Chapter 8
**CHAPTER TITLE: A Desperate Plea in the Frozen Valley**
Seonwu stood quietly, letting her face imprint itself in his mind.
At twenty-one she should have been the age for dressing up, yet all she wore was a pair of threadbare jeans whose hems had frayed so many times they looked patched again, and an equally worn purple sweater.
“Could I speak with you for a moment?”
She approached him hesitantly, then carefully parted her lips.
“If you’ve come to persuade me, you may go. I have not the slightest inclination to listen.”
Seonwu turned his back to her. He was not the sort who spoke harshly to others, and this woman seemed far too gentle to treat with any sharpness.
Yet footsteps crunched behind him again. It seemed she refused to leave.
“After all,” she said, “you claim you have no mind to listen—”
He spun around in surprise and took a hasty step backward.
Before him the woman was on her knees.
The round knees she pressed into the snowy, slushy ground looked painfully thin, and her long, white hands rested neatly upon her thighs.
“What on earth are you doing?”
Her wet eyes, when she looked up at him, held a resolute will.
“Please… just let me out of here. I don’t care if I become a talisman or anything else.”
“This is… what?”
“My mother is ill. I want to take her out of this world, but she refuses to listen to me. It’s because I have no power.”
“….”
“If you’ll simply let me leave, I swear I’ll never bother you again. Please…”
At last she clasped her two white hands together and pleaded with him in a manner almost too pitiful to bear.
“Ah.”
Seonwu sighed and turned away. What on earth was happening here?
Humans turned into talismans, or women willing to become them—everyone seemed to have lost their minds.
***
Having finished her conversation with Yonghwa Shaman, Ji Okhyeon descended to the valley outside the hermitage and spent a long while pleading with Seonwu.
“Seonwu, just listen to me once. If anything happens to you, Mother won’t be able to live in this world. You know I can’t live without you.”
“It’s not just the two of us. Bringing in an ordinary person and making them a talisman is absurd, isn’t it? And then demanding the human talisman be removed—what kind of fantasy is that?”
“Becoming a talisman won’t cause any physical harm or threaten one’s life. Nothing will happen to that girl. Besides, I’ll compensate her with money overflowing from me. Ordinary people won’t be able to touch the amount for three years.”
As she spoke with passionate fervor, a dry, cold winter wind brushed past them.
Ji Okhyeon, who would soon turn seventy, had spent the entire winter in the hospital with pneumonia. Worried, Seonwu gestured toward the hermitage.
“At least go inside.”
“I won’t go inside until you permit it.”
“If you’re this stubborn, Mother, I’ll never listen to you either.”
Only then did Ji Okhyeon turn toward the hermitage. As she walked, she covered her mouth and coughed several times.
The cough sounded far too severe, so Seonwu decided to leave at once, taking his mother with him.
While checking the knight’s position waiting at the foot of the mountain, he saw the young-faced girl approaching the valley carrying a woven basket.
By now the sun had reached its zenith. The forest’s darkness lifted as the sun stood high overhead.
The girl spread dried herbs across the broad, flat rock that formed the valley floor. The smooth stone, warmed by the sun, had no trace of snow—likely the place where she dried her herbs.
“What is that?”
“Medicinal herbs good for Mother’s condition. I gathered them in the mountains last autumn. They lose potency if kept indoors, so I dry them in the sunlight for a little while.”
The herbs had been cared for with great care. They looked crisp and dry. Seonwu stared at them, then lifted his gaze to her.
She wore a nun’s robe, and her neck, pale as the back of her hand, peeked out from beneath the garment.
“At twenty-one you’re still young enough to go out into the world. Haven’t you ever considered leaving?”
“My mother believes it is the shaman grandmother’s spirit child. She must serve the spirit properly to be healed. I’ve tried to persuade her many times, but I failed. Leaving her alone here makes me worry…”
Her skin was white, as if she had never seen sunlight. It was natural in this forest that barely let in light.
Her long hair, once tied back neatly, now had a few loose strands falling over her round forehead.
She brushed the strands away with the back of her hand and spread the herbs wide so they would not overlap.
“At least now I can earn money and leave. The shaman grandmother will look after Mother in the meantime, and…”
Her movements were practiced and familiar. She finished arranging the herbs and looked up at Seonwu with clear, unwavering eyes.
“Actually… I want to live normally like other people.”
The words “people” and “normal” carried her hidden longing.
If her mother had been brainwashed, the child should have been too. Yet this young, gentle-looking girl alone seemed to have kept her mind clear.
“Why? Living here doesn’t seem like living at all, does it?”
Seonwu, whose mind had been twisted by Yonghwa Shaman’s proposal, spoke mockingly. She showed no sign of embarrassment.
“I couldn’t attend school after middle school. I passed the high-school equivalency exam, but there are no schools or jobs here.”
Her plain, worn clothes and ordinary appearance matched what he had expected from a mountain village. Yet the girl seemed to have lived far worse than he imagined.
Ji Okhyeon had said she would pay in money the amount that could not be touched for three years if she became a Samjae talisman.
The girl’s desire to leave the forest hermitage and her mother’s goal aligned perfectly.
The situation felt suspiciously convenient, but that was separate from the other, unexpected discomfort that rose within him.
“Do you know how many people live on this planet? Many more are suffering far worse than you. For that reason alone, I can’t help you.”
The girl said nothing, only looked at him. Her cheeks, exposed to the cold for so long, showed red from burst capillaries.
Even without any herbs, her hands—used to placing them on winter rocks—were almost blue from the cold.
Perhaps this discomfort was simply pity.
The young face of the girl reminded him of the children shown in international aid programs; it stirred the same helpless feeling.
When Seonwu remained silent, the girl studied his face and spoke again with caution.
“If you ever need someone for that strange contract… please don’t look elsewhere. Take me…”
Was she even aware of what kind of contract she was offering?
At that moment hurried footsteps approached from the direction of the hermitage.
Both Seonwu and the girl turned toward the sound.
The girl called Saehwa was running toward the valley. The girl who had been spreading the herbs stood up and ran toward her.
“Mother? Why are you running like that?”
She had been told her health was poor, yet even while running her steps faltered as if her strength were failing.
“Wait… Guest… your mother.”
The girl panted heavily.
“What is it?”
“Your mother… she… she collapsed!”
“!”
Seonwu dashed toward the hermitage, leaving the girl behind. The girl followed at once.
Seonwu removed his shoes and entered the room attached to the hermitage. He immediately placed his hand on his mother’s forehead. She had held out in the subzero temperature to persuade her son.
Her body temperature was still normal, yet her face did not look like feigned illness. Her lips and under-eyes were turning blue, and a chill would soon follow with fever.
It had been less than two weeks since her pneumonia discharge. The long exposure to winter wind had been the trigger. They must return to Seoul at once.
“Mother, we’re returning to Seoul.”
“I won’t go. I will not descend from this mountain until I use Yonghwa Bodhisattva’s secret technique.”
“If it’s not a human talisman, then I’ll carry a talisman on my body, perform the rite, or anything. Just come down, Mother.”
“Your fate is too strong for those things!”
Ji Okhyeon had a stubborn streak once she made up her mind.
Seonwu knew from experience that there was no other way when she refused to yield.
While they faced each other, the door creaked open slightly. Alert to his mother’s mood, Seonwu shot a sharp glance.
The young-faced girl placed a steaming bowl in front of the door.
“Congee. Your esteemed mother said she felt the cold entering her body…”
Her voice trailed off as she glanced at Seonwu’s presence and quickly closed the door.
Seonwu watched the steam rising from the clay bowl and his mother lying on the bed, and a sudden headache struck him.
If he rejected the proposal, that girl with her shabby clothes would remain trapped here, wasting her youth. And her mother, brainwashed by Yonghwa Shaman, would suffer as before.
Besides, if he refused the human talisman, Ji Okhyeon would stay in this hermitage for days, refusing to leave.
He was not certain whether accepting the human talisman was the right path.
But if he did not accept it, his mother would simply bring forward another candidate. He did not know what a human talisman even was, yet she might have been preparing one in secret.
“So… that’s all I have to do? Then will you return to Seoul?”
“Yes.”
“I will.”
At those words Ji Okhyeon shot upright from the bed.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
With a single sentence from Seonwu, her expression changed at once.
“Oh, thank you. Thank you. Seonwu, you saved your mother. Thank you, thank you.”
This contract was not to save the girl, but to save the mother who obsessed over being a human talisman. In truth, it was to save the young girl and her mother.
Seonwu told himself that.
***
“I will accept the proposal.”
Seonwu made his decision. Yonghwa Shaman quietly summoned the girl waiting outside the shrine.
She entered the shrine and sat in a proper posture.
Her neck was long. When she placed both hands on her thighs, the line from her shoulders to her waist straightened neatly.
“This year the Samjae constellation enters Jeong Seonwu’s destiny. For three years she will serve as a protective talisman by his side. So, Jaye, introduce yourself to Seonwu.”
She raised her head and looked at Seonwu. Her eyes, free of any trace of selfishness, met his.
“I am twenty-one this year. My name is Shin Jaye.”
Only then did Seonwu learn her name.
Until that moment he had not believed the idea of a human talisman was immoral or inhuman. He now repeated her name silently in his mind.