“Grandmother,” I asked, “what makes the Sea God more powerful than the other gods?”
“Our sea is an embodiment of him,” she said, “and he is the sea. He is powerful because the sea is powerful. And the sea is powerful…”
“Because he is,” I finished for her. My grandmother liked to speak in circles.
A low groan of thunder rumbled across the sky. The pebbles at our feet skittered into the water and were washed away with the tide. Beyond the horizon, a storm brewed. Clouds of eddying dust and ice crystals swirled upward in a funnel of darkness. I gasped. A feeling of anticipation swept through my soul.
“It’s beginning,” my grandmother said. Quickly we stood and rolled up the bamboo mat, then walked swiftly toward the dunes that separated the beach from the village. I slipped in the sand, but my grandmother grabbed my hand to steady me. As we reached the top, I looked back one last time.
The sea was in shadow. The clouds above blocked the sunlight. It looked otherworldly, so unlike the sea of the morning that, though I had sat by the water only a moment before, I suddenly missed it terribly. For the next few weeks, the storms would grow worse and worse, making it impossible to travel close to the shore without being swallowed by the waves. They would rage uncontrollably until the morning when the clouds would part overhead, allowing for a brief ray of sunlight to peek through, a sign that the time to sacrifice a bride had come.
“What makes the Sea God so angry?” I asked my grandmother, who had stopped to gaze out across the dark water. “Is it us?”
She turned to me then, strong emotion in her brown eyes. “The Sea God isn’t angry, Mina. He’s lost. He’s waiting, in his palace far beyond this world, for someone brave enough to find him.”
* * *
I sit up and gasp in a lungful of air. Last I remember, I was falling through the sea. Yet I’m no longer underwater. It’s as if I’ve woken inside the belly of a cloud. A white fog covers the world, making it difficult to see past my knees.
Standing, I wince as my dress, dried and brittle with salt, scrapes against my skin. From the folds of my skirt topples my great-great-grandmother’s knife, clattering against the wooden floorboards. As I reach to pick it up, a flutter of color catches my eye.
Wrapped around my left palm, over the wound I cut to make my vow to the Sea God, is a ribbon.
A bright red ribbon of silk. One end circles my hand, but the other blooms from the center of my palm outward, leading into the mist.
A ribbon floating on air. I’ve never seen anything like it, yet I know what it must be.
The Red String of Fate.
According to my grandmother’s stories, the Red String of Fate ties a person to her destiny. Some even believe that it ties you to the one person your heart desires most.
Joon, ever the romantic, believed this to be true. He said he knew when he met Cheong for the first time that his life would never be the same. That he felt, in the way his hand tugged in the direction of hers, the subtle pull of fate.
And yet, the Red String of Fate is invisible in the mortal world. The bright red ribbon before me is decidedly not invisible, which means …
I am no longer in the mortal world.
As if sensing my thoughts, the ribbon gives a firm tug. Someone—or something—is pulling me from the other side, from within the mist.
Fear attempts to grab hold of me, and I squash it with a stubborn shake of my head. The other brides endured this, and I must, too, if I am to be a worthy replacement for Shim Cheong. The dragon accepted me, but until I speak with the Sea God, I won’t know whether my village is truly safe.
At least I am more prepared than most, armed as I am with my knife and my grandmother’s stories.
The ribbon flutters in the air, beckoning me forward. I take a step, and the ribbon alights against my palm in a spark of stars. Tucking my knife inside my short jacket, I follow the ribbon into the white fog.
All around me the world is still and silent. I slide my bare feet against the smooth wooden slats of the floor. I reach out a hand, and my fingers brush something solid—a railing. I must be on a bridge. The path slopes at a shallow decline, giving way to cobblestoned streets.
Here the air is thicker, warmer, filled with an aroma of mouthwatering scents. Out of the fog looms a line of carts. The closest is stacked high with dumplings in bamboo steamers. Another cart holds salted fish, strung up by their tails. A third is spread with sweets—candied chestnuts and flat cakes of sugar and cinnamon. Every cart is abandoned. No peddlers in sight. I squint, trying to make out the darker shapes, but every shadow turns out to be just another cart, a chain of them, stretching onward into the mist.