The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea(33)

“Mina!” the voice persists. “It’s not real. You need to wake up.”

A pressure on my forehead, a burning warmth, and then—light.

I open my eyes, gasping in the fresh, lotus-scented air. I look up, not to clouds of gray and darkness, but to Shin, sweat plastered to his brow as if he’d run a great distance.

“Breathe, Mina. You’ll be all right.”

We’re in the garden. The bright colors of the trees and the sky are almost blinding after the white and gray of the memory.

“What is this place?”

“The Sea God’s garden. This pond is called the Pond of Paper Boats.”

“All of those boats,” I whisper. “They’re prayers that were never answered.”

Shin nods slowly.

“Why? Why have they have been abandoned?”

“They’re just prayers, Mina.”

I sit up. “Just prayers? They’re the precious wishes of humans!”

Shin hesitates, then says coldly, “I don’t care about the wishes of humans.”

I stare at him, a tight feeling in my chest. His eyes are blank of expression, as if they hold no light at all. I’m the first to turn away.

“You left the house though I forbade it,” he says. “Didn’t you hear what the fox goddess said? My life is tied to yours. If you die, so shall I. You may not care for my life, but you should at least have a care for your own. There are many things in this realm that could kill a weak human like yourself.”

“That might be true, but there are many things in my realm that could kill me, too. Drought. Famine.” My eyes travel to the paper boat, where I dropped it on the grass. “A broken heart.”

“There is nothing you can do.”

Shin is right. Like he said, I’m but a weak human. How could I hope to help that girl? Even if I could find her, I have nothing to give her, nothing to offer but my own tears, and she’s had enough of those to last a hundred lifetimes. She’d been at the end of her hope; all she had left was this one last prayer …

One last wish to the gods.

I scramble to my feet. “There is something I can do. That we can do. If you’ll help me.” Hurriedly, I grab the paper boat off the grass, turning to Shin. “I’ll go back with you willingly, and I won’t leave the grounds of Lotus House for the whole month, not without your permission, but first we must grant her wish.”

“Mina…” Shin looks skeptical.

“This boat was meant for the gods, yet it never reached them. We just have to deliver the boat to whomever it was intended for.”

Shin nods slowly, seeming to come to a decision. “What sort of wish was it? It should have been written on the paper.” His eyes drop to the boat. It’s half-unfolded. The inked characters are smudged from the water, rendering them illegible. I curse in frustration.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shin says, his calm, level voice surprisingly reassuring. “When you picked up the boat, you visited the moment the wish was made. Can you describe what you saw?”

“I saw a young woman.” Her bare knees in the muddy bank. Tears slipping down her face as she kissed the paper boat. “She was with child.”

Shin’s lips thin, a darkness shadowing his face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “We go to Moon House. To the Goddess of Women and Children.”





15


We leave the palace through the front gate, which has remained open despite Namgi’s claim that it’s closed for most of the year. If Shin finds this odd, he doesn’t comment on it. I look for Mask and Miki among the market stalls outside the palace but catch no sign of them, though a few spirits glance in our direction, clearly surprised to find two individuals coming out of the palace.

“This way, Mina,” Shin says, and I follow him down a side street, away from the crowds. As we walk, I refold the paper boat. The characters of the wish might be smudged, but that shouldn’t prevent the goddess from knowing the true heart of the wish, which often can’t be expressed in words. That’s why, though we celebrate the paper boat festival once a year, any human can pray to the gods at any time, whether at a shrine or where they feel closest to the gods—standing in a field while the wind blows, by the fire as it crackles brightly, on the cliffs by the sea.

This wish should have reached the goddess, regardless of the paper boat, given as it was from the heart. But perhaps the gods and goddesses of the world aren’t able to hear our prayers, the connection between the human world and the spirit world broken because of the Sea God’s curse.

Traveling with Shin is a different experience from traveling with Namgi or the spirits. Perhaps because he doesn’t want to be stopped or recognized, he takes mostly back alleys, cutting through private courtyards and bustling kitchens and even once climbing the stairs of a teahouse to jump from the balcony onto a lower roof. As he turns back to help me, I quickly jump down, landing a little inelegantly, but on my feet. He lifts one brow, and I shrug.

As we head down a narrow street, a thought occurs to me. “Does Moon House have anything to do with the Goddess of Moon and Memory?”

“No,” Shin says. “One has nothing to do with the other. Moon House is dedicated to women and children, just as Sun House is to men and the emperor.”