Voyage to the West Sea
These days the letters come roughly once every two days.
Today was a delivery day. So from morning I had been pretending to work the fields while keeping my ears open toward the sky, yet the sound of wind breaking only came at midday.
"Big sister! This one's special delivery!"
Hermes landed, rubbing his shoulder. What came out of his tunic was not just a letter. Along with the letter came something heavy wrapped in cloth, and no matter how I looked at it, the shape was a book.
"Uncle told me twice to carry this one carefully. That taciturn man, twice. I thought my shoulder was going to fall off."
If he had cautioned him twice, it meant it was something he cherished that much.
I forced down the hands that wanted to unwrap the cloth first and opened the letter instead. There was an order to these things.
Kore,
I ate the last offering well. I shared the wheat cakes with the household, and the silent ones wordlessly took two each.
I finished the book. The title is Voyage to the West Sea. I am sending a copy for your share as well, so receive it.
I am glad the flower has taken root well in the field soil.
If while reading you find something you wish to say, write it in a letter and send it. I will write as well.
I look forward to the next offering.
Seven lines. No one had told me to count them, yet counting had become a habit. From five to seven. It had grown by two whole lines.
I read them again, one by one.
At the wheat-cake line I laughed. Knowing that the household had taken two each meant Ahjussi had watched the scene. Ahjussi watching those taciturn people pick up cakes. Next time I would bake three times as many.
At the flower-root line I pressed the letter briefly to my chest. He had remembered the words I had let slip in my last letter and answered them.
And I will write as well.
I read those six words ten times over. If I sent one, Ahjussi would send one too. It was a promise that it would not end with a single exchange but would continue.
I look forward to the next offering. The final line had the flaw of no date, yet it was clearly a notice that another would come.
Only then did I unwrap the cloth.
Voyage to the West Sea. A book bound in black leather settled heavily into both my hands. When I turned the first page, a small name was written in the corner. The name of the scribe who had copied this book, no doubt. Thanks to this person's handwriting I would be reading the same sentences as Ahjussi, so I decided to memorize the name.
The original would be on Ahjussi's shelf. The same book, one volume in each of two houses. At that thought the book seemed to grow even heavier.
I held the book to my nose. The cool scent that had come from the soil pouch clung to the paper as well.
"Big sister, are you smelling that?"
"Yeah. Why."
"No, well. You can smell it if you want."
Hermes flew off in a hurry without even drinking the honey water. Lately he was getting better at reading the room.
I did not open the book right there. Something like this was not to be read just anywhere, so I first chose where I would read it. The flower field was no good because the nymphs came and went, and the daytime room was no good because Mother looked in at any moment, so in the end the only place left was the window seat at night.
Until then, through the day, I simply carried it against my chest. When I helped with the field work I set it on my knees; when I watered I placed it carefully on a dry stone. One of the nymphs asked what book it was, and when I said Ahjussi had given it to me, that word circled the fields in half a day.
In the evening Mother saw the book and asked.
"What book is that."
"Ahjussi sent it to me. He said it was interesting and I should read it too."
"What kind of book."
"A sea-voyage story, he said."
"You of all people curious about the sea. And your uncle of all people sending books."
Mother smiled with a look of wonder. She seemed pleased that her daughter was even reading books these days. Be pleased, Mother. I am going to read it properly.
When night came and Mother fell asleep, I lowered the lamp and opened the first page.
It was the story of a human poet who sailed a ship to the very end of the West Sea.
The reason the poet set out for that sea was written on the first page. As a child he had met a lighthouse keeper on the shore. A man who kept the light alone on an island at the western edge, who had crossed over for just one day on business ashore. In that single day the lighthouse keeper had taught the young poet how to read the stars and told him stories of the sea's end, then returned to his island.
When the poet grew up he launched a ship for that island.
People tried to stop him. That end of the sea was no place for the living. It was where the sun set, and no ship that entered had ever returned.
No place for the living.
From the very first page came words I had heard somewhere many times, so I set the book down on my knees and then opened it again.
The poet met a storm. At the passage where the sail tore, the oars broke, and half the crew wept to turn the prow around, I held my breath. The poet did not turn. He said he had already heard more than enough of the warnings on land.
After the storm passed, the poet shared salt-soaked bread with the remaining crew. Reading the description of that bread, so hard they had to soak it in water, I thought of the next offering. I would bake this bread and send it up. I could already picture the moment Ahjussi recognized the bread from the book appearing on the table. I wrote the bread's name down separately on paper. Mother would know how to bake it, and for the salt I could send Hermes.
The poet found his way by the stars. The stars the lighthouse keeper had taught him as a child. Stars that, no matter which sea you saw them from, always pointed to the western edge, so that if you followed only those stars you could never lose the way.
I found those stars outside the window. I had stars like that too. Someone who had taught them to me as well. The stories of the Underworld that person had told me were my stars. No matter which night I took them out, they pointed to the same place.
While turning a page I lightly cut a fingertip on the paper's edge. More than the pain, I feared blood on the book, so I put the finger in my mouth first and checked the paper. The paper was unharmed.
In the passage where he wintered on a nameless island, the poet sat before the hearth and worried not that his own body might freeze but whether that person's light might have gone out in this cold. After reading that passage I added one more picture to the next offering. Beside the salt bread, a bowl of something long-simmered over a hearth.
The poet kept thinking of the lighthouse keeper. In the storm, under the stars, before the winter hearth. At every such passage I tucked in a flower petal. I could not underline a book Ahjussi had given me, and petals left no mark.
By the time I finished tucking them in, there were eleven petals.
On the final page the poet's ship reaches the fog at the sea's end.
Beyond the fog a single light is visible. The poet rows.
The book ends there.
Whether he arrived was not written.
I turned the last page back and forth twice and even checked inside the cover. There was no continuing chapter. It was not that the scribe had copied less; the book had always ended this way.
What kind of ending is this in the world.
After sitting like that for a long while, I decided I would determine the ending myself. He arrived. If he had gone far enough to see the light, he had arrived. All that remained was a few more strokes of the oar. I decided to read it that way. Once I decided, my heart settled. Even though it was only something inside a book.
Only then did I take out the thought I had been putting off.
Why had Ahjussi chosen this book.
He must have wanted to let his confined niece see the outside world even if only through writing. That heart was clear from the first page. The storm, the stars, the winter island—every landscape chosen for me to see.
Yet of all stories, this one. A story of going on one's own feet to a place the living cannot go.
Ahjussi. Did you choose it knowing, or not knowing.
He must have chosen it without knowing. Because that was the kind of person he was. He would not know that the words people used to stop the poet were the same words Ahjussi had written in my letters.
Still, I had read it knowing, so that was enough.
At dawn I went briefly to the seedbed. Squatting in front of Number One, I read the storm passage aloud for a paragraph. Number One listened to the end without trembling a single leaf. Brave, aren't you. You will live well even in that house.
The next day I spread paper and began writing the things I wanted to say.
Whether the storm had not been frightening. Whether those stars were real stars. Whether the lighthouse keeper had known the poet would come. What the salt bread might have tasted like. As I wrote, it spilled past two sheets. If I sent all of this, Hermes would be carrying a scroll instead of a letter.
I trimmed and trimmed until only three remained. The storm, the stars, and the lighthouse keeper. I had not thrown the rest away; I had saved them. Because he had said I will write as well, this letter would not end with one exchange. When the answer came I would send again, and when that came I would send again. One book would yield ten letters.
While writing I tried guessing the answers in advance. He would say the storm had not been frightening. He would even look up whether the stars were real or not. The lighthouse-keeper question I could not guess. I had not yet heard what that person called waiting. That was why that question was the one I looked forward to most.
On the last line I wrote one question.
Ahjussi, do you think the poet arrived.
It was not that I was curious about the answer to this question. I was curious about what Ahjussi would answer to this question.
I sealed the letter and left one empty place in the reply slot of the box. Tomorrow morning I would call Hermes first thing. I would tell him once more to go the fastest in the world.
I set the book by my pillow. Before lying down I opened the first page once more and silently thanked the scribe's name. I had finished reading, yet there was no need to return it. It was the copy that had come for my share. When I finished, I could simply read it again from the beginning.
From the paper, Ahjussi's scent still rose.