Waxing Moon (28 page)

A sharp cry issued from Mirae’s quarters, tearing him out of his thoughts. He was about to enter the gate that led to his quarters. It took a moment for him to realize where the cry had come from. He stood in front of the stone step. Mirae must have given birth. He was going to sit in his room and wait for a maid to deliver the message.

He went in his room, lit candles, and sat in the middle of the room meditatively. He felt the weight of his life. He was an old man. And his wife, young and exceptionally beautiful, had just given birth to a baby. “Ah!” he exclaimed, remembering his haunting dream a few years before, in which he was an ancient man and his first wife was so young and beautiful. Now he knew that even dreams are made of life.

He heard footsteps rapidly approaching his quarters. It was not a maid, but a servant running fast to him, perhaps to tell him that the baby was born. Or that his wife had died while giving birth. Or that the baby was deformed. All was possible. Whatever it might be, the sun would rise again the next morning.

About the Author

At the age of twenty, H. S. Kim moved to the U.S. After graduating from Teacher’s College at Columbia University, she taught Creative Writing and English as a Second Language to a wide range of students, including teenagers in Harlem, prison inmates in upstate New York, businessmen in Austria, Laotian refugees in Oakland, and foreign scholars at various universities. A born storyteller, H. S. Kim began to write fiction after settling down in Berkeley, California with her husband and two children.
Waxing Moon
is her first novel. Her second novel, currently under construction, will be a depiction of the 1970s in a divided Korea through the eyes of a child.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following individuals: Mary Bradford, Laura Gorjance, Cathy Hale, and Linda Wulf for proofreading and Amy McCracken, my editor at WiD
ō
, for her excellent work and suggestions.