Lady of Dreams Read online

  “Aish!” I said in vexation. “Now his face has gone cold again. Why did you have to come back that way?” I dropped lower in the Dream as it merged with the one containing Jessamy, and said, “Pabo!” in his ear.

  “Ooah!” said Jessamy in surprise, hunching his shoulders. “Mwohya?”

  Hyun-jun and Ae-jung looked at him in surprise, and he said meekly, “A bug flew in my mouth. Ae-jung nuna, we’ll walk you back to the cottage this afternoon, will we?”

  Ah, so Ae-jung wasn’t back to stay? Very good. I had the feeling that Yong-hwa, who had been significantly older in his first love, would need more than the day or two it would take the boyish Jessamy to recover.

  “I’ll walk her home,” said Hyun-jun. “We’ll have more work to do than we can get done this afternoon, and I’ll have to give Ae-jung instructions on the way back.”

  “All right,” Jessamy said obligingly. “I should go see Nuna anyway.” He rubbed his ear once more and made a face up at the sky for my benefit.

  Yong-hwa strolled back to the manor some time after lunch, his face closed and his eyes far away. By that time Jessamy was with me again, crouching at my feet to pinch my toes in an effort to bring back the feeling that had been lost yesterday, and it began to feel possible to pull away from the almost irresistible kinship of that Dream. As I rose from it, I became aware of the constant mutter at my feet.

  “—but I’m a good little dongsang,” said Jessamy’s voice. “Didn’t even complain about Nuna calling me pabo, and came right up to look after her.”

  A teacup rattled back into its saucer. “Was it you she was calling an idiot, Jessamy-ssi?” asked Carlin.

  “Right in my ear, too!” said Jessamy aggrievedly.

  “Then who—”

  “Never you mind, Carlin,” I said.

  Jessamy, in great glee, said, “That’s right! Never you mind, Carlin-automaton! Nuna, you’re awake again!”

  “Ya,” I said, rapping his skull with my knuckles. “You were thoughtless, Jessamy-a. Don’t bring Ae-jung back here again.”

  “Mwohya?” Jessamy’s voice went up an octave in indignation. “Thoughtless? What did I do?”

  “Ae-jung won’t be comfortable at the manor,” I said. “And neither—Well, never mind that. You shouldn’t have brought her back.”

  He grimaced. “Can’t be helped now, Nuna. Hyun-jun was going to write to Abeoji to ask if he could still make use of Ae-jung’s time, so I had to tell him he could. What if Abeoji found out you’ve been using his stationery and seal? Ae-jung will come to the manor most days for a few hours in the morning so that Hyun-jun hyung can work on his book.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That complicates things a little. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “And what are we thinking about, miss?” asked Carlin, who was still standing by the tea tray with the cup and saucer in his gloved hands.

  “Games,” I said. “There’s a lot to do, Carlin. You’ll have to be very sneaky.”

  “Games, miss?”

  “Mmm. But first, we need to get rid of the tea shop.”

  “The one—do you mean the one you sent me to this morning?”

  “How do you get rid of a tea shop anyway?” demanded Jessamy. “The Carlin-automaton is useful, but I don’t think he can get rid of a tea shop.”

  “It’s a seasonal one,” I said. “The vendor packs up his little stand at the end of autumn and finds somewhere warmer to set up. We just need to give him a reason to go away earlier this year.”

  Jessamy stopped pinching my toes. “What reason?”

  “Money, I suppose,” I said thoughtfully. The Dream of Yong-hwa lingered at the edges of my mind, showing me fleeting glimpses of Yong-hwa moving through the manor. “Carlin, I don’t have tea. Why don’t I have tea?”

  “Sorry, miss.”

  “Nuna,” said Jessamy, leaning his arms on my knees as I accepted a cup of tea from Carlin. “Why are you sending away the tea shop man?”

  “Never you mind,” I said, drawing another grimace from him. Was Yong-hwa in the servants’ hall? What was he doing there? A little more distractedly, I added, “Jessamy-a, I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention me to Yong-hwa.”

  “Dae?” Jessamy’s expressive little face fell. “But Nuna, I thought you were getting along well! I was only rude that day because you were Dreaming about him and I forgot I’d have to share you. But I won’t mind sharing you with Yong-hwa hyung now that I know you won’t pay attention to me sometimes because of him.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” I said. “Carlin, please don’t cough on the biscuits like that. I’ll want one later.”

  “Did you quarrel with Yong-hwa hyung?”

  “Of course not. I haven’t seen enough of Ma Yong-hwa to quarrel with him.”

  “But he sees you nearly as well as Dong-wook hyung! He even said to call him Oppa.”

  “Well, there’s no need to look so sad about it!” I protested. Jessamy’s anxious gaze was off-putting. “If you’re going to keep coughing on the biscuits, you can eat the top layer, Carlin. It’s not forever, Jessamy-a; I’m just making sure that Yong-hwa oppa forgets about me for a little while.”

  “We can stay in our room for the next few days, miss,” said Carlin. “If Yong-hwa-ssi is likely to be out and about the manor, it’ll be safer.”

  I sank against the soft back of my chaise longue, half-in and half-out of the Dream. Yong-hwa was in the servants’ hall; now he was talking to the butler. “Yes,” I said absently. “In our room.”

  “—yesterday,” said Yong-hwa’s voice, cutting in on Reality with its clarity. “In the rose garden. Do you remember who ordered a tea tray at noon?”

  “There were no tea trays ordered for noon, Seonnim. Most of the other guests were at the lunch table, and those that were not were at the cottage.”

  “I see,” Yong-hwa said. “Then could a personal servant have visited the kitchen and fetched a tray?”

  “It is possible, Seonnim. Shall I make inquiries for you?”

  “Please,” said Yong-hwa, nodding. “Ah—while I think of it: the clothes that were sent down for pressing this morning—who was it that brought them down? My man let in one of the servants with the clothes just as I got up. He thought I’d sent them down.”

  “That was a little confusing, Seonnim,” said the butler, descending so far as to sound worried. “No clothes were sent down for pressing for any of the gentlemen but Dong-wook Seonnim. I found it a little strange, as Hyun-jun Seonnim sends down his clothing every day, and it was Master Jessamy’s day for sending things down.”

  “Curious,” said Yong-hwa thoughtfully. “I sent nothing down, the servants received nothing, and yet I was given freshly pressed clothes.”

  “Perhaps Seonnim remembers the face of the servant who brought the pressed clothes?” suggested the butler, and I held my breath.

  “Just his cheek and the back of his head as he left the room,” said Yong-hwa.

  “Just as well,” I said. “Carlin, you were almost caught when you went to Yong-hwa’s room this morning.”

  “I know,” said Carlin feelingly. “I turned my head just in time! Do you want a biscuit, miss?”

  “Not if it’s one you’ve coughed on.”

  “I’ll eat the coughed-on ones,” said Jessamy’s voice cheerfully. “Why did Carlin go to Yong-hwa hyung’s room anyway, Nuna?”

  I laid a finger over my lips, still too much caught in the Dream to see properly. “If anyone asks, he didn’t.”

  “It’s a Dream thing, then?” Jessamy asked. He didn’t sound surprised, and he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t tell him any more about it. “Oh well, so long as Carlin knows about it.”

  “I know as little as you, Jessamy-ssi,” said Carlin, his voice heavy with disapproval.

  “Don’t start sulking at me again,” I said. “Jessamy-a, sit next to me, will you? I’m a little tired of this Dream.”

  But despite Jessamy’s warm presence beside me on the ch
aise longue, I wasn’t able to pull out of the Dream fully until late that night—a fact as annoying as it was incomprehensible. Yong-hwa wasn’t doing anything specific; in fact, from what the Dream showed me, he spent most of the afternoon alternately thinking, gazing out his window, and working at a particularly troublesome piece of composition on his gayageum. It was the composition he’d written for Ae-jung, all bright and bouncing and light, but there was something different about it today. Beneath that burbling, tripping melody was an intricate harmony that moved in and out, barely noticeable but beautiful in its subtlety. Had it always been there without my noticing it? I didn’t think so. Being something that people often overlooked, I was more inclined to see and hear similar things, and I was certain I would have noticed.

  Whatever it was, Yong-hwa wasn’t happy with it. He tweaked it this way and that, changing it by a half tone here or adding a different fall of notes there, but eventually left his gayageum with a dissatisfied look and went to his violin instead.

  I went to sleep that night with the faint strains of violin music in my ears, caught between sleep and the Dream. The next morning I woke late to find that while I’d slept better than I remembered doing in quite some time, Yong-hwa had been up and about more important business. I didn’t wake in the Dream, however, which meant that I was conveniently free to eat breakfast and send Carlin off to persuade the tea vendor to leave some two months earlier than usual. He was a clever, acquisitive sort of tea vendor, quick to pretend deafness when Yong-hwa woke enough from his silent preoccupation to be asking inconvenient questions. I didn’t have any doubt that he’d be just as quick about accepting the money I’d sent with Carlin—or about packing up and leaving, if it came to that.

  I followed the Dream of Yong-hwa, dipping from time to time into one of Se-ri, until Jessamy staggered into Yong-hwa’s quarters with an armful of proofing copy that he had brought back with him from the city. The Dream became significantly more sticky with his arrival, and I resisted just long enough to wait for Carlin’s return, strangely anxious to know that I had taken care of everything that needed taking care of. Yong-hwa was uncomfortably clever, and I didn’t want to be found out.

  When I did let myself sink into the Dream fully, weary of holding out, Jessamy and Yong-hwa were sitting on opposite sides of Yong-hwa’s table, which they had moved out onto the tiny balcony. Each was poring over a proofing copy.

  “Well, he can’t cause too much trouble there,” I said in relief. Yong-hwa had been surprisingly busy seeking out information yesterday; I hadn’t expected him to take up the game so suddenly. He was tapping at a page with his pen now, too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice that he was splattering the page with ink.

  “Jessamy-a,” he said suddenly. “About your clothes yesterday.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Did you send them down to be pressed?”

  “Dae,” said Jessamy, looking up properly. “But it’s funny, Hyung—the clothes I got back weren’t the ones I sent down. I’m glad they weren’t, though! Did you see Hyun-jun hyung’s face?”

  Yong-hwa’s teeth gleamed for a moment that was as startling as it was brief. “I did. It’s been an odd week, Jessamy-a.”

  “I don’t think you’re feeling well, Hyung,” said Jessamy, unexpectedly perceptive. “And you disappeared yesterday, too. Ae-jung was asking about you. Where did you go?”

  Yong-hwa’s smile vanished completely. “Ah. That. Someone set up a table for me at the tea stand.”

  “Oh,” said Jessamy, his eyes opening very wide.

  “Don’t do that with your eyes!” I hissed in his ear. Jessamy scrunched his face up against the whisper, which looked just as odd, but at least it didn’t look suspicious.

  He ducked his head over the proof and said guiltily, “Who did that?”

  “That’s the odd thing,” said Yong-hwa. Fortunately for both Jessamy and me, he wasn’t looking at Jessamy. Unfortunately for himself, he was distracted because Ae-jung had walked out into the garden below, and his eyes had fallen inevitably on her. “I don’t know. When I got there the table was already prepared and the vendor was pretending he was deaf.”

  “You were there all that time?” asked Jessamy, his eyes wide again. “Were you composing?”

  “Ani. I drank tea and watched the morning. I had a thing or two to think about. Perhaps I’ll go back there and convince the vendor to talk to me this time.”

  “Oh, he’ll be gone by now,” Jessamy said thoughtlessly, and I groaned.

  Yong-hwa awoke from his distraction, his eyes flying to Jessamy’s face. “Mwoh? Gone?”

  “Well—that is—he’s a seasonal vendor. He moves away every year.”

  “I see. Jessamy-a, I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you with the rest of the work. There’s something I’ve just remembered I have to do.”

  “All right, Hyung,” said Jessamy, happy to escape further notice and oblivious to Yong-hwa’s real meaning.

  I wasn’t oblivious, and I wasn’t surprised to see Yong-hwa striding through the manor and toward the side door that led to the garages. Since I hadn’t seen him do anything more energetic than a languid stroll before, it was something of a shock. Carlin hadn’t been back long, and if Yong-hwa was planning on walking this quickly and taking his vehicle, it was very possible that he could catch the tea shop before it set off.

  “This man!” I said. “Slow down, Oppa! You’ll ruin the game!”

  But Yong-hwa didn’t slow down, his Energy vehicle sweeping across the drive and toward the lane in a scattering of loose stones that startled one of Eun-hee’s gardeners. I tore after him as quickly as I’d ever moved in a Dream before, my gaze flicking ahead to where the tea shop would appear over the hilltops and back anxiously to Yong-hwa’s Energy vehicle.

  “I’m not clever enough for this,” I said, clicking my tongue. “Aish! There’s the tea shop.”

  The tea shop had left, but not completely; I could see the vendor’s little cart, prickly with banners and stacked furniture, trundling down the hill toward the lane.

  “Ah!” said Yong-hwa, and the vehicle seemed to surge ahead. If he kept going at this speed, he would catch up with the tea vendor just after the tea cart turned onto the lane.

  “I’m really not clever enough for this,” I said again, looking from the tea cart to Yong-hwa. His wheels were thrumming along at a good speed now, the wheel lugs a smooth circle of movement.

  “Oh!” I said in satisfaction. “Wheel lugs!” I’d seen Yong-hwa tinkering with his Energy model, removing a wheel that was cracking and in danger of breaking and replacing it with another. He had unscrewed those wheel lugs to do it. I swooped down close to the wheels, resolve forming and hardening in my insubstantial body, and made the Dream close around the wheel lugs. They unscrewed with an immense amount of effort, but I needed to unscrew only three of them. The last remaining lug, straining against the pressure of three missing supports, snapped, and sent the wheel careening across the lane. The vehicle dropped with a crash, throwing up dirt and stones, and dug a deep groove in the lane until it was stopped by the bank.

  “Aish!” gasped Yong-hwa, thrown forward by the sudden stop. His hair in disarray and his coat torn at the shoulder, he tumbled out onto the road, his eyes flying to the tea cart. It was disappearing over a swell in the lane, too far away to call. He said again, this time more sibilantly, “Aish!”

  Was he angry? I hadn’t seen Yong-hwa angry before; that might be interesting to observe. But he only stared after the tea cart for a moment longer, then sauntered back down the lane to fetch his wheel, his walk again as languid as usual. He crouched by the wheel for quite some time, however, turning the broken lug over in his fingers for longer than I thought it warranted. When at last he stood again, he didn’t return to his vehicle. Instead he strolled farther back along the lane, one hand in his pocket and his eyes on the road.

  It took him a little while, but he found the other three wheel lugs. Then he stood still with the wheel
leaning against his leg, the broken wheel lug in one palm and the three unbroken ones in the other. He looked from one palm to the other, and there was a thoughtful expression to his eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” I said softly. “Why find the lugs? And why are you so puzzled about them?”

  “I understand you,” said Yong-hwa to the broken lug, and then to the others, “but why are you all scattered on the road? One, then the next, then the next . . .”

  “You should be more worried about how you’re going to get your vehicle back to the manor, Oppa,” I said. It really seemed as though Yong-hwa was planning on standing in the lane for the rest of the day. “And what about Ae-jung? She’ll be walking back to the cottage with Hyun-jun any time now.”

  I saw Yong-hwa look briefly down the road, his face just a little blanker and colder. He hadn’t forgotten. He was weighing up the amount of time he had left to examine the puzzle before it became inevitable that he would see Hyun-jun and Ae-jung on his way back. He slipped the lugs into his pocket, then moved his fingers rapidly in what I was certain was a Magical working. I couldn’t see the effects of it as I would have if I were in that Reality instead of a Dream, but Yong-hwa’s lips pressed together in dissatisfaction. Had he been checking to see if the lugs were undone through magic? In that case, he obviously didn’t think it had happened by mischance.

  Ah well. It would have to be just one more puzzle piece in the game we were playing. Yong-hwa could be in no doubt by now that someone was playing with him, anyway. The important thing was that the tea vendor had escaped a Yong-hwa who was now fully awake to ask questions. He hadn’t been so on the morning that he escaped to the tea shop, which was just as well for me; I would have to be more careful about using third parties in my games.

  I followed Yong-hwa as he strolled back toward the manor. His face was never a particularly open one, but as he drew closer to the manor it closed even more, his eyes glazed with a reflective sheen that was nothing like the brightness I’d seen in them when he looked at Ae-jung. When he had hurried from the manor to chase the phantom of the tea vendor, I’d thought it was only from curiosity and a determination to work out the puzzle, but now it occurred to me that in his haste his exit had been something like an escape.