Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang

Author:Sok-yong Hwang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Garnet Publishing (UK) Ltd
Published: 2015-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

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When did that magpie get here?

The little featherbrain snatched up my spirit, my shadow-like spirit that sometimes stretched out long and sometimes shrank down small. It picked it up in its beak, flew into the air and perched on a metal railing in the dark.

Way down below, like a scene from a play I watched as a child, I saw my body lying flat on the floor, dressed in a traditional white blouse and black skirt. Evil spirits with concealed faces, dressed in black and half-hidden in the shadows, pulled off my clothes. From above, my body looked frail and gaunt. They took knives and carved me up. My spirit self shouted in alarm. They hacked off my arms, my legs, my head, and flung them to the side. Behind them, other dark spirits crowded around. They tossed my severed limbs back and forth. The dark spirits snickered raucously and began feasting on my flesh. The ones with my torso split my belly open, pulled out my intestines, my liver, my organs – and ate.

A storm of pain washed over me, and then all was silent. My spirit self watched as my flesh disappeared, and all that was left were the bones. The dark spirits snatched up my tibias and danced. They kept rhythm to the rattling of my shinbones. O fleeting life!

I fluttered in the passing breeze and dangled from the tip of a branch on the enormous zelkova tree. Did the magpie carry me here? The bird ferried over objects one by one and dumped them at the base of the tree. My leg bone, my arm bone, my little finger, the knucklebones of my toes all clattered together. At the end, something rolled and tumbled and came to a perfect stop at the top of the pile of bones: my skull. The magpie flew to the branch where my spirit hung and perched there. He rubbed his beak against the tree and squawked:

Live or die, live or die. No difference.

Grandmother appeared and shooed away the bird. Then she sat in front of my bones. She sorted through them while Chilsung picked up scattered shards in his mouth and brought them over. Grandmother fit my bones together and sang a slow song:

Throw her out, the little throwaway.

Cast her out, the little castaway.

Over the Mountain of Knives,

the Mountain of Fire,

past the Hell of Poison,

Hell of Cold,

Hell of Water,

Hell of Earth,

through the sufferings

of eighty-four thousand hells,

all the way to the ends of the Earth

where the sun sets in the western sky.

What new hell awaits you here?

Bitter souls, hungry souls,

souls burdened even in death,

endless and innumerable.

Return to life! Return!

My spirit felt as if it was being sucked down off the branch. It swirled around in the air, circling my bones several times as if being coaxed back into place, and then I was in one piece again. New flesh grew. I couldn’t stop touching my arms and legs and stomach, like a person who’d just recovered from a long illness.

Okay, okay, time for you two to go.

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