Notes.

In addition to the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Preacher's character was also first conceived immediatly after listening the song "Jesus He Knows Me" from Genesis. My love for Phil Collins is to blame.

CHAPTER LIX

"Cause Jesus he knows me
And he knows I'm right
I've been talking to Jesus all my life
Oh yes he knows me
And he knows I'm right
And he's been telling me
Everything is alright"

(Genesis, british artists, " Jesus He Knows Me")

a. Sacred Eloquence

As the days went by, Mago witnessed the development of a routine, a rhythm, a custom, and it was clear that it was neither pleasant nor reassuring. The abrupt entry, so to speak with great pomp since it had been very sudden and unexpected, of Baek Dong Soo's dead parents into his life, as well as of her master's father, who was as lout as he was clumsy and regularly reminded her of a enormous pig that someone would have soaked in alcohol, although she found the comparison rather unkind to pigs in general, seemed to have cast a wind of discord, tension, exasperation and mutism over the whole house, blended with the stinking reminiscences of unspoken words, kept to oneself.

Mago had not been present at their first reunion, but the account their host had given to his wife the next day, during breakfast, and to which they had kindly included her, something she had appreciated as she had expected to be once again relegated to the side due to her lack of connection with the whole situation and its players, had not been particularly encouraging. His statement that his father and mother, after the brief effusion of the first few minutes of the meeting, had apparently shown a cold detachment and above all a kind of embarrassed awkwardness, had been confirmed by Mago when they had come to visit them the next day, shortly after the friendly confrontation between Yeo Woon and their son, which had ended in a curt and strange way.

Baek Dong Soo had finally come back from his room, where he had locked himself up, to welcome the newcomers with a falsely benevolent look on his face, where even Mago, who didn't know him so well, had been able to see a heavy, threatening irritability and a pronounced desire to be elsewhere. Upon entering the main room, Yeo Woon displayed a similar expression, which she had perceived as even more bitter and upset than that of their host.

Five days later, as the first week of December was coming to an end, she was still hesitating about its exact origin, attributing it sometimes to the presence of her master's father and sometimes to what might have happened between him and Baek Dong Soo in his room. If their two respective attitudes towards each other testified to a reconciliation, Mago had nevertheless detected a kind of embarrassment which, although already present before, seemed to have reached cataclysmic proportions.

The father and mother of their host were good-looking and elegant in stature and face. The father in particular had the military build his son himself possessed, and a severity in his eyes that was not, however, cruel or tyrannical. He stood very upright, even more so than Mago's master, as if he had worn an iron blade on his back, forcing him to adopt such a posture. The mother had a delicately round figure, amiable, with regular features, from which it was easy to deduce her nobility.

She spoke softly, with moderation, in a soothed voice, but unlike Baek Dong Soo's wife, whose mischievous and dashing spirit brought warmth to her remarks, and a pleasant liveliness to her manners, she expressed herself without letting any real emotion be easily grasped from her speeches, thus making her more unfathomable and, at the same time, less friendly. The father did not say much during the tea they shared at the Baek house. Mago had gotten the impression that neither of them knew what to say to their son, and that the latter was going through similar difficulties.

The visit had quickly turned out to be as impromptu as unwanted by the residents of the house. While the guests were drinking tea and chatting, or trying to make up for the time they had lost, Mago and Yoo-Jin had continued their reading and study on the long table, just in front of a beautiful screen representing a high mountain range, which was located near the hallway leading to the bathroom and kitchen. Baek Dong Soo had offered them his study to work in peace, but Mago had preferred to stay in the central room, mainly because she was interested in the idea of getting a closer look at her master's father, about whom he had said almost nothing except that he had died when he was younger.

She had better understood, after seeing him, the stiffness that Yeo Woon had shown immediately after their reunion. Without going so far as to say that he was evil, because Mago suspected that a friendship with the parents of their host would otherwise have been much more difficult to conceive, he nevertheless had a permanent hostile glow in his eyes, half delirious, where the long cultivated vapors of strong alcohol could be detected.

He drank unreservedly, mechanically, repeatedly and disturbingly even for a dead, and it had been necessary to bring back for him two whole carafes of magkeolli from the kitchen, which he had emptied without ever stopping once. He was pouring himself a drink every time Mago had glanced in his direction, and the few comments he had made had been insults to his son, whom he had called a "demon" and a "curse", while the parents of their host but also their companions, allegedly Baek Dong Soo's adopted uncle and aunt, were barely trying to curb his vulgarity with half-toned remarks ("Ah, Yeo Cho-Sang, calm down a bit," Huk Sa-Mo, the uncle, had exhorted him without any impact).

In front of him, Yeo Woon had looked mortified and angrier than ever. He had been silent throughout their visit, but Mago had seen his fists clench at regular intervals on the table surface, whenever his father started to speak. As soon as they had left, he had ordered Mago to resume her training, and had been so brittle and snappy during their session that she had messed up some of her movements, resulting in more blame and more mistakes on her part.

When, annoyed by his behavior, she had ended up apostrophizing him frankly, he had cut short the lesson, reluctantly apologizing to her, and then had spent the rest of the evening in a dull silence (he just needs time). Even Baek Dong Soo's wife had failed to improve the mood of both her husband and Mago's master by relating some delightful and saucy anecdotes learned from a gisaeng friend at the Spring House, with whom she had spent the afternoon. Never since then had the house seemed so close to imploding.

On December 10, in the early afternoon, they left the house, she, Yeo Woon and Baek Dong Soo, to go and see the craftman they had met during the Yeogogoedam meeting, whose daughter was drawing maps that did not match any known country around the kingdom. He was a tanner, and lived on the corner of a relatively busy street in the western part of the capital, above the Han River.

Baek Dong Soo's wife and his son had stayed home, the first one because of a terrible migraine that had forced her to go back to bed ("it happens to her from time to time", her husband had warned them, after having gone to help her lie down in her room and then having put a fresh wet cloth on her forehead, "especially when she is on edge"), and the second one because of his lesson with his teacher.

Mago had succeeded in being liked by the boy, her youthful appearance and her Qing stories having largely contributed to the phenomenon. As a compensation, he helped her on some points of the martial arts book lent to her by Baek Dong Soo that she had difficulty to understand, but also gave her the benefit of his education in other areas, explaining certain things or notions with a patience that she found all the more endearing knowing that her low extraction had not allowed her to access a thorough instruction, and that it was therefore necessary for Yoo-Jin to repeat several times his clarifications, or to simplify them so that she could comprehend them.

At the same time, she was also beginning to find the soldier who came to prepare for the national exam, Seung-Min, much more likable than the first time he had seen her. It had to be said that he had in the meantime observed her practicing from the window of his captain's study, and that he had complimented her technique with a touching candor. Moreover, her mastery of the arts of combat had also aroused the admiration of little Iseul, the girl from the gates of Hanyang, who had come to watch her train one evening after the end of her lessons.

Baek Dong Soo followed his wife's advice, which was to avoid the main streets of the capital, overrun with policemen and patrolmen, as much as possible until their destination. During the assessment that they had drawn up with his wife of the general situation during the first days that Mago and his master had spent at home, they had, among other things, informed them of the appearance of a creature whose status had not been entirely determined by the army, but which was wreaking havoc among the anti-gwishins brigades, reducing perfectly trained men to shreds of flesh in a remarkably short period of time, and whose motivations had not been clearly identified.

"People call it the bogeyman," Baek Dong Soo had told them. "We don't know what it looks like. No one has survived its attacks long enough to describe it, but there are plenty of people who believe it's not human. And it doesn't only go for the living."

"For the gwishins too?"

Mago had not hidden her disbelief. Since the reappearance of his parents, their host's features were more drawn, and his eyes were redder. On their last visit, she had even seen him pouring himself a bowl of makgeolli, and she had noticed the discouraged way Yeo Woon had watched him drink.

"Yes, some were found a little higher up in the mountains, torn to shreds. It wasn't worth anything. The heads were missing. But the damage was very similar to that inflicted on the brigade members, so it is assumed it was responsible for that too."

Rumours of a new attack had been raised at the beginning of the month, and had been confirmed a few days later by their host, upon return from a patrol. Four members of a brigade had been found massacred and one hung in a tree. In addition, some residents claimed to have heard, at night, muffled and wet rumblings in the empty streets of the capital, plunged in darkness, which they had considered too hoarse to belong to a wolf or a dog.

Mago had also heard them once or twice, after emerging from the mute collective consciousness. It was said that the creature was now prowling around Hanyang, that it had managed to find a way to sneak in, and fear and mistrust had increased further, reinforcing security measures and surveillance at the city gates. Even the Yeogogoedam seemed to be seriously concerned about it. The subject had been discussed during the meeting, laconically, but with great concern.

When they reached the crossroads, formed by a long, wide central street and two narrower alleys, they came upon a small rally of passers-by gathered around the silhouette of a man, who stood elevated above them due to a wooden box he had turned over so that he could use it as a pedestal.

He was skinny, frightfully so, his face was emaciated, and as they got closer, Mago noticed that he was losing his hair, because his skull had terribly bare areas. He wore rags for clothing, but made great gestures, looking like he was in a trance, and he shouted in a strong, authoritative voice, astonishing for his fragile build :

"The Great Arrival is near! The kingdom will sink into the War of the Dead, and the Dead will rise up all together, the Dead will bring back the Dead! The sea will split in two and the Land will appear in the mist, soon! The War of the Dead! The Eyes will reign!"

"Who is he?" Yeo Woon asked Baek Dong Soo, gauging the man with a stern eye, arms folded in front of him.

"No one really knows," the latter replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Everyone calls him the Preacher. He has been giving us sermons for the past three years, and they have never made any sense. He's totally harmless outside of his big speeches, so the government lets him come and go as much as he wants."

"And he always announces disasters?" Mago inquired, amused by the man's animation while finding some of his statements worthy of interest (the dead will bring back the dead).

"Always. He's not the first, but it's true his predictions are colorful. In fact, his prophecies very rarely change. To be honest, I'm not even sure they have since he started announcing them. There is always this story about the war of the dead, the arrival, of the sea being opened in two and about the eyes. I think some scholars have tried to decipher his gibberish, but so far without success."

"People aren't scared?"

"At the beginning, yes, they were. Now, after seeing him come back over and over again, they barely think of him as a local attraction. They make fun of him more than they take him seriously."

Mago thought of the old Jae-Ji, of whom neither she nor Yeo Woon had received a single echo since their departure in China. She was the Eye, but the girl doubted that she was the one mentioned in the Preacher's speech. He spoke of eyes, plural.

And as they were heading towards the house of the craftsman and his daughter, something suddenly came to her mind, an idea, a thought, that she felt foreign and slimy, perhaps because it wasn't totally hers, at least she perceived it that way, which whispered "you saw the eyes in the dark when you were walking alone you saw them all of you you saw them all". The Preacher was still shouting as they walked away.

"The Eyes will reign! They will come with the White Blaze, they will come when the great White Pyre will be set ablaze!"

b. The Cartographer

When Dong Soo's reflections didn't systematically bring him back to Woon's cold skin, to his long fingers pressing into the bones of his spine, to the dead softness of his thighs and to his kisses (stay), they drifted irremediably towards his parents. Jang-mi and I were thinking it would be a good idea to come here with them, so that you can continue to bond, Sa-Mo had said when, after the parents and his wife had settled in the maru, he had accompanied him to the kitchen to make tea and a light meal of dried meat and vegetables.

It was obvious from his tone, the brightness of his eyes and his smile that he was hoping for them to get along, for the establishment of a lasting family relationship as strong as he and Jang-mi shared with Dong Soo. Throughout their visit, and those that had followed, as they had come back once since then and had invited Dong Soo and Woon as well, with Woon refusing to go, hiding behind his usual fortress but nevertheless apologizing to Dong Soo ("I can't," he had said, avoiding his gaze, and Dong Soo knew it was because of his father, because of the drunkard who had raised him), Sa-Mo had always done his best to keep the conversation lively and cordial, to limit the emergence of awkward silences, to deflect delicate questions, while trying to temper Yeo Cho-Sang's grumpiness.

He failed miserably, but Dong Soo was nevertheless touched to see him trying to make them look like a real family, in spite of the truths hidden in dark vaults, of the secrets and judgments. While studying the gigantic map composed of several sheets of paper stretched out on the surface of a large wooden table in the back of the store of the craftsman, named Gwon Nam-Jun, he thought about Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi, his parents, and how strictly impossible it was to recreate the same ease in the relationship he had with both of them.

First of all, he had lived with the former all his life, they had listened to him, supported him as much as possible, knew him, knew how he functioned, even if they were still unaware of some things, but like any parents whose children grow up and end up developing places of their own, unknown to them. It was Sa-Mo who had educated him, who had taken care of him and his broken body, who had nursed him, fed him, told him stories, prepared his meals, put a hand on his forehead when he was sick.

Jang-mi had always lend a attentive ear to his problems, she had been caring, present, she was worried for him whenever he went away, and was infinitely happy when he came back. They were the first, and the more he thought about it, the more Dong Soo understood that nothing could change this last fact, and that he had no desire to change it anyway.

On the other hand, he realized that he felt no wish to establish with his parents the kind of affection that Sa-Mo so fiercely wanted to see emerge between them. They had been absent from his life for so long that he didn't know where to begin. It was certainly not their fault, and he had at first blamed himself for it, but even the latter belief was gradually crumbling, as he gradually noticed how his mother spoke coldly to his father, as if she was keeping some old grudge against him, and how the latter fled from all conversations, remaining more often than not like a vase planted in some still and inactive setting.

He hadn't asked Dong Soo any questions about his life, his studies, his childhood without them, nor had he tried to talk about him and make himself more accessible : he was just standing there, listening, and possibly nodding his head from time to time. Conversely, his mother had expressed much more interest in him, but her concern had quickly seemed only protocolary to Dong Soo, since he had the impression she was just undertaking to fulfill her duty in this way and not showing her love for her son.

Moreover, the answers he had giveb her had appeared to awaken in her a very clear disappointment in Dong Soo's social status and activities, which made him deeply uncomfortable and did not contribute to his desire to see his parents regularly for more intimate meals.

"Sa-Mo told us you are married?" She had asked him on the very first night.

"Yes. For about thirteen years."

"And she is a former gisaeng, right?"

In the intonation of her voice, a little skeptical, a little caustic, Dong Soo hadn't been able not to hear the criticism underlying her remark, the implicit disapproval. His father, then coming back to life, had softly declared, "Son, it's true you could have picked a more suitable wife," which had disheartened him even more than his mother's comment.

Yun-Seo was perfectly fine, welcomed them whenever they came to see them at home, but his parents had only remembered her past occupation as a courtesan, and during their visits, they were hardly polite to her, looking at her and barely answering her during the conversations, ignoring her intelligence, her education or the excellence of her manners, as well as the heir she had given to Dong Soo. He had cautiously kept the fact that Yoo-Jin was not his biological son to himself, while hoping that Sa-Mo or Jang-Mi did not or would not confess the truth to his parents.

The problem was that they had acted the same way for everything, from his profession to the people he saw, while giving Woon a scrupulous look and making him wonder what his father had told them about him. In other words, the disappointment had been widely shared, and Dong Soo was dragging it along with him the same way he had dragged his carafe before.

The back store of the craftsman was larger than his shop itself. Its walls were covered with skins torn from their owners, and despite the creamy furs in which burying your fingers sound like a delightful idea, the room was reeking of the stench of animals and meat, which made him wrinkled his nose as soon as he entered. Woon and his student, on the other hand, didn't seem to feel any discomfort, and the girl even made her master notice, with a sinister gleam of appetite in her eyes, that it "smelled good".

The craftsman's daughter, Na-Young, was happy to see them, and questioned them about their presence in Hanyang and their resurrections while unfolding her maps on the large central table, of a prodigious length, and covered with what Dong Soo quickly identified as a layer of leather.

"My father didn't bury me in the cemetery of Hanyang," she explained with a smile, visibly thrilled to be able to share her experience with others. "But near a river bank where I often went to play when I was a child, and which I loved very much. It's about a mile from here, and isolated enough to avoid running into a patrol right away."

"What did you die of?" Mago asked her.

"A stupid accident. I used to hunt for my father. I fell down in a ditch and broke my leg. It became gangrenous. It didn't take more than a month."

Her father, who had just returned from a short discussion with a client, came to squeeze his daughter's shoulder and arm with painful affection.

"I'm happy you're back, darling," he said in a hoarse, emotional voice. "Very happy."

Dong Soo observed their mutual tenderness, the signs of happiness and familiarity reflecting their satisfaction at being reunited again, and for a moment felt guilty and ashamed of his inability to communicate with his own parents in this way. Perhaps I should try harder, he conceded to them, while admitting immediately afterwards that they themselves weren't reaching out to him frankly, while Sa-Mo and Jang-mi were doing what they could to increase the opportunities for them to tame each other (except that you don't tame anything when you don't want to).

He and Woon had never been alone together since their fight. It was like at the training camp, with the same embarrassment, the same shyness, the same fears. He wondered if Woon was angry with him, panicked at the prospect, for having left him alone, on the bed, when he had expressed the desire to keep him against him, but also, because the idea was still there, for the fields, for not having been able to see, for before, for when they were seventeen and for everything else.

With the maps fully spread out on the surface of the table, the three of them, he, Woon and Mago, immersed themselves in their examination, standing above them to better assess them and their details. At the beginning, Dong Soo thought he recognized paths, Joseon's roads that he had already taken, but a change of place around the table quickly revealed to him the inaccuracy of this first observation. Na-Young taught them that she had drawn the maps in what she called a "daze".

"I don't remember sketching them. It's as if I had immersed myself in the collective consciousness without realizing it, or I had lost consciousness because of hunger. I don't know how to explain it. All I know for sure is that I was...absent, somehow, and then I came to my senses in front of a fragment of a map. It still happens to me. I never know when. It's terrifying, and since others barely respond in the consciousness, I have no way of knowing what it means."

There were seven of them, and they were always more or less the same size, with only small differences of a few minor nature. They had numbers, inscribed with a brush by Na-Young, and indicating their order of creation. Put next to each other, they obviously formed the landscape of an unusual country.

The represented lands, roads, rivers, cities, which did not have any name, that had strictly no relation with the geography of the country. Woon and Mago, having brought their maps of Qing, took them out to proceed to a quick comparison as a simple precaution, in order to check what the young woman had said, and which led to a similar conclusion.

In front of their eyes was indeed the topography of an absolutely unknown, odd and incomprehensible place, and no legend had been provided by Na-Young to help them decipher the maps. She herself did not understand them.

"I just trace them, that's all," she remarked.

They had been drawn in disorder : the first one showed what was actually the center of the region represented by the maps, corresponding to what appeared to be a large central city where many roads converged, and crossed, like Hanyang, by a large, clear blue river that reappeared on other portions of the maps.

The fourth depicted either the south or the north, Na-Young was not sure, which opened on a stretch of sea. The content of the maps, in itself, was very detailed, and Dong Soo felt that it would be wonderfully accurate once on site. Gaping holes sometimes separated two fragments of the maps.

"It's not complete," Na-Young said, after Woon had mentioned them.

"What makes you say that?" the latter replied, throwing a dubious glance towards her.

"I know it, that's all. Some of them are missing."

They were interrupted by the hesitant appearance of a woman in the back room, who knocked on the door and was confused at the thought of disturbing them. Na-Young warmly invited her to come and join them, and when she bowed before them, introducing herself as So-Ha, Dong Soo recognized, not without relief, a gwishin who had already participated in the Yeogogoedam meetings two or three times, but with whom he had not yet had the opportunity to discuss.

She was probably thirty years old, and was as atypically beautiful as the maps on the table, with beautiful feline eyes, drawn backwards, a rather slender but elegant mouth, whose corners dropped slightly downwards, and which made her look strict when she was not smiling. She was quite tall, had very long black hair, tied in a high ponytail, clearing her forehead, and wore pants and a short tunic, well adjusted to her silhouette, just like Mago.

She stayed with them for a while, also observing the maps with interest.

"Which one is the last?" She asked Na-Young, who pointed to a section of land with no city marks, also facing the sea.

She studied it carefully, followed in her analysis by Woon, who was right next to her.

"It could be an island," he suddenly suggested.

"I've been thinking about it," Na-Young confessed.

"Because of the sea?" Dong Soo understood.

"Yes. And the fact that it can be seen at the extremities."

"On that count, it could also be part of a continent," So-Ha objected. "Joseon is surrounded by the sea, but connected to the land to the north. And there are only three ends where the sea appears. We'll need more to confirm anything."

"That's also what I told myself," Na-Young added, somewhat discouraged. "I have to wait and see what the next ones will be like. For the moment, it's impossible to tell if it's an island or not."

The fourth Gwishin couldn't stay for long. She was preparing her departure from the capital in the evening, and had simply wished to bid farewell to Na-Young and her father, with whom she had sympathized during the Yeogogoedam meetings.

"I was staying at a friend's house, which is why I could enter the capital," she told them. "But it's never wise for our people to remain in some place for too long."

To Woon who was questioning her about her destination, she answered :

"North. I traveled all over the south and the center after my resurrection five years ago, but I neglected the border with the empire. Besides, I heard the echoes the moment the new repressive measures began to be applied."

"What echoes?" Mago reacted immediately.

"If you were in Qing, you probably had difficulty perceiving them," the woman observed. "But just before the publication of the Decree, there was a wave of echoes throughout the consciousness, inviting the Gwishins to go north, without specifying exactly where. It's very likely they were emitted by the Eye, for the most part. And perhaps by others, such as the Voice, or the Historian."

Mago again claimed not to have perceived such transmissions, supported by Woon, who also seemed to be taken aback by So-Ha's revelation. Well, now you know, she simply said, smiling, and Dong Soo then noted, distractedly, that the arrangement of her facial features were almost the same as Woon's.

He took advantage of her leaving the room to clear his mind for a moment in the store, the smells of dead skins and salted flesh having gone to his head.

"They're with you?" the woman asked, talking about Woon and Mago.

"Yes. A childhood friend, and the girl is his student. They're staying at my house."

"That's very generous of you," she declared in a soft voice. "And kind."

"That's what a friend would do."

He pushed away the thought of the fields, the molten copper of that evening's sun, Woon's blood on his hands and clothes, on his face (that's what a friend would do). The woman, after expressing her thanks and renewing her friendship with Na-Young's father, finally left the store at a resolute pace. She greeted them with her hand as she pushed open the door. Yes, he thought again as he looked at her face, the hollow of her cheeks, her eyes, almost the same as Woon.