Chapter Text
Rumi was alone.
It wasn’t unusual for her to be alone, most of the time there weren’t any other people around. The shrine to the Keeper of the Gates was way up in the mountains, surrounded by forest, there wasn’t anything else nearby. If she climbed up a tall tree, or to the top of the nearest peak, Rumi could see other buildings around, people’s houses and stuff and a town in the near distance, down in the river valley — that was where they went to buy the things they couldn’t grow or make themselves. She’d never been there, though, at least not for as long as she could remember. The only people she ever saw were the others who lived at the Shrine, or who came to visit.
And they did get visitors a lot, because the Shrine was important. The story went that, long long ago, this shrine had been the home of the three seonnyeo who’d first sung the Honmun into being. The Keeper of the Gates, the god who watched over the Honmun and chose the hunters, was also still enshrined here, hundreds of years later. They also kept the graveyard where a lot of the hunters were buried — not all of them, some wanted to be buried with their families instead, or their bodies were never found, but there were still a lot — and a bunch of shrines for different gods and spirits. There were a lot of them, scattered all over the mountainside. Alongside the shrines and stuff were the houses where people lived, the elders and the younger priests who did the rituals to keep all the gods and spirits happy, and the initiates who were learning, but also did a lot of chores keeping everything clean and in good shape. Their visitors were mostly priests from other places, who came here to make offerings or give thanks to the Keeper of the Gates, or initiates sent here to get lessons, or sometimes people who wanted to join them here. Sometimes people came to get special warrior-priest lessons, but Rumi almost never saw them — she was supposed to be away when those people came in.
Which was a little silly, because it wasn’t as though any of their visitors wanted to talk to Rumi anyway. Even the people who lived here all the time never really wanted to talk to Rumi. When they did, it was mostly only to tell her what chores she was supposed to do today, or for one of her lessons, things like that. She was only seven years old, the only child in the whole place, and the grown-ups had duties, so they only talked to her when it was their job to.
And there were always jobs to do. The whole complex was big, and there was a lot of open space, with the gardens they kept to grow their vegetables and beans, and orchards where they grew fruits and nuts, the pens where they kept the chickens, and then just forest left to grow on its own all around it. As soon as Rumi was old enough to get around on her own and do stuff, and could be trusted to do it right, she’d had jobs to do the same as anyone else. They didn’t want her touching the shrines, mostly, worried she would taint them, so her chores were more normal things. She would help the initiates keep the houses clean, or do the laundry, or wash the dishes — she didn’t do any cooking, too small to reach the counters and too young to be trusted with knives, but she was sure she’d help with that too when she was older. And there were always things to do in the gardens and the orchards, watching out for weeds or bad bugs — some bugs were fine, but others would hurt the plants, you had to know which ones — pruning things to make sure they’d grow right, lugging water around when the rain wasn’t coming enough. This year she did a lot more garden stuff than before, paying very close attention as she was told everything they were supposed to do, and doing exactly as she was told, every day.
Doing her chores like she was supposed to, without needing to be told twice, would never make people want to have her around. But it was better not to have them annoyed with her, and the sooner she was done the more time she had to play.
She liked taking care of the chickens! The garden stuff was pretty hard work, especially in the hotter sunnier days, she’d been spending a lot of time really sore and tired this year. Especially when they had a few dry weeks, and they had to water everything, carrying buckets from the well to the plants, back and forth and back and forth — the buckets were big, and heavy, and Rumi was little. But the chickens were fun! They had a whole bunch of them, and it when it was time to feed them they would come running up all excited for food, clucking and flapping their little wings, Rumi couldn’t help giggling to herself. They were pretty! All red and black, some of them with patches of white, the boy chickens with big tail feathers, some as long as Rumi’s arm.
Even when she didn’t have chicken chores, feeding them or collecting eggs or helping to clean out their pens, sometimes she’d still sometimes come by just to play. They were funny! Their little clucking sounds, and they’d dance around, seemingly just for fun, and get in little games or fights with each other. If she sat down inside their fence, they’d come sniffing around her — she thought they knew she was someone who brought them food — sometimes crawling up into her lap or up onto her shoulders. They felt all nice and soft and fluttery, when she hugged them in her arms, like they were filled with too much energy, they were nice. There were other animals in the mountains, but they were wild animals, they didn’t let Rumi just sit around and play with them, or even hug them. She liked the chickens.
Besides chores, the other big thing Rumi was supposed to do was go to her lessons. She knew that other children went to school, there was one in town, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds. If people saw her, they would know something was wrong with her — her hair was purple, and normal little girls didn’t have purple hair. For the last couple years she’d been getting lessons here at home instead. She’d been learning about the Shrine and the Keeper of the Gates and the Honmun and the hunters and everything for longer than she could remember, through stories, but her lessons were more normal stuff that kids who weren’t growing up at a shrine in the wood would learn. Like learning her letters — it only took maybe a week for her to learn to read and write, it wasn’t hard — and a little basic math, and some history and stuff. She was told her lessons would get more and harder as she got older, but for now they weren’t very much. She still spent more time on chores than in lessons, by a lot.
Her favorite were music lessons. Partly that was because music was just nice, but mostly it was because those were the only lessons she had with her auntie. Aunt Celine was the only other person who lived with them who seemed to want to spend any time with her at all. The other grown-ups only talked to her when they had to, when dealing with Rumi was just part of their job, but Auntie always spent time with Rumi when she was home. She took Rumi in after her mother died, and they lived together and everything. Auntie had one of the nicer apartments on the grounds, because she was the only hunter who was still working, and Rumi had been living there with her for as long as she could remember. When Auntie was home was pretty much the only time Rumi talked to other people for reasons that weren’t about her chores or her lessons, just because they wanted to talk to her.
Auntie wasn’t home very much, though, most of the time she was away. The world needed the hunters to keep up the Honmun and to kill demons on this side, and right now Auntie was the only one who was still working — until the Keeper of the Gates picked the next generation of hunters, Auntie had to do the duty of three all by herself. She was away from the Shrine most days, putting on shows all over the country, using her music to draw strength from whoever heard her voice to keep the Honmun healthy. And other times she was fighting, the Honmun pulling her to where holes had been torn through it so she could try to fix them, and kill the demons that’d come through. It was hard work, especially to do all by yourself, without another two people to help. For funny magic reasons Rumi was too young to understand, the Honmun liked three-part harmonies best, so Auntie couldn’t even fix holes very well. It worked, she wasn’t doing nothing, but not as well as it would if she had a team. She was only trying to hang on, to save as many people as she could until the Keeper of the Gates could pick the next trio of hunters, and Auntie could finally rest.
So, Auntie wasn’t here very much, but that was okay. Rumi knew it was important — her aunt was a hero, out there working to keep up the Honmun, killing demons, protecting people. As kind of sad as it was that Rumi didn’t get to spend more time with her, she understood that duty was more important.
And when she was here, Rumi got music lessons! Auntie would always have music playing during the day, for as long as Rumi could remember, all kinds of music from super old-fashioned traditional stuff to old jazz and swing to new pop and things. (They had all of the Sunlight Sisters’ records in their apartment, but Auntie didn’t like listening to them — if Rumi wanted to hear Mother’s voice, she had to put them on when Auntie wasn’t here.) There would always be a lot of singing, when doing little chores around home, or taking walks around the grounds, or in the bath, or when going to bed. Sometimes they were just silly children’s songs, nothing serious, but sometimes they were story songs, about the Keeper of the Gates and other gods or spirits, or about the hunters, so they were like a lesson and a song at the same time. Putting it in a song made it easier to remember than being told it or reading it out of a book, at least for Rumi. She still remembered a lot of the story songs, even if it’d been years since she first heard them.
The proper music lessons started more recently, after she learned how to read and write. Auntie wanted to wait until basic stuff like how to hold a pen was out of the way, so then Rumi could learn how to read music, and could take notes on the things Auntie was telling her. (Some of her other lessons were done out of a book, but her music lessons were just Auntie talking to her.) There was a lot of terms she had to remember, especially because Auntie was teaching her about both traditional Korean music and more modern Western-influenced music, and they were talked about differently so she had to remember all the words. They were even written differently, though you could write traditional music on a staff if you wanted to, and they had different notes, and there were octaves and tones and semitones and intervals and meters and it was all very complicated.
It was cool, though! She thought it was neat that you could put music down on paper, and then sing it off of the paper, if you knew what you were doing. It kind of felt like magic? Which was silly, it shouldn’t feel as cool as it did — it wasn’t really that different from putting words on paper, and she learned that already — but she still thought it was anyway.
While it was very cool, the lessons teaching her about that stuff weren’t as fun, mostly sitting with papers and Auntie telling her things, Rumi taking notes and answering the questions she was asked to make sure she was paying attention. The lessons where they actually did music were more fun. Rumi was also supposed to practice when Auntie wasn’t home, but she wasn’t supposed to sing for those — Auntie said it was hard to tell if you were hitting the right pitch by yourself, so you could learn bad habits. She was supposed to play with Auntie’s sepiri and gayageum instead. Auntie had more instruments than just those — she had so many! like a whole room full of music stuff! — but those were the only ones she taught Rumi how to use yet, and she was still too small for most of them anyway. Even the gayageum was hard, she had to reach...
Her chores and her lessons didn’t take up all of the day. More than it used to be, the list of things she was supposed to do was slowly getting longer as she grew up, but there was still time to do other stuff. When she didn’t have chores or lessons, she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. Hang around home drawing and listening to music (often the Sunlight Sisters, when Auntie wasn’t home), play with the chickens, or just run around the grounds. Climbing the trees or the mountains, or spying on the birds, or chasing after the squirrels and mice and stuff. There were even gorals around! Not very many, there were one big family of them in the mountains here — Rumi was told they were special, and very rare, so she tried to leave them alone whenever she spotted them. There were weasels! and she saw wildcats a couple times! Once she had to to climb a tree really fast to escape from a boar — it left her alone once she was out of the way, she climbed back down and went home after it was gone — and she was pretty sure she saw a bear once! She didn’t get close, just turned around and walked away, but still!
As big as the grounds were, it was pretty hard to get bored. She was pretty sure she still hadn’t even been everywhere yet, because the forest was pretty thick in places, and parts of the mountains were pretty steep. It still wasn’t really safe for her to go places alone — which meant she still had more exploring to do when she was older! And besides just exploring and watching the animals, she would also check out all the different kinds of plants in the forest and up in the mountains, sometimes plopping down and trying to draw one she hadn’t seen before. When Auntie came home, she liked to have a bunch of flowers sitting waiting for her in their apartment, but she couldn’t always do that if the season was off. She would catch bugs sometimes! There were so many different kinds of bugs, she still found ones she’d never seen before now and then. She was trying to build a little secret fort for herself up in a tree with some branches and random junk she found around the shrine, but Rumi was still small, so that was hard to do, she hadn’t gotten very far yet. Sometimes she’d just run around the trees with a nice-sized stick, swishing at bushes like it was a sword, pretending she was fighting demons.
Auntie didn’t like to talk about it, she didn’t think they were child-friendly stories, but she heard them from some of the other people at the shrine. And she knew that Auntie was a hunter, and Mother had been too. Rumi knew she couldn’t be like them — the Honmun would never pick her, even if it would pick the daughter of a hunter (which it almost never did) — but it was still fun to pretend.
Was it bad that she did her play-fights with a sword? She knew her mother had a bow with special magic arrows — they would fly right where she wanted them to, even flying in curves, like zoom — but it was a lot harder to do that with sticks. Auntie used a sword, and, she hoped kind of copying her wasn’t, maybe...disrespectful toward Mother or something...
(It really was just that it was easier to play-fight with a stick-sword. She would honor her mother if she could, even just while playing pretend.)
(It still made her feel a little guilty sometimes.)
So, maybe because there were always things to do, Rumi never really felt alone. There were all the people who lived here with her, even if they mostly only talked to her when they were doing chores together, and there were all the animals around, and there was Auntie’s music collection, and the chickens! Rumi was always busy, working or playing. Maybe it would be nice for there to be other children around, she had been a little disappointed when she was told she wouldn’t be going to school, but she never really felt lonely.
Even though she never had a friend, not even once. The chickens and that same weasel she fed for a couple months didn’t count.
And then Aunt Celine got hurt. Badly.
Rumi knew that Auntie’s job was dangerous. She was a hunter, and demons were scary — they killed people, all the time, that’s what they did. Rumi had seen the graveyard here, many times, she’d heard the stories, a lot of times hunters really didn’t live very long. She knew that. Auntie had been fighting demons for a long time now, maybe three times as long as Rumi had been alive, the first two-thirds with the rest of her team and since Rumi was born alone. And if it was super dangerous to fight demons with two other people there to help you, it was even more dangerous to do it all by yourself. Sometimes there were warrior-priests there to help her, but most of the time she was alone.
And she did get hurt. Rumi had been seeing signs of it for longer than she could remember. Bruises here and there, scratches showing on her arms. Sometimes she would have a little bit of a limp, or she’d get this tight frowny look on her face when standing up and sitting down — like it hurt, but she didn’t want to make a noise and scare Rumi, holding it in. Sometimes, when she was changing clothes, Rumi would see the bandages.
But mostly it was fine! She would go out, when she had shows to do or the Honmun called for her, and she would come back after however long, and she was fine. With some new bandages maybe, looking very tired, but she always came back. As scary and dangerous as demons were, Auntie was also scary. The Honmun gave hunters strength, Auntie was stronger than any normal person, and faster, and she could feel demons around her, the Honmun warning her of danger, and she had glowing magic swords. She got hurt a little bit sometimes, but she was fine, she always came home.
This time, she came home early.
The Sunlight Sisters were gone, but Auntie had to keep them in people’s memory, and put out new music, to keep the Honmun healthy until new hunters were called — she just did it alone, as a solo career. It’d been going on for about as long as Rumi could remember, as soon as she’d been old enough that Auntie could leave her at the Shrine for weeks at a time. Her music was different now, but Rumi still liked it! It was quieter and slower than the very 90s synth pop the Sunlight Sisters did, with a lot of piano and other instruments people actually played and weren’t just done on a computer. Auntie played the piano herself, she was really good! She said she would teach Rumi when she was older and her hands were big enough, she was looking forward to it. And also the lyrics were mostly all in Korean, which was good, because a lot of their old stuff was in English, and Rumi didn’t speak any of that.
Some of her solo stuff felt a bit sad, but that made sense, didn’t it? She had lost both of her best friends, one of them dead and the other ran away. (Rumi wasn’t sure why, nobody told her these things, but by the looks people gave her she kind of got the feeling it was her fault somehow.) And also she was fighting demons all the time, and getting hurt, and things were hard, Rumi knew that. Even when she was home, safe, Auntie always seemed so tired. So yeah, her songs seeming a little sad sometimes, that made sense.
She’d left for a tour, she was going to be gone for ages. She had shows all through the Republic, but out of the country too! A few places in Japan, and Taiwan, and all the way down in Australia! which was really far! Which meant she was going to be gone for a long time, months, which was longer than she’d ever been gone before. Rumi had asked if she could come with, but hadn’t really been surprised when she was told no — she’d never left the grounds before, and there wouldn’t be anyone to watch her while Auntie was busy with her job stuff. She was a little surprised that that was the reason Auntie had given for why she couldn’t come with. Maybe when she was older she would! So, even though she was disappointed, the hint had made her a little excited, ideas about what traveling with Auntie would be like, seeing other places and people, it sounded like fun!
Auntie had been partway through the trip, jumping back to Korea after the leg in Japan, when the Honmun had called her. And she was hurt, badly, enough that she was brought to a hospital before their people could get to her. And then they had trouble getting her back — the hospital she was at wasn’t even in the Republic. The Honmun covered all of Korea, lands where Koreans traditionally lived and spoke their language and kept their gods, which meant that Auntie went fighting demons in the North and even a few places in China too. It mostly wasn’t hard for her to get there — the Honmun would carry her to wherever she needed to go — but it always took longer to get back. And that was made even more complicated when Auntie was hurt so badly that she passed out in the street, and people found her and brought her to a hospital...
...in the North. Luckily, they had priests up there too who could help smuggle her back across the border, but they had to be careful not to get caught, so it took a while.
It was really scary. They had people here who could listen to the Honmun, so they knew Auntie had been called somewhere, but they didn’t know where. They knew the hole was fixed, so Auntie must have gotten there...but then she missed her next show. She wouldn’t answer her cell phone. Her assistants didn’t know where she was.
Rumi spent days, just, wandering around the grounds, trying to find something to keep herself busy. She didn’t do a very good job of it — she couldn’t do her chores again once they were already done, and she hadn’t been in the mood for playing. She wished the priests would let her anywhere near the altars, because she wanted to pray to the Keeper of the Gates, beg Him to watch over her aunt, to bring her back. But maybe it was better that they didn’t? She wouldn’t want to make the Keeper of the Gates mad by tainting the shrine with...demon stuff, so...
She spent a lot of time sitting at Mother’s grave. That was normal, she talked to her mother a lot, about things that were going on at the shrine, or her lessons, or a cool bug she found. Sometimes she would sing, or just...stare at her name, carved into the stone, wishing.
She missed her mother. She’d never even met her, she died when Rumi was a baby, but she still missed her.
(She didn’t want to lose Auntie too. She didn’t know what to do.)
Auntie was brought back home, after what felt like forever — and by the time she got here, she was still hurt. She had an arm in a cast, and she was cut up really bad, bandages all over her middle. It was so bad that she couldn’t even walk. Maybe she could get around with a cane or something, but since her arm was broken she couldn’t do that either. They had one of the initiates pushing her around in a wheelchair, whenever she had to get somewhere.
Auntie told Rumi she would be fine. She’d been hurt badly, yes, she was in a lot of pain, but hunters healed fast. The Honmun loved them, and it gave them some of its power — it would heal them, way faster than people would get better on their own. They’d have to cancel at least some of her tour — she might not be going to Australia anymore — but she would get better. She was fine.
Rumi had cried, a lot. Partly because she was happy Auntie was home, she was so relieved she was alive. They knew that already, the Honmun would tell the priests if she died, but seeing Auntie herself, hugging her, her touch and her smell, it was such a relief, like something all twisted up tight inside melting away...
And Rumi was scared.
She was almost always alone. But, for the first time, she thought she might feel lonely.
She didn’t know what would happen to her if Aunt Celine was gone.
None of the other grown-ups here liked her, she knew that. They didn’t want her around. Part of it she thought was just because grown-ups didn’t really like talking to kids most of the time, like, they didn’t get grown-up stuff so they weren’t as much fun to talk to. Adults spent a lot of time sitting around and reading or chatting or whatever, which was boring — they never wanted to play with her, they didn’t have the energy for that. Except Auntie, when she was home, she would play with Rumi, because she was a hunter and could keep up.
And Auntie didn’t care that Rumi’s father was a demon. Everyone else did.
Everyone else hated her. They thought she was dirty — that there was too much demon in her, that she would ruin things just by being here. That was why they didn’t let her do certain chores that were too close to ritual stuff, or touch the altars, or anything like that.
Some of them, she knew, thought Rumi just being here, on the grounds, was already tainting the place. But they couldn’t send her away.
Auntie was the only active hunter, and she wanted Rumi.
Rumi remembered the first time she was told the story, it wasn’t that long ago. She never really thought that hard about where she came from before? Of course she knew Mother was dead — Auntie would take Rumi to visit her grave, since before she was old enough to remember — but when she was really little she didn’t have a good idea of what a mother was. And she never thought to think about it too hard, she thought because there weren’t any other children around, and nobody else’s parents were here, so it didn’t come up? Sometimes mothers and fathers were in stories, it wasn’t like she didn’t know what the words meant, but it just... She never thought about it, that she had a mother so she must have a father too.
Not until she was five, and one of the elders said something confusing. She didn’t remember the words of what she said, anymore, but she knew she went to Auntie and asked about it, and Auntie told her about what happened.
That there was a way (she didn’t explain how) that a boy could put a baby in a girl. This was supposed to be a love thing, between a wife and a husband, when they wanted to be parents. It was supposed to be special.
It wasn’t a special love thing, with Rumi. When the last hunters were doing very well, and they were starting to turn the Honmun gold, Gwima got scared — so he tried to break the hunters. He had some demons follow the hunters, quiet and sneaky, until one of them was alone. They kidnapped Rumi’s mother, and they hurt her. Auntie and Eunji saved her, but they were too late.
One of the demons already did the baby thing, in a bad evil mean way. (Auntie wasn’t explaining, talking in the roundabout way people did when avoiding grown-up things, but Rumi understood it was a very very wrong thing to do.) And that was where Rumi came from, from a demon hurting her mother.
Everyone told Mother to kill Rumi before she was born, but she refused to. And then after Rumi was born, they found out that she was wrong. Babies had a part of their mother and their father, half and half, which meant that Rumi was half-demon.
That was why her hair was purple. Everybody could tell right away, when they saw her. Of course, they would be able to anyway — she was the only child living at the Shrine — but people weren’t supposed to have purple hair. It was unnatural. It was why she wasn’t supposed to go into town, and why she didn’t go to school with the normal children, because people would be able to tell there was something wrong with her right away. Even if they didn’t know about demons, and she was told most people didn’t, they would still think there was something wrong. Because she was different from everyone else, she was wrong.
And there were the patterns. Rumi didn’t even know they were there, at first. Auntie said, they thought it was a birthmark — when she was a baby, they could only tell she was wrong because her hair was purple, and her eyes turned yellow when she cried, it wasn’t the patterns that told them. It was on her back, near the middle, over where her heart was. (Rumi knew where that was in people from drawings, she could reach it but she couldn’t see it.) Demons of the contract were covered in these patterns of curly sharp twisty lines, black and glowing red, proof they were owned by Gwima. Not all demons had them, just the ones who used to be people until they made a deal with Gwima, or other kinds that were under his power.
The one who hurt Mother must have been that kind, because he gave them to Rumi. She couldn’t see them at first, but she could now. Because they grew.
The story, the reason why everyone here hated her, it didn’t end with Rumi being born. Rumi didn’t know what happened exactly, Auntie didn’t say, but when they found out Rumi was half-demon there was a fight — between the hunters. When it was over, Auntie and Eunji were both hurt, really bad, and Mother was dead. Eunji left once she was healed enough, not just the Shrine but the duty. She was still out there, somewhere, but she didn’t fight demons, she didn’t sing for the Honmun, she didn’t help.
Auntie was the only one left. She had to do it herself, the duty of three carried by one.
And it was Rumi’s fault. That’s what everyone thought, that it was Rumi’s fault that the Sunlight Sisters broke up, it was Rumi’s fault that Mother was dead and Eunji ran away. It was Rumi’s fault that they only had one hunter left, who had to work so hard to do it all by herself, that people were dying because she couldn’t keep up, her voice alone not enough to keep the Honmun happy.
(Her fault that Auntie got hurt so badly, without anyone to help her.)
(Her fault that, one day, Auntie might leave and never come home.)
It didn’t sink in right away, when Rumi was first told the story. But she kept being reminded, with how everyone else here didn’t like her, the way they looked at her, talked to her. They didn’t, mostly, only enough to get through her chores or lessons or whatever, but sometimes people would say something. Not mean in an obvious way, mostly it went over her head, but she wondered... And they would watch her, sometimes, the elders when she was out in the garden or cleaning up, when they didn’t think she was looking, and they would whisper...
Her patterns burned when they grew. She didn’t notice that’s what was happening at first, she just had an especially bad day with people ignoring her, or staring when they didn’t think she was noticing, and, and one of the priests yelled at her for getting too close to the Keeper’s main altar, she was just sweeping out the shrine like she was supposed to, and she sounded so angry, and Rumi had just shrunk in and apologized and waited for her to say she could go...
She thought she was just crying, really hard, enough that it hurt. She didn’t put together it was the patterns until she felt the burning move around her side under her arm, toward her front. They weren’t black and red like Auntie said the ones on demons were, they... They kind of looked like a bruise? Purple on the inside, with a thin little line of reddish-orangeish on the edges, the purple looked like a bruise, but a softer paler color than that, though the outline was wrong. And the shape was also wrong, a ribbon bending in curls but with sharp edges where it changed directions, almost like thorns...
After she could see them, it only took Rumi a few times of making them grow by accident before she figured out what made it happen. Really strong bad feelings, enough to make her cry, especially if she was worked up about what happened to the hunters, her mother (that it was her fault), or how much everyone didn’t want her here. So she just...tried not to think about it.
It worked sort of okay? The patterns didn’t really start growing until after Auntie told Rumi the story of what happened, but since Rumi figured out what made them grow she only slipped up and let it happen a couple times. And that was over a year ago now! They weren’t that much bigger at all, it, she thought she was doing a good job.
Our faults and fears must never be seen. When Rumi explained, Auntie told her about that, that it was a thing Lady Hyeonseo, the older hunter who taught Auntie and Mother and Eunji, had told them about the job. Auntie had seemed scared, that Rumi’s patterns were growing, but when she told her how she was stopping it Auntie said she was doing a good job.
(Rumi had been so happy she didn’t feel bad even a little bit for at least a week. Auntie had been scared, and Rumi helped, so she was happy.)
But as hard as she was trying, they did still grow sometimes. Everybody had bad feelings now and then, that was just part of life — no matter how hard Rumi tried, they would grow, slowly. They were small enough that they were hidden under her clothes, nobody could see them.
But it wouldn’t be that way forever.
Eventually, she didn’t know how long, her patterns would be as obvious as her hair. Another thing about her that made it obvious she was wrong, that she was dirty, that it was her fault, another thing for people to stare at and to whisper over, another thing to show that she shouldn’t be here.
She wouldn’t be here, without Auntie. Nobody else wanted her here, because it was her fault that Mother was dead and Eunji left, the only reason they let her stay was because of Auntie. Auntie said that, before Rumi was born, Mother asked her to take care of Rumi if anything happened to her, and Auntie promised. And because Auntie was the only hunter left, the people at the Shrine had to do what she said, even if they didn’t want to.
Rumi didn’t think there was anyone here who would promise Auntie to take care of her, the way Auntie had for Mother.
Auntie got home almost a week ago now, and Rumi was still scared, and she felt lonely, in a way she didn’t think she ever had before. It was hard to keep up with her chores, even, but at least she didn’t get in trouble for it this time. She even felt her patterns burn once, Rumi struggling to breathe, to not keep thinking about how no one wanted her and she was alone, until she calmed down and the burning stopped. She went a long time without them growing, and it was bad that she slipped up — normally she told Auntie every time, so she could check, but she didn’t want to bother her with it this time. Besides, as bad and scared and alone as she felt all the time now, it was probably still good that it only happened once.
If something happened to Auntie, Rumi didn’t know what would happen to her.
Would they kick her out? Where would she go? She’d never even left the grounds before, she wouldn’t know what to do...
(Maybe they would just kill her — like when they killed one of the chickens, one big chop with a knife. Though, she was bigger than the chickens, maybe one of the wood axes would be better.)
She didn’t have chores to do, and she didn’t feel like playing out in the woods. And she didn’t want to hang around the Shrine — people didn’t want her there, she was afraid if she was reminded it might make her patterns burn again. And she felt lonely, in a way she mostly didn’t, and she didn’t know what to do.
So she went to visit her mother.
The graveyard was kept way in the back of the grounds, behind the Shrine under the cover of the mountains. There was a long curling path between the trees to get there, and it was quiet, even further away from the town down in the valley, almost feeling like it was separate from everywhere else, safe. After you walked through the forest for a while, the trees fell away, opening into a big grassy clearing speckled with colorful wildflowers, there were often birds and squirrels and stuff running around. The biggest thing here was the old mound at the very middle, a huge round grass-covered hill taller than Rumi, even taller than Auntie, a wall of big stones at the edges all the way around, as tall as Rumi’s shoulder, like a wall holding the dirt in. The stones were all covered with carvings of animals, lots of squirrels and tigers and birds, the lines looking all soft and faded from hundreds of years of wind and rain. That was the grave of the first hunters, Auntie said, the ones who first made the Honmun — nobody remembered their names, it was a long time ago, but the priests still did a memorial ceremony every month, leaving offerings at the grave, three old-fashioned stone lamps hanging spread around the circle kept always burning.
There were more graves, smaller ones, in a circle around the big mound and then moving out in a spiral to fill the clearing. Lots of them, dozens, little hills raising out of the ground like grains of rice on a plate, or the little bumps on Rumi’s arm. They were smaller than the big mound — the first hunters were most important, even if no one remembered their names — dirt piled up and grass let grow on them, a ring of little rocks the size of her foot walling each off from the others, marking their own space. They weren’t all the same, you could tell how things slowly changed over time. Toward the middle, there were more stone lanterns like on the big mound (if smaller and lower) and guardian stones with animals on them, and as you followed the spiral out there were fewer lanterns and more incense stones, until the lanterns were all gone. The other markers changed, less carved animals and more flowers and stuff, and at some point you started seeing writing, starting just with people’s names, but slowly slowly there were less carvings and more writing, telling more about the person, where they were from and when the Honmun called them, important stuff from their life, little prayers to help them in the next life.
Mother’s was the newest one. Partway around the circle to the right, there was a little grassy mound a little apart from the others. The newer graves were on the outside, so that made sense, but there was a gap between it and the closest one in the spiral, a spot big enough for another grave marked off with stones. When Rumi was littler, the first time she came here after Auntie told her what she was, she thought that was because they didn’t want any of the good hunters next to Mother, like she was tainted by Rumi, even after her death.
(Or maybe they knew Rumi would want to visit her, so they made it so she didn’t have to pass any of the other graves to get to her, and maybe taint them.)
But no, that was silly — that gap was for Lady Hyeonseo, so she could be next to one of her partners. Lady Hyeonseo was one of the hunters before the ones before Auntie. Besides Auntie (and Eunji, wherever she was), Lady Hyeonseo was the only hunter alive, but she was too old and too hurt to help Auntie keep up the Honmun and fight demons. Auntie said Lady Hyeonseo was one of her and Mother and Eunji’s teachers, but now she just stayed at the Shrine, helping the priests with prayers and stuff. The hunters before Auntie all wanted to be buried other places, with their families — a lot of the newer graves were missing hunters for that reason, but Rumi thought theirs was the only generation were no one was buried here — and one of Lady Hyeonseo’s partners was lost when Auntie was a baby and they never got her body back. At least Lady Hyeonseo got to be with one of her fellow hunters forever, Rumi guessed, that was something.
Mother wouldn’t be alone forever, either. Auntie told Rumi once, when they were visiting, that the spot on Mother’s other side was going to be for her. Auntie didn’t have a family, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Rumi couldn’t stay here, but at least Auntie would keep Mother company long after she was gone.
She stepped over the ring of stones around Mother’s grave, walked up to the memorial stone. In the more recent ones, these got kind of big, the priests and people adding more stuff about their life and prayers and stuff, whatever they wanted to be here forever. The stone in front of Mother’s stood almost up to Rumi’s shoulder. A frame of grayish rock taken from the mountains here, set inside of it a smooth black stone polished to a shine, the words cut into it all sharp and bold. Auntie said, the frame was to help shield the black stone, the words cut deep and sharp with hard lines, both to help the writing last longer. So the people long after them wouldn’t forget these hunters’ names the same way they had the earlier ones, would remember something about them, what they’d done to protect the world.
Auntie had read the whole thing out for her before, but Rumi couldn’t read it herself — it was very old fashioned, written all in hanja. Not even mixed either, like when people used hanja for some words and hangeul for everything else, so she thought it might be hanmun? She wasn’t sure, Auntie read it to her in normal Korean. She sort of remembered what it said, but she couldn’t connect it to the words cut into the stone, grown-up writing she hadn’t learned yet.
But she knew these words right here, 柳 薇映, that was Mother’s name. Rumi touched her fingers to the cold, hard stone, hoping... Hoping.
Past the memorial stone, in front of the little grassy hill, was the low flat grayish stone table of the altar, a bowl dug into it for burning incense. It was empty at the moment, long enough since the last visit that the offerings left behind last time had been cleaned up already. (Rumi wasn’t sure what they did with them, it was one of the things they didn’t want her touching for demon reasons.) Like usual, she sat down on the grass in front of the altar, but she didn’t bother sitting properly this time — no one was here to see — just folded her legs in front of her and leaned back on her hands. It wasn’t just grass on Mother’s grave, there were tiny leafy plants too, some of them with little flowers, white and yellow and—
Oh no! She didn’t bring anything! Rumi normally brought Mother something when she was going to visit, even if it was only a few berries or a little cup of rice or something. This wasn’t a planned visit, though, she’d just been wandering around the grounds, and... She hadn’t thought to bring anything. Oops? Ducking her head a little, she mumbled an apology, even though she knew that was silly. She was pretty sure the birds or squirrels or something stole the little things she brought as soon as she was gone anyway.
Most of the time when she visited her mother she’d talk about what was going on since the last time she was here, or...whatever was on her mind. She liked to think Mother could hear her — Auntie said the spirits of the dead could hear you if you did it right, sometimes, if you were lucky — that maybe Mother was happy to listen, to know that Rumi was still here and thinking about her. But mostly, she just... Well, nobody else really wanted to talk to her, when Auntie was away and she wasn’t in lessons, so it felt like the thing to do? Since she learned her letters, she started keeping a diary — Auntie brought her home the notebooks one day, said it was good practice. So, there was another way to get the thoughts out of her head now, but she still liked coming here to talk to Mother, even if she wasn’t actually listening.
She didn’t know if she was or not. Auntie said sometimes you could feel spirits through the Honmun, but Rumi couldn’t touch the Honmun. But it was nice to think she might be.
Rumi didn’t really have anything to say this time. She thought about it, watching the blades of grass on the grave sway in the breeze, listening to the rustle of branches and the chattering of birds and stuff, but... There was a lot, but it was all tangled up in her head, her chest feeling tight and snarly, she couldn’t think of the words to get it out.
And she wasn’t sure if she should. Was it...bad, to come to Mother’s grave and talk about how scared she was about Auntie getting hurt? that she might die one day, and leave Rumi behind? Because, Mother already died and left Rumi behind, and it wasn’t... It felt like it was wrong, ungrateful bad daughter stuff to do, like she was thinking more about Auntie while she was here, and like what Mother did for her was for nothing, and Rumi didn’t know what was going to happen to her...
(Rumi wasn’t stupid. Auntie didn’t spell it out, but she could read between the lines, she listened to the whispers where they thought she couldn’t hear. When they found out there was something wrong with Rumi, Eunji tried to kill her, and Mother died stopping her. Mother died for Rumi — she knew that, even if Auntie left that part out of the story she told Rumi.)
(Sometimes, she thought it maybe would have been better if she didn’t. The Honmun needed its hunters more than anybody wanted Rumi, and Auntie wouldn’t be hurt right now if Mother and Eunji were still here.)
(It was her fault, it was all Rumi’s fault. She knew that.)
Maybe coming here today was a mistake. She forgot to bring Mother anything, and she couldn’t get what happened to Auntie out of her head. And what would happen if she didn’t come home one day, and what would happen to Rumi then, and she didn’t know, and she was scared, and she felt alone in a way that was new and bad and she didn’t like it, and she didn’t know what to do...
It was quiet out here, so far out of the way where people mostly wouldn’t bother her, off in the middle of the woods. And most of the time she liked that, but maybe today it was bad. Because it left her alone with her thoughts. And she was having bad thoughts, she was scared, and it was her fault Auntie was hurt, and she didn’t know what would happen to her if Auntie didn’t come home, and she couldn’t stop, the tangle of bad thoughts filling up her head and her chest snarling so tight it felt like she would choke, she could feel the tears burning in her throat and in her eyes, and she couldn’t...
She couldn’t let the bad thoughts run away from her, she knew that — if she felt too much, it would feed her patterns, and they would grow. But it was too quiet out here, there was nothing to distract her, she just kept falling and falling, and she didn’t know what to do...
She wished Auntie wasn’t hurt, that she didn’t have to keep up the Honmun and fight demons all the time, that they could just...be a normal family. But that was selfish, she knew Auntie protected people, the world needed her more than Rumi did. And thinking that only made her feel worse, she couldn’t stop...
She wished Eunji had killed her when she was a baby, that Mother had let her. Auntie wouldn’t be hurt if she wasn’t alone, doing the duty of three all by herself, everything would be better without Rumi here.
She missed her mother — she didn’t even remember her, but she still missed her, burning deep and heavy in her stomach. She wished Mother was here, with her, she wished she wasn’t alone.
She actually felt alone, for maybe the first time ever, and she didn’t like it. She was scared, and she couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t think, anything other than the bad thoughts, she didn’t know what to do. So, without deciding to, she did the thing Auntie always did, to help calm Rumi down when the bad feelings were getting too much.
She sang.
“A mother in the island shade...”
The snarly stuff filling her chest, her throat all thick and hot, the words came out a bit choked and wiggly, not holding the notes right. And she got a little out of breath, she had to suck in air after the first couple of words, her hands shaking on her ankles, squeezing.
“...goes to gather oysters...”
Her voice came out thick and not right, but she could already feel the bad feelings stop building up. Trying to make her voice work right, focusing on the words and the notes, that was a thing to think about that wasn’t how scared alone she felt, listening to the wind in the branches and the birds and the squirrels chatter. But she still needed to breathe, harsh on her throat, her chest shaking as she sucked it in.
“...while the baby is left home alone...”
The second line came easier than the first one, Rumi’s voice smoother. She could feel herself calming down already, the tight snarly stuff in her chest loosening, the heat in her eyes like she was about to cry cooling off. It didn’t work right away, she wasn’t back to normal in a second, but she could tell that it was over, that she wasn’t going to slip and let her patterns grow. She was safe.
“...to the lullaby of the sea...”
It was the first song she thought of. Or, she wasn’t thinking — panicking, the bad feelings were going to get away from her, and the song just came. For as long as she could remember, Auntie would sing it to her when laying down to bed. Their apartment at the big house only had one bedroom, and they slept in the same bed. Rumi thought she had something else when she was really little, but for as long as she could remember, they’d slept together. She had a much earlier bedtime than Auntie, but she would stay with Rumi until she fell asleep, reciting the song low and soft. Her voice filling the air and echoing through Rumi — Auntie had a strong voice, carried by the Honmun, you could feel it — breathing in the roses and vanilla from her hair...
Maybe it was bad, to be singing their lullaby thinking of Auntie at Mother’s grave. But then, maybe not? The mother in the song wasn’t there, off picking oysters while the sea sang the baby to sleep — and Rumi’s mother wasn’t here either. Maybe that was why Auntie picked it for their bedtime song? She said it was the song her mother used to sing to her, but also, in the song the mother wasn’t there, and so it was kind of like Auntie was her sea? The one doing the singing. That made sense, right? Rumi thought it made sense.
And besides, it was their song. That Auntie sang to her every night before bed (when she was home), or when Rumi was crying over something. She must have heard it more than anything else, and always from Auntie.
“...falls asleep sou—”
It meant she wasn’t alone. She could feel it, like how just singing it she could feel Auntie’s fingers on her cheek, smell roses and vanilla. Mother might be gone, nobody else here might want her, but at least Auntie did.
And even if Auntie was gone, all she had to do to remember her — her voice, her fingers on Rumi’s cheek, the smell of her hair, curled up in their bed while the night bugs chirped outside and the wind blew — was to sing the song. As long as she remembered this, she wasn’t really alone, for real.
“—ndly...ly...ly...”
While the hot prickly feeling still filling up her chest wasn’t as bad as before, softer but still there...it changed. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, or a flower opening up. It grew hotter and brighter, seeming to spread out from her chest and up into her head, making her a little dizzy, and through her body and into her arms and legs, racing out and—
She felt something bong through her, like missing a step and the crash of a gong all at once. It felt like she was falling, Rumi’s eyes snapped open, clutching at the grass with both hands. But no, she was just sitting still on the ground. It didn’t look like anything was happening, she just felt really weird, like her feelings were too much, she couldn’t hold them in, they had to rush out. Pouring out of her, and she was dizzy, she took in a deep breath.
There was another funny bong feeling — but it didn’t stay inside of her, bouncing through her head to toe before racing out. She could see the echo rippling away from her, like dropping a rock into water or shaking out a sheet, a wave racing away from her across threads of...
Rumi blinked. That hadn’t been there before. She could still see the altar in front of the little grassy hill of Mother’s grave, a few meters of grass before the forest started, branches swaying in the breeze. All the little fiddly details, the single blades of grass, the little chips and bits of different colors in the stone. But on top of it, like a layer of sheer gauzy fabric, were strings of soft blue light, winking like starlight. Like a blanket covering the ground and over Mother’s grave and wrapping up the trees, but it didn’t hide them, she could still see both, somehow. The blue blue blue everywhere glittering in the sunlight, shifting and shimmering in slow-moving waves, like she thought the ocean might be (she never saw it before), winks of other colors showing themselves here and there, white and orange and purple and red and lavender and yellow...
...and the waves running through the fabric carried into her, shivering up from where she was sitting on the ground to echo into her chest, soft and cool and nice against the hot tight feelings still in there, like taking a big gulp of cold water...
Rumi had no idea what was happening, and it was a little weird that she was seeing this all of a sudden. But it was really pretty, the smooth waves and the colors and the sparkling. She reached toward one of the threads swooshing and swaying over the grass, prodding at it with her fingers. She couldn’t feel anything — it went through her fingers the same as the grass under it — but the thread seemed to respond to her anyway, little loops splitting off of and coiling around her fingers, flashing different colours, orange and red and purple dancing through the blue...
“Even while the baby...”
She jumped, yanking her hand away before she could be caught, looking away for where the voices came from. But there was nobody else here, she was alone in the graveyard.
...No, she hadn’t heard the voice, with her ears. The same way she could see the blue threads over everything, but also the trees and the blades of grass and all the little details in the stone, like there was nothing in the way — because she wasn’t seeing it with her eyes. The voices weren’t from people, here in the graveyard with her, they were in the threads.
Rumi had to try to breathe a few times to calm down — the threads were pretty, and seemed special, like the kind of thing the wrong half-demon girl shouldn’t be playing with — before she thought she could maybe try singing again. Her hands on the threads over the ground at her sides, watching closely, she finished the line, “—peacefully sleeps...”
She could feel her voice shivering in her chest and through her, and out across the threads — like dropping a rock into water or shaking out a sheet. The wave sparkled, more bits of color flickering, and the blue seemed to glow, warm and soft. She waited a breath, watching the threads waft around her.
“...the cry of seagulls makes her heart flutter...”
The threads kept echoing with her voice, sparkling and flickering and glowing, but she was listening for it, and she heard the voices too. Quiet, like there were people coming up the path into the clearing — not one person, but many people. It was barely a whisper, but she could still hear it, more voices than she could pick out, women and men and children, some closer and some farther, like the rustling of trees in the wind...
Countless people, singing with her.
“...balancing the basket of oysters on her head...”
The threads were growing brighter where she was sitting, tinted with soft purple and white, like flowers. They seemed to curl around her, hugging around her, turning closer with each ripple that raced out and away from Rumi. As though they were trying to hold her, wrapping around her with each word she sang, singing the same words back to her in more voices than she could count, soft and distant.
Somewhere in there, she thought she could hear Auntie’s voice, and what she thought was an echo of her own.
She wondered if Mother’s voice was in there too, somewhere.
“...the mother runs along the sandy path...”
Focused on the glittering glowing blue threads all around her, singing along with the invisible choir, Rumi didn’t notice she was crying until she felt the tears tickle at her cheeks.
Rumi repeated the short little song, again and again and again, until her throat felt sore and hot and painful, and she didn’t think she could go anymore. She laid down on the grass in front of her mother’s grave, her cheek pressed against the ground. From this close the threads filled her eyes — even with them closed, so the grass didn’t poke her, she could still see them. Glowing blue and white and light pink-purple, brighter and warmer than when she first saw them, glittering with specks of orange and yellow and green. They still swayed and danced, like stalks of grain in the wind, and she could still hear the hissing hum of the lullaby echoing in her ears. She could feel it, the threads running into her, smooth and cool and soft, making her feel light and calm.
She didn’t know what was happening, but she thought she liked it. She’d have to come out here to sing again, and hope the threads found her next time too.
If she listened enough times, maybe she’d be able to pick Mother’s voice out of the choir.
Rumi didn’t know how long she stayed out there — laying in the grass, watching and listening to the soft glowing threads wrapped over everything. She thought they might fade away when she stopped singing, and they did grow thinner when she wasn’t paying attention, but she just had to look and they were still there. She could watch them forever, they were so pretty, soft and sparkly and glowing. But it was starting to get late, without even looking she could tell the shadows of the trees would be getting long. She was a little hungry? She didn’t know how long it’d been since she’d left the Shrine, and crying always made her hungry. It must be almost dinner time by now. So she reluctantly got up, spent a moment just watching the threads brush over Mother’s grave, before dipping in a bow and turning to leave.
It seemed like there being colorful glowing threads all over everything should make it hard to tell where she was going, but it didn’t really. They didn’t cover anything, she could still see through them just fine, but the threads were also there — she wasn’t seeing them with her eyes, and her eyes still worked. She did trip over things a couple times on her way down the path, but that’s not because she couldn’t see where she was going. The threads were pretty! They were distracting!
Rumi was still a couple minutes away from the main buildings of the Shrine when she noticed something was happening. It was mostly pretty quiet here, some chatter of people doing their chores, or chatting over tea or a game or whatever, but it only got busy when there was a commotion. For a second she was worried — the last commotion they had was when Auntie was brought back hurt — but she calmed herself down with a couple breaths, the threads humming at her soft and cool. It was fine, Auntie was fine. She wasn’t out hunting, she hadn’t even gotten out of her wheelchair yet. Everybody was okay.
She was walking through the gardens toward the big house when she noticed people moving around in the courtyard. Slowly trailing to a stop, she frowned over that way, biting her lip. It did seem like there were a lot more people over there than usual — glancing at the big house, she didn’t see anyone there, in the gardens or under the eaves or through the windows. And there should be, the sun sinking in the sky, it was almost dinner time, people should be home. Something must be happening.
They mostly didn’t let Rumi be around any serious rituals — they were worried her demon...stuff might mess it up — but she could still tell when they were setting up for one. The courtyard was a paved area, with the main shrine to the Keeper of the Gates on one end, more houses for other gods and spirits to the sides, a library for writings by and about past hunters, even with some of their relics. (Rumi wasn’t supposed to touch those either.) She was coming from the open side, where the path leading across the gardens to the big house came in, opposite the Keeper’s house. Normally, she’d be able to see the shrines and the library, the buildings decorated with colorful paint and ribbons, charms dangling from the eaves dancing in the wind, the courtyard paved in white-yellow sand brushed smooth.
She couldn’t see most of it now, because there were too many people in the way. It seemed like everyone showed up — all of the elders, and the priests, and the initiates, and the visitors they had around at the moment, everyone. It was never this busy here...except on certain holidays, and Rumi wasn’t allowed to be here for those anyway. Trying not to feel too guilty — it wasn’t one of those holidays, she wasn’t told to stay home today, she wasn’t breaking the rules — she quietly slipped up to the back of the group. Looking up at the adults, some watching whatever they were doing in the courtyard and others muttering to each other, she looked around for...
Ah, there we go. Rumi shuffled over next to Jeonghui, and tugged on his sleeve to get his attention. Jeonghui was one of the boy initiates — most of the priests were girls — and while he wasn’t very nice to Rumi, at least he wasn’t as cold as some of the others. Once he looked down toward her, she said all nice and polite, “Good evening, Mister Jeonghui. What’s going on?”
A couple of the other people around made faces at her, but Jeonghui said, “Ah, Rumi, I guess you were off in the woods when the news came in? One of the new hunters touched the Honmun, just a short time ago — they’re setting up a divination to try to find her now.”
“Touched the Honmun? But...” But it was too early. Rumi didn’t know all the rules, she was still little, but the stories said that there was a bond between the three hunters, and the Keeper only chose new hunters when the bond broke. But the Keeper chose people before they were even born, so it was always at least ten, fifteen years before they were old enough to touch the Honmun. It was too early.
“Yes, it is far too early for a new hunter to have begun to flourish already. The elders were saying that perhaps the Keeper has decided to pick older hunters this time, so Lady Celine needn’t serve alone so long. That has happened before. Or, perhaps, the hunter is a child, but is in great danger, and so the Honmun moved to protect her — and so we must find her, before she is lost so soon.”
Rumi knew that that had happened before, that the Keeper’s chosen die when they’re still children, before they can even be found. It didn’t happen very often — the Keeper of the Gates was a god, and knew people’s fates, and would choose people who would live to grow up — but it wasn’t impossible. This new hunter could be in danger. There was a story Auntie told her before, where a young hunter, before she knew anything about the Honmun or demons or anything, reached to the Honmun for strength in a panic, pulling in its power to...
Pulling in.
Touching the Honmun.
Rumi didn’t know how that was supposed to work — the stories didn’t use many details. But she could still see the threads, and she remembered, touching them, how they coiled around her fingers. How she felt them reach into her, making her feel better, calmer. How she heard the echoes of voices singing in it, how it flickered different colors as she sang, grew brighter.
The Honmun had been made with song, and the hunters kept it strong by singing to it, by drawing on other people’s strength with their music.
And it responded to her.
“...Oh.”
“Yes, so you understand the excitement.”
Rumi just blinked up at Jeonghui, speechless.
It wasn’t just the hunters who could touch the Honmun. Other people could do it, priests, even people who didn’t have the proper training and figured out how to do it on accident. Warrior-priests even learned how to make themselves strong with the Honmun, the same way the hunters did. The hunters were still different, though, special — the Honmun loved them best, so it gave them more strength than anyone else, and only the hunters could draw a spirit-blade from it. And other people could call to the Honmun through song, but the hunters were best at it, could make it stronger just as it strengthened them. Other people could learn to do some of what they did, but the hunters were always best at it, chosen by the Keeper of the Gates, the Honmun’s favorites.
And there were relics here, in the library, that knew the hunters. Auntie said, they would shine each time a hunter touched the Honmun. And the first time, when a hunter first did it, they said the statue of the Keeper in the main shrine would speak. Rumi didn’t know what that sounded like, but Auntie said it was how they knew she and Mother and Eunji were ready, that Lady Hyeonseo could find them. Other people could touch the Honmun, but hunters were different, they always knew.
And Jeonghui said a hunter touched the Honmun for the first time, just now. While Rumi was off on her own, at the graveyard, singing to keep herself calm, to stop the patterns from growing — and she found the threads, laying over everything, glowing a soft blow and sparkling like starlight, she could still see them now, it...
The Honmun. It must be.
For a little while, Rumi kept staring up at Jeonghui, after he turned back around to talk to someone else. But she shook it off, and then slipped through the couple rows of adults to the front. Everyone was here, looked like, but not very many people lived at the Shrine. A couple dozen right now, maybe? Most of them were standing in a couple rows at the entrance to the courtyard here, and then there were the priests setting up the ritual. There were three of them, one praying on her knees in front of an altar someone moved out here, the other two moving around a post with an icon way up on top (Rumi couldn’t tell which one, too small and far away), setting up things on the sand, drawing with some...colored stuff. Dyed charcoal maybe? Not sure. She was distracted for a few seconds, watching what they were—
Oh, it was a map! They were drawing a big map of Korea, maybe the ritual was supposed to point them where to look? That made sense.
Rumi took a deep breath, and then another, getting ready to raise her voice. She was mostly quiet around the grown-ups, didn’t draw attention to herself — and this was kind of big, making her nervous. “You don’t have to do that.” There were some mutters, she felt a couple people over here look her way, but the priests ignored her, kept working. Raising her voice more, she said, “Hello? You can stop, it was me.”
When they heard that, the priests stopped moving, the two doing the map looking over toward her. She could tell they didn’t believe her, just from their faces, but they didn’t say anything, just kept staring. It was someone in the group by the entrance (she wasn’t sure who) who said, “What are you talking about, girl?”
“I was singing in the graveyard, just now, and...” Eyeing the glowing blue threads over everything, sparkling and flickering with yellow and purple and white, she didn’t know what to say. They probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. “I touched the Honmun. I can still see it, now. It’s pretty.”
It was quiet for another few breaths, but it probably wouldn’t be for long. People here didn’t like her, she was the dirty wrong demon girl — they wouldn’t even let her in the main shrine, at least not without someone there to watch and make sure she didn’t touch anything. That the Keeper might pick her was...
Rumi was still figuring it out herself. It was big, she didn’t know how she felt about it.
She didn’t want to think about it right now, because if she did she’d probably start crying, and then she wouldn’t be able to tell people what happened. She would think about it later.
Before anyone else could do anything but glance around and whisper, Aunt Celine called over to her. “Come here, Rumi,” beckoning with her hand of the arm that wasn’t in a cast. Most of the group was at the entrance, but there were a few over by the library — Auntie in her wheelchair, Lady Hyeonseo in a chair someone must have moved for her, a couple initiates hanging back if they needed anything. Rumi glanced over the map. They didn’t need that, but it would still be rude to mess it up walking on it, so she went around instead, going all the way to the left so she could take the wooden walkway at the edge of the sand all the way to Auntie and Lady Hyeonseo.
She could feel everyone watching her, every step on the way. There was some whispering, but mostly everyone was quiet, just, staring. It was making her nervous, her shoulders prickling and her stomach twisting, like she was doing a bad thing, but she made herself keep walking. And she breathed, slow and steady, trying not to feel her heart thumping, stay calm.
Auntie looked better than she had when she got here, but you could still see she was unwell. The worst bandages were hidden under her clothes, the most obvious thing the yellowish-white wrapping around her left arm, hardened to hold her arm at a funny angle. Her hair had been cut short, maybe so it wouldn’t be in the way, her sharp, narrow, serious-looking face looking even thinner than usual. But she did look better, a scrape on her face and the bruises on her neck and on the arm you could see were gone, the color back in her cheeks, and her eyes steady. Still hurt, but she was going to be okay, it was okay.
Reminding herself of that made it a little easier for Rumi to stay calm, her steps not feeling so stiff as they did at first.
She passed Lady Hyeonseo’s chair before she got to Auntie, the old hunter looking small and frail and wrinkly, wrapped up in warm robes with a hat to shield her from the sun. Lady Hyeonseo was also staring at her, but with her head tilted a little, frowning in thought. Rumi paused in front of Lady Hyeonseo’s chair to bow to her quick — the hunters were the masters of the Shrine and the lands it stood on, it was polite — before moving on to Aunt Celine. Before she could worry about what she was supposed to do now, Auntie asked, “You said you were singing in the graveyard?”
Rumi nodded. “Yes, Auntie. I was visiting Mother.”
There was a little flinch in Auntie’s face, small enough you might miss it if you weren’t looking. “Which song was it?”
“Um, ‘Island Baby’?” She heard some scoffs, or little huffs of laughter, glanced back toward the group by the entrance. Maybe that was a little silly — it was a lullaby for little kids — but she was feeling...too much, and it was the first thing she thought of.
Auntie just smiled at her, though. “Sing it again with me,” she said, holding out her good hand toward Rumi.
Rumi slipped her hand into Auntie’s without thinking, before she even asked, “Why?”
“The Honmun is curling around you, brighter at your feet, in a way it didn’t do before.” There was some more muttering behind Rumi at that, she started glancing that way but stopped when Auntie kept talking. “It is subtle, enough I didn’t notice until you were standing in front of me. But if you are a hunter, Lady Hyeonseo and I will know for certain when we hear you sing.”
...Oh. Okay, that made sense. “Do you want me to start?”
Instead of answering, Auntie hummed the melody, one time through. Auntie had a strong voice, even just humming smooth and deep and rich, shivering in Rumi’s chest. That was partly her, but also partly the Honmun — hunters’ voices were magic, given power by the Honmun, even without trying to. Rumi could see it, ripples running through the threads, glowing brighter and sparkling and flashing, curling close to Auntie’s wheelchair, almost like they were trying to hug her. It was pretty!
She was distracted enough watching the Honmun react to Auntie’s voice that she almost missed the start of the song. She didn’t have to think about it, just slipped into singing right along with Auntie, she’d heard it so many times that it didn’t take any thought at all. Auntie’s voice was a lot stronger than hers, lower and thicker, but Rumi could kind of...stack her voice on top of hers, kind of? It was hard to explain, how things went in layers, but she’d heard enough music by now that she could feel out where her voice was supposed to fit in a way that they’d add together instead of Rumi just getting buried by Auntie. They never did this with this song before, but they had played around with singing before, and flutes and stuff when Rumi was practicing with her sepiri, so it wasn’t hard to sink into something comfortable.
They didn’t sing for very long. Before they even got to the end of the first line, Rumi could already see the Honmun moving, rippling around them like raindrops hitting water, the closer threads curling and twirling around them. And it got brighter, glowing like it was catching the sun, with more flickers of other colors slipping through, where the threads touched Rumi seeming to slip up into her, reaching inside, making her feel cool and soft and calm. She couldn’t help smiling, which made it a little hard to sing properly, fighting to make her mouth behave.
She could hear the Honmun singing back to her, countless whispery voices singing the same song. She wondered if Mother’s voice was in there.
They were only a couple of words into the second line when Auntie already cut off — not all at once, for one note sounding thick and wavery before she closed her mouth. She stared at Rumi a second, her eyes wide, before she glanced over at Lady Hyeonseo. “I felt it. Did you?”
Her dark crinkly eyes fixed on Rumi, the old lady nodded. She spoke louder than Rumi expected, maybe to make sure other people heard, loud enough that Rumi twitched, deep and a little croaky but still carrying okay. “There can be no mistaking it. Rumi will be a hunter.”
Suddenly, people were talking, a chattering of voices too many for Rumi to pick out the words very well. She looked back toward the small crowd gathered by the path out, worried — it didn’t really sound like they were happy. Surprised, yeah, but... She would say that finding a hunter was obviously a good thing, especially so early — she could get a head start on her training, so she could help Auntie sooner than they thought! — but she guessed they didn’t know how to feel about it because her father was a demon. They didn’t even let her near the altars and stuff, or touch anything they were worried about getting tainted. But if the Keeper of the Gates chose her, then that meant it was fine, right? What were they going to do, tell Him He picked wrong? That would be silly, He was a god, He knew what He was doing, and complaining at Him about it would be a weird wrong thing to do...
But she didn’t want to think too much about that right now — about Rumi being a hunter, about the Keeper picking her — because if she did she’d probably start crying.
She only had a few seconds to look over at the priests and initiates and everybody and worry what was about to happen when she felt Auntie’s hand let go of hers. For a flash, she thought Auntie might be unhappy about it, but when she turned back to look at her there was...a look on Auntie’s face. She wasn’t sure what to call it — her mouth open a little, face all loose and smooth, her eyes wide. Her hand came up to Rumi’s shoulder instead, her voice sounding thick and half-choked, she said, “Rumi, I’m... I was so worried...”
She didn’t finish the sentence, just staring at Rumi, her eyes going a little wavery from tears. “Worried about what?”
Auntie shook her head, and didn’t answer the question. Her hand came up to cup Rumi’s cheek instead, feeling a little cold from being out in the wind — or maybe Rumi’s face was extra warm right now somehow — and smelling of this lotion she used when she was hurt, like aloe and sandalwood and persimmons. “I...” The tears starting to slip out of her left eye now, crawling down her cheek, she hissed, “I’m so relieved. Come here.”
It was a little awkward, since Auntie was in a wheelchair — and Rumi had to be careful, she didn’t want to hurt her! But Auntie was pulling her in, so she shuffled up right against her legs, leaning over. Auntie’s good arm wrapped around Rumi’s back, pulling her even closer, even her arm in the cast coming up to rest against Rumi’s side. Worried about maybe poking at a cut or something she couldn’t see, Rumi ended up just fisting her hands in Auntie’s jacket, her head tucked in under Auntie’s chin. Leaning over like this was a little uncomfortable, but Auntie was warm, and holding her tight, and she smelled nice, the lotion and the roses and vanilla from her hair.
The others in the courtyard were talking about the big news of Rumi being a hunter, but she wasn’t really listening. Her aunt holding her — the only person who really cared about her, Rumi would be alone without her — the bigness of what just happened gradually sank in, and Rumi let herself feel it.
While Rumi and Auntie cried together, the Honmun kept watch, wavering and glowing and glittering.