The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea(9)

The boy watches me, a slight crease in his brow.

Namgi whistles low. “Never thought I’d see the great Lord Shin of Lotus House speechless before a Sea God’s bride.”

A nobleman. Somehow I’m not surprised. Though undoubtedly the youngest of the three, Kirin and Namgi seem to defer to him in all things.

“Lord Shin,” Kirin says—low, urgently. “The fog lifts.” His eyes are raised skyward, where moonlight breaches the rafters, bathing the hall in light.

Shin steps back. “Keep your fate, Sea God’s Bride. It has nothing to do with me.” He reaches to his side and pulls a sword from its scabbard. The metallic glide is deafening in the silent hall.

“My name is Mina.”

He pauses.

“I am not Sea God’s Bride or No One’s Bride or Magpie,” I say. “I have a name. Chosen by my grandmother to give me cleverness and strength. I know who I am, and I know what I must do.” I raise my great-great-grandmother’s knife. “And I will not let you take my life.”

Reaching up, Shin tugs at his mask. The cloth slips, pooling around his neck. “Mina,” he says, and my traitorous heart skips a beat. “The Sea God’s bride.”

I swallow thickly. His voice without the mask is clear and warm. He has beautiful features—a straight nose and soft lips. With his sea-dark eyes, he’s breathtaking.

“I won’t take your life.”

A painful hope blooms within me.

“Just your soul.”

Wrapping his hand around my wrist, he twists. The knife clatters to the floor. With his other hand, he raises his sword and plunges it downward. I scream. The piercing sound abruptly cuts off as his sword connects with …

The ribbon.

He slices clean through the Red String of Fate.

I gape, watching the slow fall of the severed ribbon like two halves of a broken feather. How is this possible? For a brief second, all is silent and still. Then my scream rushes back, but the desperate sound bursts not from my mouth but from outside my body, in the air above. The scream swirls and coalesces, a mass of bright colors whirling together. The ribbon slips from my hand, rising, followed closely by the Sea God’s half of the ribbon. Together they wrap around the scream, forming a dazzling sphere of light.

Shin steps forward, his hand outstretched.

There’s a brilliant flash of color. In the aftermath, I blink away stars. And my ears pick up a wondrous sound, unexpected in this desolate hall—a bird’s cheerful warbling.

Cradled in the center of Shin’s palm, its wings folded snugly against its sides, is a beautiful magpie with red wing tips.





4


The magpie coos in the palm of Shin’s hand. Unlike the black-and-white magpies that flit about my village, this magpie’s wing tips shimmer a vibrant shade of red—the exact color of the Red String of Fate.

The magpie flutters its wings, and I feel a strange ache in my chest.

Kirin approaches, his long strides eating up the short distance. He lifts the wooden birdcage, and Shin gently places the magpie inside. The bird doesn’t seem to mind its imprisonment, content to hop up and down the cylinder perch that spans the width of the small cage. As Kirin ties closed the door with a piece of bamboo string, Shin turns away, sliding his sword back into its scabbard.

I point to the birdcage. “Where did that magpie come from?”

No sound comes from my mouth.

“Where did that—”

Nothing. No sound. No voice.

I press my fingers to my throat; my pulse beats strong. “What’s going on?” I can feel the words, the familiar vibrations. “Why can’t I hear myself?”

“Your soul is a magpie.”

I look to where Namgi grins at me on the bottommost step, having pulled the mask down from his face.

“What do you mean?”

He doesn’t have to hear my words to read my expression. Sauntering over to Kirin, he bends down to peer into the cage. “When Shin severed the Red String of Fate, it took your soul. For you, your soul is tied to your voice. It’s not unexpected with singers and storytellers.”

My … soul?

He raps a knuckle against the wooden bars, causing the magpie inside to ruffle its red-tipped wings. “A temporary state of being. Nothing too serious. Imagine it like missing every third heartbeat.”

I blanch, that in fact sounding very serious.

Kirin tugs the cage out of Namgi’s grasp. “At the end of the month, come to the south gate of Lotus House.” His voice is dull, as if he’s said these same words many times before. “A servant will deliver your soul to you. We will not be responsible for what might happen should you fail to appear.”

I struggle to understand. How different it is to believe in myths than it is to live inside one. If I am to trust their words, my soul is a magpie and somehow outside my body. Yet I feel no different than when I first woke to this world. Perhaps a bit salt stained and bone weary, but nothing compared to what I’d imagine losing a soul might feel like—one less heartbeat a minute, a chasm as wide as the world inside you.

“Lord Shin,” Kirin calls out, “with your permission, Namgi and I will return to Lotus House.”

Shin straightens from where he’s been leaning to pick something up off the floor. “You have my thanks, Kirin. I’ll join you shortly.”