This piece was originally published in the Gilded Glass Anthology: Twisted Myths and Shattered Fairytales by WordFire Press.
In the cool, early morning of spring’s first new moon, Madam Yim brought her young wards onto the Lake of the Nameless Goddess on a boat, pushing off the lake’s bottom with a long bamboo pole until it could no longer reach. As the first rays of sunlight rose over the tops of the trees, they drifted into the thick fog until their temple home on the shore disappeared.
The wards, all girls wearing plain, undyed hanboks, huddled in the center of the boat for warmth. Except for Chohee, drawn to the edge of the boat, gripping the side with both hands as she slowly lowered her face closer to the water. Madam Yim smacked her fingers with the pole, and she snatched them back with a yelp.
“Not yet,” Madam Yim said. “Wait your turn.”
Chohee sat back down in the boat, rubbing the pain out of her knuckles. Her best friend gently nudged her shoulder.
“Sorry, Madam Yim,” she murmured.
Chohee and the other six girls had all been born during the once-a-century arrival of the Great Heavenly Comet, marking them as potential vessels for the Nameless Goddess whose spirit resided in the lake. After their tenth winter, they had all left their families’ homes to live together in the village temple with Madam Yim to purify their bodies and strengthen their ties to the spirit world. Now, ten long years later, one of them would become the next vessel, and the rest would be commoners again.
The Nameless Goddess had resided in her lake for thousands of years. She blessed her people with favorable rains for their harvests and abundant, delicious fish for their tables and markets, sought out by even royal chefs for the king’s table in the distant capital city.
Like their goddess, the seven wards had kept their names to themselves during the entirety of the decade they had served in the temple, if they had been named at all. Chohee didn’t even know the name of her best friend, with whom she had eaten every meal, stolen wine from the kitchen, and sneaked out of the temple into the village late at night just to see if they could.
Madam Yim looked to the heavens, waiting for some sign, then tapped the fishmonger’s daughter with the pole.
“You. Go,” Madam Yim said.
With trembling hands, the fishmonger’s daughter approached the edge of the boat and looked down at her reflection.
“What do you see?” Madam Yim asked.
“I only see fog,” she confessed.
“Very well. Next,” Madam Yim said.
The fishmonger’s daughter returned to the center of the boat sniffling, big tears rolling down her cheeks. Her friends comforted her with gentle words. She was just another commoner now.
“Silence!” Madam Yim barked. “Do not distract the others.”
The second girl went forward, and she, too, saw only fog. The third as well. The fourth girl, Chohee’s dear friend, was the first to see.
“A fighter, with a face covered in blood, surrounded by flames,” she said, her voice shaking. She looked up with wonder in her eyes. Madam Yim smiled.
“Our Nameless Goddess has chosen to show you a vision of your future son. Rejoice, for he will surely be a great general of whom many songs will be written. Next,” she said.
But Chohee’s friend did not look happy. She looked disturbed.
The fifth girl saw a beautiful young nobleman, and Madam Yim declared it would be her future suitor. Finally, Chohee was allowed to approach, and once again she peered down into the water, keeping her sore hands close to her stomach. A patch of fog stirred and cleared away, and she held her breath as she leaned farther over the edge.
The boat gently rocked, yet the water was as still as glass. A featureless face, a flat brown oval matching her own sun-darkened skin appeared. Slowly, her face was etched into the lake’s surface, wearing an expression she could not decipher. Her own eyes were wide, but her reflection’s eyes were hooded, as if she held mysteries that she did not care to reveal.
“Well? What do you see?” Madam Yim demanded.
“I see myself,” Chohee said, leaning so close to the water that her nose nearly touched.
A rough wave suddenly struck the boat, and she fell headfirst into the cold lake. The weight of her layered hanbok pulled her down into the depths, and she flailed her arms and legs, though she had never learned to swim. She tried to hold her breath, but her lungs screamed for air and her traitorous mouth opened anyway, sucking in water.
An intense loneliness seized her as she watched the bottom of the boat drift away while she sank. Somehow, she had always known that she would not survive past this day. Her family had fallen ill and died of sickness only months after she had joined the other girls in the temple, and now she was dying, alone and unwanted. She stopped struggling. At least death would be better than this loneliness she felt.
Something struck her hard in the chest: the end of Madam Yim’s bamboo pole, searching for her in the depths. It struck her side, and her hands grabbed it automatically. She flew through the water and broke the surface with a gasp. Some of the other girls were there at the edge of the boat, grabbing her hanbok and her arms, pulling her to safety. The feeling of loneliness subsided as she left the lake.
The fishmonger’s daughter turned her on her side, and her friend struck her back hard. She threw up all the water she had swallowed, and the other girls squealed and jumped back, rocking the boat even more. Only her friend stayed.
“Steady, steady!” Madam Yim called, kneeling beside Chohee. “Do you live, girl?”
Chohee’s nose and throat burned. She nodded, too weak to speak.
“Did you see anything in the lake?”
Chohee shook her head.
Madam Yim picked her up and leaned her against the front of the boat, where it pinched into a point.
“Stay there and don’t fall in again,” she commanded.
When the other girls had settled, Madam Yim tapped the last girl, the nobleman’s daughter. No one was supposed to know she was a nobleman’s daughter, but it was obvious by her pale, glowing skin, untouched by the sun even though they all had to do outdoor chores, and how her long black hair always shone in any light, healthy and lustrous. Her features, too, were beautiful: a small, petite face carved from ivory.
She approached the edge of the boat and peered down at her reflection.
“I see a beautiful woman crowned with seven stars, holding a scepter of twin dragons around a pearl.”
Madam Yim clapped her hands together and covered her face, then got down on her knees and bowed low to the nobleman’s daughter. The other girls did the same, except for Chohee. She locked eyes with the nobleman’s daughter over the others’ heads. Envy burned in her heart.
The Nameless Goddess had chosen her next vessel.
* * *
There was a festival in the village that very night, celebrating the next cycle of the Nameless Goddess. Colorful silk and paper lanterns were hung from every home and along the streets and alleyways, some folded into the shapes of lotuses, frogs, and dragons. At the temple, villagers brought offerings before the stone statue of the Nameless Goddess, with her seven-starred crown and scepter of twin dragons entwined around a pearl. A fan covered her face, etched with the story of how she had angered the other gods through insolence and so was cast from the heavens into the lake, losing both her name and face in the process. Now she protected the villagers as part of her divine penance, forever separated from her celestial family.
The offerings were stacked plates of fruit and confections, cooked rice, the best catches of fish, and spring wine that had been fermented throughout the long winter. The spirits, ancestors, and local household gods would come and feast on the offerings, draining them of their energy, and later the villagers would share and feast on the same food.
Chohee played her part with the other five unchosen girls by arranging the offerings in their proper place while shamans in colorful robes danced with knives and bells, calling down their gods into their bodies. They walked unharmed on beds of nails, ran sharp swords along their tongues, and then with grins showed their uncut tongues to the villagers. They re-enacted stories of the gods and of humans who had walked the spiritual plain, some full of joy and laughter, some of tragedy and sorrow. Their apprentices, lovers, and village musicians beat complex rhythms on animal-hide drums and cymbals and loudly sang old folk songs.
The nobleman’s daughter, dressed now in a vibrant silk hanbok, her hair done up with jewel-encrusted combs and tiny bells, sat cross-legged at a table to the side and heard the villagers’ wishes and prayers as they brought their offerings. Royal emissaries and stone-faced monks from the capitol, unamused by the shamans’ raucous performances, sat on either side of her, whispering words from the king into her ears. She was not the vessel yet, but already she was elevated to godhood in everyone’s eyes.
When the last of the offerings were placed, Chohee slipped away. She climbed the old, crooked pine tree growing beside the courtyard walls as she had a thousand times before, sitting in its branches and watching the shamans dance in peace. It didn’t last long. She had just gotten comfortable when her dear friend walked up to the base of the tree.
“May I join you?” she asked, raising a ceramic jug and a clay bowl. “I brought wine.”
“If you can climb on your own,” Chohee replied.
Her friend grinned and quickly made her way up the tree with only one hand, sitting beside Chohee. Balancing against the trunk and bracing her foot against an opposing branch, she poured cloudy rice wine into the bowl, took a deep drink, then handed it to Chohee. The cool wine chilled her throat and stomach. She shivered, and her friend poured another drink for them both.
“I took this from the offering table,” her friend said casually as Chohee took her second sip.
Chohee choked but did not spit it out. She smacked her friend’s arm.
“You can’t do that!” she said.
“The spirits have plenty. They won’t miss one bottle,” she said, shrugging, then removed a paper-wrapped package from the inside of her hanbok. “They won’t miss a couple of honey cakes, either.”
Chohee smacked her arm again, but she still took one of the cakes. She’d already drunk the wine, after all, and besides, she was just another unwanted girl now, with no family and no prospects. What more could the spirits do to her that hadn’t already been done?
“So. Will you tell me your name?” the girl asked.
“My name?” Chohee blurted, startled. “Why would you want to know my name?”
“Because we’ve lived together for ten years. Isn’t that enough? Don’t you want to know my name, too? I’ll go first,” her friend said. “Lee Gangwol. My family lives to the south.”
“I’m Chohee. Just Chohee,” she said.
“Chohee,” Gangwol said slowly and smiled.
Chohee blushed. It was the first time she had heard her name spoken from someone else’s lips in a decade, and maybe the first time she had ever heard it spoken with such care.
They climbed from the pine tree onto the courtyard wall and drank the rest of the wine together, hushing whenever someone walked by underneath their tree, laughing as they leaned into each other, and Chohee felt light as air. When the shamans had finished their rituals, the monks from the capitol at last were allowed to pray in long, monotonous chants none of the villagers could even understand. She leaned back on her hands, sleepy and content, and watched the stars instead.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to share it with anyone else?” Gangwol asked.
“Of course,” Chohee said.
Gangwol stared hard at the chanting monks, her arm resting on the knee of her widespread leg, looking anything but ladylike.
“The vision I saw. It wasn’t a man’s face. It was a woman’s,” she said at last. Then she breathed in deep, held it, and sighed. “It was mine.”
Chohee sat up straight. She wobbled a little from the wine, but Gangwol reached out and grabbed the back of her hanbok, keeping her from falling.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think I’m ever going to be a mother. I think I’m going to die in battle one day,” Gangwol said.
“A woman general,” Chohee said in awe. “Madam Yim was right: they’ll write songs about you.”
“I wonder if they’ll be good ones,” Gangwol said, drinking the dregs straight from the jug. “Did you really not see anything when you fell in the lake?”
“Nothing.”
Gangwol nodded, deep in thought.
“I thought for sure when you fell that the goddess was taking you then and there.”
“I thought she was taking me, too, at first,” Chohee said with a heavy sigh of her own. “If she had chosen me, I would never let you die in battle. I would follow you and keep you safe.”
Gangwol laughed and nudged her shoulder.
“War would take me far away from here. How would you protect me from the lake?”
“There are rivers and springs. And rain. I would hop from puddle to puddle on one foot, like this,” Chohee said.
She was halfway standing up, balanced on one foot, when she toppled forward. Gangwol grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close, keeping her from falling again, laughing all the while.
“I’m glad you weren’t chosen,” Gangwol said. “It would be lonely without you. But now, we’re both free. We can be whatever we want.”
Chohee stopped laughing.
“I wanted to be the Nameless Goddess’s vessel,” she admitted. “I wanted it more than anything. Didn’t you?”
Gangwol just smiled and shook her head.
The royal emissaries and the monks bowed to the nobleman’s daughter as she was taken away by Madam Yim to prepare for her joining with the goddess. Then they made their way to the back of the courtyard, past the sleeping quarters, through the eastern gate, and toward the vessel’s raft laden with flowers and ritual instruments, along with the other boats which would carry lanterns and fish offerings out onto the lake.
Chohee jerked up: something was wrong. They should not be approaching the raft without Madam Yim or any of the shamans. It was a closed ceremony to anyone outside of the village.
“Look! Where do they think they’re going?” Chohee asked, pointing to the emissaries and monks.
Gangwol watched the group and frowned. She stood up and held the jug like a weapon.
“Let’s follow them,” she said.
Quickly and quietly, they scampered across the courtyard wall on their hands and feet, dropped to the ground, and followed the men from the shadows.
“Be sure to bless the wine,” one of the emissaries said as they stepped onto the raft.
A monk pulled a silver vial from his robe, unstoppered the sacred wine, and upended the vial into the jug. He sat and chanted as the other monks spread some sort of dust in complex circular patterns on the raft.
“It is blessed now, my lord,” the monk said. “When their goddess descends into her new body, she will be too weak to escape the dying vessel.”
“Good. Soldiers should be here soon to stop any villagers who try to get in our way. Their heathen goddess will be cast to the underworld, and this sacred lake and all its power will belong to Our Heavenly General and our king,” the emissary said.
Chohee covered her mouth. The Heavenly General was a new military god from the capital who demanded sacrifice from the battlefield. How dare they come and supplant the goddess who had watched over their village since before the Heavenly General had even been born? Red-hot righteous fury boiled Chohee’s blood, and she ran at them, ready to kill—but Gangwol yanked her back into the brush.
“What was that?” a younger emissary said, peering into the dark.
“The soldiers taking their positions, or a night bird catching its prey,” a monk suggested.
“You heard them—soldiers are coming. We have to warn the others,” Gangwol whispered.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a general yourself in your future? We must kill them and protect our goddess,” Chohee said, seething.
“We will only be killed ourselves, and then the new vessel will unknowingly go to her death and sever the Nameless Goddess’s ties to our realm. Come, Madam Yim will know what to do,” Gangwol said, pulling her back toward the temple.
A group of soldiers wearing tall black hats with purple imperial feathers stepped out of the trees and blocked their path, swords drawn.
“Little sisters, what are you doing out here without a chaperone?” a soldier asked. “It’s dangerous to be out here alone.”
“It wasn’t dangerous until you came,” Chohee said, and spat on him.
“We have holy business at the temple. Our gods will curse you if you hinder us,” Gangwol said, raising her chin.
“How can I let you go when you have disrespected me like this?” the head soldier demanded, wiping the spit from his cheek with a glare. “Don’t you know that spitting on an imperial soldier is the same as spitting on the king?”
Gangwol stepped in front of Chohee, shielding her with her body. Lanterns lit up farther down the lakeshore, where most of the village would be watching the ceremony. Past the soldiers and through the open courtyard gate, villagers carried the nobleman’s daughter on a plain palanquin, preceded by the other four wards carrying silk lanterns on poles, led by Madam Yim. Behind the palanquin, more villagers beat on drums and sang in drunken celebration.
“It’s a trap!” Chohee shouted. “They’ve poisoned the wine! It’s a tr—”
The soldiers moved fast as serpents, grabbing both of the girls and covering their mouths. Chohee bit down hard and the soldier holding her grunted in pain but did not remove his hand, his blood filling her mouth as they were dragged into the trees. Gangwol smashed the jug on another soldier’s head, and he collapsed, but two more grabbed her.
“Should we kill them?” one of the men asked.
“No—not until their goddess is dead. If their blood is spilled on the earth, she may sense the threat,” the head soldier said.
The more the girls struggled, the tighter the soldiers held them, pulling them farther and farther into the woods. Chohee kicked and bit even as the procession moved past them toward the raft, the music drowning out their desperate battle.
The royal emissaries and monks bowed to Madam Yim as they approached.
“Haven’t you retired to your rooms?” she asked.
The eldest emissary smiled at her. “We humbly request you let us stay and observe the ceremony. We may never have a chance to witness a god fully possessing a mortal again. We will be sure to tell our king of this glorious occasion.”
“Goddess,” Madam Yim corrected. “Very well. For the sake of our king, you may stay and observe. From the shore.”
“Could not one of our monks join the party on the raft, so we may give a more accurate account to our king? He would surely bless your village with many riches,” the emissary said.
“With my deepest apologies, I must insist you remain on the shore.”
The emissary gave a slight bow of his head and relented. Helplessly, Chohee could only watch as the nobleman’s daughter, Madam Yim, and her fellow wards stepped onto the raft and pushed out into the water, the rest of the procession climbing into the other boats to follow.
Gangwol wrenched her right arm free and twisted to the left, grabbed hold of a hilt of the soldier still holding her and withdrew his sword from its scabbard, then ran him through with his own blade. She slayed another before the others could react. Chohee got a soldier’s finger in her mouth and bit clean through the bone. The soldier let go of her, screaming, and she spit the finger onto the ground.
“Don’t kill them yet!” the head soldier cried, even as he struggled to disarm Gangwol without spilling her blood.
Gangwol fought like she had been born with a sword in her hand, as elegant as she was deadly. She shoved Chohee behind her and waved the sword in the remaining soldiers’ faces, backing away towards the water.
“I’ll hold them off! Go!” she cried.
Trusting in the vision the Nameless Goddess had given Gangwol—that she would one day fight in a future battle—Chohee ran towards the water. She looked back once just as a soldier struck Gangwol in the temple with a rock, knocking her to the ground.
Tears stung her eyes, but she could not go back for her beloved. She had to save the Nameless Goddess. She screamed warnings as she ran to the boats, but her voice was lost in the drums and singing. A royal emissary grabbed her by her jeogori as she tried to run past him, holding her back.
“Little sister, where are you going? The raft has already left,” he said.
Chohee quickly yanked her jeogori’s knot loose and slipped out of the little jacket. She ran into the water, ignoring the shouts behind her. Perhaps it was her blind faith or sheer desperation, but for once her arms and legs carved a path through the water like the fins of a fish.
But the raft pulled farther away as Madam Yim uncorked the tainted wine and poured it into a bowl for the nobleman’s daughter.
Chohee screamed again, but she sank and choked on water. She thrashed, using every last bit of strength she had to claw her way to the surface.
A hand reached down and pulled her up and into a boat, smacking her hard on the back. She coughed up the water and saw Gangwol, pushing hard along the lakebed with a bamboo pole in a boat left behind, her face covered in blood from the cut on her temple.
The emissaries and monks chased them on another boat. Three soldiers stood at the bow, swords drawn. Behind them, the trees lit up with flaming arrows. Panic seized her: they weren’t going to kill the Nameless Goddess with poison. They were going to burn her and everyone else on the raft.
“Madam Yim!” she cried.
At last, Madam Yim turned around and saw them just as the nobleman’s daughter lifted the bowl to her lips.
“It’s poison!” Chohee screamed, jumping out of the boat and onto the raft. “Don’t drink!”
Madam Yim spun around to yank the bowl back, but it was already empty. The nobleman’s daughter looked up at her, startled. Chohee held her breath.
Silence hung in the air. The waters did not part. The Nameless Goddess did not appear.
“What is the meaning of this?” Madam Yim demanded.
The nobleman’s daughter burst into tears.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I lied. I didn’t see anything in my reflection. I only saw fog.”
She threw herself at Madam Yim’s feet and grabbed her leg, wailing.
“Please forgive me! My father told me if I didn’t become the Nameless Goddess I could never return! I didn’t know what to do!”
The other four girls gasped. The wrong girl had drunk the wine. The ritual had failed. The Nameless Goddess could not ascend for another hundred years, her protection and ties to the land severed. The emissaries and monks hadn’t even needed to sabotage the ritual; they had already won the moment the nobleman’s daughter had lied.
Flaming arrows fell from the sky like stars, striking the raft. Chohee and the others quickly stamped them out, but it only took one arrow to strike the circle of dust the monk had scattered, and a raging fire swirled up. The other boats in the water started moving towards the raft, but they were too far away.
Chohee and Gangwol grabbed Madam Yim and the other girls, guiding them to the small boat they had taken. Gangwol reached back for Chohee but when she stepped in, the boat began to sink, already at its limit. It couldn’t support her weight and her friends’ at the same time. She and Gangwol locked eyes, and then Chohee stepped back onto the raft and shoved the boat away with her foot, hard.
“What are you doing? Get in!” Gangwol cried as the water took her away.
Chohee turned away to face the flames. She had failed her goddess, but at least the others would be saved. The raft suddenly dipped as Gangwol climbed on: she had jumped from the boat and swum back.
“What are you doing?” Chohee said, shaking. “You’ll be killed.”
“I’ll carry you to shore!” Gangwol said.
Chohee held onto the back of Gangwol’s jeogori and they jumped into the water, but their soaked hanboks pulled them down and they struggled to keep their heads above the surface. Finally Chohee let go and they both took hold of the raft’s edge, gasping for air.
“Go without me. Live for us both,” Chohee said, but Gangwol shook her head.
“This is my fate. To die here with you, surrounded by flames,” Gangwol said, her silhouette crowned with flames, tears streaking down her face. “I always thought we would have more time, that after tonight, when we were truly free, I could finally tell you I love you. I’m sorry, Chohee. I wasted the ten years we had.”
Chohee held on tight to Gangwol, opened her mouth to say that she loved her, too, that every morning she had woken up looking forward to seeing her face, that none of it had been a waste—but something grabbed her ankle and dragged her into the lake. The water pulled her down faster than Gangwol could swim after her, bubbles covering her face as she screamed in frustration.
And then, all was still. From the bottom of the lake came a light, and a woman swam up like a fish, clothed in a plain, undyed hanbok, skin browned by the sun, her face a blank and featureless oval. She took Chohee’s hands, and she was no longer choking on the water, but breathing it as freely as she did air. Features were etched onto the woman’s face until it was Chohee’s own reflection staring back at her.
And then she understood. The Nameless Goddess, who had lost her identity when she was cast from the heavens, took on the name and face of her vessels. The Nameless Goddess embraced Chohee as they became one flesh and one spirit, and she felt again her goddess’s unbearable loneliness, eased by their joining. Through the Nameless Goddess, Chohee would at last have the power to protect her village and the ones she cared for. And through Chohee, the Nameless Goddess would no longer be alone, at least for a time.
Together as one body, she ascended through the water, taking Gangwol and placing her gently on the raft. She floated high above the surface of the lake and held out her hand, water swirling up to take the shape of her scepter. With a single sweep, storm clouds suddenly filled the clear sky, and a torrent of rain quenched the flames on the raft and the archers’ arrows.
The emissaries and monks fell prostrate in their stolen boat, crying out for her forgiveness. Her twin dragons rose from the depths, made of lake water, and devoured the men whole. The dragons swept into the trees, swimming through the air, and tore the imperial soldiers limb from limb.
She felt the presence of the Heavenly General, her young nephew, angry that his followers had failed. This would never be his land. This would never be his lake. Her fellow celestial gods had believed tying her to the mortal world would make her weak and teach her her place, but it had only made her stronger and more defiant. She would never again bow to any god or king.
Across the lake and the shore, her villagers sang her praises and celebrated her return. All but Gangwol, standing on the raft and watching her with sorrow. When the dragons had finished their meals and returned once again to the lake’s depths, she set foot on the raft as Chohee the human girl, not Chohee the Named Goddess. She stroked Gangwol’s cheek with a tender hand.
“We were going to be free,” Gangwol said, choking on tears. “Both of us. But now, you’re going away from me, to somewhere I can’t reach.”
“But I am free. Truly free to walk the worlds of spirits and humans as I wish, with whom I wish,” Chohee said, brushing a tear away with her thumb. “Will you walk with me?”
“Always,” Gangwol said.
Gangwol kissed her deeply, and both of Chohee’s hearts flooded with joy to love and be loved in return. The storm clouds cleared, and the lake shone with stars.
Soon Jones is a Korean lesbian writer and poet originating from the rural countryside of the American South. Their work has been published in Writers Resist, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Westerly, Juke Joint, beestung, and others, and can be found at soonjones.com.