Ballad of the Mountain Fox

제 13 장: Interlude for Information

“Ya!  Old man!”

The aforementioned old man gave a snort, scratched his belly, and rolled over.

I gave him a kick.

“Ow!  What?”

I crouched beside his bedroll, a not-so-sincere smile across my face.

“Have you been eating well, ahjussi?” I asked sweetly.  For added effect, I let my fangs show.

“Gah!”  The old shaman scrambled backwards and against the wall.  “M-M-Moon Sun!  Wh-what a surprise!  Why are you here?”

“A surprise, you say?” I echoed, leaning in closer.  “Yes, I would be surprised too, to see that I had yet again failed to rid this mountain of its fox demon.  Just how many of those spirit traps did you set up this weekend, hmm?”

“Now, I didn’t mean—”

“Save the lies for someone who’ll listen,” I snapped, standing back up.  “The bottom line is, thanks to your concern over my well-being, I’ve now become indebted to someone.  You are going to help me pay them back.”

“I’m…what?”

“Or would you rather not live to see the sun set tonight, ahjussi?”

“I-I…”  The old man finally got to his feet, though he still leaned heavily against the wall for support.  Finally, he took a deep breath and nodded.  “Is it a spell you need?”

I crossed my arms.  “Information about a curse, actually.  One of the travelers is becoming quite ill with something.  What can your books tell you?”  I cast a glance over to the piles of scrolls and books along the far wall.  Some were arranged in neat stacks, but mostly papers were just scattered everywhere.

“You mean, you’re actually helping someone?  A human?” the shaman asked wide-eyed.

“I had very little choice in the matter, thanks to your meddling,” I snapped.  “And after all, he did provide me with a wonderful meal the other day.”  I took yet another step closer to the man and whispered confidentially “Highwaymen.”

The shaman grew pale, and I laughed at his expression.  I licked my lips and turned away, allowing him space to move to his books.

“So, uh…what does this curse look like?” the shaman asked as he ruffled through his papers, trying to sort through the mess.

“There’s a weak green aura about him,” I said.  “It pains him to walk.  And it’s apparently getting worse.”

The shaman nodded, picking out a worn journal from one pile and flipping through the pages.  “How old is this person?  What does he look like?”

“Young enough to get into trouble easily,” I retorted, then amended, “Somewhere around twenty-four, perhaps?”  Humans lived so quickly, it was hard to pinpoint an exact age.

The shaman nodded, still flipping through the pages of his journal.  “And his appearance?”

“Well, he has nice facial features, I suppose, for a human.  His teeth looked well taken-care of, and his nails were clean.”

“It doesn’t matter what—” the shaman interrupted, but upon meeting my gaze, cleared his throat and lowered his voice to a more respectful tone.  “I mean, what was he wearing?”

I gave a huff of annoyance.  “Nobleman’s clothes, of course.  Do you thing a sangmin would have clean nails?”  I looked down at my own—one had broken while I was trying to get out of the spirit trap earlier that morning.

The shaman’s own fingertips, stained with ink, turned yet another page in the journal.  “Young and wealthy—sounds like a lover’s revenge, to me,” he muttered.

“So what can be done about it?” I asked.

The shaman’s index finger came to rest on a certain line in his book, and his lips moved soundlessly as he reread the sentence.

“Well?” I pressed.

“Usually there’s an opportunity to free oneself from the curse, dictated by the one who cast the spell,” the shaman said.  “But we would have to know the exact words said during the spell casting.”

“Is there another way?” I asked.

“There is one small loophole—to dilute the curse’s potency.”

“And how would we do that?”

The old man turned a shade paler at the use of “we” and not “I,” but continued on without objection.  “Well, we’d do some guesswork with what exactly the curse mentioned,” he began.  “Then we’d make our own version of the curse and share it with others.”

“Curse others?” I said, curious.

“No!”  He looked appalled.  “Curses come in rhymes, as you know.  We’d pass it off as a simple song or poem, then, and not a curse.  Once the curse is no longer thought of as a curse, it loses its power.  See?”

I made a noncommittal grunt in reply and crossed my arms.  “So how do we guess what this curse mentioned?”

The man shook his head.  “I’d need something to trace the spell with—something that belongs to this yangban who’s been cursed.”

“What about this?”  I held the item in-between my thumb and forefinger and gave it a shake.

“A hair?  Are you sure it’s his?”  The shaman looked skeptical.

I fixed him with a glare before giving the strand a sniff.  “It has his scent.  I found it on the human who helped me this morning.”

The shaman shrank back with a nervous laugh, not wanting to bring up the subject of the spirit traps again.  “A-alright then, that should work.”  I handed him the hair, and he studied it for a moment before casting an anxious glance back up at me.

I sighed.

“How long will it take?”

“I-I’ll hurry,” he stuttered.  “Just wait outside a bit.  Feel free to walk around the garden and hunt any rabbits.”

“Hmph.”

I turned to the door, determined not to help him rid his garden of the very creatures eating up his food.  Then again, I could smell a few of them very near, and all the struggling in the spirit trap that morning had made me awfully hungry…

“You have a half an hour, ahjussi,” I warned from the doorway.  “If it takes you any longer to come up with a counter-curse…” I let my nails carry out the rest of the threat, trailing them down the wood of the door to leave long scratches in the wood.

The shaman gulped visibly, and I gave a cheerful smile.

“Well, I’ll let you get to work!”

My smile dropped as soon as I left the hut and headed for the garden.  Finding the counter-curse would only be the beginning of paying off my debt.  It was going to be a long day.

 ========================================================

Ahjussi literally means “uncle,” but in Korea, the title can be applied to an older gentleman to show respect—of course, I use the term ironically here, since if I hadn’t needed the shaman for answers, he would already have been missing his liver.

Actually, his liver probably wouldn’t have been worth eating anyway.  So he’d just be dead, then.

Oh, I’m sorry—I forgot you haven’t finished with your drink.  Hopefully I didn’t upset your appetite?

Yangban, as you might recall, is the word for a nobleman, and so sangmin is the word for a commoner.  Obviously, noblemen have nicer teeth and better-kept nails than commoners.  Only the shaman is such a fool that I’d have to spell it out for him.  You would understand if I had described someone in that way, wouldn’t you?

 Of course?  You don’t seem so sure…