The Shaman's Tongue
It drifted, bobbing gently.
A white face rose to the surface of the liquor.
A cat...?
That was the first impression the face gave. But Shin Jeong-ah, peering down at it, began to shake like a leaf, her mouth falling open.
She wanted to scream. Not even a sound would come.
The thing was covered in fur — and yet it was no cat.
A human face — a newborn's, at that. Only the dense pelt and the upper lip, split up its center, had made it look feline.
"Hhk...! A-ah...!"
Shin Jeong-ah knew exactly what this was.
A deformed child. Congenital hypertrichosis, and a cleft lip and palate — the reason the old man had killed his newborn son.
Hss... hss...
Cheong-geum spread a blanket over the man exhaling those faint, shallow breaths, then turned her head toward Lee Geum-kyeong.
The gut was over. The mouth that the calamity had twisted into something feline had returned to its proper shape, and the man lay sunk in a deep sleep, his consciousness severed as though he had fainted.
"Thank you for your labor, Teacher."
"It was you who toiled, child."
Cheong-geum, who had assisted at the gut alongside the beopsa officiants, smiled wanly.
"You've borne far more than I have, Teacher."
No sooner had Lee Geum-kyeong returned from seeing a great gut to its end than she had begun a rite for a patient stricken by the calamity. How heavy a fatigue must have settled into that aged frame. In truth, though she stood ramrod straight, deep weariness was carved into her face.
"The night is far gone. Pass word only to the mudang who gave their consent, then get yourself to sleep."
"Yes, Teacher."
Cheong-geum, mid-bow, lifted her head as though something had just come to mind. Lee Geum-kyeong, who happened to be watching her, let her brows curve gently, and after a moment's hesitation Cheong-geum spoke.
"Teacher... do you think the Young Master will be all right?"
Kang Hyeong-seok had asked that a mudang be sent to the hospital — to the people stricken by the liquor. When she had reached them, they said their mouths were bent like a cat's, just like the man lying under the blanket here.
"If the Young Master has been caught up in this affair—"
"That is nothing to fret over."
"Pardon?"
Lee Geum-kyeong regarded her without the slightest shift of expression.
"A great deity walks beside that child. What is there to worry about?"
A thin "ah" escaped Cheong-geum's parted lips, and she gathered her expression.
"Yes, Teacher."
"And the saju in your pocket — whose is it?"
"Pardon?"
Cheong-geum blinked in surprise and thrust a hand into her pocket. Inside was the paper bearing Shin Jeong-ah's birth date — the reading Kang Hyeong-seok had requested of her some time ago.
"Ah — this is one the Young Master asked to be read while you were away, Teacher."
"Let me see it."
Scarcely had the paper touched Lee Geum-kyeong's hand before her brows knit.
"Tsk, tsk. No easy fate, this."
"...There was Gwimungwansal in her saju. Should we write her a protective talisman, perhaps?"
"That is not the matter at hand. She is close to our side. Very close."
"...Pardon?"
A shamanic fate — yet not one meant to receive the gods. Had she not been born into a family prosperous enough to shelter that fate, it was a saju that would have walked the road of a dark shaman or a beopsa.
"Whose did you say this was?"
"The Young Master's superior at his company, she said."
Lee Geum-kyeong laughed softly through her nose and handed the paper back.
"If she ever comes calling when I am not here, see that kind words are waiting for her."
"Will she truly be all right?"
"It is hardly a fate bound for an early grave — what is there to fear? She will live long."
Lee Geum-kyeong drew one great breath and flung the doors wide. The moon, veiled in cloud, hung precisely at the heart of the sky, and its light came pouring in as though it would flood the room.
"There is nothing to worry over."
Shin Jeong-ah's saju was that of one who assists and upholds a mudang. So long as Kang Hyeong-seok did a mudang's work, and Shin Jeong-ah stood beside him doing the same, there was nothing to fear.
The bond between mudang and beopsa. That was what Lee Geum-kyeong had read in Shin Jeong-ah's saju.
"The moon is cold. It seems all of today's misfortune will come to an end tonight — so send word to the guardians the moment the sun rises."
Cheong-geum found the words difficult to grasp.
"Understood, Teacher."
Yet watching Lee Geum-kyeong press her palms together toward the moon, she bowed her head without a word of protest.
Wham! Wham!
Punch after punch hammered into him, yet Seok-woo seemed a man who could feel no pain.
"Hrrk! Hrrrrrk!"
Loosing beast-like shrieks, he flung a hand up to gouge out Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes, and whenever the slightest opening offered itself, he came hurling stones and fistfuls of dirt with terrifying savagery.
Snap!
Seok-woo, wearing the mudang-gwi, finally managed to sink his teeth into Kang Hyeong-seok's forearm.
"Tch!"
Crunch. Squelch!
Like a beast rending meat, Seok-woo's teeth burrowed deep into the flesh. Red blood welled from the wound and soaked through his outer jacket, and what the cloth could not absorb trickled all the way down to the tips of his fingers.
WHAAAM!
Kang Hyeong-seok threw his whole weight into a hammer blow to Seok-woo's temple.
Even so, Seok-woo only curled his eyes into crescents; he would not release the forearm.
It was his obsession with the Mugo. Like the Yeommae, the Mugo becomes a fearsome ritual implement — and though the mudang-gwi had long since lost its body, it could not let go of its fixation on the effigy. It clung with murderous, unhinged tenacity.
Crrrunch!
Gritting his teeth, Kang Hyeong-seok clapped his palm over the man's face. Then, enduring the pain, he opened his mouth.
"When banners flutter upon the great generals of the white horse, every stray ghost and twisted spirit that leaps forth from among the vessel-hosts shall be bound fast and struck down, delivered before the divine generals for judgment."
The scripture had taken hold. Seok-woo's mouth — which had seemed it would never open again — gaped wide.
"Aaaaaaah!"
As though refusing to hear the scripture, the mudang-gwi within Seok-woo loosed a frenzied scream.
If anything, the scream only confirmed it — told Kang Hyeong-seok exactly how the mudang-gwi had to be handled.
With a snap, Rrrrrang! — bells clutched tight in one fist, Kang Hyeong-seok shrugged off his outer jacket even as he recited the next verse.
"Stray ghosts, wandering spirits — you have nowhere left to go at all. East, west, south, north, and the center besides: look all about the five directions and the eight ways. Where is it you will go?"
Both ears twisted shut, the mudang-gwi inside Seok-woo glared at Kang Hyeong-seok through bloodshot eyes. But it could no longer lunge; it only held its distance.
Flap! Spreading his jacket wide, Kang Hyeong-seok ignored the pain climbing his forearm and closed in.
"You would run south!"
There was no time. He had not been able to reach Shin Jeong-ah, yet he knew something was already happening.
The calamity is straining to break free.
The cause had been uncovered; the thing itself dragged into the light. Proof of it lay in the way the pressure that had been smothering the mountain was growing thinner by the moment. Only by exorcising the mudang-gwi — the root of all of it — could the celestial passage carry on unbroken.
"The soldiers of the south, the Red Emperor's jade-armored host, have arrayed the fire of two and seven and pitched their camp at the southern pass — you shall not go south!"
Flap! The jacket dropped over Seok-woo.
He thrashed like a beast snared in a net, but Kang Hyeong-seok bore him to the ground and climbed astride him. Blood ran from beneath the wound; the muscles of his forearm had swollen taut.
So it was that Kang Hyeong-seok, pinning Seok-woo down through the jacket, shook the shaman's bells.
"You would go west? The generals Gyeong and Sin of the west, the White Tiger's jade-armored host, have arrayed the metal of four and nine and pitched their camp — the west, too, is barred to you!"
"Uuuuuh! Krrrrrrk!"
As he subdued the madly thrashing Seok-woo, Kang Hyeong-seok felt his Momjusin descending into him.
The great deity is with me.
In those eyes, washed perfectly clear, there was not one measure of fear.
"You would go southwest? The general Gap-Sin has called up three thousand troops in haste and swiftly pitched his camp in the southwest — nor shall you pass there!"
Rrang! Rrrrrang!
Shaking the bells, he carried the scripture on.
"You would go northeast? The general Gap-In and the generals of the five directions stand arrayed; every ghost that comes shall be bound fast, its belly cloven with the long heaven-sword until it submits, its throat staked down with a three-pronged spear, its bones ground in the fire-cauldron legion with a fifty-pound iron mallet and kneaded into the purified water."
"Graaaaaah!"
Strength was bleeding out of Seok-woo's body, which had thrashed as though to fling Kang Hyeong-seok clean off him.
Almost. Truly, almost there. It was about to end.
"Rolled tight in elm twigs, sheathed in a net of five-colored iron, flung with a splash into the deep water of the great sea — once it sinks to the deepest depths, even after a hundred million years, that ghost shall never win release!"
Rrrrrang!
Kang Hyeong-seok hammered the jacket down with the hand holding the bells.
Seok-woo's fists went slack.
Rrang! Rrang!
He struck down once more with the bells, and the writhing weakened.
And in that same instant, his sight one with the divine, a vision began to unspool before Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes.
The old man, young again. And with him, the shaman, alive.
"So it was nightmares that brought you here."
"Y-yes?"
"Your son is clinging to your back."
"Wh-what are you saying! What son? I have no son—"
"How dare you lie before the divine spirit!"
The young face of the old man froze in raw ruin. He twisted to look frantically behind himself, then covered his face and collapsed where he stood.
"It isn't my fault. It wasn't my fault."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Born wearing the shape of a beast. A Taejagwi will not listen to words — there is no celestial passage to be performed for it, either."
The old man, writhing in anguish, did not see it: the shaman's serpentine eyes, gleaming with wicked and sinister design.
"I shall teach you one secret method. Will you carry it out as I say?"
"S-save me, please. Anything. I will do anything."
So the shaman taught the young man the Mugo.
Step by faltering step, the young man made his way home — where he was met by grotesque shrieks from within the house, and his aged mother.
"What did they tell you at the shrine?"
"M-Mother..."
The young man confessed everything that had passed at the shrine.
"All the better, then. That woman was a problem in her own right. Root her out now, once and for all — wouldn't that set your mind at ease?"
"Mother!"
The old woman's gaze had settled on the house from which that pitiful wailing spilled.
"Her wits have left her; every word that should stay buried comes spilling out. I told the villagers it was the ravings of a madwoman, told them to let it pass in one ear and out the other — but are you meaning to leave that woman be, just as she is?"
"...Of course not."
"When you build the fire in the hearth, shove her straight in."
"...What?"
"I will see her clothes soaked in oil. All you must do is push her in and end her breath."
"M-Mother..."
"She is the one who spat out that freak, is she not? Kill her and be done with it, then take yourself a new bride. The line must go on."
And what followed was the image of a woman burning.
"Aaaaagh! Kyaaaaaagh!"
The agony of being burned alive is a thing too vast to bear.
Kang Hyeong-seok's face contorted, and cold sweat beaded from the hand gripping the bells.
Clank. Clank.
The final scene was the young man seen from behind, crouched low, calmly burying a jar. Into it went the bones of the first child he had killed with his own hands; then came a fill of vicious soju. Such was the birth of the Mugo.
Rrrrrrrang!
With that violent peal of the shaman's bells, Kang Hyeong-seok's consciousness snapped back to reality — to the chill night air, to a forest alive with the crying of field crickets.
With eyes tangled in every emotion there was, he looked down at Seok-woo, lying crushed beneath the shrouding jacket.
"Your father's sin — karma spun from a shaman's tongue."
That karma had heaped and heaped until it took the shape of the Mugo. The mudang-gwi would answer for all of it.
Raising the shaman's bells high, Kang Hyeong-seok shook them over the moaning Seok-woo.
Rrang! Rang! Rang! Rang!
The bells tolled, purifying the energies of everything around. The mudang-gwi lodged in Seok-woo loosed a soundless scream, and the night wind stopped, hushing all the world.
Quietly, Kang Hyeong-seok began to chant the scripture.
"O legion of the azure sands, great divine generals of the Six Jeong and Six Gap, envoys commanding the spirit hosts of the five directions."
Above the jacket, Seok-woo's mouth could be seen gaping wide.
No thrashing. No wind. And yet the jacket moved as though it were boiling.
"Envoys of the Azure Emperor in the east, envoys of the Red Emperor in the south, envoys of the White Emperor in the west, envoys of the Black Emperor in the north, envoys of the Yellow Emperor at the center — each leading your legions of ghost soldiers—"
Hurk!
Blood geysered up from Seok-woo's mouth, dyeing the jacket red. Blood flowed from his eyes and nose as well, blooming a stain across the fabric in the shape of a human face.
Rrrrrrrang!
Shaking the bells with all his might, Kang Hyeong-seok poured out the remaining verse as though hurling it down.
"Into the hell of crushing, the hell of the iron bed, the hell of black darkness, the hell of foul water and filth, the hell of the Yellow Springs, the hell of Avici — be cast down into the deepest depths, and at this very day, at this very hour, be extinguished for all eternity, we implore."
Let the mudang-gwi that wrought the Mugo be annihilated!
It was the moment the scripture, laden with that desperate wish, came to its end.
Hurk!
Black blood came surging up, drowning the jacket in black.
Chest heaving, Kang Hyeong-seok drew the jacket away.
Thank you. Thank you.
For standing with me. For granting me the strength to destroy the mudang-gwi. For watching over me, so that my heart would not waver.
Pressing his palms together in gratitude, Kang Hyeong-seok knelt at Seok-woo's side.
Now I will guide the vengeful ghost's soul across. Protect me to the very end.
The evil had been annihilated; now came the duty of helping the souls bound in the Nine Springs make their passage. Blood dripped steadily from the forearm where the bite marks stood stark, but Kang Hyeong-seok, indifferent, tore at the lining of his jacket with his teeth.
Rrrrip!
He tore the lining as long as his reach allowed and tied the knots in quick succession. Seven knots in all.
"In place of the seven-star kite, let these knots stand — and may the Great King of Heaven and Earth of the Central Pure Land, the Great King of Paradise, the Great Kings of Azure, of Thunder, of Red, of White, of Black, and of Yellow, and the Great King of the Conquering Waters, lend their aid to this celestial passage."
Rrang!
Holding the bells aloft so their sound would carry far and wide, he went on in a low voice.
"Souls bound to this Cheongdeok Mountain — be comforted, be watched over with mercy, and be received."
Let there be no soul left in torment. Let no one writhe in agony. Let them cast off their old grudges and shed every impurity.
Rrrrrrrang!
The peal of the bells, as great as the heart behind it, rang out across Cheongdeok Mountain.