In the blink of an eye the creature attacked, and a beefy arm hooked around Jihoon’s neck. It smelled like overripe fruit and body odor—not a good combination.
Bristling whiskers pressed into Jihoon’s forehead as the beast sniffed him. Jihoon tried to strain away, but the grip around his neck was too strong. The harder he struggled, the tighter the stranglehold became.
Jihoon imagined dying alone in the middle of the forest. How his halmeoni would worry. How his body would be found days later, bloated and unidentifiable.
“Ya!” A voice shouted behind them.
The beast whirled so quickly, Jihoon’s head spun.
When everything settled, he blinked in surprise. Jihoon couldn’t decide if he was imagining things because of lack of oxygen or if a girl really stood there. If she was real, she couldn’t have been older than Jihoon’s eighteen years. Her eyes were sharp and her lips peeled back from her teeth. It made her look as wild as the creature choking him. She was slim and tall, perhaps a head shorter than Jihoon. Her feet moved into a fighter’s stance, pulling his gaze down her long legs. She was missing a shoe.
“Let him go, dokkaebi saekki-ya.” She spat in the dirt.
Puzzle pieces clicked into place, like finally remembering a word that had hung just out of reach. The beast holding Jihoon looked like the stocky, hunched goblins in his halmeoni’s stories. Except dokkaebi didn’t exist.
The dokkaebi let out a bellowing laugh. “Take him from me, yeowu.”
The girl’s eyes flared.
Jihoon knew this was an uneven match, but he didn’t have the courage to tell the girl to leave.
She grabbed the dokkaebi’s thick thumb and with a quick jerk twisted it off.
The beast wailed in pain. His arms loosened, dropping Jihoon.
Fear made Jihoon’s muscles weak as he fell to his hands and knees, wheezing to pull in precious air.
There’s no blood, Jihoon thought as he dry-heaved. Why is there no blood?
In fact, the thumb cracked off like a piece of porcelain snapped from a vase.
The creature hunched, cradling his injured fist. His face was now so red, it clearly reminded Jihoon of the crimson-skinned dokkaebi in his old children’s books.
Jihoon stood on shaky legs, the girl now between him and the dokkaebi, the thumb still in her hand. She squeezed her fist closed until her knuckles cracked. White powder flew from her palm. The dust wove in and out of the light as if the girl had cast a spell. Then Jihoon realized the clouds covering the moon had parted. It lit the scene with a silver pallor. Everything that had once seemed ominous now softened to the haze of a dream. The shadows shifted. A glow of shapes coalesced around the girl in a wide fan.
No, not a fan.
Tails, as bright and pale as the moon.
She looked like a warrior queen, fierce and unforgiving. And as untouchable as the ghostly tails dancing behind her.
Memories flooded Jihoon of Halmeoni reading him fables from the yellowed pages of her books. Stories where foxes lived forever. Where they became beautiful women to entice unsuspecting men. Where those men never survived.
Now he understood why the dokkaebi had called her yeowu—fox.
“Gumiho,” Jihoon whispered.
The girl’s head whipped around, her eyes bright as fire.
Jihoon knew he should fear her, but instead he felt a strange fascination.
The clouds reclaimed the moon, making the shadows bleed. The darkness took over until Jihoon couldn’t see a thing.
He wanted to convince himself it had all been a trick of the light. He almost could as his eyes adjusted and he saw the girl, now tailless without the moon.
The dokkaebi let out a guttural growl and charged.
The girl met the goblin head-on. It pushed her back, her feet digging divots in the ground.
Jihoon never tore his eyes from the fight as he bent to scoop up Dubu’s limp form. She seemed too light in his arms, but he saw her small chest rise and fall with relief.
Mere meters away a battle played out that Jihoon thought he’d only see in his video games. A dokkaebi versus a gumiho. A goblin versus a fox. The two were so evenly matched that any ground gained by one side was soon lost again.
Jihoon started to flee, then stopped. He couldn’t force himself to take another step. What kind of person would he be if he abandoned the girl after she’d saved him? Not the boy his halmeoni had raised.
Already annoyed at his conscience, he called out, “His right side!”