There was a time when the people who possessed the gift of Magic were plentiful in all of Korea and its surrounding kingdoms. It was not unheard of for a farmer’s child to be able to speak to animals or a common black smith to breath fire. In those days, the Magic people were celebrated as the descendants of gods and many of them held positions of esteem in there own communities. But as time passed, the people who could do magic became less and less. No one knew why the Magic people began to disappear and the villages where they still existed treasured their presence all the more.

Then a terrible incident came to pass. 

In the time that the current King’s grandfather had just ascended to the throne, three men in the countryside were killed by a woman who had the Magic to turn water in the air into ice. The word spread quickly throughout the villages and towns until it reached the imperial city. The woman was summoned to trial before the King and his counsel, where she begged pardon and claimed she had only been defending herself from the men that had attacked her in the night and tried to her. But in her testimony she confessed to what people feared the most; that a lone woman had killed three grown men. That was all the powerful men of the counsel heard. After that, the fear spread like fire through a straw house. The woman’s story no longer mattered, overshadowed by a more terrifying truth to which all the people could attest.

The Magic people were dangerous.

The Magic people had to be detained and controlled.

A panic swept the nation as the same people who had once worshipped the Magic doers now them violently. People had to go into hiding and entire families were killed if even one member was suspected of having what was once considered a gift, now turned curse. The numbers that had already begun to dwindle diminished until there was almost no more Magic in the Kingdoms of the East, those who still possessed the ability enslaved or in hiding. These days, Magic people are mere commodities, traded and sold among the wealthy and powerful. 

Jongin’s grandfather had been a very young man when the persecution of the Magic people began, only just graduating from his apprenticeship as a carpenter in a fishing town bordering the larger city of Gwanju. Kim Donghae had been popular among the small children and young mothers in his village for the fantastical plays he would put on every weekend with his wooden puppets. It was a rich and elderly man who began to suspect the young Donghae, driven almost mad with jealousy that the young wife he had payed good money for spent more time watching the handsome carpenter’s puppet shows than tending to the old man. In the middle of a show one rainy weekend, when almost all the village had gathered in the local pub to enjoy some cheerful respite from the dismal weather, the old man sprang onto the stage and cut all the puppets loose of their strings with a sharp knife, only to reveal they continued to move and dance uncontrolled. The wealthy man immediately tried to turn the villagers against Donghae, but he did not expect for the young carpenter to have sympathizers amongst the young men of the village who had grown up with him, and the parents of the children who loved him. In the ensuing chaos, it was the rich man’s own young wife who helped Donghae escape, and together they stole one of the old man’s fastest fishing vessels and sailed to the mountainous imperial city, where they figured the best place to hide would be in plain sight and far away from anyone that could reveal them. 

In the privacy of their new home, Donghae had continued to perform his enchanted puppet shows for his now wife, and then for their little daughter when she had been born a few years later. But when a harsh winter had taken the life of his brave and beautiful wife, something had shuddered and withered inside the aging man. He had put his puppets away, much to the relief of his daughter who was growing into a very pragmatic young woman who feared for her small family’s safety should her father ever be discovered.

Life went by peacefully for the father and daughter, and Donghae even took on an apprentice, an eager and clever young man who he suspected was initially more interested in his daughter than in carpentry. Jinki was not without talent, however, and he was an earnest student; When he had finally won Gwiboon over, Donghae could at least be sure that his daughter would always be well loved and taken care of. As the years passed, the old man was able to retire comfortably when his son-in-law took over the business, moving from fixing homes and completing commissions to even earning side wages by selling wares in the growing imperial city marketplace. The old man even had the pleasure of seeing his first two granddaughters be born healthy and grow strong. By the time Gwiboon grew pregnant with a third child, Donghae had grown very old and missed his wife more and more as the days passed. He thought he could be content with watching his third grandchild come into the world before finally going to his eternal rest. But from the moment his old eyes had laid on the child’s dark skin, so like his own, he knew the boy would be special. And so he prayed to the gods for more time and he asked his dear wife to wait a little bit longer. 

Jongin was a quiet baby, seldom crying, even when hungry or troubled, and much slower to speak than either of his sisters. By his third year, his mother and father had begun to worry that there might be something wrong with the boy but old Donghae scoffed at them, always doting on the child and saying the boy was too wise to be wasting his words. 

From the moment Jongin’s child-hands were able to do more than open and close into tiny fists, Donghae had put a whittling knife into them and taught the boy how to follow the grain and listen to the whisper of the wood. On the day of his fourth birthday, Jongin hid away from all of his family, reappearing in the kitchen only when it was time for dinner. From his pocket he’d procured a small wooden rabbit with every detail carved to near perfection, whiskers fine as threads of silk and eyes that seemed to glow from within. The boy had placed the figurine on the table and its back gently once, twice. Then, as the entire family watched, the wooden rabbit had hopped across the table and jumped into old Donghae’s lap, where it had stilled again. The two young girls had squealed with glee and immediately begun to fight over the rabbit, trying to get it to move again. Gwiboon had dropped the plate she had been washing to shatter into the kitchen basin and walked silently out of the room, followed closely by a stunned but concerned Jinki. 

Old Donghae had cried quiet tears of joy as he opened his arms for his grandson to climb into so he could hold the boy who had been the only one to inherit his gift.

That night, Donghae had laid to rest for the final time. When his daughter went to wake him the next morning, she’d found him laying peacefully with a content smile on his face.