Ballad of the Mountain Fox

제 16 장: Composing the Counter-Curse

“No, no, no.  She said it was ‘crossing over the mountain,’ not ‘going over the mountain’…”

There was a twang, and then the hollow thud of a drum.  “Stop being so nitpicky.  It still gets the same idea across anyway.”

“Well, what about the first part?  Isn’t there something we can substitute in for the gibberish?”

Upon hearing this suggestion, I cracked open an eye and looked over at the huddle of musicians.  “The ‘gibberish’ stays.  You want it to rhyme, don’t you?”

The drummer who had spoken looked startled that I had overheard him.  “Uh…of course, Moon Sun!  You’re version is very good.  But, if I may ask—why arirang and arariyo?”

“Arirang is another name for this mountain road, didn’t you know?” I replied lazily.  “Arariyo is just, uh, the next thing that rhymes.”

“Is it really?  I always thought the mountain road was just Saeje, like the village.”

“Yes.”  No.  I had made it up on the spur of the moment, so as not to draw suspicion that it was a spell word.  But the old mountain shaman had insisted that the word be used to break the curse, and so I had no other choice.  Anyway, it was a nice-sounding name, better than Bird Pass.

“Oh.  You must forgive us, we’re not from here—”

“Obviously,” I muttered.

“—my companions and I were born in Gwangju.”

“Is that so?” I said without the slightest bit of interest.  “How remarkable.”  It had barely been a day, and already I was growing weary of the company of these fools.  At least we were finished walking now that we had reached the village.  Humans moved so slowly.

At first, the group had been hesitant to accept me when I had accosted them on the mountain pass earlier that morning after visiting the shaman.  After hearing my singing and witnessing my prowess on the gayageum, however, they were easily swayed, and I became the first and only female in the group—traveling performers back in those days were typically men.

Now, if only I could get the proper words of the counter-curse through their thick heads!  The shaman had told me the key words that needed to be used, and I had written them down for the slow-thinking performers to better comprehend.

The shaman had taken a long time to trace the curse with the nobleman’s hair that I had given him.  Eventually, though, he had been able to figure out what most of the spell consisted of.  As he had surmised, it was a sort of lover’s revenge, which accused the yangban of leaving his lover.  Ironically, the spell then compelled the nobleman to literally leave and travel over the mountain, and become increasingly crippled in the process.  The problem was, though, that if he didn’t manage to free himself of the curse by springtime, he would remain cursed forever.  I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t take until spring to fix the matter—I didn’t want to be stuck in this agreement for so long, trying to break the curse brought about by a whiny jilted woman.

The self-centered brat.  Who compared their beauty to that of a blooming flower in the winter?  In my opinion, the nobleman was smart to have left such vanity.

One thing about the curse was still a mystery to me, though.  Why offer an escape from the curse at all?  And by coming to my mountain, of all places?  Was there something more that the old shaman had missed in his assessment?

I was interrupted from my musings once the musicians began to bicker again.  Sighing, I stood up and moved closer to the huddle of actors and dancers.  They each were wearing painted wooden masks—some with women’s faces, others with men’s—and going through their different acts.