The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea(3)

2


As I sink, the roar of the waves abruptly cuts off, and all is silent. Over and around me, the dragon’s long, sinuous body circles, swirling a great whirlpool.

Together we fall through the sea.

Strange, but the urge to breathe never rises. My descent is almost … calm. Peaceful. This must be the dragon’s doing. It’s using its magic to keep me from drowning.

My throat tightens, and my heart pounds with relief—all the brides before me, they lived.

Down into the darkness we sink, until the sea above me is the sky, and we—the dragon and I—are like falling stars.

The dragon circles closer, and through its tightening coils I catch sight of one hooded eye, opened slightly to reveal a glittering pool of midnight. Time slows. The world stops. I reach out my hand. Droplets of blood leave the open wound to trail like gemstones across the distance between us.

The dragon blinks, once. A rift opens up below me.

I drop through it into darkness.



* * *



My grandmother often told me stories about the Spirit Realm, a place between heaven and earth filled with all kinds of wondrous beings—gods and spirits and mythical creatures. My grandmother said it was her own grandmother who used to tell her the stories. After all, not all storytellers are grandmothers, but all grandmothers are storytellers.

My grandmother and I would make the short walk through the rice fields and down to the beach, each carrying one side of a folded bamboo mat. We’d spread the mat on the pebbled sand and link arms as we sat side by side, dipping our toes into the cool water.

I remember the way the sea looked in the early morning. The sun peeked out from over the horizon and lit a golden pathway across the water. The briny air misted over our faces like salty kisses. I would lean closer to my grandmother, basking in her steady warmth.

She’d always start with stories first, those with beginnings and endings, but as the orange and purple hues of the early morning settled into the bright blue of afternoon, she would begin to ramble, her voice a soothing melody.

“The Spirit Realm is a vast and magical place, but the greatest of all its wonders is the Sea God’s city. Some say the Sea God is a very old man. Some say he’s a man in his prime, tall as a tree with a beard as black as slate. And others believe he might even be a dragon himself, made of wind and water. But whatever form the Sea God takes, the gods and spirits of the realm obey him, for he is the god of gods, and ruler of them all.”

My whole life, I’ve lived surrounded by gods. There are thousands of them—the god of the well at the center of our village, who sings through the croaking of the frogs; the goddess of the breeze that comes from the west as the moon rises; the god of the stream in our garden, to whom Joon and I used to leave offerings of mud cakes and lotus lily pies. The world is filled with small gods, for each part of nature has a guardian to watch over and protect it.

A strong sea wind swept over the water. My grandmother lifted her hand to her straw hat to keep it from being ripped away into the darkening sky. Even though it was still early in the day, clouds gathered overhead, thick with rain.

“Grandmother,” I asked, “what makes the Sea God more powerful than the other gods?”

“Our sea is an embodiment of him,” she said, “and he is the sea. He is powerful because the sea is powerful. And the sea is powerful…”

“Because he is,” I finished for her. My grandmother liked to speak in circles.

A low groan of thunder rumbled across the sky. The pebbles at our feet skittered into the water and were washed away with the tide. Beyond the horizon, a storm brewed. Clouds of eddying dust and ice crystals swirled upward in a funnel of darkness. I gasped. A feeling of anticipation swept through my soul.

“It’s beginning,” my grandmother said. Quickly we stood and rolled up the bamboo mat, then walked swiftly toward the dunes that separated the beach from the village. I slipped in the sand, but my grandmother grabbed my hand to steady me. As we reached the top, I looked back one last time.

The sea was in shadow. The clouds above blocked the sunlight. It looked otherworldly, so unlike the sea of the morning that, though I had sat by the water only a moment before, I suddenly missed it terribly. For the next few weeks, the storms would grow worse and worse, making it impossible to travel close to the shore without being swallowed by the waves. They would rage uncontrollably until the morning when the clouds would part overhead, allowing for a brief ray of sunlight to peek through, a sign that the time to sacrifice a bride had come.

“What makes the Sea God so angry?” I asked my grandmother, who had stopped to gaze out across the dark water. “Is it us?”

She turned to me then, strong emotion in her brown eyes. “The Sea God isn’t angry, Mina. He’s lost. He’s waiting, in his palace far beyond this world, for someone brave enough to find him.”



* * *



I sit up and gasp in a lungful of air. Last I remember, I was falling through the sea. Yet I’m no longer underwater. It’s as if I’ve woken inside the belly of a cloud. A white fog covers the world, making it difficult to see past my knees.

Standing, I wince as my dress, dried and brittle with salt, scrapes against my skin. From the folds of my skirt topples my great-great-grandmother’s knife, clattering against the wooden floorboards. As I reach to pick it up, a flutter of color catches my eye.