Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang Read Free Book Online Page A

first trotting, then slowing to a walk. The fields were blanketed in fog.
    â€œSlow down, girl! I told you, Chilsung is fine.”
    I passed the train station, crossed the rail crossing, and ran up a low hill. I could see the cornfield. I could hear the cornstalks and the long, flat leaves stirring in the wind. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted into the dark.
    â€œChilsung- ah ! Chilsung- ah !”
    Grandmother panted as she climbed over the hill. I stood there with my ears perked, trying to make out any other sounds among the rustling of the leaves. To my right, I heard something that sounded like a short grunt. I pushed my way into the centre of the field and spotted Chilsung’s white fur and outstretched legs. When I cradled his head, he yelped and shook my hands off.
    â€œHe must be hurt. Don’t touch him,” Grandmother said.
    â€œHow are we going to get him home?”
    â€œI’ll bring your sisters back with the wheelbarrow we keep in the shed. You stay here.”
    She disappeared into the dark, and it was just Chilsung and me in the middle of the cornfield.
    Bari -ya !
    Startled, I looked behind me.
    I almost died! Strange men grabbed me and dragged me into the mountains!
    Chilsung’s breath was weak and shallow. From that moment on, I was not only able to convey my unspoken thoughts but also to hear Chilsung’s thoughts, the same way I could hear Sook’s. I closed my eyes and thought: It’s alright. I’ll keep you safe. You’ll be better in no time.
    Mi and our grandmother came back with the wheelbarrow, and we carried Chilsung home in it. When we got to the house, we took a closer look at his injuries: his ear was torn, he had a large open wound on his back and a telephone wire was wrapped around his throat, digging deep into the flesh under his jaw.
    Grandmother clucked her tongue. “Guess he got away from the bastards who were planning to eat him.”
    â€œHe’s family to us, but meat to everyone else,” Father said. He used a pair of pliers to remove the wire noose and applied ointment to the torn ear and the cut on Chilsung’s back. Then he wrapped the injuries with strips of fabric. We took apart the doghouse that Hindungi had lived in back in Chongjin and used the wood for kindling, and spread straw on the floor of the shed to make a bed for Chilsung. It took over two weeks for him to return to full health.
    *
    All summer, rain fell like a hole had been torn in the sky. The heavy rains that had started at the end of July kept going long past mid-August. The corn and vegetable gardens planted on the mountain slopes were swept away, and even the terraced fields carved high up into the curve of the mountain ridges had collapsed in places from landslides – the red earth beneath the topsoil exposed – or were buried completely under mud. The Tumen River overflowed its banks, and every low place in the city of Musan was puddled with mud. Roads and train tracks buckled and caved. On the radio they said the entire country was underwater. Bodies floated in the flooded fields and at the edges of the cities.
    The part of the city we lived in was on relatively high ground, so other than a little bit of flooding on the road to the customs office, we were unaffected. It wasn’t until the end of August, nearly ten days after the floodwaters had drained away, that equipment arrived from the city, and soldiers on border patrol and young men who’d survived the famine and flooding were able to repair the railroad tracks and the roads. Though autumn was on its way, there was nothing, not a single crop, left in the fields to harvest. Like us, those who survived were probably nibbling away, bit by bit, at the grain they’d secretly stashed. We had one meal of porridge that was both breakfast and lunch made from boiling roughly ground corn meal with wild greens – groundsel, goosefoot, Chinese plantain and such – that my