A Crane Among Wolves

44. Iseul

The fleetingness of life…I found myself thinking endlessly of Wonsik’s remark. We mortals exist for but a season, and yet we love as though we are bound by eternity.

I could not claim to know precisely what love was, but by the second month of his passing, the memory of Daehyun had become a worn-out book. Creased at the spine, the pages stained with tears. A tale that was unbearably painful, yet I continued to return to it time and time again, desperate to keep him alive in my memory. I clung to every fragment of our shared moments. To forget him, I feared, was to forsake him in the frigid depths of the river, his grave.

And so I clung to the ghost of him.

He was the memory I turned to after a long day of caring for my sister, who did well on some days, worse on others. And terrible on the morning we’d received a letter from Grandmother saying she could not take us in again, afraid of what the villagers would say. There was no home for Suyeon and me to return to but this abandoned hut in the mountains, the same in which I had hidden before. And if not for Yul, I feared my sister would have slipped into utter darkness.

Life had not much improved for the other commoners of the kingdom. The people had become buttresses for the extravagant rewards granted to government officials. Land was given to the new elite, and thus land was taken from the people. The elite received tax exemption, and thus the tax burden was increased upon the people. Small and large rebellions continued to break out across the kingdom, led by angry peasants and disgruntled government officials alike.

As for the deposed king’s stolen women, the thought of them haunted me the most. They were distributed among the rebel leaders and among the soldiers camped at the kingdom’s borderland, like festival treats to greedy children. And it was Deputy Commander Park, rather than Maggot himself, who had hoarded many of the deposed king’s women, building a private mansion to house them all.

It pained me to think of the kingdom, and so I focused on my sister’s hands. I had crushed bongsunghwa flowers into a paste that I now rubbed onto each of her fingernails.

“When Yul visited this morning,” Suyeon murmured, holding her hands still before me, “she told me the deposed king had passed.”

I glanced up from where I was sitting. I had been out collecting the flowers, and so had missed Yul. “How did he die? Was he poisoned? Stabbed? Suffocated?”

She sighed heavily. “There were assassination attempts, but they were all thwarted by the soldiers guarding Yeonsan. They protected him out of former loyalties. It… it was a natural death. He died of an illness.”

I fell dead silent, the disappointment so deep that I could not even move.

“King Jungjong decided not to execute the tyrant in spite of everything,” I hissed, my voice trembling. “And now he is allowed to die a peaceful, natural death? Where is his punishment? If I were king, I would have quartered him—”

“Yeonsangun was once our king, so there is the people’s former loyalty to consider,” Crow called in from where he stood, stationed outside the door. He had offered to keep watch over us, standing between Maggot and my sister as a mountain. “It is simply not the way of our kingdom to kill a man who once received heaven’s mandate.”

Pain constricted my throat, bitter disappointment like a noose. I beat it away. The kingdom was in ruins, and there was nothing I could do about it. But I had my sister, and I could still gently wrap leaves around her fingers, staining the nails a cheerful orange.

Hopefully Mother’s old tale was true—that if the stain lingered, it was a sign that one would find true love by the first snowfall. And how dearly I wished it for my sister, for her to find love, and see the sparkle return to her eyes.

“I will tend to your nails next,” Suyeon whispered.

I stilled, an ache twisting in my chest. “There’s no need,” I said, then mustered a faint smile. “Truly, no need.”

On my nails, bongsunghwa stains would fade too swiftly, vanishing well before the first snowfall.

No true love awaited me. Mine had already been found, only to be lost just as quickly.