Gayatgo

1. Taeyoung (Chapter 6)

There was heavy rain and the hauling wind sounded like the wailing of lost souls. It was the early spring of 2008. The young Father Maximo entered a little shabby lobby of an old apartment at the outskirt of London. An old grandfather clock, standing on a corner of the lobby floor, showed that it was half past six. He went along the narrow corridor to a dilapidated door; room 101. He knocked the door several times and waited. There was no sound to be heard except for the creaking of the boards underneath him as he shifted his weight rather uncomfortably. He knocked once more before grabbing the door-knob and heaving it open with his shoulders. He blinked in surprise as it gave away easily.

The small living room came into his sight gradually as he came. The antiquated lamp beside a couch was revealing the surprisingly neat room. There was a clean window beyond the couch, and the last trace of light vanished from the window. An old elegant woman, who was dressed neatly in white, was sleeping sitting on the armchair next to the couch. She looked as feeble as a thin ray of light. He stayed still till she woke up. He caught a tiny movement in the armchair.

“Sorry for barging in but nobody answered. Are you the one who called me last night? …Asa?” He thought he saw a little glow in her gentle eyes with faint smile around her trembling lips.

“I’m very sorry, Father. I had a short dream about you when we… it may seem crazy but...” She heaved a sigh. “Can you please come here, closer, and sit down? I’m going to tell you a long story now, a very strange story, and would like for you to listen where you can hear me.” Her voice was surprisingly affable in an elderly way, yet there was something commanding in her voice that he could not resist. He did as he was told. There was a weird familiarity about the voice he could not put his finger on.

“I called you not for confessing but to give you something,” she produced a little golden key in front of his eyes. “This is a key to a vault in Swiss Bank. You may find everything you need in there.” Although her smile was a pleasant one, there was sadness in her brilliant eyes.

“It’s really nice to meet you. I’ve been waiting for a long time, longer than you can imagine…Yes. I am Asa. And you are Taeyoung.” He went rigid of all sudden, ever so slightly. The same sensation of nervousness he felt yesterday permeated through him as he heard his old name. It was a name even he had almost forgot.

“Ah, you look just like Taejin. You have his dark brown eyes and his expression. Yes, you do. Now, I can forget,” she said with a look of bliss in her eyes. “All those repetitive years of agony, of remembering, while you were asleep for a millennium.

“Sorry I left you alone until now but it was the Gayatgo’s decision and I cannot go against them.” The word Gayatgo suddenly reminded him of the day in an orphanage, when he had a visitor for the first time in his life. He was sulking as usual the other boys were forever teasing him. He was the first boy they’ve seen who was ethnically different to them and they didn’t like the looks of him. Perhaps it was his eyes which seemed to pierce through them, uncovering their deepest and darkest secrets.

That day, however, he felt the same strange feeling all day like today. The visitor gave him a small parcel. It was a ragged packet with strange brown stains at the edge. On the parcel, he found a picture of a beautiful girl playing a harp-like instrument. He felt both sad and pleased with the small tattered parcel. The visitor had disappeared as he handed him an odd note:

When her gayatgo sings, the hidden path will be opened;
When his great crow flies, you will take to the air

“I should have met you seven years ago but I had suffered from amnesia until the last month. And we, Gayatgo, have lost most of our members from a terrible accident in New York, 2001. How ironic that after agonizing for more than a thousand years over all those memories, I get an amnesia. Anyway, we are not too late, I think. The next full moon is the exact time for the hidden path to reappear… You still have a chance to fix everything.

“Do you know the children’s story, Jack and the Beanstalk? At a glance, it is just a harmless fairytale. But in truth, it tells of our history, hidden and interwoven into the story. On a cold winter night of 898, the youngest and bravest general in the country’s history, Taejin, was born in Balhae...”


2. Jack (Chapter 4)

It was a warm summer evening of 1519. A man in an expensive-looking suit was proposing a toast to Jack, whose 80th birthday they had gathered for. Bang, bang. There was a sudden stirring among the guests as they heard several gun shots firing in the distance, but it smoothed down soon.

After Jack came back from the party to his own library, he surreptitiously opened his private vault. He let out a sigh of relief after he had checked that the two parcels with blood stains on were still safe in there. Drawings of a three-legged crow and a girl playing a strange harp-like instrument were on each parcel. He had examined them until his secretary came to report to him about the gun shots. His secret agents had blocked them again. They had tried to attack Jack’s residency constantly after the fable, Jack and the beanstalk, had been dispersed. He wished that he hadn’t let the story slip on his wedding day. He couldn’t remember what exactly he had told about his fortune on that day because of his blind drunkenness. But because of that, Gayatgo had finally found him – he was the guy.

Jack reminisced about the day of his luck had started. It was when he had found a strange lane to the fourth dimension, in the year 1467. He didn’t have a job though he was twenty eight years old. He was coming from a gambling house. Money, as always, seemed just out of reach. He was especially at loss on this day because it was his last money he had got from selling his old cow. Now he had no money, no milk to drink or even meat to eat. When he first saw the lane, he was thinking that maybe he should go to East Indies like other chaps to make his fortune. It was shining mysteriously under the full moon. As he entered the lane, landscapes had abruptly changed, and he found himself in an ancient and strange country.

Far away in the distance, a dim light was glowing. As he arrived at a big gate of a residence, he saw a horse was running out from the stable. An attractive young Asian woman was on the horse. He couldn’t speak anything as she passed hastily. He went into the house and gasped at the scene before his eyes. Many armed soldiers were sleeping here and there. A tall athletic officer about his age was deep sleeping in a couch. There was an empty cup besides him. Jack’s intuition told him not to touch any drinks. He smirked as he realised it was the time to make his fortune.

When he was going outside after he had taken a bag of diamonds, a big crow with three legs flew in through an open window. A young girl who was holding a harp-like instrument was riding on its back. She plucked a string, making a high pitched sound. He looked back into the room in alarm. The man on the couch seemed to be stirring, trying to get up, as though he couldn’t move easily. Jack stabbed him repeatedly with a knife he had always carried. There was several flash of lightening. As Jack watched in astonishment, the crow and the girl changed into two odd parcels and lay beside the dead man. Jack grabbed the blood stained parcels and ran away from the residence. The lane was fading away as Jack plunged into the vanishing lane.

As Jack aged, his assets were increased because of the diamonds. He didn’t know what to do with the weird parcels but he put them inside a vault. After a long research, Jack had found out that he had skipped five hundred and forty one years ago to 926, to the past. He had discovered that the country was ruined by a volcanic eruption in the same year. He also heard a strange fable about a young hero who had a crow with three legs and a singing harp. He sensed a certain danger when he had found it. Thence, he had organized a private army of his own.


3. The ruined country (Chapter 3)

There was a volcanic eruption in Balhae in 926, on the same night when Taejin was murdered. The legend has it that the loss of the nation’s relics and the death of their owner led to the tragedy which marked the nation’s end. The angry lava flow had swept away several major castles in the land in a night. Most of rural nation had survived but they had become slaves to the neighbouring nation Geran in a short time. The nation’s secret army, Gayatgo, had been preparing for it according to a prophecy but an accident had occurred which they had not foreseen. Thus, Balhae (698-926), which had a large territory containing large parts of today’s North Korea, east China and south Russia, had disappeared behind the history. A few surviving warriors of Gayatgo, who knew exactly what had happened, had known what they had to. They went abroad to prepare for the day when the hidden path would open again in the future.


4. Taejin (Chapter 1)

On a cold winter night of 898, the youngest and bravest general in the country’s history, Taejin, was born in Balhae. The moon was nowhere to be seen – only hundreds of stars were shining vividly in the night sky. He was healthy and twice as big compared to other babies. His big eyes shined brightly on his handsome face like a tail of the comet that had fallen onto the backyard. But the most unusual thing about this boy was his tiny wings which he was born with on his small back.

At the time, there was a legend, or perhaps a prophecy, that there would be a great king who would be born with wings on his back. Naturally, the king, who already had six sons of his own, was afraid of such rumour. To him, the wings were only a proof of a potential traitor, not the proof of a hero. So, once he had found out about the boy, it was only a matter of time before he sent out his servants to kill the young Taejin. And not before long, his existence became known to the king’s astrologers who had read it in the stars.

Now, the young hero’s life, it seemed, rested in the king’s hands. However, unbeknownst to him, his chief priestess, who often foretold the destiny of the country, had full intention to save him. She felt strongly that the country’s fate was closely interwoven with Taejin. And she acted faster than the king.

Taejin was brought to a sanctuary where only women priestess could enter. It was located near the large lake, Chunji, which was at the top of Mount Bagdu. On the night of full moon, the chief priestess cut his wings. She then sealed them in the nation’s ancient relics of the past, hiding them. These relics looked like small packages on the outside but they took to their real forms on the nights of full moon. One was a magnificent crow with three legs, and the other was a young priestess who was mute and could only communicate through her gayatgo, a twelve-stringed Korean harp.

Thus, Taejin was saved. No-one knew of his wings and he grew to become a fine young general people revered.


5. The Fateful Night (Chapter 2)

In the spring of 926, Leehyun, a potent politician and a general, was occupied with thoughts. The king was so pathetically incompetent that the country was falling apart. The current foreign policy that the king had incepted was absolutely laughable. There was even a rumour that the king had lost the two sacred relics which had been passed down in the royal family for centuries. There didn’t seem to be any way to prevent the downfall of the country except to take the throne for himself through coup d’état. Leehyun had confidence that if he took the throne, he could strengthen the country.

General Leehyun would find the relics, which were the symbols of the kingship, after his rebellion was successful. He already had the control over the entire army except the Imperial Knights, who only followed the king’s orders.
The only matter was Taejin, the commander of the Imperial Knights. He knew that Taejin was too upright to join his rebellion, even if he was his son-in-law. If Taejin, who had the status of a national hero, were to oppose Leehyun in the battlefield, the coup d’état would be foiled. The best solution seemed to be to put Taejin to sleep for the duration of the rebellion. He would have to discuss it with his daughter, Asa.

In one summer evening in 926, General Taejin was pleased to come home in months. He had been busy from the beginning of the year. He was not only the leader of the Imperial Knights, but also a leader of a secret Army, Gayatgo. He had been training the Imperial Knights. He recalled an old sorceress he met ten years ago. She had told him about the great evil that would bring the country to ruin in ten years time. Now, the time of the disaster was near, he had also been busy preparing Gayatgo against the foretold doom. The sound of Asa’s footsteps, bringing his cold lemonade, brought him back to the present.


6. Asa (Chapter 5)

Asa was repeatedly reincarnated after she had died in 926. She had countless memories of her past lives from 901 to 2008. Once, she was born in 1930, when Korea was occupied by Japan. She was forced to use Japanese name and their language. She felt a deep despair beyond description, not without a trace of guilt, as she saw her nation so deteriorated.

In 1944, her sister Suni had run away from Jungshindae, which was an organization for gathering women to provide them to the Japanese soldiers as prostitutes. Policemen had tortured their father to garner the whereabouts of Suni, and at last, he was released from the severe torture. He soon died after and the remaining family members were scattered across the country. They were separated forever from each other as the country was divided into two during the Korean War in 1950 - South Korea and North Korea - by the super powers of the time, the United States of America and the Soviet Union. This period of her life had scarred her forever. More than ever, she felt the urgency to rewrite the history and fix everything.

Asa finally tracked down and joined Gayatgo in 1956. The organization had once lost their chance in 1467 because not only could they not find the guy, Jack, but also Taejin. He wasn’t reborn until 1980. In 1990, Gayatgo finally found Taeyoung, Taejin reincarnate, in an orphanage in the U.K. The main members of Gayatgo all agreed to give him a trial. However, Asa sent him one of the two relics to protect him just in case.

In the meantime, Gayatgo had been preparing for the day of opening of the fourth dimension. They discovered that only Taejin could enter the path as Jack did 541 years ago. They bought the twin towers in New York as their base, choosing the city because the U.S.A had been on the rise as a new Empire during the last century. They had acquired this position by economic and cultural hegemony.

However, the main base Twin Towers was blown away along with most of Gayatgo’s agents in 11 Sep. 2001, by an organization of Jack’s descendent. Asa took an injury to the head during the incident and had lost her memories for seven years to come.
In the summer of 2008, when Asa was awakened by a gayatgo melody, just outside of London, she couldn’t remember what had happened during the seven years. But she knew she didn’t have much time.


7. Rewriting of the history (Chapter 7)

With a doubtful mind, Father Maximo had gone to the vault in Swiss Bank and had checked out its contents. After that, he had got on a train to Mount Bagdu. On the train, he looked out the window and marvelled at the wide plains where his ancestors might have been riding across on horsebacks. At the base of the mountain, he stood between green valleys, enjoying the feel of the cold wind on his back. And in the late afternoon, when he finally arrived at Lake Chunji on the top of the mountain, he scattered Asa’s ashes according to her will. He gently touched the edge of the lake with his fingers. A pause. Then he left, with a changed expression on his face, resolute.

Thirteen days hence, Taeyoung, now no longer Father Maximo, stood on a lane in a remote area of London. Midnight. There was a beautiful full moon up in the sky, seeming strangely large and bright. It was the only source of light, except for the shimmering glow in the distance that was beginning to appear.

**********************

A man takes a step forward and instantaneously, the landscape changes before his eyes. An ancient, foreign country. He hears a familiar haunting melody of strings. He sees a crow with three legs. Something is itching on his back and he smiles a secretive smile. He is home.


By Mikyung (3,080 words)