Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (32 page)

She ran toward the ruined sock factory, tears streaming down her
frightened face. After her came a pack of boys, their heavy shoes echoing on the
empty street. The boy in the lead was Dong-sun, the butcher's son.

I slid back down into the ditch. The rest of the boys, wearing castoff
soldier's clothing, shouted and shoved each other as they ran, chasing after the
girl as if she were a dog. Chung-hee trotted in the middle of the pack, the backs of
his bare ears showing red in the cold. They herded the girl into the alley. Dong-sun
grabbed her braid, yanking her to a stop. She stumbled in the dirt, and the boys
closed in around her.

I knew then that Chung-hee had left us. He had broken off from the world
where Mother and I still lived as a family. The things we did here in this world,
the rules we followed, meant nothing to Chung-hee. He and the other boys had created
their own world out of the bombs falling, the bullets exploding, the tanks rolling.
They had found and filled a new space.

W
hen I returned, Mother worked
in the storehouse, scooping out the last of the cooking oil. I gave her the hairclip
and told her that the Lees had closed their shop and moved away. I didn't tell her
the rest. The radio was on again, the serious voice reading out the missing-persons
messages. Mother's face fell. We had received only one letter from Father since he
joined the army, and that had been six months ago. I sometimes thought Mother was
like the chickens—frightened by the guns, but afraid to move too far from the place
she knew. After all, if we left, how would Father know where to find us?

I played with little brother, letting him grab my hair and pull it with
his fists. It was late afternoon before I could get back to the chicken coop.

Turtle was ill. His face was pink, full of hot blood. He wouldn't talk
to me, only lay there moaning.

I thought our food must not have been good for him. I was used to the
weevils and the old stale taste of the cabbage. His body must not have liked it. He
sweated, even as his breath made clouds of steam in the cold. I heaped straw around
him. He twisted in his makeshift bed, throwing off the straw, pieces clinging in his
hair. He opened his hands, and the pictures flowed in a jumble. People, animals,
buildings, were all mixed up—a dog with a wagon wheel for hind legs, a flower
growing out of a kettle.

I brought him another blanket, an old one that used to be Chung-hee's. I
worried that Turtle would die. I pushed him back on the ground, and tucked the
blanket around him. Still he shook and moaned. He cried out in his strange voice and
I worried that someone would hear. I slid under the blanket beside him, and
pretended that he was Chung-hee, back when we were friends. Chung-hee before the war
when Father was with us and the radio played songs that Mother sang to as she sewed
and we played games and thought alike and loved each other.

Turtle fell asleep, clenching the blanket. Mother was distracted,
worried about Father and Chung-hee, hands full with the baby, but she would notice
if I stayed away all night. I slid from under the blanket and left Turtle sleeping
in the empty chicken coop.

T
he next morning, Turtle was
gone. The straw was patted down like an animal's nest, leaving the shape of where he
had laid in the night.

Outside the chicken house, yesterday's half-melted snow had frozen too
hard to leave any footprints. I raced out the courtyard gate and looked up and down
the empty street. Had Chung-hee found Turtle sleeping in our shed? I told myself
Chung-hee wouldn't have hurt him.

A strong gust of wind bit through my sweater, blowing away the gray
clouds and the recent snows. The gate of Hye-su's house next door banged back
against the courtyard wall. My heart jumped with relief. That gate had been latched
ever since Hye-su and her family had packed up and headed for the train station at
the end of summer. But now it was loose. Someone had been inside.

I ran through the gate. Hye-su's courtyard was exactly the way I
remembered. One small window was broken. Snow piled in the north-facing corners and
where it had blown off the roof. I wondered why Turtle had come here, why he hadn't
stayed safe and warm in our chicken coop.

A shadow moved inside Hye-su's house, passing quickly in front of the
window.

I stepped closer. “Turtle?” I whispered.

A hand shot out of the doorway and grabbed my arm. I screamed, and the
hand spun me around.

“What are you doing sneaking around here?” Chung-hee demanded.

I stared at my big brother. I didn't know what he was doing in Hye-su's
old house, but I knew he was up to no good. I wished I could tell him about Turtle;
Chung-hee would be able to help me search faster. He would know more places where a
boy might hide.

“I know you have a boyfriend,” he said. He tightened his grip on my arm,
twisting the skin under my sweater. His eyes were so brown and hard, like flat river
stones faraway under the water. I wanted to tell my brother that he wasn't alone.
That everything he had seen, I had seen, too.

“I didn't think you were old enough.” Chung-hee's harsh black eyebrows
bristled together, like angry caterpillars. “But now that you are, you can help put
rice in our bowls.”

I remembered the girl in the alley by the sock factory. I jerked my arm
back, and shoved Chung-hee hard in the chest.

He laughed in my face, his mouth wide open. Even his breath had changed.
It was a man's breath, a hot stinky blast of smoke and old food. He twisted my arm
behind my back. “You're as bony as a crow, Min-hee. But you're young, and that
counts for something.”

I was crying. I couldn't understand what had become of my brother. I
spat in his face.

Chung-hee's fist knocked me in the jaw.

I fell, and he leaned over me, ready to hit me again. He was breathing
hard, his face red and ugly.

A plane buzzed over the mountains north of us, followed by a dull thud.
There was a low whistle from the street, and Dong-sun, the butcher's son, poked his
head over the wall. “Let's go,” he called to Chung-hee.

My brother turned his back on me and ran after Dong-sun.

I stood. My mouth was full of blood and snot, and one of my front teeth
felt loose. A shell exploded a few houses away, rattling the ground. I thought of
Turtle wandering in his bare feet, alone, unable to ask or explain. I ran out of
Hye-su's yard, calling his name.

I
found Turtle on the edge of
town where walled houses gave way to open fields and scattered farms bordered by the
mountains. I had no idea how he had gotten there. Turtle, in his flimsy shirt and
pants, with Chung-hee's blanket wrapped around him, was staring off over the rocky,
snow-covered fields. His face was no longer flushed with fever, but his eyes glowed
with bright determination, like a boy on the day of an important exam.

As soon as he saw me, his hands flew into action, kneading the air.
Images flickered between his hands like the propeller on a plane, too fast to see
any single blade.

“Slow down,” I said. “Just do one at a time.” I put my hand on his
shoulder.

I knew he couldn't understand me, but the tone of my voice must have
reached him. He breathed out, long and hard. Then, with his hands, he stretched and
pulled, and landscapes unrolled between his palms. Turtle's eyes were intent on me,
urgent. There were no cornfields or big blue skies. No red-painted barns or black
and white cows. Just one picture after another of winter woods, and mud, and broken
trees. At first I didn't recognize them.

“Wait,” I said. “Go back.” There had been something familiar in the last
scene.

I waved my hand in a circle, like a clock circling backward.

He shuffled the scenes between his hands.

“Stop!”

He held the picture still. The trees were broken, the ground churned
into deep, hardened ruts. It took me time to recognize it because it had changed so
much. But I did know it. It was the woods near the Parks' farm.

We headed west out of town, toward the granite mountains. The winter sun
glowed a pale yellow that heated my skin under my scratchy sweater as we jogged
along the deserted streets. We crossed the railroad tracks and traveled out into the
open country.

The Parks' farm lay in the next valley over. The mountains fed a stream
that watered their pumpkin fields and flowed all the way down to the sea thirty
miles away. We crossed the open fields, trampling the dried grasses. Blood surged
into my face where Chung-hee had hit me, swelling my lip.

Ahead, fog swirled out of a thick forest of pines. I stopped at the edge
of the woods and turned to the boy. I dialed my hand forward, telling him to show me
the next picture. He showed me a stream, rushing with water. A slab of granite,
glazed with ice, rose above the current.

I knew that rock. In the summer we dove from its flat top, splashing
into the clear, cold pool. Its surface was pocked with holes all over, like the
spots on a frog's back. The holes filled with water when it rained and seemed to
stare up like a hundred liquid eyes.

I tried to remember the way to the rock. I had only been to the river in
summer. It was all so different now. Mist filled the woods, and I didn't want to
step inside. I wondered why Turtle wanted so badly to come here and how he knew what
it looked like.

We climbed up the rocky spine of a ridge and stumbled down the other
side, through the splintered, broken trunks of what used to be a grove of beautiful,
tall birch trees. The armies had crossed back and forth over these hills for weeks
and had left behind a trail of ruined equipment—shredded tires, ragged camouflage
nets, even a tank sitting lopsided in deep, churned ruts.

Though he must have been weak from his fever and at least as hungry as I
was, Turtle kept pace. Halfway down, the spring that fed the stream burst from a
cleft in the granite, and we followed the spill of its waters to the bottom of the
valley.

We walked downstream, picking our way over the slick rocks. Up ahead,
the stream churned through a narrow channel, then widened and slowed. A tall, strong
pine grew beside the pool, its drooping branches brushing the flat top of a granite
boulder. The stream had carved away the bank beneath, leaving the mottled red slab
to stretch out over the calm, deep pool.

Turtle came forward and clutched my arm, looking past me at the rock as
if he were afraid.

I remembered what the old people said about the rock, that a spirit
lived inside it, looking out at the world through its hundred eyes. Once, Hye-su,
Chung-hee, and I and some others had come to the stream to swim, and had found an
orange and a handful of rice on top of the rock, left as an offering to the
spirit.

Bumps stood out on Turtle's thin wrists. Under Chung-hee's blanket, he
shook from the cold. His look said that he didn't know any more about what was going
on than I did.

I let go of Turtle's hand and climbed up on the rock.

And stopped. A dead man slumped against the other side. His still arms
were wrapped around his middle, his green soldier's uniform soaked through with
blood. The blood was on his sleeves, on his bare hands, on his trousers, and on the
stones and snow below him. It was old blood, brown and congealed. His soldier's
helmet lay on the ground beside him, and his head drooped loose on his neck. The
dead man's hair was the same color as Turtle's, the same shade of red-bean
porridge.

Turtle shouted “Pa!” and ran toward the man, dropping Chung-hee's
blanket on the snowy ground.

I had no idea how Turtle had appeared in my courtyard three nights ago,
or what had pulled him out of his bed an ocean away and led him to his father's body
here in the blasted forest, but it wasn't natural.

“We should go,” I said.

Turtle didn't move.

The man on the ground opened his eyes.

Very slowly, the soldier raised his head and settled it back upright on
his neck. His skin was gray-white and his lips blue. But his eyes focused on Turtle.
There was no doubt that he recognized his son.

The man's mouth moved, and he tried to smile.

The soldier unfolded his arms. It was no good, I could see that at once.
He must have been in so much pain. When his arms moved away from his body, I saw the
hole torn in his side. I could see right through his bloody uniform, right through
his ragged skin to the shiny red, white, and black bloody insides of him. But he
stretched his arms wider.

Turtle stepped toward him, then stopped and turned back to me. Turtle's
eyes met mine, and he pressed both hands flat against his chest.

Then Turtle went to his father, knelt, and stepped between his
outstretched hands.

The soldier folded his arms around Turtle, pulling him into an embrace.
Before I had a chance to say good-bye, the edges of the boy rolled up and he
collapsed from the inside like a building falling in on itself.

The soldier's arms dropped onto his chest, limp and lifeless. His head
lolled against the rough granite. The stream rushed past, seeking the sea, the spray
licking the toes of the dead man's boots, casting them with ice. There was no trace
of Turtle. He had gone, evaporated like the food in my stomach.

I dropped down on the riverbank in the snow, and cried into the neck of
my sweater. Turtle was gone, and I was alone again. My own world that I had thought
solid and indivisible, the world where Father sat at the head of the table, and
Mother sang songs from the radio, and Chung-hee carried me on his bike, had
disappeared forever. There was no longer any trace of the family we had been, no
more than there was a piece of Turtle's sail-patterned shirt or his red-porridge
hair left behind on the trampled snow in front of me.