Prologue

—Outskirts of Seoul, Korea, 17th century

ak straightened, rolled his aching shoulders, and arched to loosen the kink in his back. He peered into the grasscloth sack tied around his waist and shook the sack so the scattered grains of rice collected into one corner. Barely more than a handful. It would take him at least another two hours to gather enough for the family's evening meal.

His wife still nursed the two youngest children, for comfort if not nourishment. But the two oldest boys each ate their meager servings of rice in a single mouthful. Every fiber of Pak's being longed to give his own share to his sons, but if he did not eat to keep up his strength, he could not work. There would be no rice for anyone. The boys understood this, and had never once complained. Each evening, Pak had to resist the temptation to eat with his back turned to them.

The rice paddy in which Pak now stood belonged to a wealthy merchant named Lee. After the harvest, Lee allowed the poor to glean the last grains of rice that remained on the stalks or had fallen to the ground. Dozens of men and a few women and children were bent over in the painstaking task of gathering rice one grain at a time.

But the paddy across the road was empty. Yu, whose wealth was even greater than his neighbor's, employed an overseer who prevented such gleaning. From where he stood, Pak could see stalks in Yu's field still bent over with the weight of grain; it was well known that the overseer's fondness for wine made him careless in the supervision of the harvest.

Another gleaner, head lowered and hands intent on parting the dried stalks, butted into Pak's legs from behind. Pak fell forward, rice scattering from his open sack.

"Ai-go!" he shouted. "Clumsy ox—are you blind as well as stupid?"

The other man looked up, his eyes blank with starvation. He bowed his head in apology, but immediately dropped to his hands and knees and began scrabbling for the rice that had fallen from Pak's sack.

Pak shoved the man, who fell over onto his side. Pak kicked him in the ribs, then snatched up the few grains that remained. The man scrambled to his feet and fled across the paddy. Pak did not have the strength to give chase.

He slumped over, panting with anger and despair. When he raised his head, the first thing he focused on was the field across the road. Pak glanced around cautiously. Then he stepped into the road and walked a few paces, stretching his arms and twisting a bit, a tired gleaner taking a break.

His steps brought him to the edge of Yu's field. He began stripping the stalks nearest the road and within a few minutes, had gathered more than he had just lost. Eagerness overtook caution and Pak waded into the field, shaking the grain free in a frenzy.

Someone shouted a warning. Pak hurriedly crossed the road back to the other field, trying to disappear among a little knot of other gleaners. He heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats.

Yu's overseer reined his pony to a stop where Pak's foray into the forbidden field had left a path of broken and trampled stalks. Pak and the others in the field dropped to their knees in the traditional bow of respect.

The overseer gestured for them to rise with a perfunctory wave of his hand. He walked to the side of the road and inspected the stalks at the edge of the field. Then he turned back to the group of gleaners. Without a word, he moved among them, shouldering them aside as he peered into their sacks one by one.

Pak kept his head bowed and his eyes lowered when the overseer reached him. His sack was inspected for several moments longer than the others' had been. Then the overseer moved on, checking the contents of several other sacks.

At last he returned to his pony. He unstrapped a heavy wooden paddle from the animal's saddle. Then he looked back at the gleaners and pointed the paddle—first at Pak, then at two other gleaners.

The rest of the crowd turned away at once and returned to their work in silence.

Pak felt his legs move seemingly of their own accord. He stepped up into the road, surrendered his sack to the overseer, and lay down on the packed dirt.

The other two men knelt at either side of him and held his arms. The overseer strolled back and forth a few times, slapping the paddle against his own hand as if testing its strength. Pak closed his eyes, hearing the steady thwack of paddle on palm.

Pak had not had enough time to steal a substantial amount of grain, so the punishment was commensurate—half a dozen strokes on the soles of his feet. Still, after the overseer had ridden away, taking the sack with its few handfuls of grain, Pak could not walk unaided. The two men who had held him down supported his arms on their shoulders and half-dragged, half-carried him home.

Greater than the pain from a few broken bones in his feet was his humiliation on entering the shanty village where he lived. His wife and sons, somehow informed by the wind that carries bad news ahead of itself, rushed out of the house to meet him. His wife began wailing, but his sharp hiss silenced her. The two boys, at twelve and ten years still small for their ages, tried to take over from the men who were carrying him.

For three days, Pak lay on the tattered straw mat in the house as his feet ballooned to twice their normal size. The babies wailed continuously, unable to nurse while his wife spent long hours in Lee's paddy. And at the end of the third day, his second son crept to the side of the mat and bowed.

"Father. What we have talked about, before. I am ready now."

Pak stared for a long moment at the boy's solemn face. Then he nodded once and turned his head away.

It had been a year ago, during the same weeks of the spring hunger, when hardly a grain of rice remained in the fields and the wild greens had not yet sprouted. Pak and his sons had watched as a neighbor family joyfully packed their few belongings and moved out of the village, to a house closer to the city center. A house with paper windowpanes and a real stone floor.

"How is it that the Hwangs meet with such good fortune?" his elder son had asked.

Pak answered carefully. "The second son has taken employment at the palace."

That was all he had said. Somehow, his own second son had discovered the truth on his own, and it was this to which he now referred—a conversation they had never had.

In a few more days, Pak would be able to walk again. He would take his younger son to the palace walls, and they would be admitted to the surgeon's quarters. His son would be asked if he had any second thoughts, and would reply that he had none. Pak himself would hold the boy under his arms as the swift, skillful surgery was performed, the knife slicing as close to the body as possible.

The plug would be inserted, the wound stanched with clean white linen. The boy would be forbidden to eat or drink for three days. If he survived, and most did, he would return to the palace to serve.

As a eunuch.

There would be plenty of rice, for the rest of their lives.

© Linda Sue Park