Chapter 1

 The moonlit rivers shines upon them in such delicate grace, the swallowing silence fills the crisp darkness and the spirits of the dead dance under the moon in the absence of living men out in the wild. Tales have been told for centuries that the souls of those who have passed away flourish upon the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, and that the moment the sun returns for its time to shine- the dead immediately rushes to their fortresses by their tombs and watch over their loved ones from above.

Would it still be that satisfying to see the senselessly disturbing tranquility and serenity in the night when it was told from children to the elderly and from the richest of the nobility to the most unfortunate of the lower class that those who have lost their lives to war will never forgive and never forget?

Gentle waves prance on the fluid, silky sea water that reflects peacefully upon the moonlight’s blinding rays, reflecting against a translucent, glass pendant that swung around over the surface of the water as if it was waiting to catch the glare of the moon to gain some special power.

            “My Lady, you would not like to dip that necklace into the water. It is a gift from the Ming Emperor himself and would not be glad onto seeing it floating around in the oceans.” Lady Jeorin fiercely scolded the young lady who lazily reached out towards the stream of water that seemingly calmed down by the time she had been looking down very precisely.

Yoona shook her head and looked up innocently, snatching the necklace away quickly onto her pocket as if she had been accused of a crime that she had not done. “Lady Jeorin, The King himself only gave this as a token of our loyalty even if we were of foreign origin, not that he would take me as his woman or any of that sort.” She proudly responded. Her words coming out that were full of skepticism and doubt.

            The wood on the floating boat’s base shook slightly as a young man of great presence and charm walked in even if he was only a few years than Yoona herself. Dressed simply and formally with his sword that he had always tucked in his belt, Park Yoochun had entered in with a grim expression that had emphasized his stern features and uptight personality.

“Yoona-ah, you should not speak lightly of the King and his gallivants in romance even if we are on the way home. You may never know that maybe some of his spies still remain in our ships. ” He rebuked seriously without remorse, as expected of the first born male child of a noble family that had connections that spanned continents and had the pressure of the entire clan upon him.

She stared at him with squinting eyes in suspicion, offended with the conception he made against her. “Are you calling me somewhat a of the king? Blasphemous, even if he took me as his mistress during our times of living in his kingdom: I would refuse and who says he would keep me.. ” Yoona walks over towards him, the jewel amethyst of her headdress, looking even more majestic in its bright, purple color as she spit her words sharply and in a piercing tone.

Yoochun frowns concernedly at her and raises his head high up as if to keep his pride to himself. “I am only warning you that speaking so carelessly like that would put you in trouble and be the end of you, sister. I am only repeating what Father had told us over and over once again.” His voice turns harsh yet quiet against the clacking sounds of boatmen turning over the ship, a whisper only heard between the two of them.

            She clenched her fist as the fear and anxiety she feels inside of her increases with the warning her brother had given her. She straightens up her back to appear more responsible and mature than how her fifteen year old self looked like and an uneasy expression remains permanent on her face for the rest of the boat trip.

It was true that among the remaining noble families, theirs was still considered as one of the most conservative and old-fashioned based on their beliefs. A copy of the Samguk Sagi that had been written during the period of the Kingdom of Silla was still read and passed down generation upon generation as to the study of what had made their history as a family so rich and cultured that it should be valued even up to today. As part of reading that book, the beliefs, the folk tales, the stories and the manners of speech had influenced the family greatly, even up to this very day, it seemed as if their everyday lives had still been integrated as heavily relied on the practices of their ancestors.

            The most famous tale Yoona remembered word by word however was the story of how the moon goddess fell in love with the sun god and after their forbidden romance caused them to be shunned and exiled in the heavens, it was believed that they both settled quietly here on earth to raise a family and therefore their children become the rulers of the Kingdom of Silla and their bloodline runs strong in the Park family.

Through the long and dragging of events from the past, they have lost their claim to the throne and no longer lead themselves as the pioneers and as kings and queens of the kingdom, but have been restored as prominent lords and ladies who have reserved spots for themselves in the royal court, with their connections going beyond the border as their father, Park Junho, had been assigned as the Foreign Ambassador to the Qing Dynasty and had only recently been on a boat back home from the great empire.

            “I have seen land, My Lord! Probably only 5 hours away from here.” Their father’s warden, Hwang Inhyun, called out contentedly as he peeked through a rusting bronze telescope from the ship’s top deck. An old and nearly bald man with wisps of black and gray hair scattered throughout his hairline stood behind him and eyed meticulously the land he had not seen for nearly a decade and a feeling of nostalgia grew stronger and stronger as they grew closer to their homeland.

Ten years ago approximately, the King had sent their family into a voyage and to live within the Qing Dynasty while Park Junho had served as the Joseon Dynasty Ambassador to that foreign nation and the Park’s had lived there since then. Now that his term is finally over and the election season for another ambassador has come, they are now riding a ship back to the city capital and to report to the King.

It had been still clear in their minds - The busy and crowded streets of the golden palace that had been filled with hundreds and thousands of servants and the gossip and the rumors that flew from one’s mouth to another within a fortnight who could ruin one’s reputation before the sun sets.

Valuable pieces of art hung up against the red colored tapestries and sculptures and embroideries of formidable quality were found all over the Forbidden Palace and to leave the predicament and return to their quiet lives in Joseon was something especially the children would have to get used to.

It had been a difficult decision at first to leave the prosperous and settled lifestyle they had become accustomed to in the great dynasty, but after an official letter of request from the King that had commanded them to return back to their homeland as soon as his term as foreign ambassador had finished; he had no choice but to pack up all their belongings and take the nearest ship back to within the Joseon peninsula.

            “Good, we must start preparing to dock off and find a carriage to bring us to the family manor up in the north from the capital.” The former ambassador sighed tiredly, cold mist coming out of his breath and his thick, unshaven beard looking even grayer into the darkness of the night and made him look a lot older than his years.

            “A carriage has already been prepared for you, My Lord.” Hwang Miyoung, their warden’s youngest daughter and Yoona’s main handmaiden, stepped out in her feminine and shy graces and bowed politely as she stood next to her cousin. “Thank you, Lady Miyoung.” Lord Junho gave a brief yet kind smile at his warden’s daughter, who responded with a timid courtesy and quietly walked over to speak to her father.

Slowly, the sun had begun to rise as the stars had faded behind the white clouds and the overcast of the sky disappeared with the sun rays shining upon them. The darkness vanished from Yoona’s sight of view as she slept tranquilly on the soft, silk bed that they had brought with them all the way from the Qing Dynasty.

Her eyes opened upon the warmth of the sunlight filtered from their windows, the night is over and the day has arrived for everyone to be awoken. She sat up in her bed, blankets still warmly wrapped around her waist area and below still trying to recollect her senses after a long time of sleep and rubbed her arms repeatedly to clear her eyesight from the foggy clouds that block her from seeing clearly.

            It took her a few minutes to fully be awoken, the conversation she had with her brother being the first thing that repeated over and over in her head as it struck her personally. Were my intentions of wanting to be Queen that obvious? She asked herself personally, gasping to herself in fear and the tip of her fingers on her peach painted lips.

 She remained inside her cabin mostly after she had awoken, muttering past stories her grandmother had told her over and over again as a young child and the future she had been promised to have. It was a well-known truth within their family that her maternal grandmother had been a seer and had the fortunate talent of being able to look into the future within her own reach.

A memory clear about her grandmother was her gray, clogged eyes that seemed lifeless and showed no emotion that was unique to most people because she could not see anything but could only feel and recognize things by how they sounded without seeing things in person. Yoona would giggle every time her grandmother would fondle her rough and callused palms against her smooth cheeks and would tell her about what she saw in her dreams of what she’d become in the future.

            If she ever told anyone, whatever her grandmother had promised her over and over as a child, her wet nurse and servants would just coyly laugh and thinks she would be dreaming like some peasant child who lived by the empty temples who were only living in by the monks and those who took shelter in the holy place.

Her meditation of thought as she looked at the clear blue sky and the drifting clouds that was broken as Miyoung entered with a pile of neatly folded linen tucked in between her arms, graciously bowing her head and hurriedly looked at her warden’s daughter.

            “My Lady, I am glad that you have awoken. I assume you have gotten good sleep over the past few hours?” Her handmaiden cheerfully grinned at her newly awoken cousin, sitting at the corner of her bedding as she set aside the linen next to her.

Yoona bluntly shook her head with a clearly upset frown and stood up from the ground in which she had been sleeping on. A piercing thrill of pain throbbed in her head and her footsteps shaky and unsupported as she trembled on her own feet.

Miyoung held on her before she would crash right onto the ground and would feel any more ill with her blurring eyesight and inattentive senses. “Are you alright, My Lady or would you like some medicine or should you just rest until we dock by the coast?” She softly asked with wide eyes as she was afraid something was happening to her.

            “I’ll be taking a walk around the dock if you wouldn’t mind, Lady Minyoung. I would please like some lemon tea by the time I’d be back in my chambers, with extra honey, of course.” She ran over towards the metal door, pulling up her skirt as she went to venture off to see the promising view they currently saw while aboard in the ship.

…...

The waves crashed gallantly against the striding pull of the ship that went against the current of the sea. The wind flew strongly as the cold, misty air caused some of the crew of the ship shiver in their sleep and have their fingers tremble while they held onto the breaking rope.

Even as a child, Yoona had felt like she had a connection with the sea, like she belonged to those who lived far away from the shallow waters and lived their lives in the marvel that the sea truly was. It may have also been the stories her grandmother had told her that made her so fond of the sea and how it felt like a second home for her if only she wasn’t human.

            Generation upon generation, folk tales of the swimming mermaids that patrolled around the sea from sunrise to sunset had never left the mouth and ears of the common folk but had rarely reached the attention of nobles and their stewards.

            A beautiful mermaid named Shira was rumored to have swam across one side of the peninsula to another, from early in the morning until the dawn of the night, the beauty and allure of her voice heard by those who had reached the moment of death in their lives and were to be delivered to rest in the afterlife. Singing the sweet tune of her melodious song, she watched as their pulses stopped, their flesh rotted and swam them down into the water as she laid them to rest.

Her beauty had been so great in a range that mermen from coast to coast from different seas and oceans would swim all the way to ask for the siren’s hand in marriage, only to be whacked in the face by her winged tale as she swam away furiously in refusal.

She had continued living her life as half a man and half a mermaid by the shore of the sea in which they had been drifting at this very moment- that it until she heard from a couple of talkative handmaidens in the palace about who her father really was and she went all the way where they said he was found.. Her father was an impoverish and meager yet simple living fisherman who lived by the shore who had a shiny, bald head and a thin, growing mustache that hid a large scar found beneath his rough edged jaw line and often had a timid smile and a joyous laugh as he taught several small children the art of fishery.

            It confused her; she had never heard anything from her mother who her father had been and whenever Shira would have been too impatient to take “No” as an answer, she would have replied with a dishonest reply that her father was some merman warrior she had fallen in love as a young woman before his tragic death. But up to this very moment, she had realized those stories she told about her brave and chivalrous father who fought battles against sea monsters were all lies, as her father was a human.

Shira bolted away furiously, going against the violent waves and swam far, far away from the route she had usually taken back to her modest shell she had lived not too deep down in the sea. She swam upwards towards the swamps, oily and greasy green seaweed and wet mud had filed that area and she didn’t know anywhere else to go but there.

By the stone cave she saw a wounded man unconscious lying on the cold ground, his eyes closed and his breathing steady as he peacefully rested still with his robes soaking wet and the slick blood on his coat still fresh. Out of curiosity, she approached him with a cautious attitude, backing away for at least a few meters before he would even catch a glance of her through the corner of his eye.

Strangely, Shira found herself swimming all the way to that mysterious place nearly every time before sunset and by coincidence, the injured man had been there every time she appeared. For the first times he had consciously seen her, he was shocked and backed away in fear with wide eyes as he had never seen a mermaid so up close and intimate with him as he did.

Eventually, he had warmed up to her and had started to ask simple questions and gave short smiles at her. “What is your name, beautiful mermaid?” He asks.

She backs away, swaying her tail as she hides behind a smooth boulder of a rock, her eyes peeking through the corner. “My name is Shira and what are you supposed to be doing here?”

“I am here to explore and see up close the world that many of my kind never see. How about you?” He crouched down until he was able to be face to face to the young mermaid, whose eyes drifted away and diverted all around him as she avoided his gaze.

On the stormy night her grandmother had told Yoona the story, she chirped in such a hopeful tone and sat there hugging her hand sewn straw doll close to her chest. “Do they fall in love, Grandmother? Isn’t that like what happens in every one of the stories my wet nurse tells me? ” Her eyes shimmered like gold and her hands clasped tightly together in suspense.

Her grandmother bitterly laughed, the few yellow teeth, she had left in her swollen and empty gums clearly seen. “My sweet grandchild, not all the tales your silly wet nurse or even your mother tells you all end with happy endings. Nearly a hundred years ago, all of my brothers were washed out before winter had begun during the war and I had never seen them since then. Listen carefully to me as I speak of what happens in the end.”

She holds in her tears as they clog her eyes like rough, hard-edged daggers stuck in her irises as she vigorously rubbed them off with her gold trimmed sleeves. “Can you tell me the rest of the story until the end, Grandmother? Please grandmother and it is still too early from my bed time?!” Yoona attempts to still sound interested and excited for what happens to the story, even if deep inside she is afraid of how it truly ends as foreshadowed by her grandmother.

            “Alright, alright- Just for tonight, darling. Hmm- So where was I? Oh yes, I was – I was at the part where Shira had met that human. So, after that – “ Her grandmother had kept going on with the story up to the very end, even if her eyes turned into half-crescents and she grew more tired as the story went on.

Shira had continued to visit that empty and hollow cave every time since, hoping that he would be there every time to tell her about how the life of a human truly is and how her life could have been if she had not been a mermaid but a human. A tinge of dismay and alarm had erupted in her heart as she had not seen any sights of him in the cave, but only the strips of his bandages and broken pieces of his quills torn apart on the ground.

She went everywhere she could to find him; going east, west, north or south just to find him and it drove her crazy to not see him in her sight. It seemed like she was ready to give up, until one of the kingdom’s religious ministers had approached her and warned her that her fling with that human would be her downfall and that now that the whole kingdom had known of her human ancestry, she was more in danger than she ever was.

In panic, she trembled and screamed about how she would be able to get out of this and eventually turn into a human. The minister shook her head and grimly told her that it was too late and the only possible way she could have done to free herself was to kill the human. The human man she had fallen in love with.

Shira couldn’t bring herself to do it, as she had wanted to run away, become human and live peacefully in a small cottage with him, but she had thought she would rather die than live without him. Though the demands of the Queen had warned her that if she did not kill the human the Queen would kill him herself and Shira couldn’t refuse but to agree to kill him herself instead.

She killed him on one stormy night when the thunder roared and the tide of the sky was high as the sun and he had been so glad to see her after such a long time. Shira deceived him into believing that now she had given him the ability to breathe underwater and that he could even become a mermaid.

The delusional fool he was, like any man in love, believed and jumped enthusiastically into the water, before Shira pulled him into one last kiss and pulled out the sharp dagger in her pocket and stabbed it right through his heart. She killed herself and followed him shortly after.

Yoona scratched her fingernails against the core of her scalp, shaking her head furiously in refusal of how those stories had taken over her life so far. “No - You are the youngest daughter of the Noble Family of the Parks and the blood of the Kingdom of Silla flows in you. “ She repeated to herself, mumbling softly as her head throbbed in pain of the fairy tale that had turned into her greatest nightmare.

A gentle tap on the shoulder by long, slim fingers had given her a shock for a few milliseconds, before sighing in relief to see her brother worriedly looking over her. “Are you alright, little sister?” He asked, gentler than how he spoke to her the night before.

She smiled up to him, adjusting the hairpiece on the peak of her forehead that had twisted over towards the left side of her ear. “ I am alright, brother. There is nothing to be concerned about as of now. How was your sleep then?” Yoona diverted the topic on purpose.

It was his turn to give a kind and loving grin at her, a gesture she had not seen from him in a while since they had left for the capital in Qing. “I’ve rested well, sister. The lemon tea Lady Jeorin made this morning has been wonderful.” He spoke lightheartedly, even though she could still see the tiredness and discomfort through the filters of his eyes.

Yoochun was only two years older than her, being sixteen years of age, while she was at the tender age of fourteen, but physically they seemed a lot more different to one another. He was tall and slimly built like she was, though he had a bit of muscle by his arms while she was just bone and marrow, with such thin arms it seemed like she had sticks sewn right onto her.

He had high, prominent cheekbones, thick eyelashes and plump limps just like her own, features they have mostly inherited from their mother and both had looked more like her. Though in terms of personality, he had a rather philosophical and logical view of things after years of Confucianism under the supervision of monks and scholars of the Qing Dynasty. She on the contrary, had a very mythical and fabricated belief and sight of things, which is probably as a result of all the gossiping and the practices of discretion she had learned in the Qing court alongside the court ladies.

            She had always looked up to her brother, being the calm and collected man he was who would always plan beforehand of what he would do before making an action. A main problem her father had always told her was that she was an uncommon type of woman even in Qing – she was headstrong, fiery, and stubborn which caused her to possibly do everything before thinking about it.

“It’s sometimes great to be home again isn’t it?” He laughed lightly, crossing his arms and resting his head as they looked out onto the sea. We haven’t seen mother in years, she wanted to say.

“It is. We haven’t been in the manor for years, but I’m sure uncle has been watching over it after grandfather passed away.” She nodded with a timid frown, nervously hiding her sweaty palms behind her back as they quietly continued to look out onto the ocean.

            Coming home after more than a decade may have changed so many things, so many