noticed any of this before.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is weird,” Mia said, smiling a little to herself as she turned onto her back. She tried to relax and doze, but the sense of being exposed kept jolting her awake. After a while she sat up and checked her watch. 11:16.

  “It’s not even twelve yet. Doesn’t it feel as if it should at least be afternoon? As in, I’m starting to get hungry again.”

  “We ate early, before seven, and we just walked down a mountain. That’s a good reason to be hungry.”

  “But it’s not good. We don’t have any more food.”

  “We had a real breakfast this morning, that’ll hold us.”

  “Tell my stomach that.”

  They each took a stick from the last package of gum, just to have something to chew on. Three left. And six Starbursts. Mia took a swig from her water bottle. They’d have to be careful about that now too. How easy it had been at the farmhouse, living next to the stream.

  Her skin felt crawly, like she wanted to jump out of it. The border was maybe only fifty miles away. But they had to just sit there on the hillside, doing nothing. She was going to go crazy before it got dark.

  Propping herself against a tree, she took out her colored pens and journal. She wrote down everything s
he could remember about the last two days, using just Soon-ok’s initials.

  Afterward she lay on her belly in the grass and read through her journal from the beginning, slowly. It was a complete record of their entire trip, except the details about the phone. That had seemed too dangerous to include, even if no one else might ever see it. And she didn’t want to think about the pictures from the prison camp any more than she had to.

  It made her tired, just reading it all. They’d been through so much. But then, some of the hard stuff had led to discoveries. It was like those steel wool pot scrubbers Mom used: The experience scraped off the surface to reveal what was really underneath.

  Some of what was there wasn’t easy to accept. Stone Warrior was scared. Squeak was angry. But that same Squeak had found the strength to save herself, then save her brother. The scouring made the metal shine, like a star.

  Mia turned back to the page where Daniel had written her name. Sung-mi, Beautiful Star. Underneath she wrote her other name. Mia. That meant “mine” in Italian. Like she was becoming her own self. Maybe she was growing into both her names.

  Mia wrote her Korean name in han-gul over and over, practicing shaping the letters as neatly as she could. She tried to copy the Chinese characters Daniel had written.

  She flipped to the map she’d drawn based on Soon-ok’s picture of stones and grass. She looked at the guidebook map of the northwest section, trying to compare the two maps to see where they were on the road. It was impossible to know their exact location, but she figured she had it within ten or fifteen miles. You are here. For some reason, that made her feel better. A little more in control of what happened to them.

  “Simon?”

  He grunted. He was lying on the ground, arms behind his head, foot braced on the tree. His MP3 player wires ran from his sweatshirt pouch up to his ears. His battery must still be working. Mia scooted closer to him on the grass, holding out the guidebook map.

  “It looks like the train tracks are on the other side of the road, closer to the ocean. But really close. Maybe within a mile. So it might be safer to go along the tracks, like we did before.”

  “No, the road’s our best bet. It’s right here, and much easier to walk on. There’s hardly any traffic, even in daylight; I’ve only heard one car pass since we got here.” He didn’t even look at the map.