A Note to My Readers:

I have re-edited Chapters 1 and 2 slightly. The other chapters are unchanged.

Chapter 13: The Bodyguard and the Valley of Dreams

The ghosts of the past whisper to me in the dark, deep at night, waking me from my restless slumber. Phantom images of a forgotten time flit across my mind, and I relive those too-brief, too-precious moments when I was young, when I was really, truly happy, and nothing, and no one mattered, but Hyuk, my love, my whole life. I open my eyes and I am in the present with my emptiness and my loneliness. My memories belong to yesterday, and I can never go back to the way it was, to the way we were. 

I remember a few weeks before our wedding, Hyuk turning to me and saying, "Does 34 seem very old to you?" We were in his car, driving somewhere, to one of those obscure villages located well away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi, where we could be ourselves, a tall, lean man and a small, slim wisp of a girl, scarcely tall enough to reach his shoulders. "Oh, no," I said, too eagerly, too quickly, perhaps. "I don't like young men." "That's because you haven't known any," he said. "I'm old for my age," I said, and he laughed, and took my hand with his free hand, and kissed it, and said, "Don't grow up so quickly."

How well I remember my wedding night. I had never held hands, nor been kissed by any man before I met Hyuk, and here I was, a bride of barely 24 hours, about to share my bed for the first time in my life with my husband in a grand honeymoon suite in a plush hotel in London. We sat on the huge king bed, side by side. He took both of my cold hands, and pressed his warm lips on one, and then the other.

"Don't be nervous," he whispered. "I'm not," I said, and I wasn't. "I love you," I said. "I love you so much." He cupped my face in both of his hands, and kissed the top of my head with infinite tenderness. "My sweet girl," he said softly. "My sweet, sweet Sunny." He leaned toward me, his lips against my cheek, brushing it lightly, and that light touch sent shivers through me, making my whole body tremble. "If you want me to stop, tell me now," he whispered. I closed my eyes, and he brushed his mouth against the hollow of my temple. "Don't stop," I breathed. He traced the line of my cheekbone with his lips. "I love you. I love you. I love you," I said, over and over. "Don't stop, don't ever stop, I'll die if you stop - "

And his lips were on mine. I reached up and pulled him down to me, and the rest of my words were lost against his mouth. He kissed me gently, carefully, but it wasn't gentleness I wanted, not now, not after all this time. My fingers gripped his hair, pulling him closer, harder against me. He groaned softly, low in his throat, and then his arms circled me, gathering me against him, and we rolled over on the bed, tangled together, still kissing. I felt him, all of him, pressed against me, and I breathed him, I inhaled him, his scent, his essence. His face had the slightest bit of rubble, rough against my skin, rubbing against it, but I didn't care, I didn't care at all. His hands were everywhere, and mine, too, were on every part of him, every inch of him, running over the scars on his chest, his back, and down.

"What are these scars?" I whispered. "A motorbike accident," he murmured. "This one?" I touched a long jagged scar across his thigh. "I fell from a tree when I was eight." "Those?" "I stuck my hand in a Ming vase in the library and it broke into pieces."  

I kissed his scars, every one of them. I remember the way he tasted, his scars under my lips, the shape of his body under my hands, the warmth, the heat of his body, the way his lips felt, moist, sweet, tender. I lost myself in those lips, in him, in all of him. And still, I wanted him close, closer; I could not get enough of him.

On my third morning at the palace, I woke to find that Hyuk had already left the room. He would be busy all morning, he had told me, and would be in his office meeting people over state affairs. I pressed the number 2 on the phone, and in less than five minutes, there was a soft knock on the door. I opened it, and a young girl was standing outside.

"You called, Your Majesty," she bowed, and said shyly, "My name is Song Ah Young. I am your personal maid." I liked her at once, and felt immediately at ease; here was someone, finally, who was younger than me, who had no alarming standards, and was in awe of me. To her, I was the Empress, and there was no surprise, nor scorn or ridicule in her candid eyes, and as she helped me to run my bath and choose my dress, and iron it, she chatted with me freely.

"I'm 20 this year, Your Majesty, and I came here to the palace four years ago, when I was 16. My father is the Head Gardener, and my mother works in the laundry department." "Do you like it here, Ah Young?" I asked. "Oh, yes, Your Majesty," she said. "Mrs. Kim is very kind." "Were you here when the - the late Empress was alive?" I could not help myself, and the words came out before I could stop them. Ah Young did not seem shocked, though, and answered me readily enough, "Oh, yes, Your Majesty. There were lots of grand balls and grand parties then, because Empress So Hyun liked entertaining guests. But after she passed on, it became very quiet." "I see," I said, and added, after a pause, "I think that I'll have my bath now, Ah Young. And perhaps, you could put my hair up later. It's getting rather long at the edges. Oh, I have a tear in my nightdress; perhaps, you could mend it later." How easy, how effortless it was to issue orders when I was relaxed,  comfortable. "Yes, Your Majesty. Certainly, Your Majesty."

We had lunch with Chun Woo Bin, Hyuk's personal bodyguard, and the Chief of the Imperial Guards, an elite group of men specially tasked to protect the Imperial family. Woo Bin was a quiet, unassuming man, a bachelor, and of the same age as Hyuk, and of the same height as well, but where Hyuk was dark, Woo Bin was fair. It was easy to chat with him; he was courteous and pleasant, and there was a quiet strength about him, a dependability, and it was easy to see that Hyuk was very fond of him; there was a closeness between them, a bond that seemed to reach well beyond that between an emperor and his personal bodyguard, and they shared an easy, quiet friendship that seemed to hearken back to years of being in each other's company.

"We grew up together," Hyuk said. "Woo Bin's father was the Chief of the Imperial Guards when my father was alive. The late emperor took a liking to Woo Bin, and he became my companion. We had lessons together and we got into a lot of scraps together as well." Woo Bin laughed quietly, and said, "We climbed that chesnut tree outside the Morning Room for a dare, to see who would reach the top first, but His Majesty fell off it midway, and I tried to catch him, but I couldn't. He cut his leg and had to get stitches for it, and I broke my arm, and we were grounded after that for a month, no gallivanting on the grounds anymore, we had to be cooped up in the library, studying." "That was a hellish experience, " Hyuk said, "even more than the stitches." Both of them laughed, and I smiled.

Lunch was over, and Woo Bin left, bowing to me, and said, "It has been a pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty." He seemed to mean what he had said, and there was a quiet smile in his eyes, which warmed my heart, and made me happy. Lunch had been a pleasant experience in Woo Bin's company, and I had been completely at ease, being myself, and it hadn't been necessary to put on any pretence whatsoever.

Hyuk rose and said,  "I'm taking the afternoon off. Let me show you something of the palace today." We wandered about the rooms downstairs, and looked at the pictures, and Hyuk put his arm around my shoulder. I began to feel more like the self I wanted to become, the self I had pictured in my dreams, who made the palace her home. My footsteps no longer sounded loud or clumsy on the marble tiles, for Hyuk's black shoes made far more noise than mine.

He looked out of the long glass windows, and said, "Let's go for a walk." "But it looks like it might rain," I said, looking at the looming dark clouds in the distance. "A little rain won't hurt you," he said indulgently, ruffling my hair. "All right," I said, suddenly seized by a longing to get out of the palace. It would be good to see the sky again and feel the wind tug at my hair and whip against my cheeks. And Hyuk would be beside me, just the two of us alone, as we had been during the blissful four weeks of our honeymoon in Europe, away from the servants, away from the guests.

We climbed the grass bank above the lawns, and plunged into the woods. The trees grew very close together with a tangle of undergrowth beneath, and it was dark. We trod upon broken twigs and fallen leaves, tiny buds of flowers about to blossom, and the thick, gnarled limbs of roots beneath the bracken, spreading out like tentacles across the grass beneath our feet.

I took Hyuk's arm, stepping carefully over the roots of the trees so that I would not stumble. "Do you think that I'm a calm, quiet little thing?" He stared down at me in astonishment, his dark brows drawing together. "Why on earth would you ask that?" "Oh, nothing," I said. "I just wondered." "What a funny little thing you are," he said, kissing the top of my head. "I think that you are beautiful." I smiled up at him, and snuggled closer to him.

We came to a clearing in the woods, and there were two paths, going in opposite directions. I was about to take the path on the right, when Hyuk stopped me. "Not that way," he said, and turned left instead. "Where does that path lead to?" I asked. "To a cottage in the woods," he said briefly. "It's abandoned and empty."

We walked along the left path silently. "This path leads to a valley. It's one of my favourite spots." He seemed happy, and started talking cheerfully about Woo Bin. "He's like a brother to me - he's a good man, steady and reliable, and devoted to the Imperial family. How did you find him?"  "I like him," I said, and Hyuk seemed pleased.

"Here we are," Hyuk said suddenly. "Take a look at that." We stood on the slope of a wooded hill, and the path wound away before us to a valley, by the side of a running stream. There were no dark trees here, no tangled undergrowth, but on either side of the narrow path stood irises and magnolias, purple, pink and white, things of beauty and of grace, their lovely delicate heads drooping a little, bowing to the soft summer rain which had started to fall quietly. The air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as if their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dark moss beneath our feet. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little stream, and the light pattering of the rain. I saw a family of squirrels emerge from a thick cluster of trees and undergrowth, scavenging amongst the gnarled giant roots lying half-buried in the damp, moss-covered earth, blanketed with a thick layer of decaying, brown leaves, and held my breath. The squirrels darted away, quick as a flash, but the littlest of them paused for the tiniest fraction of time, lifted its head and looked toward where I stood, awed, motionless, and then scampered away as swiftly as it had appeared, and the valley fell to silence once more.

When Hyuk spoke, his voice was hushed too. "We call it the Valley of Dreams," he said.

We stood still, not speaking, looking down upon the white azaleas at our feet, and Hyuk bent, and picked up a fallen petal and gave it to me. It was crushed and bruised, and turning brown at the curled edges, but as I held it between my fingers, the scent rose to me, sweet and strong and heady. The sky was now overcast and sullen and the light shower had turned into a steady, insistent downpour, and drops of water fell onto the snowy white petals, bending them under their weight, and clinging to their delicate faces. There were petals at my feet too, brown and sodden, their petals torn off and broken, but bearing their scent upon them still, and another smell, of crushed leaves and damp moss and bitter earth. I held Hyuk's hand, and the vast unknown palace, the echoing silence of the empty passageways, the suffocating stillness of the west wing and the ghostly white sheets, were wiped out, forgotten. There I was an intruder, an unwelcome stranger, wandering in rooms that did not know me, that did not want me. Here it was different; I was a lost soul who had stumbled upon an enchanted world. It drew me in, and it embraced me.

And then the skies opened, and the rains poured down. Hyuk turned to me, laughing, wiping the hair out of his eyes. I laughed too, exulting in the wind, the rain, the loud clap of thunder that echoed all around us and down the valley. He looked at me, drenched, the rain pelting down my face, and the laughter died from his lips. He put his arms around me and pulled me up against him and onto my tiptoes. My head came up to his chest and I could hear the rapid beating of his heart. My heart was hammering and there was a rushing sound in my ears, like waves crashing. He bent his head, cupped my face in both of his hands and kissed me. He'd kissed me before, gently, tenderly, quietly, kindly, comfortingly, but this was different. He had never kissed me like this before; fiercely, wildly, hungrily, desperately, and the rain fell in sheets around us, and lashed our faces, running into my eyes, my nostrils, my mouth, and the wind howled, a plaintive, mournful cry, and whipped up our hair and sent it flying, tangling, merging my strands with his, and still, he continued to kiss me, his lips hot and wet and tasting of the rain, droplets of water clinging, dripping off his lashes, his brows, his hair. I looked at him in the rain, and I could not breathe; the sight of him, the beauty of him, filled me with wonder; he appeared almost god-like, an ancient, mythical, primitive creature from another realm, another world, his beautiful face wild, passionate, no longer calm, no longer controlled. We broke apart, breathing hard, our breaths coming in ragged gasps.

"Sunny," he said, his eyes wild, on fire; his voice not the even, measured voice that I knew, but different, unrecognizable, raw and hoarse, and again, "Sunny."

Hyuk took off his jacket, and draped it over both of our heads, and we ran back the way we had come, and soon we were within sight of the palace. "Here," he said, pulling me away from the main entrance, and toward a door on the left, at the side. It led into a long stone passage, and we hurried along it, wet and cold, our clothes soaked through, our hair dripping droplets of water; we turned a corner, coming upon a staircase, and met a palace maid that I had never seen before; she carried a mop and pail in her hands. She stared at us open-mouthed.

"Good afternoon," said Hyuk. "G-Good afternoon, Your Majesties," she stuttered, and bowed to Hyuk and then to me, still open. Hyuk laughed, and I giggled, as he made for the staircase, my hand in his. I wondered what she would say when she returned to the servants' quarters this evening. "You'd never guess who I saw this afternoon in the stone passage," she would say, settling herself down with a hot mug of tea at the long dining table in the kitchen. "Who?" The others would ask, their eyes agog with curiosity. "The Emperor and the Empress." "Oh my," they would exclaim. "Go on, what were they doing?" "She had a leaf in her hair, and he had a bit of a twig on his shoulder, and they were both soaking wet, drenched to the skin. I wonder what they were up to in the woods, and in that great raging storm too." And they would all laugh, but it would be good humoured-laughter, and just thinking of the servants' gossip brought a flush to my cheeks and a smile to my lips. We reached the top of the staircase, and turned left, and were soon in the passageway that led to our rooms. He pulled me into my room, and was kissing me feverishly even before he had shut the door behind us.

That evening, after dinner, Hyuk and I went to the library. It was lined with wooden bookcases that stretched along the walls all the way up to the ceiling, and it had a musty, wooden smell to it, a dry, old smell, as if the books in there had been kept for a long time, for centuries, and if you opened one of those wooden bookcases and lifted out a book, an ancient moth, or a dead fly from a species long extinct, could very well fall out from within the dusty, yellowed pages.

I knelt down on the carpeted floor, drowsy and contented, and rested my face on the arm of Hyuk's deep chair, where he was sitting, looking through some letters. He frowned at one, smiled at another, and threw a third on a pile of opened letters at the side of his writing table. Now and then, he lifted his face from the letters and smiled at me, in a distracted sort of way.

Finally, he laid down the letter that he was reading, and drew his chair back, patting his lap. "Come on up," he said, smiling. "Do you want me to climb up onto your lap?" I asked, laughing. "It wouldn't be the first time," he said, and I blushed, remembering how I had careened off the stage and into his lap the second time that we had met at the theatre. I climbed up onto his lap, and buried my face in his chest. "I was such an idiot," I said miserably. "What must you have thought of me?" "I thought that you were very sweet," he said. "I love you so much," I murmured, burying my face into the hollow at the base of his neck. "Don't love me too much, Sunny," he said seriously, my head tenderly. "Why would you say that?" I drew back, staring at him. "Because I'm not perfect, I'm far from it," he said, and he looked sad, all of a sudden. "You are perfect to me," I cried, a catch to my voice. "I've made mistakes, and done things that I've regretted," he said slowly, his eyes shadowed for an instant, and then he smiled faintly, and said softly, "Remember that even idols have feet of clay." I wrapped my arms around his neck as he kissed me.

The door suddenly opened, and we sprang apart. It was Min Yoo Ra, dressed in a deep green dress which brought out the rich, burnished tones of her silky hair. "I'm sorry, Your Majesties," she said softly, her eyes averted to her hands, folded demurely in front of her. "I knocked, but no one answered." I tried to scramble off Hyuk's lap, my cheeks burning with embarrassment, but he tightened his arms around me, holding me snug against him with cool, calm hands, refusing to let me go.

"What is it?" he said, his voice icy. "The Empress Dowager wishes me to pass you this letter; she says that it is urgent, and that you need to reply to  it as soon as possible." "Put it down there," he said curtly. She laid it down carefully on the table, and waited. "Leave," he said. "I will read it, and I will see my mother later." She bowed, and padded out softly, closing the door quietly behind her.

"Why are you angry with her?" I asked. "I'm not," he said, shrugging. "I think you are," I said. "Why? Don't you like her?" "I haven't the slightest interest in that damn woman," he said. "She's so beautiful," I said mournfully. "I wish I had hair like hers. Do you think my hair is lank?" "Your hair is fine. There's nothing wrong with it," he said. He looked like he wanted to laugh. "Should I colour it like hers, do you think?" I asked dejectedly. "That could be risky," he said. "You could end up looking like one of those squirrels we saw this afternoon." "Oh, you!" I punched him in the chest, and he laughed. "I'd rather not talk about that woman, or your hair anymore, and continue where we left off." He caught my hands and pulled me to him and my heart started to pound. He bent his head and kissed me, and Min Yoo Ra and the rest of the world faded away.