The Dragon Queen Read online

  The room is large for being underground. It’s two stories tall and twice as wide as it is deep. Wooden columns and painted beams support the roof. In the center, four columns hold up a wooden dais topped with a canopy. On the dais is a throne painted red. Hanging behind the throne is a ten-foot-high faded-blue tapestry that looks very old. Woven into the tapestry with what looks like gold thread is a two-headed dragon—the exact same dragon as on the comb sent to the president of the United States. Its tongues curl up and its claws reach out. Its eyes seem to be staring at me.

  I’m still terrified, but clearly this isn’t a torture chamber. I don’t see a cell, either. My panic eases some, but I’m terribly confused.

  Off to one side of the throne are several women dressed in dark loose-fitting blouses and slacks who are attending to a woman with her back to me. The attendants remove the woman’s clothes. Naked, her cream-colored skin glows in the candlelight. Her figure is lean and athletic. She stands straight as the women slip on a layered hanbok petticoat. They support her as she steps into a blood-red chima with a gold design above the hem. When they tie it to her chest, the long skirt reaches all the way to the floor. The woman steps into brown namaksin clogs that make her several inches taller. She holds out her arms, and the attendants put on a gold jeogori jacket with a white collar. They close it across her chest with a maroon bow. As they apply makeup to the woman’s face, someone brings in stools and more attendants stand on them and go to work on her hair. They brush it with long deliberate strokes. They fold it onto her head and pin it with a gold binyeo. They place something on top of her head and secure it with more ornamental hairpins. The entire ritual feels like a holy thing that I should not interrupt. Finally the attendants are done and they bow as they back away, out of sight into the room’s darkness. With her back still facing me, the woman bows her head. I think she’s praying.

  I look around. There are people lighting candles, preparing tea, stoking the fire. They all wear the same dark loose-fitting clothes. I notice there are two men standing behind me.

  I’m still confused, but for some reason, I’m not so afraid any more. It’s peaceful here, almost like a church. The fire in the fireplace has burned away the mustiness. The great room is now pleasantly warm. I get a strange feeling that I’m about to go on an extraordinary journey.

  “Come forward,” says the woman, speaking Korean. She’s still on the dais facing away from me, but she no longer has her head lowered. Her voice is strong and firm and echoes off the walls. I’m not sure she’s talking to me, so I don’t move. The men behind me take my arms and lead me forward until I’m standing just below the dais. I look up.

  She turns to face me. She’s magnificent, like a beautiful, terrifying queen. Her face shimmers gold and orange from the fireplace’s flames, almost as if she herself is on fire. The hanbok gracefully drapes her figure. The makeup on her face makes her look both delicate and strong. They’ve arranged her hair in strips and folds and have put on a headpiece that snakes around her hair. It adorns her face like a picture frame. Her dark eyes are intense, but touched with compassion. In her hand is a folded fan.

  “Anna?” I mutter. “What’s this abou—”

  “Take off your shoes,” she says in Korean.

  “Uh, what?” I say.

  Her eyes flash. She points her fan at my feet. “Your shoes,” she says. “It isn’t proper to wear street shoes inside a place like this. Take them off.”

  The men behind me put their hands on my back so I slip my shoes off. Someone places a pair of zori on the floor in front of me. I don’t put the sandals on.

  “Christ, Anna. What are you doing?”

  “Speak Korean,” she says, still speaking Korean herself. “I hear you know it.” She goes to the throne and sits with her back perfectly straight.

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Use it. You are in Korea. Speak the language.” She holds her chin high and looks down at me.

  Finally my mind starts to work. “Who are you working for, Anna?” I ask. “The North? The Russians?”

  “Working for?” she says in Korean with a smirk. “Do you think this is about money? You have turned corporate, haven’t you, Mr. Simon? You weren’t always that way. I’ve read your dossier.”

  “You have?” I wave. “Look, just tell me what this is about.”

  “One Korea,” she says.

  I lean forward and cock my head. “One Korea?” I say. “How could you know—”

  “Speak Korean!” she thunders.

  The power in her voice and the fire in her eyes startle me, so I switch to Korean. “What’s going on here, Anna? Who are these people? Where are we? You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “As I suspected, your Korean is pathetic,” she says, looking away. “To honor the people whose language you use, you must learn it. Without an accent. With proper grammar.”

  “Well, I’m not a native speaker like you,” I say.

  “I’m not, either,” she sniffs. “I was raised in America since I was a baby. I didn’t start learning Korean until a few years ago.”

  I can’t believe it. Her Korean is flawless, as if she’s spoken it all her life. There’s no accent, and her vocabulary is much better than mine. So much for seven years of Korean. “Anna, Jesus. What’s going on here?” I say, carefully choosing the right Korean words and struggling to minimize my accent. “The two-headed dragon. The message sent to the president. What do you know about it?”

  “It’s not what I know that’s important. What is important is what you learn about it. Perhaps your experience here will bring back that fire you once had.” She lifts her chin at the people behind me. They bring a high-backed wooden chair. A hand on my shoulder gently pushes me to sit.

  “Please,” I say, “I don’t know what you want with me, but . . .”

  “Why are you here?” she asks. She opens her fan and fans herself with quick flicks of her wrist. “Why did you come to Korea? What is your mission?”

  “To get a ground-level view of what’s going on. To help formulate a strategy for the secretary of state and the president.”

  “To achieve what goal?” she asks.

  “What?”

  She stops fanning herself and glares at me as if I’m stupid. “Strategies support goals. You said you’re helping formulate a strategy. What goal will your strategy support? It’s a simple question.”

  “To support US policy here in Korea. To protect our interests in East Asia.”

  “Ah, yes. Our interests,” she says, fanning herself again. “American imperialism is not the recipe for world peace, Mr. Simon.”

  “It’s not imperialism,” I counter, switching to English. I shake my head and stand. “Look, I don’t have to sit here and debate US policy with you, whoever you are. Okay?” I look for my shoes, but a hand pushes me back into the chair. It’s not so gentle this time.

  Anna snaps her fan closed and nods. “You are correct,” she says. “We are not here to discuss policy. Instead, you need to hear a story,” she says. “It’s one not many people know.”

  “I don’t care about your story,” I say. “If you really work for State and want to ruin your career with this charade, then by all means. Just do it without me.”

  “My career?” she replies with a raised eyebrow. “So I can be like you and Craig Matthews—harmless, but dead? That is not why I’m here.”

  “I’m not dead,” I protest half-heartedly.

  “Stop worrying so much about your career, Mr. Simon,” Anna says. “I assure you this is far more important to your mission than anything the ambassador or a general or the CIA can tell you. This is the story of the dream of One Korea and the two-headed dragon.”

  I look at the tapestry again. The two-headed dragon stares back at me. The words “One Korea” ring in my head. “Well, Anna,” I say, “looks like I don’t have a choice.”

  “Call me Ja-young,” she says. “That is my Korean name. When I’m in Korea, it is the name I prefer.�
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  I’m pissed about having been abducted and being forced to be the audience for Anna’s show. But with her guards behind me, there’s nothing I can do about it. And I sense there’s something important to learn here. “Okay, tell me your story,” I say. “I hope, for your sake, it doesn’t take too long.”

  “It will take as long as it takes, Mr. Simon. You must listen carefully. Listen and learn.”

  And then the pleasantly warm room and Anna’s queen-like demeanor start to pull me into a spell. It feels like the Korean folk plays Jin-ee and I loved to see when we lived here. I cross my legs and lean back. I hold my gaze on the remarkable figure sitting on the throne above me. Damn, she looks a lot like Jin-ee.

  She sits straight with her hands folded in her lap. She starts in a voice clear and strong. “It was the first warm day of spring when the palace messenger came galloping up the road to the House of Gamgodang where I lived.”

  FOUR

  March 1866. Seoul, Korea

  It was the first warm morning of spring when the palace messenger came galloping up the road to the House of Gamgodang where I lived. Only a few days earlier a warm rain had made the leaves burst into a sweep of green, and the flower buds on the fruit trees were ripe to open. The new bamboo shoots had pushed through the garden like ivory needles through black silk. The air was heavy with new life.

  I first saw the messenger while I sat on the Chinese bench in the bamboo grove reading poems by Chŏng Ch’ŏl. The messenger drove the horse along the wall surrounding the compound and pulled to a stop at the gate. He wore a red tunic jacket and a black joenrip hat with a thick red tassel and a long beaded strap. His horse was a splendid Chinese Datong, tall, muscled, and draped with a polished leather saddle. As the horse snorted and stomped, the messenger called out from the gate, “Anyohaseyo! I have an important message from His Excellency’s court. Come out at once!”

  “His Excellency” was Korea’s powerful regent, the Taewŏn-gun, “Prince of the Great Court,” father of the boy king Gojong. The Taewŏn-gun often summoned my uncle to the palace only a short distance away. So naturally I assumed the messenger had come for him. But I remembered my uncle had left earlier that day for Yongsan-gu on official business for the crown. Surely, the palace would know he wasn’t here. I didn’t think anything of it and was returning to my poems when my uncle’s valet, Mr. Yang, and my aunt came out and exchanged a few words with the messenger. I turned my ear to hear what they were saying, but they were too far away. My aunt exchanged a few words with the messenger and then looked across the bamboo garden and pointed at me. The messenger examined me from atop his mount and nodded. He pulled on the reins and kicked the horse with the heels of his oxskin boots. The horse reared and galloped down the road back toward the palace. My aunt gave me a quick look, lifted her purple chima, and hurried into the house followed closely by Mr. Yang.

  A few seconds later, the back door swung open and Mr. Yang ran to the stables. He roused the stableman and pointed to my uncle’s fastest horse. When the stableman had saddled the horse, Mr. Yang mounted it and went for the gate. As he drove the horse down the road in the opposite direction from where the messenger had come, he shot a disapproving glance at me from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. This, from someone who I thought didn’t even know I existed, sent a shiver through me.

  I couldn’t believe all this commotion was about me. Who was I to have the attention of the palace? I was an orphan girl, dependent on the charity of my father’s brother and the Min clan of the House of Gamgodang. To them, I was like a beggar that appeared at their doorstep four years earlier. And just as people try to avoid beggars, they did their best to avoid me. I didn’t care. In fact, it was the way I wanted it to be. If they could not love me, I wanted them to leave me alone. So I talked only when I was spoken to and was careful to stay out of their way.

  But I had once been loved. I’d been my parent’s only child, and they had nurtured me as only loving parents could. My father had been a scholar and a spiritual man. He insisted I read the teachings of Confucius and Buddha and encouraged me to take up the same studies as boys my age. He told me I was an excellent student and that I learned quickly—faster than the boys. He was tall, strong, handsome, and, though he was a scholar, he liked to do hard work—work usually assigned to servants or put out to cheap labor. He had me help when he fixed roof tiles on our house or when he built a coop for our chickens and ducks. As we worked, he talked about the teachings of Confucius and the poems of the great Korean poets. I loved listening to him, and my heart soared when he put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me after we had finished our work.

  My mother had been more earthly. She was beautiful and petite like me. She had more spirit than anyone. She delighted in growing orchids and loved the wildlife along the Han River a short distance from our house. Her favorites were the red-crowned cranes. She told me the cranes lived for a thousand years and were a sign of good luck and longevity. She would take me to the river’s high banks and we would watch the snowy-white birds with the long black necks and little red caps as they stalked their prey. When one speared a fish or a salamander, she would cheer and grab my hand and I would cover my mouth and laugh. We talked about spirits and the meaning of things that I could not talk about with my father or anyone else. Through her, I knew the cranes, the fish, the trees and flowers, the mountains and sky.

  Together, my parents were heaven and earth, the truth and life, and all the year’s seasons at once. They loved each other like no two people ever did, and I blossomed inside their circle of love.

  But one day, my mother started to change. What was once warm and light turned icy and dark. She stopped talking to my father, as if he was a stranger to her. He desperately tried to bring her back, and his heart broke more every day as she drifted away. Although she was never cruel, my mother didn’t talk to me, either, except to order me away from my books to come help in the kitchen or the garden. I often wondered if she was angry with me. She never went to the river anymore to watch the red-crowned cranes. She would spend hours in her garden talking to her orchids. In the last days, she never asked me to help in the garden when she was there and scolded me to stay away whenever I came close.

  One night, I awoke to voices in the garden. I crawled off my sleeping mat and went to the window. Outside, my mother was angrily talking aloud to no one. “What is it?” she cried. “What do you want from me?” I thought she was talking to her orchids again. Then she said, “Go! Leave me alone!” This time, I thought she was talking to me, so I quickly went back to my mat and covered my ears. I never looked out again when I heard her in the garden at night.

  My father died when I had just turned eleven. One day he was there, looking at me from over the top of his books as I studied Confucius and the classic Chinese teachings. The next day, he was gone like the cranes that vanish on the first cold day of fall. The medicine woman that came from Mapo said that the blood in my father’s head had turned to wood in the middle of the night. After the eight days of mourning, my mother no longer talked to her orchids or tended to the household chores. She stayed in bed, longer and longer each day, until she never got up. I tried to feed her, but she refused to eat. Her orchids died. I often heard her sobbing at night.

  One day she called me to her bedside. Though the nurse had opened the sliding wall to the outside, the room was warm and clammy. My mother was thin and frail, and her eyes were lifeless like those of a dead fish. Lying on her mat, she motioned me to come close. I kneeled beside her.

  “Ja-young,” she said, “soon I will go to the land of our ancestors where I will finally be at peace.”

  “Please stay, Ummah,” I cried. I was afraid of being alone, and I wanted my life to be as it was when my father was alive and she was happy.

  My mother shook her head weakly. “No, I cannot. The spirits scare me, and I cannot convince them to leave me alone.”

  I looked at my hands so she could not see my tears. Outside, the birds chirped ga
ily, mocking my despair. “What will become of me?” I asked.

  She sighed deeply. “Oh, my daughter, I have not been a good mother. I should not have left you. But you are stronger than I am. You are smart and beautiful. Like me, you see things others do not. I was not able to find peace with these things, but you must or they will lead you into the dark as they have done to me. And when you find your peace, you must use your gifts.”

  I shook my head. “But what will I use them for, Ummah?”

  My mother closed her eyes. Then she said in a faraway voice, “The spirits tell me they fear for Korea. I think, my daughter, you who sees so much must try to understand what they are saying. Speak for them. It is your duty to me and your father, and the spirits of our ancestors. It is your duty, your children’s, and your children’s children’s. Find your way. Be strong and do not fail. Promise you will.”

  “Yes, Ummah,” I said. “I promise.” She nodded weakly, and turned away.

  Early the next morning she got out of bed for the first time in weeks and threw herself into the Han River.

  Now, as I sat in my uncle’s bamboo grove, I remembered what my mother had said about my duty. I had been fortunate to have my uncle take me in to the House of Gamgodang after my mother died. It was a lovely place and I did not want for anything. But living here, I wondered if I would ever find my way as my mother said I must. Since I had arrived, I’d spent my time in comfortable idleness. I wasn’t unhappy, yet I was not happy, either. I didn’t hear the spirits my mother spoke of. My life was like the days in late winter when everything is quiet and still and you think spring will never come.