Gilded (10 page)

“It’s my superpower. Eating after people and not getting sick.”

“And here I thought it was your brains.”

“Nope.” He points the fork at me. “That’s my cover.”

I steal the fork and point it back at him. “So why are you really here?”

“I wanted to get a better look at your new bow.”

“Are you mocking me? You’d better not be.”

He raises his hands in the air, his gold ring glinting in the light. “I swear on every perfect cheesecake in the universe.” But then the humor leaves his green eyes and his gaze centers on my face. I nearly forget to breathe. “I have a fascination with old things. They’re far more interesting than shopping or ski parties.”

“Okay. I guess you can stay for another two minutes.” He’s so cute. That’s got to count for something. I slide my phone to the center of the table.

He puts on his glasses. “It’s hard to see much from a picture. Did your grandfather tell you which period it’s from?”

“No. I suppose I could ask.”

“Cool engraving of the Blue Dragon.” He rotates the phone, scrutinizing it. “I’d like to see it.”

“You think by looking at it you could tell what time period it came from?”

He grins. “What do you think?”

I give him the evil eye as he studies it closer.

“Yep. Definitely the Blue Dragon,” he says. “There’s a legend about a bow and the Blue Dragon. Something about using it against an immortal.”

I lean forward. “Really? Do you remember the name?”

“I don’t.” He hands back my phone. “I’ll check it out for you if you’d like.”

“That’d be great.”

“It’ll cost you, of course.”

Before I can give him a good punch in the shoulder, my phone beeps with a text from Michelle. It reads:
Going 2 check out the shops. U coming?

I see Michelle and Lily heading out the door, motioning me to follow.

“I think you’d better go,” Marc says. “They look pretty serious.”

He’s right. I should go and not let crazy mythical creatures control my life.

“Shopping is serious,” I say, and scoot out of the booth. “See you at school?”

He nods, and I love the way he looks at me, warm and interested. My heart does a little jig as I rush out the door.

Winter bites my face, nearly taking my breath away. The street has been blocked off from cars to allow vendors to set up tables and carts filled with jewelry, clothes, and food. The cart lanterns swing in the icy wind, illuminating the night with a ghostly glow.

Flurries of snow stick to my jacket and cling to my eyelashes. I blink them away and start weaving through the crowd in pursuit of my friends. When I come to an intersection, I swivel in a circle, searching for them through the snowy mist. Then I spot them down the street on my left. Lily’s plaid jacket and Michelle’s purple jacket stand out among the usual black dress of the pedestrians. I take off, yelling their names, but the music blaring from the karaoke bar drowns out my voice. Even though I’m shoving my way through the crowd and practically jogging, I can’t seem to catch up to them. Are they purposely ignoring me?

They take another turn, this time down a side street where
the brick and concrete buildings all seem to have grown together in a winding warren. Where are they going? My hair is damp from the snow. I stop to put on my hat and gloves, but when I look up, they’re gone. This must be some kind of trick. I yell out their names, but the wind sucks away my words.

I spin in a circle on my boot heels. The shadows shift by the automatic parking garage. Someone screams from the dark window in the hotel above. Or was that a laugh? The wooden telephone poles lining the street groan in the wind.

Voices seem to whisper in my ears. “Princess.
Princessss.
”

Terror streaks through me. I fumble for my phone. It falls into the snow and with it a familiar piece of paper. I crouch down and pick it up. It’s the note from Grandfather with Master Kim’s phone number and address.

Forget politeness. I’m going to find this guy
.

I punch the address into the GPS on my phone. The system recognizes it, indicating it’s only a block away. I take off at a sprint down the street, hoping Master Kim will be working late.

When I turn into the next intersection, the streetlights flicker. Behind me I hear something breathing. I whip around. Nothing. Puffs of cold air cloud up in front of my face as I stare into the emptiness. Or is it emptiness? I squint at what appears to be a breathy cloud under the awning of an abandoned store.

“Eye of the Tiger” slices the silence. My phone. I press it to my ear, backing away from the cloud.

“Hello.” My voice shakes.

“
Annyeong haseyo
,” a woman’s voice says. I realize the voice in the phone is also coming from behind me.

I whip around to see a woman, a phone against her ear,
standing at the gate of a walled house across the street. She’s wearing a pair of black pants and a thick gray shawl.

“Jae Hwa,” she says. She knows my name? “I see you found your way. Your grandfather said you would come.”

How does she know these things?

“Come. Come quickly!” she says, waving her arms toward the warm light of her home. “The night is full of evil spirits.”

I don’t need to hear anything else. I race through the iron gate, and the lady practically shoves me up the stone stairs, slamming the wooden door behind me.

Only after I step inside do I wonder if I can even trust this woman.

I face the stocky lady, now removing her shawl, and clutch my phone tighter. She’s about my height, dressed in polyester pants and a thick blue sweater. Everything is simple about her except the shimmer of gold from the ring hanging on a chain around her neck.

She seems harmless enough. Then she turns, and I see the scar etched across the left side of her face, as if some beast had ripped its claws through her skin, and I shudder, remembering Haechi’s claws. Her black hair is braided and pulled harshly into place, giving her face a tight, hard expression that matches the steel in her eyes.

“I am Master Kim. I will train you in what I know.”

She’s
Master Kim? I study the crumpled paper in my hand. Behind her is a painting of the Tiger of Shinshi, just like the one on Grandfather’s note. In fact, it looks a lot like the mural in Grandfather’s house. This has to be the right place.

The room has an odd scent, so strong I want to plug my nose.

“How do you know my grandfather?”

She mumbles something in Korean and then: “He did not tell you who I am, did he?”

I swallow hard, my feet rooted to the floor.

A shadow slithers across the geometric-styled window screen. I lean forward. What was that? Its shape is snakelike but much,
much
bigger. I blink at the impossible. My body goes as stiff as a breaking board with the thought of what could be outside.

Master Kim crosses the room, grabs a cloak and two flashlights. She tosses the cloak over my shoulders and jams the flashlight in my free hand. My other still holds my cell phone.

“Should keep you warm,” she says, and yanks back a Chinese carpet to reveal a trapdoor beneath it. She lifts it by the attached bronze ring.

I stare down at the blackness below me. She shines a flashlight into its depths, and even though I spot a wooden ladder, I back away, unwrapping my scarf from around my neck. The room suddenly feels hot and too small.

She jerks her head toward the black hole and lifts her eyebrows as if to say “Any day now!”

Yeah right, crazy lady
. Like I’m going to leap into a dark hole of my own free will. Not after everything that has already happened today.

Which reminds me, I should call Dad.

Problem. I’m supposed to be in bed.

“Now, Jae Hwa!” Master Kim yells. “He has sent his dragons!”

She knows my name. Part of something scaly from outside slides under the door. I rub my eyes.

Whatever is outside wants in.

“The ginseng is not working.” Master Kim yanks on my arm, nearly ripping it out of the joint. “Stubborn child! I am taking you belowground. His powers are useless there without the light.”

Claws, golden and sharp, tear apart the screen.

I dive for the hole.

The wooden ladder feels smooth and cold under my palms. Crazed Ginseng Lady ducks in right after me, her flashlight clenched between her teeth. The trapdoor slams closed, enveloping us in darkness except for the bobbing beam from her flashlight. I hear the clink of metal. I hope it’s a strong lock.

Would that keep us safe?

Soon my boots hit the ground, which is slimy and gooey. I click on my flashlight and pan it around me. We’re in a narrow passageway hewed out of concrete. Sure enough, the goo my boots cling to is mud combined with stuff reeking of dead fish and urine. Disgusting.

Above, claws rake across the trapdoor, and the dragon shrieks. My heart catches in my throat, and suddenly the goo isn’t so bad.

Master Kim brushes past me and takes off down the passageway. The cold is bone-chilling, and I’m suddenly glad for the cloak she gave me.

I hurry after her. “What is this place?”

“An old North Korean tunnel discovered by the government six years ago. President Lee Myung-bak had it blocked off and restricted. Since the president did not want his people to know how close they had come to invasion, it was kept quiet.”

Her flashlight casts creepy shadows that skitter off the rounded walls. I shiver despite the cloak, but she continues on unfazed. “My cousin’s husband is the subway overseer. She mentioned it to me. I knew an underground escape from Haemosu was exactly what I needed, so I bought a house just above one of the vents. The perfect hideout. Most do not know this tunnel exists, and those who do have pretended it into nonexistence.”

We reach an iron gate. I shine my flashlight through the bars and over the pebbled ground, but my beam doesn’t reach far enough into the gaping blackness.

“Where does that go?” I ask.

“North Korea. You do not want to go there. Trust me.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ginseng Lady focuses on a tiny square door set into the rock wall to our right. She spins the combination lock, its click echoing through the hallway. Then she leans into the door and shoves it open, the bottom scraping in aged resistance. I shine my light back the way we came, peering through the gloom and hoping my light won’t catch a glint of those shiny scales I saw above.

“The dragons will not follow us here,” she says, and steps inside. “They need the power of light to sustain them, and their golden claws can only keep the power for so long. Other creatures perhaps, but tonight we do not matter to them.”

I gulp at the thought of other creatures and duck inside. My boots trail sludge across the concrete floor.

Master Kim sits down on a wooden bench and slips off her
shoes and enters another room. I mimic her actions, sidestepping the mud with socked feet.

The next room is the exact opposite of that dreary tunnel. The walls are lined with murals of the Korean countryside and native animals like the bear, tiger, and crane. The floor is wooden rather than concrete, and electricity lights up rice-papered lanterns attached to the walls. At one end stands a rack of weapons and Tae Kwon Do
doboks
, while the other holds scrolls and books lined up kind of like in Grandfather’s cave. It’s quite large, too, about half the size of my Tae Kwon Do gym.

Master Kim is already over by the rack and choosing a
dobok
to put on. She changes right in front of me. I avert my eyes and study a mural with a giant black bear.

She ties a black belt around her waist and looks at me expectantly. “Get dressed.”

“So you’re going to train me?”

“We have little time.”

Obviously, this lady isn’t into formal introductions. I riffle through the tunics to find something close to my size. Some of these look yellowed, as if they’ve been there for a very long time. I find one, undress, and slip it on. When I finish, I see Master Kim is talking on the phone.

“You owe me this time with her,” Master Kim says into the phone.

Then, noticing I’m dressed, she holds out her phone to me, the cord tangling up around her arm, and says, “I have arranged with your father to take you home. We need all the time we can get. Would you like to talk to him?”

I stare dumbly at her. “What!” I whisper. “You told him I was here? He doesn’t know I’ve left the house.”

“He already knew. He’s been searching for you for the last hour and called me to help.”

I’ll be grounded for eternity. I think I’ll delay the inevitable. “I can’t talk to him.”

“Best not to mention the dragons,” she says, handing me the phone. “It may not go well for you.”

I push away the phone. “I’m not talking to him.” Then I look at her more closely. “Wait. How do
you
know my dad?”

“Listen, young lady.” Crazed Ginseng Lady takes my hand and puts the phone into it. “If you do not talk to him, I will never train you. And trust me. You want me to train you.”

She’s got a point. Besides, it’s not as if Master Park at my old
dojang
is keen on me coming back. I put the phone to my ear. “Dad?”