Chapter 2

“Uaaaah!”

Hong Yeom-rang lunged, grabbed the flag that was pointing at him, and in the blink of an eye snapped the shaman’s pointing finger right off. The fragile, girlish clapping shaman collapsed on the spot, screaming and then bursting into tears.

“You were trying to act all careful, and then you go and say something you can’t back up.”

It wasn’t an accident that their eyes met.

Hong Yeom-rang sat down calmly in front of the crying shaman and said that without a trace of hurry. That shaman had already had him marked as the sacrifice and had been biding her time, waiting for the moment to point him out. The bells stopped. The drums stopped. Everything fell silent except for the shaman’s sobbing. Even outsiders at the edge of the crowd were left speechless by the sudden commotion.

“…Are we cursed or something?”

Someone whispered it so softly it barely registered, but it sounded huge in the hush. With everyone’s gaze openly on him now, Hong Yeom-rang felt annoyed. A broken finger wasn’t going to kill anyone, yet the shaman kept crying like a child and he just frowned.

Once a year, one hundred days before the harvest.

It was basically a harvest festival for the village. As long as someone kept the ritual for one hundred days without dying or injury, everyone believed the year would be calm. Hong Yeom-rang spat openly at that belief.

“Cut the fuss and come along.”

General Hong said it with a stern face as he went over to his son who’d grown far larger than he remembered.

Staring eyes, his hard father, the shaman’s wails, it all annoyed him. Hong Yeom-rang followed his father.

The stunned crowd hurriedly cleared the ritual site.

People muttered worriedly so no one else could hear, saying maybe the ritual had been defiled and what if the tiger came back and did harm to the village. All eyes flicked toward General Hong’s house which had the tallest wall in the village.

After they cleared the site and dusk settled, folks left one by one saying the ritual must have been tainted. The shaman left behind, her finger broken and her sobs turned into hiccupping sobs, still couldn’t stop crying.

Under the sacred tree, after everyone left and darkness crept in, a weird wind blew and the shaman huddled her narrow shoulders and sniffed.

“I-I told you I couldn’t do it, h-honestly, I said so, huugh…”

She sobbed out the words.

“…He’s always been like this since he was small, so mean, huff…”

Hong Yeom-rang had been the shaman’s first love.

When she was a child, she was so pretty she confessed to him and got a wooden sword in the face on a rainy day for her trouble. She’d thought he was a real girl and dared to confess. If he’d been carrying a real blade then, she’d have been torn apart.

Hong Yeom-rang still made her heart race.

Not because he was her first love, but because she could see the sword hilt at his left hip. A beating like when they were kids wouldn’t be the end of it this time. Still, now of legal age, Hong Yeom-rang had grown a bit more composed and hadn’t drawn his sword.

It was a relief that it ended with only a broken finger.

“If he’d pulled his sword I’d be dead for real…”

“Who are you gonna tell?”

“Eek!”

The shaman shrieked at the whispered voice in her ear.

“You’re scared seeing ghosts and you jump like that.”

“My skirt, my skirt’s flipped up, my skirt!”

A shabby, faded yellow skirt covered a woman’s face. She hung by her calves from the nearest branch, limp and flipped upside down so the skirt had been turned inside out. The shaman screamed at the sight that was more shocking than any ghost.

A pale white hand slid out from under the skirt and pulled it down to the jeogori. Long, tangled hair dragged across the ground. Her sparkling eyes shone even in the dark like glossy pebbles.

Her face was bloodless and pale, and then her mouth curved up in a smile that still had no color in the lips.

Seeing that grin made the shaman shiver. It reminded her of Hong Yeom-rang when he was a kid. People who smile like that never brought anyone any good.

“See, you’re fine. You’re not dead.”

“If I were dead!”

“Then who would be the next clapping shaman?”

The words sounded like they were tossed away without a second thought and the shaman, forgetting the pain in her broken finger, reflexively stuck out a fist. The upside-down woman, still holding her skirt with one hand, reached out with the other pale hand and grabbed the shaman’s knuckles.

“Ugh!”

“If you’d had the courage I’d have untied the yellow cloth and let you go.”

The woman released the shaman’s popped lip and said it so matter-of-factly.

“You broke my finger!”

“You’ve got a temper.”

“I told you. He’s no good.”

“I didn’t think you meant you’d tell on him just because he was your first love.”

The woman named Hisa said it with a teasing tone. The shaman ground her teeth and then let them go. Since childhood she had often followed her mother around and watched Hisa. After her mother died she took on the shaman work and got to know Hisa that way.

Sometimes when the person chosen to be the sacrifice was rare, Hisa herself would select them. Just like she did today with Hong Yeom-rang.

“It’s not like he was my first love or anything.”

“You were crying so pitifully when you begged.”

“I’m crying pitifully now too!”

“Want me to give you a piece of mountain ginseng? Eat that and get better quick.”

At her age the shaman still thought Hisa might be some kind of ghost, but Hisa was visible to others in the village too, so she couldn’t be a ghost. She didn’t give off a bad aura. The shaman’s mother had told her to treat Hisa as one of the mountain deity’s messengers.

Her mother had heard that from her grandmother, and the story had been passed down for generations. If that’s true then Hisa had lived at least a hundred years.

“You still think I’m a kid?”

Hisa laughed while dangling upside down at the shaman’s words.

Even hanging upside down for so long there wasn’t a hint of blood in her face. Sometimes Hisa would watch people praying at the sacred tree and grant their wishes. Most of the wishes were simple ones like the family’s health or better fortune, and she was able to answer them.

One hundred days of devotional rites.

She counted on that, so granting one another’s wishes was easy enough.

Everything was fine until Hisa suddenly pointed out Hong Yeom-rang.

“You cried too much.”

“Get colder if you’ve lived that long.”

The shaman said it sourly. Of all people it had to be Hong Yeom-rang.

On a moonless night with no one around the shaman said the eldest son, Hong In-nam, had cried and pleaded under the sacred tree. He’d gone to the capital for the annual flower festival, seen the princess and fallen in love at first sight. He wanted his brother, who was destined to be a royal consort and who outshone him, to be shamed so he wouldn’t marry the princess. He’d begged the sacred tree to put a humiliating blot on his brother’s life.

Hisa had listened from the shade above the tree and felt the prayer.

Hong In-nam had begged that a dishonorable stain be left on his brother so he couldn’t marry a princess. He’d cried and told his life story of being forever behind his younger brother and finally begged that, before the court called him, his brother should vanish right in front of him.

Because his brother had never failed to be whatever he wanted him to be, the tearful prayer to humiliate him had moved Hisa.

“The problem is that the taste wasn’t bad.”

A red tongue slid out between Hisa’s pale lips and licked her lower lip.

The shaman noticed Hisa’s gaze and understood in a second that Hisa was very hungry. She shifted her eyes slightly.

“When did you ever taste Hong Yeom-rang before?”

“On a hot mountain pass I jumped in the stream to cool off. Something floated by and I picked it up and tasted it.”

“You actually ate whatever floated by in the water?”

“If I grant someone’s wish, someone’s gotta be happy.”

“You’re awfully selfish.”

The shaman scowled and Hisa changed the subject. Hisa’s eyes softened at the memory. She was clearly savoring that taste. They both knew what had been eaten without saying it. There’s no way they could not know.

Those chosen as sacrifices gained wealth instead of losing it but in exchange they…

The shaman sighed.

“That’s why strange rumors spread.”

“What rumors?”

“That… why only men full of yang get chosen as sacrifices is because… y-you eat their yang, right? So that’s why someone wanted a shame put on his brother’s life.”