Chapter 3

Hisa, who’d realized something, suddenly smiled wide again. Bored villagers made up stories about sick mothers being healed and sacrificial families getting rich and then grew jealous.

“Ms. Hisa!”

“Hey, it isn’t exactly wrong.”

Hisa chuckled softly. She smiled with a face so pale at night she’d be mistaken for a ghost.

Because this village believed in the mountain deity and offered sacrifices, the shaman’s declarations about who to pick were taken as gospel. Folks were quiet about calling Hisa a monster, and calling her the mountain deity’s messenger kept people from stirring trouble.

“You’re gonna get called a real monster for this.”

“I guess I can’t be a god after all.”

Hisa answered like she didn’t much care. She didn’t pick just anyone. Usually the clapping shaman chose the sacrifice, but sometimes Hisa herself did. Most often the clapping shaman picked someone from a poor family that couldn’t afford medicine or food and sent them up the mountain.

Everyone who’d gone up had come back alive so far, and there’d been no real trouble.

But ever since Hisa pointed at Hong Yeom-rang, the clapping shaman had been uneasy. Why him of all people in the village? Hisa didn’t give favors to the well-off. That’s why she usually picked the poor and sick families for the offering.

Sometimes a woman was chosen and gossip ran wild and people laughed it off. But Hong Yeom-rang wasn’t someone to be laughed off.

This would be a problem. A big one, thought the shaman as she burst into tears again.

“Don’t complain and go up.”

The ember in the long tobacco pipe burned low and sputtered. General Hong, who’d been puffing on the pipe, lit it again and told his son sitting before him in a flat voice. Rumor was that in two months the court would be taking fate tokens to find a royal consort’s husband. It was a court rumor that had already reached the higher circles, so it wasn’t just gossip.

General Hong trusted his son’s fate.

But would the man who’d turn in people to the magistrate really lift their family’s fortunes?

As time passed, the general reached the point where he didn’t trust his own son. He’d sent the boy to a straight-laced friend in the capital thinking the friend wouldn’t tattle. Instead the son got even more proper, and the general felt awkward.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“So don’t complain and go up. Go off into the mountain and train if you have to.”

This village might be the last line of defense in wartime. No one really died, and people came down from the mountain with wild ginseng and goods, so the village could live with it. Cooperation with the villagers mattered most in wartime.

What worried General Hong most was his birthday in two weeks.

Gifts would come from here and there, and he’d still be watching his son’s behavior.

“Not to the capital, up the mountain.”

Hong Yeom-rang nodded faintly, a look his father couldn’t read. Was he agreeing or refusing? Even if he was young when he did wrong, if his son, barely of age, went to report his father for taking bribes, the general would be mortified.

He had to keep him out of the court until he could be quietly dealt with, but now the son had been chosen as the sacrifice.

A sacrifice.

From a renowned meritorious family, the son was now to be offered.

Either way, the son sat right at the center of scandal. Hong In-nam, who stood beside them, pressed his lips together and tried not to laugh.

“Tsk tsk, sons are all the same.”

Headaches were General Hong’s problem.

“If the court accepts someone who’s been tainted as a sacrifice, would the king not be angry if he heard it was ritually impure?”

“If you don’t tell the court, this won’t escape to the capital.”

Hong Yeom-rang smiled calmly at his older brother Hong In-nam, who seemed desperate to drag him into trouble. He said it pleasantly.

“He’s going up to the mountain to train. I’ll send a decent young man up separately as the sacrifice.”

“What? Isn’t that deceiving the village? If a tiger shows up again or there’s a famine next year…”

“You didn’t know my son believed in that nonsense. Just play along so we don’t lose the village’s goodwill, and so the second son can safely go to the court. No need to make any scandal.”

Hong In-nam fell silent, feeling foolish for believing the superstition.

Still, he thought it might be real.

He’d gone under the sacred tree and begged desperately, and he’d heard tales of sacrificial men returning with medicine that saved a sick mother. He’d tried anything to grab at hope.

Even though he called it superstition, he had tried it. No single noble family had ever produced a sacrifice. People praised that as the mountain deity taking care of the needy. He hadn’t expected his brother to be chosen, but now he was.

This was for real.

“Father!”

“Like your brother said, just keep your mouth shut. Only you have to, only you.”

He’d fallen in love for the first time, and it was the princess.

Hong In-nam glowered at his father, who had no intention of submitting his own fate token. The eldest son who’d gone to the capital once came back like a deflated kite. He looked pitiful to General Hong.

“There’s a monster rumored to live up in the mountain.”

“Ah, I saw it once too.”

Hong In-nam nodded at Hong Yeom-rang’s words.

Villagers said they’d sometimes see a strange woman when they went up the mountain. She didn’t age and looked like she might be a monster, but the clapping shaman called her the mountain deity’s messenger, so people pretended not to see. She didn’t harm the village, and sometimes if someone got lost on the mountain at night she’d appear and lead them back. Outsiders told stories about her too and said she wasn’t harmful.

“These people call her the mountain deity’s messenger, so watch your tongue.”

“If there’s something that’s alive and doesn’t age or die, then it’s a monster.”

“Hmm.”

General Hong, who’d never seen her and had only heard rumors, thought she might be a monster too. She appeared and disappeared and left no trace.

“Let’s say you went to catch the monster.”

Hong Yeom-rang decided.

When they agreed to pass it off as him going to catch the monster rather than go as a sacrifice, the general’s eyes brightened.

“Right, if you passed the military exam it stands to reason you’d go deal with any sly monster and bring peace to the people.”

Whether they could actually catch it was another question.

Even if she was the mountain deity’s messenger, she wasn’t a consistent presence and people might not notice if she vanished. She was spotted only now and then like a ghost. If they staged it, they could handle any rumor about ritually impure fate tokens.

How could someone who passed the military exam ignore the village’s monster?

For the first time in a long while, General Hong felt in tune with his second son and laughed. When his laughter died, he awkwardly sucked on the pipe and waved them off. The two sons bowed and got up.

They’d been sitting so long that Hong In-nam’s legs tingled and he limped, but Hong Yeom-rang walked across the main hall like nothing was wrong.

He even looked cooler than his elder brother, and Hong In-nam bristled.

“Even you, Hong Yeom-rang, don’t like talk about the royal consort post, do you?”

“Royal consort husband?”

Hong Yeom-rang stopped and turned at the unfamiliar word. Hong In-nam’s limp stopped too when Hong Yeom-rang turned back. Having been hit as a child, he felt like one more step closer might get him struck again.

“Father said he’d submit your fate token, so you’re puffed up…”

“You still believe in superstitions. What about my fate?”

“That…!”

“You’re in league with the clapping shaman and that girl up on the sacred tree. They plotted to pick me it seems, but I won’t go quietly.”

“What?”

What’s on the sacred tree?

Hong In-nam hadn’t seen anything. Hong Yeom-rang narrowed his eyes with a look of contempt. He clearly remembered the girl hiding among the thick leaves with the yellow cloth in her arms. Seeing that made him want to laugh.

He’d never actually believed he was fated to be a royal consort.

He didn’t want any stain on his life, so he’d get rid of the sly monster. It just happened his father’s plan matched his own, and he had no interest in the consort post. His father, who believed the shaman’s words, and his older brother, who believed in superstitions, looked the same to him.