“Sica?”

A pale, somewhat weary-looking young woman slid open her eyelids to reveal soft, limpid brown eyes. Eyes that tried, albeit in vain, to conceal the seemingly unending pain and suffering her twenty-odd years had endured. Her vision slowly focused on the tall, well-dressed man standing over her, cradling her thin hands in his.

“I’ve just spoken to the captain. It’s time to disembark.”

The woman managed a faint nod, closing her eyes again. Her husband bent to gently lift her frail, limp body and carried her outside into the warm April sunshine. Three crewman stood by to help her into a little lifeboat at the side of the schooner. Slowly, taking great care not to rock or bump it, they lowered the boat out onto the docks below.

An open-top carriage with two horses stood waiting. As the driver drove off up the grassy lane, the people they passed stopped and stared down at the woman lying upon the seat. And, as it always does in a small town, the news spread from hill to dale like wildfire; Jessica Jung had come home.

The townspeople knew her as the second child in a household of three orphaned daughters. In her teens she married a religious graduate who became the local Anglican priest. Her baby died in childbirth, and her husband followed soon after. Overcome by grief, she rarely ventured out of her house, until she married a rich businessman after nearly two years of mourning. The bare facts could be recited by anyone living there, but nobody was really close to her personally.

The countryside rolled by as the horses clopped along. Jessica had requested an open-top carriage, the better for her to see her own hometown again. She smiled as the breeze played across her face, and sighed with satisfaction at the familiar sights that met her eyes as if to say ‘Welcome home’. Spring had come to Jeju and all the flowers were in bloom along the country roads. Away in the distance, a horn blared as the schooner pulled out of the small village dock. Big ships never came to Jeju, South Korea. The ship had only stop