The Beast Player Read online

  Perhaps I’m getting closer to the end than I thought. Will death come for me like that, suddenly, without warning? He stood numbly in the yard bathed in spring light. If it does, what will happen to Elin? Though mature for her age, she was still a child. He pressed a hand to his mouth and closed his eyes. He could see all too vividly the bleak future that awaited a girl as young as her if she were cast out into the world without a protector. He had better consider to whom he could entrust her care when he died. He had expected to have more time than this, but clearly he had better think about it now, and without delay.

  He opened his eyes and crossed the yard with heavy steps. As he went round the corner of his house, he was startled by the sound of a horse snorting. Someone was standing in front of the door—a young man, dressed in clothes that would normally be seen only in the capital. At the sight of his face, Joeun stopped in his tracks.

  “Asan…”

  A frown creased the young man’s forehead. The two stood motionless, staring at one another. Finally the young man spoke.

  “Hello, Father.”

  When Elin met the young man who was Joeun’s son, she saw in his face an old, familiar expression; the one she had seen on her grandfather’s face every time he had looked at her or her mother, a mask that concealed the same thought. What is an Ahlyo doing here, acting as if she were kin?

  She bowed her head to the floor in formal greeting. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Elin.” Asan nodded brusquely and then turned to speak with Joeun without addressing a single word to her.

  “Father, please think it over. Mother and I aren’t the only ones who have been waiting all this time for your reputation to be restored. The teachers and students at the school are longing for you to return, too.” Joeun sat with his head bowed and stared at the floor without responding. “Tosalielu has agreed to restore your honor. This is a wonderful opportunity. Takalan has been ruined, charged with treason against the Yojeh. He’ll never meddle in the affairs of the school again. Please, Father! Come back. It’s what everyone wants!”

  Joeun raised his head and gazed at his son. “Would you give me some time to think about it?”

  Asan scowled. “But, Father! What’s there to think about? You were the headmaster of the most prestigious school in the kingdom. Do you intend to live out the rest of your life secluded in the mountains like this?” A trace of a smile crossed Joeun’s face as he regarded his son. With an exasperated look, Asan thrust his chin in Elin’s direction. “If you’re worried about the girl, I’ll convince Mother for you. We can take her in until she comes of age and then find her a husband from the artisan class. As a foster daughter of the Tohsana family, she should have no problem making a match.”

  Joeun turned his eyes on Elin. She looked down and did not meet his gaze. He remained silent for a long time, but when he spoke, it was only to say once again, “Let me think about it.”

  Asan left, promising to return in ten days’ time. After calmly finishing the day’s work and clearing up after supper, Elin slipped out of the house and went into the stable. She hung the lantern she carried on a post, and the foal blinked as though dazzled. It was already surprisingly steady on its legs. Totchi nuzzled it lovingly. As Elin stood leaning against the railing, gazing at the pair, she heard footsteps. Joeun came up beside her and rested his elbows on the top of the railing. The two stood silently for some time just watching the foal with its dam.

  Finally, Joeun broke the silence. “Forgive Asan, Elin. He has never lived anywhere but the school in the capital. He’s an honest man, but he cares a bit too much about honor and rank…”

  Elin turned to look at him. “You were the headmaster of a school?”

  Joeun smiled. “I never told you, did I?… I guess because when I met you I felt that I was starting my life over. I decided there and then to forget the twenty years I had spent as a teacher and the other twelve as headmaster at Tamuyuan, the school for boys of the skilled artisan class. I made up my mind to spend the rest of my days as an ordinary beekeeper, adopting the speech and attitudes of a peasant.”

  He paused to rub a hand over the old scar on his chin and then continued quietly. “I like teaching children. I didn’t become a teacher just to follow in my father’s footsteps. For me, it was a calling. Of course, because I liked it, I was passionate about it. I’m pretty sure I was considered a good teacher. Otherwise, why would I be appointed headmaster at only forty years of age? Everything in my life seemed perfect… until that one incident.”

  Joeun shifted his eyes to the foal without seeing it. “A teacher should treat each pupil fairly. But teachers are only human. It’s hard not to give more attention to students that excel at their studies, especially if they are good people. One of my students was a boy named Neekana. He wasn’t from a wealthy family, but he was extremely bright and had a cheerful disposition. One of my other students was Saman, the son of a wealthy bureaucrat named Takalan. I just could not like Saman, even though I knew that as a teacher I should treat all my students equally.”

  Joeun frowned. “He lied so smoothly, you see, as if he were telling the truth. Cruel lies intended to get others into trouble. He was jealous and had an excessive amount of pride…” He paused, as if to swallow a bitter taste that rose in his mouth. “The marks on the final exams determined whether the young men in the graduating class could assume the job or post that they desired. Saman, of course, intended to become a high-ranking bureaucrat, just like his father. But his marks were far below standard. It was my job to grade the final exams. When Neekana received the highest mark, it made me very happy. He, too, had been aiming to become a bureaucrat, and with that mark, he would have no problem.”

  Joeun’s mouth twisted. “But the night before the grades were to be announced, Saman and his father came to my house. Saman accused Neekana of threatening him. Neekana, he said, had told him not to answer the questions correctly, that if he got a good grade on the exam, Neekana would tell all Saman’s friends about the lies he had told. I laughed out loud. Neekana was far smarter than Saman. Why on earth would he need to threaten him? The idea was ridiculous. I said as much, although more gently than that, because his father was there. But his father was furious. His son, he insisted, could not possibly be lying. Why would Saman tell a lie that revealed that he had deceived other students? He demanded that I fail Neekana and give his son the grade he needed to become a bureaucrat. I refused adamantly.”

  He closed his lips and fell silent for a moment. Then, forcing the words out, he continued. “That night, Saman killed himself.” Elin looked up at Joeun with a start. There was a darkness in his expression that she had never seen before. “Takalan blamed me. He claimed that if I had believed in his son, Saman would not have killed himself. He said I was unfit to be headmaster of Tamuyuan because I clearly favored Neekana over his son. Prince Tosalielu, who owned the school, had no choice but to dismiss me from my post.”

  Joeun looked at Elin with a wry smile. “To be honest, I still think that Saman killed himself out of spite. Governed by his inflated pride, he would have fiercely resented the fact that I didn’t take his words seriously. I think he killed himself to hurt me for not believing him, to make me pay for it… But, Elin, that is precisely the kind of person a teacher really needs to teach.” His eyes were filled with pain. “I did everything I could to protect a capable student, but I abandoned Saman without a second thought, simply because I disliked him. Even after he died, I still could not stand him. And I would certainly have abandoned him again if the gods had turned back time. Knowing that about myself shocked me far more than my dismissal.”

  Totchi snorted loudly, and Joeun turned his eyes back to the horses. After some time, he spoke again, slowly. “I want to stay here and live with you like this. But, to be honest, I’m torn. The school, like the rest of society, is fraught with power struggles. It can be a pleasant place if you have the backing of a powerful teacher. But those who study under someone like me, under someone who f
alls from grace, are relegated to the lowest positions in the hierarchy. I wonder whether it is really right for me to pursue my own happiness when my former students may be suffering for my failure.”

  He turned to face Elin. “Would you mind very much if I were to ask you to live as my foster daughter in the capital?”

  Elin gazed back at him wordlessly. Joeun wants to go home. He himself had not yet realized it, but to her it was clear. The way he talked had changed when he spoke of his past. She had known this day would come. Over the years, she had come to understand how society worked and it had become clear to her that Joeun had not been born a beekeeper. The wide range of subjects he taught her every night, even his ability to play the harp, indicated the depth of his knowledge and education. No one from the peasant class would have been permitted to study these things. Although Joeun had never spoken of leaving, Elin had prepared herself long ago for the possibility that they would part. It was not that she had foreseen it. Rather, she had prepared herself in self-defense—so that when the time came, she would not be hurt. Since the day her mother had been torn from her, she had lost any faith that happiness was eternal and unchanging.

  Change, she knew, was something that came suddenly. But though it might come without warning, she never wanted to taste again the sorrow she had felt at the loss of her mother. She had therefore been careful to keep some distance between herself and Joeun. Had he understood?

  She loved him. She wanted to live with him forever. But her spirit drooped at the thought of living in the capital with Joeun’s son and family, of feeling like a burden and being married off to some unknown artisan. In her childhood, she had learnt all too well what it meant to marry into that class. The only woman in her village who had become an artisan in her own right had been Elin’s mother. If she married one, she would be expected to bear the man’s children, serve him and take care of his house for the rest of her life. This held no attraction for her at all. She could not bear that kind of life, even if refusal meant parting with Joeun and living alone.

  There’s so much more I want to learn, so many questions I want to find answers for.

  One of these as yet unanswered questions was why her mother had believed controlling the Toda was such a mortal sin. She had mulled over her mother’s words and recalled the look on her face again and again. Now she thought she could understand, at least a little, what she might have felt.

  When Elin watched the honeybees or other creatures in the wild, when she observed the diversity of their life cycles and the astounding precision of their habits, there were times when she felt herself become a prick of light in the vastness of the night sky, times when all living things, people, beasts and insects, dwindled to equal points of light twinkling in the darkness. Having felt the world from that perspective, having held this vision in her mind, there were moments when the practices of a beekeeper struck her as loathsome—especially the way beekeepers made royal jelly. The liquid that the worker bees wrung from their bodies to make a new queen was traded for large sums of money. A teaspoon was worth a small gold piece, and Joeun deftly manipulated the bees to make it. Royal jelly was a good product and a good medicine. That’s why he did it, and, of course, that wasn’t bad. But every time she watched him control the bees, she recalled the dark expression on her mother’s face as she had rolled the Toda whistle in her palm.

  Had her mother been feeling the same way, that it was wrong to manipulate other living things? Had she felt herself to be just one of countless pinpricks of light in an infinite expanse of darkness? Had she seen that the Toda, too, were dots of light? Was that why she had felt it was a sin to manipulate them?

  Why are Toda the way they are? Why are we humans like this? Questions like these teased her mind. Perhaps there were no answers, but she wanted so much to find them.

  “Uncle Joeun…” she said. “Is there a school in the capital where girls can study?”

  A look of sadness crossed his face. “There are… but they’re all designed to train girls to be good wives to members of the nobility or high-ranking artisans. Even if you went, I can’t imagine that you would be satisfied with what you learnt.” He sighed and shook his head. “If only you were a boy… I don’t know how many times I’ve thought that. If you were a boy, I’d enroll you in Tamuyuan without hesitation, regardless of whether Asan or anyone else objected.”

  Sometimes daughters of the nobility were permitted to study at Tamuyuan, but very few, and Elin, who came from Ahlyo stock, would certainly not be allowed in. Joeun reached out a hand and stroked her hair. “So you don’t want to come and live with us in the capital?”

  Elin bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Keeping her head down, she nodded. “…I was very happy living with you… I wish we could go on this way. But if that’s not possible… I…” She took a deep breath and went on. “I want to live by myself… I don’t want to live in the capital in your house as a foster child and be married off.”

  Joeun closed his eyes and nodded once. “Yes. I can see that. You’re not the type of girl who would be happy as the wife of an artisan.” Yet deep inside was the thought that even such a fate was better if it meant Elin would not be left alone when he died. He could not help but feel that his son’s arrival on the very day that he had felt so ill was an act of fate. He sighed again. “What are we to do, I wonder?”

  From the moment she had met Asan and sensed that the time of parting was near, Elin had been rolling an idea over in her mind. Since that summer four years ago, she had been drawn to the Royal Beasts. Or perhaps obsessed with them was a better description. Every year when she and Joeun returned to the hut in the mountains, she had gone back to the cliff to watch them. Joeun had scolded her countless times, but she could not resist. One day, he had exclaimed in exasperation, “I once knew a woman just like you, who was possessed by these Beasts.”

  She looked up at him now and said, “Uncle Joeun…”

  “What?”

  “You told me once that you knew someone who worked in a sanctuary for Royal Beasts. A woman. You said that she was a beast doctor.”

  Joeun blinked. “Ah. You mean Esalu, at the Kazalumu Sanctuary. They call it a sanctuary, but it’s really where they take care of injured beasts until they die.” He could see his friend’s face in his mind. She had been admitted to Tamuyuan, even though she came from the lower ranks of the nobility. Sallow-skinned, with angular features, she could not have been called pretty even in flattery, but she had been extremely clever, and the two of them had become fast friends.

  “Esalu. Hmm.” He frowned and his expression grew thoughtful. “I see. A beast doctor. Yes, that’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of. It’s a high position, but because exposure to blood is defiling, women are allowed to assume that rank. And you might be very well suited to it.

  “As for Kazalumu Sanctuary, children come from all over the country hoping to become doctors. They study while taking care of the Royal Beasts, so it would really suit you as a place to live.” Even as he said this, however, he still looked concerned. “But it’s a hard job, heavy labor with few rewards. If anything happens to one of the Beasts, the doctor may be blamed… and in some cases, even sentenced to death.”

  The image of her mother being dragged before the inspector jumped vividly into Elin’s mind, and a cold pain shot through her chest. Yet, almost simultaneously, another image surfaced in her memory—her mother’s pale hand slowly and gently caressing the huge flanks of the Toda, her mother’s face as she gazed at them…

  Then, like a bright flash of light, she remembered—she had always longed to be like her mother, to gain knowledge, and to use it to help the beasts.

  I want to become a doctor and care for the Royal Beasts. The thought spread inside her like fire through an open field.

  She raised her head. “Uncle Joeun, my mother was a beast doctor.”

  Joeun’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “But she only treated Toda. I was raised in a village of Toda St
ewards in the Tohan district on the western edge of Aluhan territory…”

  With her eyes cast down, she began to tell him the tale that she had concealed for so long in the depths of her heart. She told him how her mother, who had belonged to the Ahlyo, had wed the eldest son of the village chief and given birth to Elin. For this she had been cast out of the Ahlyo. But because she had excelled at healing, she had been entrusted with the care of the Kiba, the most precious of the Toda herd. When the Kiba were found dead one morning, she had been blamed and sentenced to a brutal death. Elin told him how she had tried to save her mother, but instead had been placed upon a Toda, wrenched away, and carried to this land. Elin told Joeun everything—everything except the fact that her mother had used a finger whistle to control the Toda. Somehow it did not feel right to share that.

  Joeun listened open-mouthed. “…So that’s what happened.” He shook his head. “You’ve finally solved that riddle for me. When I found you, you were covered in glue-like mud and Toda slime. I had always wondered how on earth that was possible… Now I see…” Her past had been far more painful and cruel than he had ever imagined. He looked at her steadily. “But if that’s the case, wouldn’t you hate to become a Royal Beast Doctor?”

  Elin shook her head. “No. I loved to watch my mother when she cared for the Toda. She was the best doctor in the village… I always wanted to be like her.”

  Joeun looked into her clear, shining eyes and nodded. “All right, then. I’ll ask Esalu.”

  2 THE ENTRANCE TEST

  The rain that had fallen incessantly since morning finally ceased when the carriage carrying Elin and Joeun reached the Kazalumu highlands. The clouds chased across the sky by strong winds still glowered darkly, but they were brightening at the edges, and patches of blue sky peeped through the gaps. Cloud shadows flowed across the gently sloping highlands, caressing the meadow. A high fence surrounded the Royal Beast Sanctuary, but its height was barely noticeable in the vast area it enclosed. The sanctuary was almost as large as the highlands.