by Yoon Ha Lee
I shed my human shape for that of an enormous hawk. On a planet with stronger gravity, I wouldn’t have been able to fly. But the Fourth Colony’s lower gravity worked to my advantage. Here I could soar.
It was a risk—the ghosts could have flown after me. But they didn’t. They were too focused on Captain Hwan.
I caught an updraft and wheeled higher. The wind buffeted me, and it took several moments to steady myself. As a hawk I had keener eyesight, and I surveyed the valley beyond the cliff. Surely an artifact as powerful as the Dragon Pearl couldn’t be concealed easily?
“Let me guide you,” Jun whispered in my ear. I was grateful for his help. Following him would be a lot easier than trying to remember the coordinates from Hwan’s map. We banked and arrowed downward.
Another group of ghosts swirling below us made it easy to spot the Pearl. In the center of the throng, my hawk’s vision picked out a glow coming from a shining sphere. Unlike the death-white spirits, the orb was a tumult of colors, like a living ocean—from jade-green to turquoise, from aquamarine to deep blue, with foam-pale flickers in all the colors of the rainbow. It looked to be about the size of my fist when I was in human form.
I circled, frantically considering my options. No way did I want to swoop down among the ghosts. But I didn’t have a choice, not if I wanted to retrieve the Dragon Pearl.
“You can do it,” Jun urged me. “You’ve got me—I can protect you from the ghosts.”
Anxiety seized me once more. Would Jun betray me again? It might be safer to trust my own defenses.
But the fact remained that he was my brother. Sujin and Haneul couldn’t help me now. It was Jun or no one.
I dove for the Pearl. The ghosts shrieked in fury. I could feel them battering against the boundaries of my mind. But they could find no purchase. As the ghosts tried to assault me with images of pox-ridden humans and corpses piled high, Jun created a spiritual shield around me, countering with memories of our life together on Jinju, from watching for falling stars late at night to playing tag around the house.
Cold wind swooshed against my wings. I kept my eyes focused on the orb and my talons outstretched. When they closed around the Pearl, it exuded a swelling warmth that I felt to my core, all the way to my wing tips. The ghosts howled as I snatched it up. I let out a hawk scream of triumph and beat my way back into the sky. I was literally holding on to hope.
Then, with my hawk vision, I spied the captain’s shuttle on the ground. I could see every detail clearly. The shuttle’s hatch opened and several soldiers poured out, followed by a familiar tall figure. Captain Hwan stood silhouetted by the lights within. In his hand was a blaster. And it was aimed upward—at me.
I flapped my wings frantically to gain altitude, then folded them and dove again, this time right for his hand. The one wielding the gun.
I had to give the captain credit for remaining calm. He didn’t blink as I arrowed straight toward him. He had time to shoot once. Fire pierced my right wing—what would have been my shoulder if I’d still been in human form. I plummeted, struggling to keep my grasp on the Pearl.
The pain made me light-headed. It was so tempting to retreat into the shape of some inanimate object, even if it would only be a temporary respite. But if I did that, I’d lose hold of the Pearl.
I landed badly, breaking my fall with my injured wing. The impact jolted me. This time when the cry broke from my beak, it wasn’t one of triumph but of shock.
The captain’s shadow fell over me as he advanced down the shuttle’s landing ramp. In a panic, I shifted back into human form. My right shoulder ached abominably, and I hugged the Dragon Pearl to my chest with my left arm as I tried to shield it from him. Its sweet, changing glow seemed to soothe my pain.
I looked around for Haneul and Sujin. They were now surrounded by the captain’s soldiers. I stood up and attempted to make a dash for them, only to be stopped cold by the voice of a ghost. I recognized it as belonging to the robed woman who had spoken to us earlier. She reared up before me, her hair blowing wildly about her face.
“Not the wisest decision, bringing more of the living down here,” she said. Considering everything that had happened, her tone was distressingly friendly. “Four supernatural creatures, even.”
“The captain brought himself.” I was shaking, sensing that I was missing something important. Maybe more than one thing. But the pain made it so hard to think clearly. “At least tell me your name, honored ancestor.” I figured a little buttering up couldn’t hurt.
“I am Eui,” she said. Her smile thinned. “But your flattery won’t save you, fox.”
More ghosts swarmed toward us, and their presence became suffocating, even though I knew they couldn’t physically smother me. I heard a growl erupt from Captain Hwan.
Together the ghosts spun a vision in the air before us.
An old starship touched down on the promontory formed by the cliff. From it emerged a woman in old-fashioned clothes bearing a small translucent casket that glowed in familiar changing sea colors. I recognized the woman. Anyone from Jinju would have. Hae had been the greatest shaman of her day, and she’d come here to the Fourth Colony instead of going to my homeworld to finish terraforming it. No one knew why.
In the vision, ghosts gathered around Hae. There was no sound, but they were clearly beseeching her. What wasn’t clear was what they wanted.
I was just about to ask, but the captain got there first. “Why didn’t you come to an understanding with the shaman?” he questioned Eui. “Surely she could have assisted you.”
Eui looked down her nose at him. Hwan was tall, but Eui had the advantage of being able to hover in the air above him. “Hae’s only concern was the glory of the Thousand Worlds. The glory of the Dragon Society. Glory for herself. It was all politics to her.” With a bitter chuckle, she added, “She, a shaman, didn’t care about matters of the spirit.”
I frowned. “What matters of the spirit? Why did she come here?”
“She was going to rid the Fourth Colony of its ghosts by singing us into the underworld. Then she would return in triumph with the Pearl. She would take control of the Dragon Society, and after that, who knows? She might have declared herself empress of the Thousand Worlds . . . if it weren’t for us.”
In the vision, the ghosts crowded around Hae turned from plaintive to enraged. But the shaman had strength of will. She eventually broke free of their influence . . . dropping the Pearl in the process. Frantically, she searched the ground for it, but the ghosts obscured her vision. She let out a wail of defeat, and I watched in horror as she flung herself off the cliff.
“Imagine how that must have felt,” Jun whispered in my ear. “Losing the Pearl, along with all her dreams. Cling tightly to it, sister.”
I bent over, practically wrapping myself around the Pearl, and shut my eyes, fearing that the ghosts would turn on me next. “Stay close, Jun. I need you to protect me.”
“You don’t need me, Min,” Jun said. “You know what to do. You’ve always been the cleverest one in our family.”
I opened my eyes. The ghosts were swirling around me, but they hadn’t called down any lightning strikes, or driven me off a precipice, or frozen the blood in my veins. They gazed at the Dragon Pearl, but not in anger. In expectation.
I didn’t know exactly what they wanted, but I was beginning to get an idea.
“Long ago, you were wronged,” I called out, my voice shaking. “Let me make it right.”
“Don’t believe her!” said the captain. “She’s a fox. All foxes are liars. She only wants the Pearl for herself, like that shaman did.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but then I spotted Haneul and Sujin, still ringed by Hwan’s soldiers, and the words died in my throat. I’d lied to them from the beginning. There was no reason they should believe me, either.
The wind picked up again and Eui floated toward me ominously, interpreting my lack of response as an admission of guilt. “On the day you come to the gate between t
he world above and the world below,” she said, her voice rising, “no one will guide you to the welcoming dark, and no one will say the rites over your grave. No one will—”
“Honored ancestors,” I shouted, standing my ground, although what I really wanted to do was run and hide like a small child. “You shouldn’t have been abandoned by the rest of the Thousand Worlds. You need us to help you. You can’t wield the Pearl yourselves, because you’re dead, right? But we can do it for you and give you what you’re looking for.”
From behind me I heard bitter laughter. “Pretty words, Min,” Captain Hwan said. “But what makes you think you can control the power of the Pearl?”
“Let Haneul and Sujin go,” I said, clutching the Pearl, “or I’ll use it against you.” I wasn’t sure how I’d do that, exactly, but if I had to, I’d figure out a way.
Then I noticed Haneul’s and Sujin’s expressions. Haneul wouldn’t meet my eyes, and her cheeks were flushed. Sujin, on the other hand, stared defiantly at me.
My heart sank. I waited for an explanation. But I’d already started to figure it out—why Sujin had called the captain, why Haneul had tried to warn me before I flew off in hawk shape . . .
“The two cadets were never in any danger,” Captain Hwan said, confirming my guess. “It was a ploy to win your confidence so you’d lead them—and me—to the Dragon Pearl.”
The truth stung, even though I knew I didn’t have any right to feel hurt. After all, I’d tried to dupe them, too, and I hadn’t admitted my true identity until the captain unmasked me.
“Why?” I asked them. Over the howling wind I heard the ghosts’ mocking laughter, and I flushed hotly.
“Jang was a friend,” Sujin shot back, even as Haneul shook her head. “Did you ever think about how the people who knew him would feel about the way you pretended to be him for weeks? You didn’t let us give him a proper funeral.”
A proper funeral . . .
The ghosts crowded closer and closer as Sujin spoke, drawn to an anger that echoed their own. We could be in big trouble if Sujin went on like this. I had to calm the goblin down.
“I talked to Jang’s ghost,” I said, keeping my voice level even though I was tempted to shout back in my defense. “He wanted me to continue his training cruise and help him find out who hired the mercenaries who killed him. I promised to do it. I even swore it on the bones of my ancestors.”
“Words are cheap,” Sujin said. “How—?”
Whatever Sujin had been about to say died in their throat.
Slowly, another ghost materialized next to me. I was buffeted by a familiar cold breeze. “Jang? I thought you—”
“Min is telling the truth,” he said to his friends. Then he addressed the other spirits. “She helped me, and she will help you.”
I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the roaring of the wind seemed to die down a little.
The captain narrowed his eyes at Jang. “You,” he spat. “If you’d gone properly to your rest, instead of plaguing us with ghost luck—”
Jang glowered at Hwan. “I served you loyally,” he hissed. “And what did I get for it? You knowingly sacrificed me!” It looked like he wanted to lunge at the captain.
“Not now, Jang!” I said through gritted teeth. I clutched the Dragon Pearl more tightly. It hummed at my touch, and gradually I felt a sense of serenity wash over me. I shut my eyes. Help me, I asked whatever spirits dwelled inside it.
In answer, I saw a momentary vision of a calm ocean, its waters the same changing colors of the Pearl itself. In the pale sand along the shore, I saw the shadow of a fox. My shadow.
I opened my eyes and gazed into the Pearl. Its glow brightened. Whether it was an answer from the artifact I didn’t know, but a thought sprung to my mind. In the old stories, the number four signified death—the Fourth Colony had turned its own name into a prophecy. I might not be a shaman, but I knew magic responded to suggestions, just like people responded to Charm. And between Haneul, Sujin, Captain Hwan, and me, there were now four living supernatural creatures on the Fourth Colony. Perhaps this was all meant to be. . . .
“You are coming perilously close to promising something you can’t give,” Captain Hwan said to me over the ghosts’ rising hisses. “There’s still another way for us to get out of this. Your brother may no longer be . . . available, but—” He raised his eyebrows at me.
The captain was referring to Charm. He didn’t want to say the word out loud, in case the ghosts caught on.
I remembered Nari’s parlor and how she’d used her Charm to manipulate whole crowds of people. Over the past few weeks I’d learned that my power with Charm was even stronger than hers. I wasn’t confident that it was persuasive enough to sway the thousands upon thousands of ghosts who had gathered around us, though, and I only had one chance to get it right.
No, my idea was safer. Maybe, for once, I could help without using Charm.
The ghosts’ angry glares had settled on Captain Hwan. As glad as I was that the force of their hatred and misery wasn’t directed at me for a change, I had to get their attention again.
I lifted the Dragon Pearl into the sky with my good arm. The ghosts were drawn to its pulsing colors. “You have gone too long without a proper burial,” I shouted.
The wind subsided into murmurs of assent.
“With the Pearl, I can turn this land into a tomb for you,” I said, enunciating each word as clearly as possible. “I can give you your peace at last.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” Eui said.
I brought my arm down and held the Pearl close to my heart, as if swearing an oath. “Jang trusted me. He is one of you now, and so is”—I gulped—“my brother. They deserve funeral rites, too.” I looked at Jun, but he was gazing at the horizon. The lump in my throat was never going to go away. “I’ll do it for their sake, if no one else’s.”
Captain Hwan regarded me with furious eyes. I started to sweat. What if he tried to snatch the Pearl away? With my injured shoulder, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist him. If I couldn’t sell him on this plan, we were doomed.
The captain leaned forward ever so slightly and hissed, “You’d trust the Pearl? When taking it doomed a shaman at the height of her powers?” Then he grabbed my upper arm before I could dart away.
I stifled a gasp as his fingers dug into my flesh and he yanked me toward him, wrenching my injured shoulder. I could shift and try to escape with the Pearl, but where would I go? And I couldn’t Charm him into releasing me—the ghosts were watching, and that would only renew their distrust. I had to find another way.
I stared at Haneul and Sujin, willing them to look at me. “Think of Jang,” I pleaded with them. He stirred next to me and I held still, refusing to flinch from his wintry touch. “Don’t you want to lay him to rest?”
Sujin’s brow furrowed. “Is that what you want, Jang?”
The Fourth Colony’s ghosts muttered and clamored. The wind was whipping up again. Jang hugged himself, looking more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him before. I was forcibly reminded that he’d only been a couple years older than me, the same age as my brother.
“You kept your end of the bargain,” Jang said to me. “Now it’s my turn to help you.”
Turning to Hwan, he said, “Let her go.” He didn’t speak in a deferential tone, as a cadet to a captain, but in a hollow, detached voice, as one of the dead to one of the living. He rested his insubstantial hand atop the captain’s, which was still wrapped around my arm. The chill bit my skin. Surely the captain felt it, too.
“Captain, sir,” Haneul said unexpectedly, her voice shaking, “we’ve already been cursed by enough bad luck. Don’t you think it would be better for us to do what the ghosts want?”
Sujin hesitated, then nodded. “Haneul’s right, sir,” they said. They were carefully avoiding my eyes.
“But it would be such a waste,” Hwan said almost under his breath. “When I think of what the Pearl could do . . .”
His
grip on me tightened, and I thought his next act would be to strangle me then and there. In anticipation, the breath stopped in my throat.
Jun said, “This is your chance to bring honor to the Space Forces, Captain. And some measure of peace. If nothing else, do it for your lost comrade, Myung.”
Hwan went still at the sound of her name. Then, suddenly, he exhaled explosively and let me go. I almost dropped the Pearl out of sheer surprise.
I whispered to the orb before Hwan could change his mind. “Let’s do this together,” I said. Its soft, swirling light enveloped me, and warmth spread through my body. Even the pain in my injured shoulder felt distant. “Let’s make a proper grave for the dead.”
The ghosts’ spokeswoman floated up to the four of us. “Swear on the bones of your brother,” she said to me. To Captain Hwan: “Swear on the bones of your comrade.” And at last, Eui said to Haneul and Sujin, “Swear on the bones of Jang, who was your friend.”
I shuddered as her words reverberated through me. If I broke such an oath, I could expect my own ghost to wander until I found some way to redeem myself.
“I swear,” I said. “I swear on my brother Jun’s bones”—I heard him sigh quietly—“and on the bones of all my ancestors, and on the bones of everyone who has died for the Pearl.”
The others murmured their oaths as well.
For a few moments, nothing happened. I held my breath in dread. What if we’d been doomed by my overconfidence, and Captain Hwan had been right after all? Would the ghosts swarm us?
Then the Pearl hummed as if in approval, its iridescent surface glowing so brightly I was dazzled. Its colors swirled in a maelstrom of glimmering blues, greens, and grays lit by starry gleams of silver. I stared at it, enthralled by its beauty. A questing presence moved inside my mind, and in response I held out the Pearl. My living companions formed a ring around it, moving slowly as though hypnotized. Haneul’s eyes had gone soft with wonder, and even Sujin looked less angry. As for Captain Hwan, something like peace touched his face.