Beasts of a Little Land
Juhea Kim
Prologue
The Hunter
1917
THE SKY WAS WHITE AND THE EARTH WAS BLACK, LIKE AT THE BEGINNING of time before the first sunrise. Clouds left their realm and descended so low that they seemed to touch the ground. Giant pines loomed in and out of the ether. Nothing stirred or made a sound.
Hardly distinguishable in this obscure world, a speck of a man was walking alone. A hunter. Crouching over a raw paw print, still soft and almost warm, he sniffed in the direction of his prey. The sharp smell of snow filled his lungs, and he smiled. Soon, a light dusting would make it easier for him to track the animal—a large leopard, he guessed, from the size of the print.
He rose quietly like a shade among the trees. The animals moved without a sound, here in their own domain, but the mountains belonged to him also—or rather, he, like the animals, belonged to the mountains. Not because they were generous or comforting, for nowhere in these woods was safe for man or beast. But he knew how to be when he was on a hill, to breathe, walk, think, and kill, just as a leopard knows how to be a leopard.
The ground was mostly covered with red-brown pine needles, and the footprints came few and far between. Instead, he looked for scratchings on tree trunks or places where the thickets were left almost imperceptibly disturbed, perhaps just a few wispy hairs caught at the ends of a broken branch. He was closing the gap between them, but he still hadn’t caught sight of his prey in the past two days. He had long ago run out of his provision, coarse barley balls flavored only with salt. He’d spent the previous night in the split-open trunk of a red pine, looking up at the white sickle moon to keep himself from falling asleep. But his hunger and fatigue made his feet lighter and head clearer, and he decided he would stop moving when he fell dead, but not before then.
There were no killings left behind thus far. Rabbits, deer, and other small beasts were dried up in winter, and it was just as hard for a leopard as it was for people. At some point it would have to stop, and that was how he was going to kill it. They both needed food and rest, but he was determined that he would go on longer than his prey, as long as necessary.
He came upon a glade, a circle of young pines huddling away from a rocky ridge. He walked up to the overhang and looked around the surrounding mountains in their wintry down of charcoal and ash green. The sheets of clouds, blown by the wind, were caught at the throats of hills and billowed like torn silk. Beneath his feet, there was a fall into the wild white abyss. He was glad to have been led to this place. Leopards loved rocky cliffs, and it was more than likely there was a den here.
Something soft and cold gently touched his face. He looked up at the sky and saw the first sprinkling of snow. Now he’d have more footprints to track, but he would also have to find the animal quickly and descend the mountain before the snow thickened. He tightened the grip on his bow.
If his instincts were true, and the leopard was just below him in its den on the side of the cliff, he wouldn’t have to struggle to find it any longer. But he would have to wait at that spot until it came wandering out again, which might be in another hour, or three days hence. By then, the snow would go over the top of his head while standing. He would become snow and rock and wind, his insides would feed the leopard and his blood would nourish the young pines, so that he may as well have never had a life down below as a human among other humans.
In that life, he’d been a soldier in the Imperial Army, handpicked from the best archers in the country. No one could surpass him with a rifle or a bow. They called him PyongAhn Tiger, after an old saying about the personalities of each province. Of course, there were ferocious beasts in every mountain and forest in the little land that even the ancient Chinese had called the Country of Tigers, but the name suited him more than the farmers from the South. His people were born hunters, who survived where the land was too steep and unforgiving for tilling.
His father had also been a soldier under the PyongYang magistrate. Whenever they skipped paying the army, his father had gone into the mountains. Most often he’d brought back small game—deer, hares, foxes, and pheasants—though sometimes boars, black bears, leopards, and wolves.
When he was a child, his father had killed a tiger by himself, and six of the village’s strongest men had to come help him carry the beast down the mountain. The rest of the villagers surrounded them in solidarity while the children ran ahead of the crowd, cheering. A tiger skin was worth more than a soldier’s yearly wage. Its massive body was laid to rest in the village square under the ginkgo tree, and somehow the women prepared a feast out of nothing—that was their talent—and everyone drank their fill of the milky rice wine.
But later that night, sitting cross-legged on their hot-stone floor, his father turned grave. Never kill a tiger unless you have to, his father said sternly.
But Father, we are rich now. We’ll be able to buy all the rice we need, he said. The stub candle was flickering modestly, without defying the darkness that protected them all like a thick winter quilt. His mother and younger sisters were either sewing or asleep in the other room, and there was only the murmurous sound of owls on their hunt.
His father just looked at him and said, You’ve been shooting hares and pheasants since you were a child.
Yes, Father.
You can take down a pheasant flying a hundred yards away.
Yes, Father, he said proudly. Already there was no better archer than him in the entire village, except for his father.
You can shoot an arrow into a tree from a hundred and twenty yards away, and shoot another one right on top of it.