fear her halmeoni that she’d pretend she and Miyoung weren’t close? It hurt even as Miyoung recognized this was what she’d always done, kept space between her and Nara.
“Sit,” Nara’s halmeoni commanded, and Miyoung obeyed.
Shaman Kim pulled out a bujeok and wrapped it around Miyoung’s yeowu guseul. The old shaman’s eyes captured Miyoung’s. The look was not particularly kind, and Miyoung wondered again whether she was a fool to trust this old woman.
It was too late. Nara pulled a janggu onto her lap, the hourglass-shaped drum decorated in bright reds and blues that matched the girl’s hanbok. She struck the instrument, a heavy beat that reverberated through the forest.
Despite her age, Shaman Kim moved gracefully in long, reaching movements. Her feet took slow, measured steps. Her arms folded and twisted into a kut, a shaman dance. Her long sleeves shot out, an extension of her body.
As the kut progressed, the moon rose.
The air became heavy. The smell of incense thickened.
Miyoung coughed to clear her throat, but it didn’t quite work.
Nara caught her eyes and mouthed, Open yourself.
Miyoung stilled and tried to release the tension in her shoulders. She didn’t know how to open herself, but she figured part of it was to relax.
The smoke of the incense wove in the wind. Wisps breaking off to become ghostly shapes. It coalesced, becoming the face of one of Miyoung’s past victims. A man she’d caught killing dogs in an alley on a full moon. His gi had tasted heavy and salty.
Then another, the face of a man who’d used his money to buy his freedom after driving drunk and plowing into a family of four; the whole family had died. And Miyoung sent the man to meet them in the afterlife.
More faces formed in the smoke, breaking free to swim around her. A macabre montage of her victims. Vengeful eyes of the dead spinning and spinning around her in a crowd of accusation.
Miyoung yanked at her collar, trying to pull in air. Shaman Kim’s eyes found her. Held her as the woman twisted and spun. Her graceful dance becoming sharp, jerking motions.
The beat of the janggu reached a frenzied crescendo, and Miyoung’s heart matched it beat for beat.
Release the unclean spirits. The voice wasn’t her own, but that of the shaman, whose eyes never left Miyoung.
I can’t breathe, Miyoung thought. It felt like the hands of the dead were clamped against her skin, their cold fingers holding her throat closed.
Death holds you. It covers you.
She clawed at her own neck. Trying to tear a path for oxygen to enter her body again.
The gold-wrapped bead in the shaman’s hands seemed to glow, bright as fire. A twin of the flames that shot through Miyoung’s veins. She tried to crawl, thinking to snatch the bead back, but she could barely sit up.
She tensed against the pain until her back arched in reply. Heat enveloped her, fireworks trailing through her bloodstream.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, she tried to say, but couldn’t get the words out.
She twisted in torment, her body moving along with the jerky dance of the shaman.
And in her wavering vision a darkness seemed to spread, like a black hole opening in the forest. It pulled at the ghosts that surrounded her, devouring them. Their protests became a piercing wail.
Then the darkness pulled at her, like it sucked at her very soul. Like it sought to pull that piece of her free from her body. When she opened her mouth to scream, no sound would come.
Something burst through the trees, a large shape that looked clumsy and shambling next to the graceful dancing shaman: Jihoon. He raced forward, pulled Shaman Kim around, and yanked the bujeok-covered stone from her hands. He dropped it with a yelp, blisters decorating his palm with angry red welts.
Though the dance had stopped, the lightning shooting through Miyoung didn’t cease. She lurched up. Her legs threatened to buckle. Her heart ached.
She craned her neck, gasping for air, and saw the full moon bright in the sky.
Using the last of her strength, she ran.
30
JIHOON DROPPED THE fox bead and stared at the burns on his palm, like he’d pulled a lit ember from the shaman instead of a stone.
The stunned face of the old woman almost had him bowing instinctively in apology. Then Miyoung raced into the trees.
Jihoon took off after her, calling for her to wait. She didn’t listen, and by the time he’d left the light of the clearing behind, he’d lost her.