The Beautiful Girl from Sanshin

by Emma Eun-joo Choi

There were once tigers in Korea, back when all the rivers still ran into each other, when the swallow flew without fear of glass and the mountains stood whole and unmarked by graves. Back then, Korea was less of a country than a mass of forest, a peninsula grown over with green, unbordered and unending. It was the time of origin and legends, although back then they were just called fact. It was the time of my grandmother, my first one, the deepest root in our family tree.

Her name was Dae and on the day she was born, a tiger was born too. They came screaming into the world at the very same moment, tethered by the silent bond that sometimes exists between women and tigers. It is a rare and powerful thing to enter life alongside a tiger. The tiger is no longer a tiger and the woman is more than a woman: they become something in-between, separate bodies and split souls. My grandmother’s fate lay alongside the tiger’s. The tiger’s life hung off of hers. For as long as they lived they would search for one another, following a voice from an invisible mouth, trying to be together again—trying to be one.

But these were the days when humans lived in fear of tigers. They knew them to be strange and ferocious beasts, violent creatures full of evil magic that stole their livestock, dragged unsuspecting villagers into the forest and left their half-eaten corpses back outside of their houses. So, when little Dae disappeared on the day of her first birthday, the villagers of Sanshin feared that this is what had become of her. They looked for her everywhere. They looked behind doors and below tables, inside beds and around woodpiles. They even checked inside of the large clay jars that held the village’s kimchi, only to find nothing but cabbage fermenting inside. Finally, the villagers took up their knives and their pitchforks, reluctantly setting course into the forest to bring Dae back safely, or to bury her on her birthday.

They were prepared to search for hours. They brought with them long torches and bright lanterns, small pouches of dried fruit to fuel them long into the night. But, only an hour into their search, they found Dae safe and sound, sitting in a small clearing between the paws of the tiger. She cooed as she held the tiger’s face in her hands, bright tufts of orange fur bursting from between her fingers. The villagers shouted but before they could strike, the tiger moved swiftly to its feet and slunk away, leaving Dae gurgling happily on the forest floor.

*

From that day on, the villagers treated Dae as something halfway between a demon and a curse. They called her a product of evil magic, a bad omen, a daughter of tigers—the only known living creature, human or otherwise, to have looked a tiger in the eyes and return unscathed. So, when it became clear that she would be beautiful, they blamed this on the tiger, too. They whispered that it was a curse from this beast, a punishment cast on the village for all the tigers they had killed in years past, a trap to lure men to their dooms.

Dae was none of these things. The simple fact of the matter was that on the day of their first birthday, Dae saw the glittering eyes of the tiger and crawled towards it, pulled by the instinct that had been born with them. And in the forest she found her partner waiting for her, its paws plush and open, waiting to hold the girl and be held by her.

But, of course, the villagers didn’t know any of this. All they saw was a girl safe in the paws of a tiger, sitting before a vicious creature who stared at her like she was one of its own.

Fear rolled over the village like a fog. The villagers breathed it in and it filled their lungs, seeped into the folds of their minds until they were mad with it, raving and running and shouting into the night about tigers and evils and spirits. And so, because they feared Dae too much to harm her, they dragged her parents out of their house and drowned them in the river. The villagers let their bodies wash away along with the truth of that night, for as Dae grew older, they simply told her that the tiger had killed her parents, and that it had been the villagers that had saved her from its undiscriminating claws.

*

And so my grandmother grew up as both the daughter of the village and the daughter of no one. She was passed from house to house, fed by all and loved by none. They whispered about her behind their paneled walls, but never gave her a clue as to why no one would keep her in their home for more than a month, or why she, unlike any of the other children, was forbidden to go into the forest. They told her that she had a weak constitution—a frail set of bones—and that the more laborious chores like fetching water from the river and collecting mushrooms from the mountain should be left to the stronger, healthier children. Dae could never understand this. Although she was fed relatively little, she was the fastest of the children, winning every play yard foot race by a good three paces. Even in schoolyard fights no one had ever bested her. In fact, the other children seemed to cower as soon as she approached them, even if it was just to say hello.

Only one boy never shied away from her. His name was Han. He was the blacksmith’s son and missed most of school to apprentice his father’s trade. When he did come to school his hands were always stained with soot from the forge, leaving the ever-present impression of a mustache on his upper lip from when he reached up to wipe his nose. Behind his back, the other children teased him mercilessly, taunting him with nicknames of “mustache” and “old man.” But they would never say these things to his face for Han was a violent child, known in the village for his sudden fits of rage. No one had dared to approach him after the day he hit a boy so hard the boy lost use of his left eye. No one but Dae, who approached him the next day at lunchtime. She walked up to where he sat alone in the shade to stand before him, holding a barley wheat biscuit in her outstretched hand.

Hi, she said, I’m Dae. Do you want a biscuit?

Aren’t you scared of me? Han asked without looking up. Everyone else is.

No, said Dae. Are you scared of me?

Han finally looked up, his forehead wrinkled with confusion. Why would I be afraid of you?

Dae shrugged. I don’t know. Everyone just acts strange around me. I don’t know why.

Han shrugged. You seem fine to me.

Dae smiled. She held out her hand further, her body tilting as she leaned towards him.

Come on, she said, take it.

Hesitantly, Han took the biscuit and bit into it. Dae watched him as he chewed, waiting.

Hey, he said, that’s pretty good. Dae smiled.

*

Tigers have voices, too. Have you ever heard a tiger chuff? At its worst, the tiger roars, the sound like air being ripped apart. But when a tiger truly speaks it’s no more than the suggestion of a sound. It’s the low rumble of a stone moving under a lake. A woman’s voice beneath a hand.

*

The years passed and Dae never set foot into the forest. Although she hadn’t been there when they died, Dae had heard the story of her parents’ deaths enough times that it had become a memory, pressed into her mind like a footprint in the grass. In the darkness behind her eyelids she saw a man and a woman standing, hand in hand, in a shadow with a tail. She saw their terrified faces as the shadow rose up. She watched the river wash red as their bodies fell away with the water over a cliff, lost to the earth. Lost to her.

What haunted Dae most about her parents’ deaths was that their bodies were never buried. Instead of resting safely in the earth, her parents were loose in the world’s water, shifting aimlessly for the rest of time. At night, Dae dreamt of their blue bodies at her bedside, kneeling beside her on bloated knees, looking at her with white eyes until she opened hers to find nothing at all.

Only once did she nearly enter the forest. It was her twelfth birthday, although she didn’t know her birthday and when she asked, the villagers pretended as if they had forgotten. Dae was standing in the middle of Ahjussi Jeong’s pepper field, where she was supposed to be pulling weeds, but instead, stood staring into the forest.

Back then, the forests of Korea were very different from how we know them now. Plants grew that we have no name for, plants of many colors and strange shapes, both flowering and plain, plenty and rare. The vegetation was thicker, more abundant. When Dae looked into the forest it was as if she was looking into a painting: a flat, untouchable mass of leaves and branches, flowers and weeds. And, in the center of it all, two sparkling circles. Small and gleaming, black as the deepest lake at nighttime. Dae stared at them and they stared at her. Black eyes to brown, holding each other across the field of unripe peppers. In her feet, Dae felt a low rumble. Like the premonition of an earthquake—the gestation of a mountain. Dae blinked but the eyes stayed fastened on hers. Dae felt her body moving without her mind, her leg rising to take a step forward, but before her heel could strike the ground Ahjussi Jeong’s voice electrocuted the air, shocking her out of the trance.

Are you done with those weeds yet? he cried from inside his house.

Almost! she shouted. When she turned back to the forest it was just a surface again, flat and full of nothing.

*

The tiger remembered Dae just as Dae remembered the tiger. It wanted nothing more than to be with her again. In the absence of language, creatures like the tiger feel emotions differently than we do. More precisely. Deeper. The tiger knew that nothing would be right until they were reunited. But the tiger had seen the villagers’ gleaming knives, it had seen all those years ago how they would destroy even those of their own with nothing but their hands and running water. So the tiger bided its time and waited in the forest, waiting for Dae to return.

*

At eighteen, Dae was a woman, and the villagers treated her differently for it. Fear rolled back over the village as they watched the change come over her. As the baby fat left her cheeks, her face grew taut, her edges sharp and feline. As merchants carted their goods from village to village, they carried with them tales of the beautiful girl from Sanshin. They stood atop their carts and spoke of a girl whose beauty made strong men weep and women go mad—beauty to rival even that of the red sun that fell every evening onto the blade of the mountain’s edge.

The wariness the villagers had treated Dae with as an infant returned to the way that they spoke to her, the way they watched her as she walked down the street. Even Han had changed. In manhood, a real mustache had replaced the one of soot, and almost overnight he had grown tall and strong. Sometimes, Dae caught him looking at her with a strange intensity etched into his face, a shade of darkness simmering in the folds of his eyes. But Dae knew that as long as people associated her with Han, they would leave her alone. His strength kept her safe, and in turn, Dae ignored Han’s strange looks, choosing to see Han as her friend as the village as her family—her life as perfectly normal.

Eighteen years of homelessness had taught Dae that the only kind of girl people were willing to take care of was a nice one. She learned how to make herself plain, like a simple, flavorless cracker to which no one could complain. She did her chores and then she did extra ones. She was clean to an extreme and bathed even when she wasn’t dirty. She threw herself into her schoolwork, quickly proving herself as the best student in the village. When she finished working through all of the schoolhouse’s lessons, she worked through them again, mastering the problems twice as quickly as before. When she had completed them again for the third time, the villagers took her out of the school and put her in charge of the village’s books.

In an empty hut in the middle of town, Dae rifled through books documenting everything that had ever happened in the village of Sanshin. She read about each merchant that came down the road, the things that they carried, bought, and sold. She read about crops that they had grown and the crops that had failed, and which farmer had been responsible for each one. Dae was in charge of organizing the past and recording the present. The villagers reported to her things that they thought should be preserved, dictated stories that they wanted on paper. She listened to them and she obeyed—she wrote and stayed silent.

*

The tiger dreamt of my grandmother’s eyes in the distance, her hair whipping across her shoulders like smoke. It dreamt her walking towards it. Her bare feet on the forest floor, leaves folding softly beneath her heels, her body whole and steady and moving. The tiger watched her move through the sunlight, through the thick of the forest, coming closer until it could smell her breath, until its face was before hers, until...

*

On the first day of autumn, the oldest man in the village died in his sleep, slipping out of life as easily as a leaf falling into water.

The villagers were distraught. No one had died in recent memory and the villagers had forgotten the feeling of grief. It overwhelmed them, rushed in like a flood, and they wailed and beat their drums as the man’s family carried his body up to the mountain.

Later, the man’s widow came to Dae’s hut to ask for her husband’s name to be interred into the book of dead names.

Reluctantly, Dae reached up to the highest shelf where a slim book bound in cracked leather sat in the darkness. In all of her time working in the hut, it was the one book she had avoided. She was sure that to see her parents’ names written in red ink would be too much for her. She already felt as if she stood on a floor of rice paper. She feared that to see her parents’ names, to see their deaths immortalized in the book, would make her fall through.

On the first page was a short list of names, written in red ink beside the date and the cause of their death.  But next to her parents’ names there was nothing. Not “tiger” or “mauling” or even just “accident.” Her parents’ names. A blank space.

A hot feeling began to burn inside of Dae. It pulsed red hot beside her heart—a double heartbeat.

Shaking slightly, Dae stood up. She walked past the old man’s widow and out

of the hut. She walked to the house of the new oldest man in the village, Jun. He sat in a wooden chair outside of his house, wagging a long stick to break up fights between his chickens.

As Dae walked up the path Jun looked at her with wary eyes. Of all the villagers, he feared her most, having been the first to find her in the clutches of the tiger all those years ago. He was the one who had suggested that Dae be assigned to managing the village’s books, hoping that this would keep her out of sight, and the villagers out of danger.

Dae stopped a few paces away from the old man, the most important man in the village, her mouth tight and angry. She handed the book to him, its pages open to her parents’ names written with nothing in the space beside them. Jun looked down at the page and back up to the girl, defiance and fear glazed over his eyes.

How did my parents die? Dae asked. In her chest, she already felt the answer.

Jun leaned back in his chair. He examined his stick, twirling it between his palms.

The tiger killed them, he said, You know this, of course.

Dae closed her eyes, biting her tongue again to keep the fire from spilling out of her mouth.

Then why isn’t it written in the book? she asked quietly. How did my parents die?

Jun had been watching Dae ever since he had rescued her from the tiger. He watched with disgust as she was kept in the village, as she fed off the hard-earned grain of his fellow villagers. He had watched as she grew into womanhood and he had felt the pain of her beauty, and he had hated her for that, too. He saw the evil inside of her and feared her, feared everything he could not know. And finally, when Dae asked the question that was not really a question, the question that her dreams had already answered, the fear festering inside the old man spoiled into fury and burst out of him like pus from an angry boil.

How dare you! he cried, his face swelling purple. His shrill voice shook the air, making villagers pop their heads out of the surrounding houses. It is not your place to ask these questions! How dare you!

How did they die? Dae said again. They are my parents. It is my place to know the truth.

Jun glared at her.

Are you really ignorant? He seethed, spitting into the dirt. Or are you just playing coy? Toying with us until the day you destroy us all?

My only curse is the way you all have treated me all these years! screamed Dae, flying back to confront the villagers that had crowded around them in the yard. Is this how you shelter an orphan? With lies and deceit and cruelty?!

You made an orphan of yourself, the old man sneered.

Dae whirled back to him, her face bright and raging.

What do you mean? she demanded. What are you saying?

Tiger’s curse, he spit. Your parents drowned by the hand you guided. I should have left you to die in that forest, let you rot there and your evil rot with you. You are our punishment.

He stepped towards Dae, leaning forward to speak directly into her face. You are our curse.

*

Dae burst through the doorway of Han’s house, stumbling over to where he stood kindling the kitchen fire. He caught her by the elbows as she sputtered out what had happened, what she had found. Han listened with an unchanging face. He let her speak until she ran out of breath.

Are you hearing me? Dae cried, beating at his chest. Why don’t you speak?

My father told me of all of this long ago, said Han, and Dae’s mouth fell open.

It never mattered to me. It’s all just stories and superstition, anyways.

Dae shook her head.

I don’t know, she said. Even if it is, how can I go on? How can I go on living here when I know how they see me—what they think?

Dae looked at her friend, waiting for him to comfort her like he always had whenever the other children used to torment her, teasing her and knocking her over in class. She waited for the Han of childhood to return, for him to smile and tell her that it would all be okay. But instead, Han stepped towards her. He lowered his head until they were eye to eye. He said, Marry me.

Marry me, said Han, and Dae looked at him with wide eyes. Marry me and none of this will matter. We’ll be happy and all they’ll see is our happiness, you as my wife, and nothing else.

Han, Dae said. The scalding rage of before had vanished, leaving in its place the numb frost of shock. Her mouth opened and closed as she searched for words, for anything. Han. How can I be your wife?

Easily! He said, his eyes flaring. I love you, Dae. You know I do. I’ve loved you ever since we were children. I’ll tell my father that we intend to marry and there will be nothing that he can do. I’m his only son, he relies on me more than I do on him. And as you have no parents there will be no opposition to the marriage and we will be together!

Dae pushed him away and stumbled back, standing speechless as she looked at her childhood friend. She felt as if the clouds above had suddenly shattered, the tree she clung to in thunderstorms: struck by lightning.

H-Han, she said, her voice quavering. I love you as a friend loves her oldest friend. I’m sorry if I ever led you to believe anything else. Truly, I never intended it.

Han’s brow creased, his shoulders rising slightly as he sank into himself. Instinctively, Dae took another step back.

Please, forgive me, she said. Can’t we go on like we used to? Please, Han?

Please?

Han was looking down at his hands, his whole face clenched and tumultuous. Dae watched him as a swallow watches a hawk. Finally, Han looked back up at Dae.

Marry me, Dae, he said again, but this time in a voice she had only heard him use towards others. Dae turned to run but he caught her shoulder. His hands had become strong from years of working at the anvil, of entering and retreating from fire.

You could come to love me, I know it, he said. And now, with the truth out, you need a husband.

How can I be your wife? She asked again, this time her voice nearly at a shriek. She took another step back, her mind blasting white with panic as her back hit the wall. Han’s body blocked hers and she pleaded with him, how can I be your wife?

And, with his hand sealed over her screaming mouth, he showed her.

*

Dae ran. Her slippers fell off her feet, her dress flapping loose around her body, as she burst through the village, her hair flying behind her like shreds of dark ribbons glaring in the sun. She ran so fast that no one had time to see her, to shout out a threat or a warning before she flew through the fields and into the forest.

*

The tiger felt Dae coming before she even began to run. It felt her footfalls in the center of its paws. It took its place by the river and waited.

*

Dae tore through the forest, only speeding up as branches scratched at her arms, her hair catching on rough bark. She was not crying but her breath came at strange gasps, her chest bucking and swaying wildly as she ran. She didn’t remember having ever been in the forest, but the same instinct that guided her so many years before guided her again. A pull at her navel led her towards the river, drawing her deep into the forest.

Finally, her feet stopped in a clearing scattered with red and yellow leaves. The river trickled past nearby, its waters weeping quietly.

Dae stood there and coughed in air, aching all over, failing to feel alive. She doubled over, gasping and grabbing at her legs, holding onto herself as waves of panic crashed upon her over and over.

When the tiger approached Dae startled, but the tiger just stood there and Dae didn’t run away. She crouched there on the forest floor, shuddering and trying to breathe. Slowly, the tiger walked towards Dae, placing one paw at a time firmly on the ground. Dae watched the tiger’s paws approaching and held onto her legs, held herself in. Afternoon sunlight fell through the leaves overhead, setting the tiger’s fur ablaze with light. The tiger stopped a foot away from Dae, its tail swinging slowly, and stretched out its neck.

Carefully, the tiger laid its muzzle against her cheek.

Dae felt the tiger’s soft fur against her face. She breathed in and smelled its familiar scent. Gradually, she matched her breath to its breath, her body uncoiling slowly as she focused on the tiger’s body, its gentle weight, its firm heartbeat.

Dae fell to her knees, her hands pressed before her, grounding her to the cool earth.

The tiger stepped back, turning its great head to face hers. Their eyes met.

*

Dae married Han in a borrowed hanbok, the billowing skirt big enough to conceal her growing stomach. After they bowed to his father at their wedding, Han smiled at Dae with all of the immeasurable brilliance of a man victorious and in love. But Dae did not smile. She looked at him with hard eyes, eyes locked and closed, Han and the world on one side, she and her child on the other.

They moved into a little house right beside his father’s, the walls thin enough that during the day, the only sound was that of metal on hot metal, tools making tools, knives cutting out new knives. Dae stayed inside the house and cooked for her husband, preparing plain meals of stew and rice twice a day until her belly grew so large that it was hard for her to stand.

Now that she was a wife, the other women in the village began to visit Dae in her home, figuring that the fact that she was pregnant proved that she was not a demon but a woman, and that the common bond of matrimony would provide some kind of kinship that had been absent for the past eighteen years. But when they came to her house Dae would not speak. For the nine months that her child grew within her, Dae didn’t speak a single word. At first, Han worried, wondering if the pregnancy had struck some madness within her. He brought midwives and doctors to her, trying in vain to find some mysterious root of his wife’s speechlessness. After weeks of fruitless examinations, he gave up, figuring that perhaps it was better that she was silent and content than angry and screaming. For months Dae was silent until, finally, the day came where water poured down her legs and the midwife came to help Dae lie down and have her baby.

Dae screamed. She kept the whole village awake for twenty-six hours as she pushed and pushed and tried to get her baby out of her body. Han paced outside of the house, waiting for the terrible screams to end so he could hold the son he so desperately wanted. But, after all those hours, it was a girl who slid into the midwife’s hands, wailing hoarsely into the late winter air.

At the sound of the baby’s crying the villagers let out their collected breath. A long labor rarely meant a successful one and they had all been expecting disaster. And yet, even after the cord was cut and the baby was declared healthy, Dae went on screaming just as loudly as she had for the twenty-six hours she’d spent in labor.  

What’s wrong? Han asked, looking down at his daughter lying in her cradle, but the midwife didn’t know. Everything had ended but Dae was still screaming, screaming on and on, screaming nine months of screams, letting loose the lifetime of sound she had kept deep at the bottom of her lungs. Han shook Dae by her shoulders but she only screamed louder, her eyes huge and bloodshot and bulging, as if another birth was on its way. Stop! Han yelled, shaking her again, but she just kept on screaming. Han raised his hand to strike her, but before he could bring it down, a shadow fell over the room.

Dae stopped screaming.

Han turned around.

A tiger stood in the doorway. At the sight of it the midwife fainted dead away. Han backed up, blocking Dae’s body with its own, but the tiger ignored him completely. The tiger looked only at Dae, moving towards her slowly, its shoulders rolling smoothly as it approached her bedside.

Dae lay in bed, her torso propped up by pillows, whimpering and shuddering violently as the tiger came towards her. The tiger nudged Han with its shoulder and he fell back, struck dumb by the sight of it. The tiger stood at Dae’s bedside and looked into her eyes for a moment. It lay its head against her sweating forehead.

Dae closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, her chest rising and falling with the tiger’s. The tiger shifted its head to align it to hers, its cheek against her cheek, its nose in her hair, its mouth against her ear.

And the tiger spoke.

Only tigers and the women born with them know the speech of tigers, but what the tiger said to Dae must have been what she was waiting for, because as she listened she sat up against her pillows, her body rising as if it were the sun and a long night was ending. She looked into the tiger’s eyes, the eyes that were her own, and she was filled with light, a brilliant, searing brightness, the hot heat that had been seething inside of her finally realized. And, in a movement so swift it could only have been practiced, Dae reached under the mattress and pulled out a knife, flying out of bed to plunge it into her husband. 

Han looked down at the handle of the knife sticking out of his chest. He looked at Dae’s hand wound around it. The blood that stained them both.

Dae wrenched out the blade and Han collapsed to the floor. Looking up, she found the village at her door, staring at her with horrified faces.

The tiger lunged and Dae sprang forward, slashing at anything within reach. The tiger roared as Dae screamed, this time every cell of her body screaming with her. She stabbed blindly and saw blood fly through the air, heard the screams that cut through the chaos but couldn’t touch her. Nothing could touch her—she hacked and she cut, ripped and clawed, mauled and roared her terrible roar, the roar of great boulders crashing down a mountain. Her teeth flashed in the sunlight and her huge claws split open the air, making it bleed, too. Her powerful back legs launched her high above the crowd. She landed on each of the men whose names she had spent so many hours reciting. She tore open their throats with her teeth and stained her lips red. She ripped open the old man, Jun, and killed everyone who had tortured and lied to her, who had ripped away her life just as she ripped away theirs. She was a whirling mass of skin and metal and bone, spinning around and high and above, her fur electric and blinding in the sunlight, killing until there was nothing left standing to kill. And then Dae collapsed, her legs folding in under her, the knife falling out of her hand to rest in the tall grass.

The tiger lay down next to her as she lay breathing quietly on the ground.

With the last of her strength, she reached up to lay her hand on its head. The tiger breathed out and Dae took it as her last breath, finally asleep, finally at peace and brilliant in blood red.

*

And so our familial mountain came to know its first grave. The tiger carried my grandmother’s body on its back up to the top of the tallest mountain and dug with its own paws her grave. The tiger lay her body down in the cool earth, piling an enormous mound of dirt on top of her so that she was the new peak, the highest point in the sky.

The tiger went back down to the village and found my grandmother’s daughter. My next grandmother. It licked her clean and, taking care with its claws, wrapped her in a blanket. The tiger carried Dae’s baby gingerly between its teeth into the forest, walking to the next known village, a place where no one had heard the screams of that day.

I wonder what the tiger told the baby as it took her to her new home. Maybe it spoke of her mother, and how, for a moment, she had been the only woman in the world. Or maybe it told her her future, about how one woman’s past always returns as another’s present. Maybe it comforted the child. Maybe it warned her. Maybe it said to her what it said to Dae before she took out her knife. Maybe it told her of all the women that would breathe in from Dae’s last breath. Maybe it told her the story she would tell her daughter, and her daughter would tell hers— the story my mother told her daughter and that I will tell mine. The story of our first grandmother and how she had been that day. Burning bright. Complete and untouchable. Immortal.

Emma Eun-Joo Choi is a playwright and fiction writer from Vienna, Virginia. Her fiction has been featured in publications including The Masters Review and The Harvard Advocate, and her plays have been professionally produced in DC and New York City. Emma is a student at Harvard College and lives in New Jersey.