The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea(5)

My eldest brother, Sung, thinks all wind chimes sound the same. But I think he just doesn’t have the patience to listen. The clanking of bronze baubles against seashells sounds different from the tapping of tin against copper bells. The wind, too, has varying degrees of temperament. When it’s angry, the chimes make a sharp, shrilling sound. When it’s happy, the chimes clink together in a lively dance.

This sound, though, is different. Low. Melancholy.

I step back down the stairs. The ribbon doesn’t resist but grows in length, trailing after me.

I can hear my grandmother’s voice in my ear. There are rules to the world of spirits, Mina. Choose carefully which ones you break. There is a reason this city is veiled in mist. There is a reason I can only travel through it by way of a ribbon of fate. But the sound of the chime was close, and the truth is, I think I’ve heard it before.

The sound leads me to the doorway of a small shop off the boulevard. I brush aside the rough curtain and step inside, gasping at the wondrous sight. The shop is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of wind chimes. They cover the walls and hang from the ceiling like teardrops. Some of the charms are round and small, made of seashells, acorns, and tin stars; others are large waterfalls of golden bells.

And yet, as within the white fog, there’s no wind in the shop.

But I could have sworn I heard a sound. My eyes are drawn to the far wall, where a gap at the center displays a single wind chime. A star, a moon, and a copper bell are threaded on a thin bamboo string. It’s a simple construction for a chime.

I recognize it immediately.

I carved the star from a piece of driftwood and the moon from a beautiful white seashell I’d found on the beach. The bell I purchased from a traveling bell maker, pestering him as I rang each bell inside his cart, one after another. I wouldn’t settle until I found the perfect sound.

I spent a week crafting the chime. I meant to hang it above my niece’s cradle, so she could hear the wind.

But she was born too early. If she’d been born in the autumn, she would have lived. But as everyone knows, all children born during the storms never survive past the first breath.

Sung was heartbroken.

In a rage I’ve never felt before or since, I took the charm to the cliffs outside our village and pitched it over the edge. I watched as it fell and shattered upon the rocks. Last I saw the chime, it was in pieces as they were swept away into the sea.

All around me the chimes in the shop begin to jingle—somehow swaying in the windless air—until the shop is a clamor of cacophonous sounds.

Wind chimes ringing without wind mean there are spirits about.

I exit the shop, the sound of the chimes dampened to my ears. If there are spirits here, and they’re invisible, watching, what do they see when they look at me?

I walk fast. The night is long, and the ribbon is a weight against my hand. Beyond the gate is one grand courtyard after another. I look at none of them. After the fifth, I’m running.

I step through a final gate, climb the stone steps, and enter the throne room of the Sea God, stopping only then to catch my breath.

Moonlight filters through breaks in the raftered ceiling, slanting broken light across a great hall. The twilight gloom of the fog is muted here, but still the eerie silence remains. No servants rush out to greet me. No guards move to block my path. The Red String of Fate ripples. Slowly it begins to shift from a bright, sparkling crimson to a deep bloodred. It leads me to the end of the hall, where a massive mural of the dragon chasing a pearl across the sky frames a throne on a dais.

Slumped over the throne, his face shadowed by a magnificent crown, is the Sea God. He’s dressed in beautiful blue robes, stitched silver dragons climbing up the fabric. Around his left hand is the end of my ribbon.

I wait for the spark of recognition in my soul.

According to myth, the Red String of Fate ties a person to her destiny. Some even believe that it ties you to the one person your heart desires most.

Is the Sea God tied somehow to my destiny? Does my heart desire him most?

There’s a sharp pain in my chest, but it’s not love.

It’s darker, hotter, and infinitely stronger.

I hate him.

I take a step. And then another. My hand that holds the ribbon goes to my chest and comes away with the knife.

What would the world be like without the Sea God? Would we still suffer the storms that rise out of nothing to wreck our boats and drown our fields? Would we still suffer the loss of our loved ones to famine and sickness, because the lesser gods can’t or won’t hear our prayers, fearful as they are of the Sea God’s wrath?

“What would happen, if I were to kill you now?”

As the words echo in the vast hall, I realize these are the first words I’ve spoken aloud since arriving in the Sea God’s realm.

And they’re words of hate. My anger swells up like an unstoppable wave. “I would kill you now and sever the ties of our fate.”

My words are reckless. Who am I to defy a god? But there’s a terrible ache inside me that needs to know—

“Why do you curse us? Why do you look away when we cry and scream for your help? Why have you abandoned us?” I choke on these last words.

The figure on the throne doesn’t answer. The magnificent crown he wears leans so far forward over his face that it shadows his eyes.

I take the last few steps to the dais. Reaching out, I remove the crown from the Sea God’s head. It slips from my fingers to land with a thud against the silk carpet.