Gilded Read Online Free PDF Page B

replace the creature’s breathing. I swivel in a circle. Everything is back in place as if nothing happened. I press my cold hands to my cheeks.
    Blood trickles from a cut on my palm. Probably from when I fell. That was all. I fell, hit my head, and had some crazy dream. How long was I out?
    The sweet potato lady eyes me from under the green scarf wrapped around her head. She wobbles over in her bulky trousers and stuffs a dirty towel on my bleeding hand. I’ll probably get an infection from it, I think dully.
    She rattles off something in Korean, but I’m too dazed to listen. I do notice she’s holding a piece of my coat. I peer over my shoulder and realize the back of my coat is shredded as if some wild animal with giant claws has ripped through it.
    Impossible.
    “Flee!”
the wind whispers into my ear.
    I run the rest of the way home.

 

    We leave Seoul hours before sunrise the next morning. Dad hopes to avoid the Han River traffic. Still, five a.m. seems a little extreme, especially since I hardly slept last night thanks to that horrible Haechi creature attacking me. Or as it seemed to believe, “protecting” me. Some protection.
    I’m still not sure what to think about last night. Was it real? It felt real.
    But none of it could possibly have happened. That stuff belongs in movies and fairy tales. I rub the egg-sized bump on the back of my head. I’m guessing I hit my head and then dreamed up an insane story.
    I stare out my window as the first rays of sunlight sparkle across the skyscrapers on the other side of the Han River while, on my right, concrete buildings line the edge of the road like a massive wall.
    Haechi. Glittery Guy. Palk. Why had I imagined those creatures?
    Last night, mind racing, I’d dug through my unpackedboxes until I found the book of Korean folktales Mom read to me every night as a kid.
    “These are your stories, Jae,” she’d say. “They are a part of who you are.”
    Never once had I imagined those stories would come to life and attack me.
    I cross my legs in the backseat of the car and rest Mom’s thick hardcover in my lap. The pages are soft and worn under my fingers. I flip through them until I find the illustration of Haechi.
    Underneath it is the definition:
Haechi—A legendary creature resembling a lion; a fire-eating beast; guardian against disaster and prejudice.
    It looks exactly like the creature I hallucinated last night. I flip to the index and search for Palk. He’s listed as one of the two great immortals and the counterpart of Kud, the immortal of darkness.
Palk—The sun god and founder of the realm of light. He is the personification of all that is light, good, and beneficial.
    I press my palms against my eyelids as if to push away last night’s memory. For a year after Mom died, I saw a psychologist to help me cope with my nightmares. Maybe moving to Seoul reawakened those nightmares, but at a whole new level this time. Because last night in the street facing those creatures felt real.
    Too real.
    I tuck the book to my chest. I can almost hear Mom’s voice reading to me like she would when I was little. When she was sick, really sick, I’d lie next to her, watching the shadows creep across the walls like the hands of a clock.
    “Read to me,” she’d say.
    So during her last days, I was the one who would read until my throat would ache and my voice would rasp.
    It hadn’t always been that way. Before Mom got sick, we were busy. She with her paintings and I with my archery tournaments. If she was here now, would I have talked to her about last night? If she hadn’t gotten sick, would we have ever gotten that close?
    My heart balloons up until I can’t take the pain of it anymore. I throw the book across the car.
    “Jae!” Dad says, jerking me back to reality. “What is wrong?”
    What is there to tell him? That I’m losing my mind?
    “School,” I finally say. “Too much studying.”
    We merge into the three-lane Gangbyeon Expressway as Dad nods