Page 81 of Reign of the Talon
My heart slams against my ribs in horror. I never knew. I never…
“It hurts,” Chara says, smoothing back my hair. “You feel sick. You want to escape your own body.”
“It’s a type of pain that no one should ever experience. But the three of us have.” Chryse’s eyes become hard, flinty. But not toward me. “They should not be able to take it from us. Our bodies are our homes. We should never feel threatened inside of them.”
“We want to help you reclaim yours,” her sister murmurs. “Which is why we’re here. To help you get ready. So when your body is your own again, you feel safe.”
I don’t know if that’s possible.My hands shake violently as I form the words. Revulsion lances through me. What the Prophecy has done to me…I’m terrified.
“I know,” Chryse replies, voice ragged.
But I want to—totry. I do. That body was mine, once. I lived in it, breathed in it. It was as Chryse said. It was my home.
Yet the Prophecy has used my body to do such horrible things. Once, it fed words onto my tongue and shoved them out with gnarled fingers despite my protests. It made me dance for it like a puppet on a string, dance to a song of death and destruction.
“You’re not alone,” Chryse whispers. “We’re here with you.”
What do I do?I ask, trembling.
“You start by looking in the mirror.”
My mouth dries. Terror tightens my chest. I wonder if I will see the Prophecy, a parasite in my skin, jerking my limbs around like a puppet master playing with strings. I’ve not looked in a mirror for…so long. To be quite honest, I’m not sure if I’ll ever want to again. It is one thing, to see myself through Rui’s memories. It is another to face myself through my own eyes.
Exchanging looks, Chara and Chryse each take one of my hands and squeeze them gently. “You’re not alone,” promises Chara.
“We’re here with you,” Chryse agrees. And those words, oh, those words… They give me a sudden flood of resolve. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to look at the mirror.
To my surprise, there is no reflection.
As I peer into it, images swirl into its depths, flashing through sparkling mist. I cannot help but to lean forward until my nose nearly touches the glass, holding my breath in a mixture of fear and anticipation. There is something so comforting about the mist, something soothing.
With a final swirl, the mist clears and reveals a scene. My eomma—young and rosy-cheeked—lying sweaty in a small bed, a bundle wrapped in her arms. The baby is a tiny, chubby thing, with wet black hair and wrinkled skin like a prune, but my eomma stares down at her with an expression of warm, intense love.
“Lina,” she murmurs, kissing the tiny forehead reverently before smoothing down the baby’s dark hair. “Lina, Lina. You’re perfect.”
The scene ripples, changes. I am four years old, in the barley field surrounding our chogajip, laughing as my appa swings me around and around in the air. My small arms are outstretched to better feel the sky. “I’m flying!” I squeal, and my appa laughs, bringing me back down and hugging my small frame close to him.
“Like a bird.” He laughs, but then he is gone, and I am eight, crying as I run back to the chogajip from where I was playing outside. My knee is bleeding, and it hurts.
“Lina!” Eomma gasps and ushers me inside, where she gently tends to the tiny wound—first cleaning it with cold, cold water from the well and then wrapping it with a strip of cloth. Her fingers are gentle on my skin, and when she is done, she pulls me into a hug. “Be careful, please…”
Then I am ten, and holding a tiny Eunbi, marveling at how warm, how sleepy, one little girl can be. She smells like something sweet and almost floral, and when she stretches, one of her tiny hands bumps against my face. Content, she gurgles up at me, blinking with wide, bleary eyes. I smile down at her and kiss one of her cheeks with a big, loudsmackthat makes her giggle.
Thirteen. One year before the shipwreck. I’m gangly and awkward, with a pimple on my forehead that won’t go away. “Eomma,” I complain, hovering near my mother as she sweeps the floor of the tiny chogajip, “why won’t it leave? It looks ugly.Ilook ugly.”
She pauses from her work and peers at the ugly mark. After washing hands that have grown more callouses over the years from raising two daughters, and working on the barley farm, she dips a finger into a tiny jar of precious salve that we can only afford once a year. “Here,” she murmurs, carefully dabbing it on my skin. “But you don’t look ugly, Lina,” she says as she cups her hands around my face. “You’re beautiful. My beautiful girl.”
Fourteen. My first year with the Talons. I’m crying hard in the gardens, missing my eomma and appa. It is one of the only times I will allow myself to grieve like this, to get distracted from my work. “Lina?” a voice asks, and then Sang—the young spymaster—is hesitantly wrapping his arms around me. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”
Fifteen. I’m in Chara and Chryse’s room, and they’re running their fingers through my hair as they weave ribbons around the dark locks for the fun of it. “Your hair’s so silky,” Chryse sighs enviously. “Likesilk.”
“I think that was implied,” her sister snorts, and then I’m seventeen, kissing Sang for the first and last time in his room, my skin touching his, his fingers running over mine in gentle worship as we discover each other, all the hidden places we harbor. At the end of it, he kisses my forehead, and we smile at each other…
Eighteen. Rui and I are dancing, sweeping through his ballroom, one of his hands on the small of my back, the other holding one of mine. We are on the beach, kissing each other hungrily, black sand cradling our bodies. We are in Gyeulcheon, those last few days before my return to Sunpo, and he is making any excuse to touch me. Flicking my nose. Playfully tugging on the end of my braid. Taking my hand in his, comparing their sizes against each other. Little touches, just here and there, touches that I welcome and cherish.
My lips, parting, panting and puffing, as I worked so damn hard to wean my body off halji. A triumph that tasted so sparklingly sweet until the Prophecy ruined all of it, inhaling the curling smoke through the mouth it stole from me.
Rui’s and my wedding night, when I was my own self for the first time in so long. The way Rui held me, touched me, marveling over the slopes and curves of my body. His delicate fingers skating along my skin, his lips slanting across my own as we find a rhythm, a song that only the two of us can hear.
