Late spring, 1632

Temple in Mount Taebaeksan

Choi Jina refused food and ignored her medication. The pain was a welcome distraction, and the fever let her sink into an oblivion that was devoid of all thoughts. She was aware of men tending to her lacerated, infected back but had become immune to their presence.

Until the physician, an imposing man with charcoal ash hair, lost his patience one day and yelled, "I am already losing one. I refuse to lose you too! EAT!"

A sliver of alarm had run through her body at his raised voice. The monk with him immediately admonished the man for his impudence. However, conditioned to obey a command from a male authority figure without question, she complied immediately. She wriggled up from her prone position and reached for the spoon. For the first time, she had been aware of someone as a person, rather than shadows she relegated to the periphery of her pointless existence, though if someone asked her, Jina could not tell what she had eaten.

The man later patted her head when he thought she was sleeping and said, "I am sorry, child, for being harsh. But you will not die under my watch."

Jina had not opened her eyes, but she had listened. Despite her attempts at noncooperation, she started healing.

However, Choi Jina's body recovered faster than her mind, which refused to mend. It had fallen apart, and she could not figure out how to pick up the pieces and fit them correctly.

Her mind would be blank for days, and she would stare at the cherry blossom tree outside the chamber window. Jina watched its bare limbs sprout miniature nubs that grew into green sprouts. Soon, the tree was laden with cherry blooms that bent the branches to their tune. Magpies nested somewhere deep within its rich, flowery limbs. Silvereyes flapped their little olive wings, probing each pink flower with their tiny beaks, unable to decide which bloom tasted the best. She watched the tree shed the pink and wear just green emotionlessly. She never missed its olive feather friends, either.

The abyss to which her mind retreated at night was anything but empty. Instead, it was filled with dark spectres that woke her up and kept her awake, her body drenched in sweat. In a recurring nightmare, she would be tossed over a shoulder, thrown into a ditch, and Seung would appear. "Take me home," she would cry, but he would turn away, and then her father would appear with a lash in his hand.

She stopped sleeping at night.

Jina started wandering out, only to meet kind gazes that led her back to her chamber like a lost waif. It didn't stop her, though.

One night, faint sobbing cries drew Jina to another chamber not too far from where she lodged. She stood outside the door for some time, listening to muffled sobs of what sounded like a grown man.

The following evening, her feet walked in that direction on their own accord. When she peeked into the chamber, she saw a woman under many layers of covers, with an old monk sitting by her side, reading his scriptures.

An exceptionally tall man with wet salt and pepper hair hanging around his broad face approached the chamber. It was the giant man, the physician, who had yelled at her a few days ago.

"How are you feeling, my lady?" The man asked in a gruff voice. Alarmed at being found outside her chamber and worried he was upset, Jina lost her nerve, nodded awkwardly and retreated without answering.

Two nights later, Jina's curiosity took her inside the chamber. The woman was small, frail and unconscious. The young monk attending her whispered. "She is gravely ill, my lady." Beaten and hit on the head, the woman had slumped and never recovered. The woman slept on her back, her hands lying limply by her side. Jina looked at her wrists. Horrified, she had let out a muffled cry. They had severe bruising and had marks as if she had been chained.

Jina smoothed the young woman's forehead with her hands, tears clogging her vision. She was grey and lifeless, even though the slight up and down movement of her chest indicated she was still hanging on to her life by a thread.

The woman died the following evening.

Choi Jina was overcome with grief that seemed strangely personal. She didn't know the woman, did not know what her name was. Yet Jina felt a rage that ravaged her insides. Another nameless woman who had lost her life because the humans who held power over her decided she was not worthy of living.

Jina sightlessly stumbled into the woods, trying to escape the vile ghosts that chased her. Hatred, shame and hopelessness spewed a volcano that bubbled within her.

That was when, in a twist of fate, Choi Jina came upon a young girl being cornered by two men, one of them with a knife glinting in his hand. "Don't make it difficult for us. We will make it quick," the man with the knife crooned.

The evening was raw, trying to hold onto the last bits of the light, which left its fold rapidly. The girl backed up from them and picked up a rock. Even in the dim light, Jina could see her terror-filled eyes rounded in shock and despair.

Something snapped within Jina. A lava of fury simmering inside her burst open and devoured her. All that was left behind was a red haze, a cloud of insanity that demanded complete submission of her rational mind. A keen sound emitted. Jina wasn't sure where it came from, but when it turned into a howling, unholy wail of wrath, she knew it was her.

Jina charged down the hill, unmindful of the prickly bushes or loose gravely soil her feet slipped on. Frantically, she grabbed whatever was within reach and hurled it at them. Her hands clasped around something twine-like, which she yanked from its roots ferociously, her rage giving her a strength she didn't know she had. She wildly swung it at them.

While her efforts of assault were futile, her raging bellows were not. Taken aback by her sudden appearance and ensuing eruption, the two men instinctively recoiled in fear at her raging dance of madness. Her unexpected presence in the woods and the fact that she didn't quite look like she belonged to this world, the dusk giving her deathly pale complexion a ghostly aura, caused the man to drop his knife. The men turned tail and scattered into the thickness of the bushes.

Jina didn't think. She grabbed the girl who had been as frozen in fear at Jina's crazed state as the men and dragged her by the wrist. The girl, after one moment of hesitation, followed Jina.

Jina's howls brought unexpected help. Two monks carrying swords appeared at the top of the hill, led by the giant man in grey attire she had come to think of as 'the physician'.

Jina wasn't sure of the order of the events that followed. One of her wounds had reopened, and the physician was tending her, his eyes red and moist. The monks had led the rescued girl away. Jina shivered in the aftermath, curling into a foetal position, vaguely aware that her fever had returned.

When the important-looking man in official robes came the following morning at dawn with several men holding fire torches, Jina was utterly unprepared. The official was a massive man with a girth that could accommodate the trunks of three oak trees. Two of his men dragged her outside and threw her at his feet.

"We found this woman, My Lord."

She was surrounded by the monks, all kneeling on the ground.

One of the men yanked her by the hair and exposed her face to the man.

"She is not her," the official roared. "Where is she? Where did you hide my slave?"

The head monk stepped forward. Giving a respectful bow, the monk knelt in subjugation. "My Lord, two of my monks rescued a lost girl in the forest yesterday, but she was gravely injured and died in the night. She is being buried even as we speak. We did not know she was a runaway slave."

"I don't believe you. She cannot be dead. Where are you hiding her?" the man yelled, looking around furiously. Jina thought she detected a note of desperation in his voice.

"My Lord, if you follow me, I can show you where she is being buried."

The fat official demanded all the people in the compound follow him, ordering his men to keep a tight watch so no one could escape. When they reached the burial, a good stretch away from the monastery, the men at the burial site had already started throwing dirt in the grave. All they could see were the feet and a bit of the skirt of the slave girl.

The official gave a cry that sounded quite like misery. He hurried to the pit as fast as his massive body allowed and sat on the edge. "Sui Ni..." he screamed. "You cannot leave me! Take her out, take her out. I want to see her. She cannot be buried here; I want to take her back."

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The monk spoke calmly, gently, and persuasively, "My lord, we have read the prayers for the dead for this grave. Changing a grave can cause unrest to the departed soul. Moreover, there is a disquieting thing the girl told me before she died. She was pursued by two men who attacked her on the orders of a lady of their household. Also, this girl was carrying a child. Disturbing her can cause her soul not to find a release and wander to revenge on those who wronged her and her unborn child."

The man paled at the thought of having the dead girl haunt his home. He turned on his men and soon had the two men who had chased the slave girl on the orders of his wife dragged away. But his anger had not diminished. To Jina's horror, the man walked to her and grabbed her chin, tipping it up. The eyes that stared back at her had a strange gleam in them. "This face....who is this woman?"

His touch repulsed her. Nausea threatened as fragments of another disgusting touch flooded her fragile mind. Jina tried to twist away her face, but his vice-like grip only ended up bruising her chin. The man licked his lips.

"Forgive me, my lord," a heavy, gravelly voice said. It was the physician. "Her name is Kim Minjae. I beg for forgiveness if her presence offends you."

"Oh, she does not offend me at all. What a rare beauty. How could I not have seen you before, Kim Minjae?"

The unfamiliar rage returned, and Jina pushed his hand. "Please do not touch me, my lord," she said coldly. The man's eyes widened in surprise and narrowed calculatively.

"How is your speech so refined when your clothes are not? Did you serve a rich master?"

"My lord, she is not a local. She is only a devotee; she has come with me," the physician said.

The official looked the physician up and down. "You are the visiting physician of our village, right?"

"Yes, I am, my lord," the physician replied calmly.

The obese man observed the physician with narrow eyes. "So why is she with you?"

"I am her unfortunate father, Kim Seo Jun. I have brought my daughter here so she could pray in repentance."

Jina started in shock but kept her head down, swallowing her surprise at the turn of the conversation.

The official made an odd sound and grabbed the physician by the collar. "It must have been you who tended to my woman and killed her. Looks like you can perhaps pay for your terrible blunder. You could not save my favourite slave girl, so I will take your daughter instead."

Pure terror turned Jina's blood into ice. Jina tried to steel herself against her rising panic, ironically the first tangible feeling she had felt since her father had thrown her away like a rag doll. She dug her nails into her thighs through her thick skirt to keep her hands from shaking. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the monks move; all of them abruptly coiled like panthers as if ready to pounce.

The physician said, "She is not worthy of you, my lord. She is married. Her husband beat her after a powerful lord forced himself on her and threw her out."

The official's eyes narrowed, and he pushed the physician away. "Then she is even more fit to be my slave. I will pay good coin for her."

"She is scarred, my lord."

Before Jina could comprehend, the physician approached her, grabbed her by the arms, and lifted her to her feet. He then ordered her to loosen the strings of her coarse jacket. Terrified, Jina looked at the head monk for help, and the tall old man gave her a slight nod, his kind eyes asking him to trust them.

As soon as she loosened the jacket, the physician turned her around roughly and lifted the back of her coat. An audible gasp rose behind her, and the flap of her jacket was dropped almost as fast as it had lifted.

"My daughter is not fit for you, my lord," the physician repeated.

"A lower-class man dared to do that to his wife because of a lord?" The man sneered.

"My son-in-law is a rich merchant in Tosan, my lord. His name is Jo Sung Ha. He commands merchant ships, and he is angry because my daughter committed the sin of carrying another man's child."

The toad gave Jina a speculative glance.

"I see. So, she has already been soiled and discarded. This is a waste of great beauty. Getting rid of a child should be easy, physician. And I don't mind a few scars. I might even consider making her a concubine if she behaves."

The physician was breathing angrily, aware that his excuses had only worsened matters. His hands were bunched around the fabric of his tunic so tightly his knuckles were white.

The old monk moved closer to the obnoxious lord. "My Lord, taking a devotee from a temple is not advisable. If the word gets out, it will reflect poorly on you as well as us," the old monk said, but this time, there was a dangerous undertone in his voice that had been absent earlier.

"My men will never dare to speak about this," the toad boasted.

"I am afraid I cannot allow something like this to occur at this sacrosanct place," the monk said, his voice deathly quiet, his tone brokering no argument to his intent.

The toad opened his mouth, about to say something, then stopped as he became aware of his surroundings. Even though he had come with several men, he was still outnumbered by the monks, renowned across Joseon for their martial arts prowess, all of whom were well-trained warriors. His men would stand no chance. The royals visited this temple, and the King would ruin him if the word got out.

An ugly red spread on that man's rotund face, his cave-like nostrils puffing with fury.

"I will investigate, and if I find any part of your story untrue, I will disembowel you with my own hands and then take her!" The man spewed spittle on the physician's face.

The party of the official disappeared.

Shaken, Jina tried to coalesce her runaway thoughts. The monks led her back to her room. A little while later, a young monk guided her to the head monk's chamber.

The physician knelt before her. "I apologise, my lady. I deserve to die for my audacity to let impure eyes fall on your person. Please punish me as you see fit."

"We apologise for putting your honour at stake, my lady. Please forgive us," the monk said.

So much had happened so quickly that Jina found it difficult to process, but she understood that the unthinkable act of disrobing her back to strange men might have saved her life and prevented bloodshed.

"I am ashamed, but I also understand," Jina whispered, the heat of mortification slowly creeping up her cheeks. "Did the rescued girl die?" She asked, her spirits broken.

"No, my lady, it was not her," the monk said quietly. He explained it was the woman who had died the previous evening. They had switched her clothes with the runaway girl, and they had already stowed her away until they could send her somewhere safer.

"Where will she go?"

"We do not know yet, my lady. We have helped people in the past, but not runaway female slaves. We will need to raise some funds before that. But please do not worry. Right now, we need to think about your safety. You will have to leave the temple immediately. We will have to move you somewhere else," the head monk said.

The thought of going anywhere new, away from the safety of these people she had come to trust, made her want to throw up.

"Why? He is gone."

"He might come back, so we cannot risk it. You still need medical attention. So we have decided to send you with Physician Kim Seo Jun to Ganghwa until you recover."

"Ganghwa?" Jina tried to calm her panic. "But I don't know him. And why would he take me?"

"You will travel as his daughter, Kim Minjae. On the island, you will live as his daughter. No one will suspect," the old monk said. "Moreover, even if Sang were to investigate, our story would line up. You must leave the temple and go to Ganghwa, my lady." Jina's tender ears, conditioned for years to pick up nuances of discontent, did not miss the steely resolve in his voice.

Jina felt hysteria rise in her chest. "I am very thankful to all of you for getting me out of a difficult situation, but I cannot go with a stranger. I want to go to my grandmother's village."

"Your wounds are not healed and can turn poisonous. And you do not have a place to go even if we send you to your grandmother's village. And," the monk paused, "if someone like Inspector Sang causes trouble, we will not be able to help."

Jina felt the fragile comfort zone her mind had found in this temple slip away rapidly. Growing desperate, she pleaded, "Then let me stay here."

"Unfortunately, temples are not the safest places for women. You are not out of danger. He might try to kidnap you, and if he succeeds, all of us will be forced to accept you as his woman by law," the monk said.

"That's preposterous! I am a married woman; he can't do that. My father will have his head. My husband -"

Choi Jina stopped, aware that colour was slowly leeching out of her face.

She had no father, no husband.

Jina swallowed, fear bunching her insides as the reality of his words sank in.

"My lady, if I may interrupt," the physician spoke up from the back of the room. He slowly came forward and bowed. "Inspector Sang has his eye on you now, and the man is known to take away vulnerable women forcibly he takes fancy to. He was not prepared enough today, but he will come after you. The monks can fight him, but it will cause bloodshed and bring the wrath of the King upon the temple."

"What is the guarantee that man won't come after me on the island?"

"Official Sang might want you but will not leave his village or travel across the sea for you, my lady."

"Why are you going to such lengths for me? You do not even know who I am," Jina asked. She was not yet ready to give up the voice she suddenly found out of sheer desperation. The world was too big, too strange, too unknown and too scary, and she could not trust a stranger, even if he were one who had seemingly risked his life to save hers.

"You are correct; we do not know who you are, and we do not need to know. It's up to you to disclose it when you deem fit," the monk replied. "However, you are in our safekeeping, my lady. We are indebted to the man who sent you to us, and we will protect you at all costs. Moreover, Ganghwa is only half a day away from here. Physician Kim Seo Jun can always bring you back here for visits."

"It would be an honour if you came with me. You will live like my daughter, and I promise I will protect you with my life," the physician added kindly.

"People will know I am not your daughter, and our ruse will be up." Jina felt a calm hatred of a cornered animal resisting its inevitable demise.

"No one has seen my daughter on the island since she was eight. It has been twelve years," the physician reassured her.

"I understand Kun Seunim's (monk) motivation. But why are you helping me, Physician Kim Seo Jun? What if your daughter comes back?" Choi Jina asked the physician, still adamant, though she knew her objections would make little difference as the head monk had already made up his mind.

The proud man's shoulder stooped, and his voice broke. "My daughter will never return, my lady. We just buried her in that unnamed grave. If I can save you, I will feel her death was not in vain."