The Fog Horn (Angae Godong) - Chapter 6

The sea fog did not clear for three days. The fishermen stamped their feet. They must have had a good harvest after a long absence from the sea.

It was frightening to hear them muttering, “This is the season, we need to get them all in!” He often thought of a man being caught in the longline nets with stitches all over his body.

He stroked his chilled arm. Today was the day to pluck the weeds [1] from the village head’s chili and potato fields.

When he thought he was done, he stretched his back, but there were still a few dozen furrows left. That was the thing about farm work. There was no end to the work.

Nuri rubbed his aching hands and then bent over again. Keeping his head down on the ground attracted a few bugs, but they didn’t bother him because he was numb from the constant bites.

After clearing a few more furrows, Nuri met up with the person who was plowing on the other side.

He was sweating beads. Wiping the sweat off with the towel around his neck, he slurped off the leftover mukbap [2] he brought as an after-work meal.

As he walked through the furrows [3] , he felt the warmth of the muk [4] as it slid down his throat.

Just as he was getting some air and wondering about when he would get to go home again, Cheol-woong threw about two dozen potatoes wrapped in an onion net onto the field.

“Today’s wage. I told you to do the chilli patch, but you did the potato patch too.”

“Is it okay to give me so many potatoes?”

“They’re rotting in the storage. Your house, your jar and your rice jar are all empty and it’s a house in this village that doesn’t even have potatoes.”

“Thank you.”

Nuri clutched the onion net. As the saying goes, Nuri’s family was the only one without a field. Nuri’s house wasn’t even Nuri’s land. He didn’t know who owned it, but someone had lived there and left the island. Into that empty house came his parents.

Nuri’s father had disappeared before Nuri was born. He wasn’t dead, just gone. Nuri’s mother never said he was dead. She said he had disappeared. The more she put it like that, the harder it was for Nuri to imagine his father.

He was a visitor who stayed on the island for a while and then left. That was all Nuri knew about him.

His Mother didn’t resent his Father until she passed away. Nuri thought that because his mother was like that, he couldn’t resent him either. He hadn’t been taught what to resent. His father was just a vague existence to Nuri.

Nuri walked down the road, clutching the net full of potatoes. The pain in his feet had subsided since the water demon had kissed the instep.

The limp in his leg was a little less painful. There wasn’t a noticeable change in his manner of walking, but it was a change Nuri could clearly feel.

Could this all be part of the process of possessing/bewitching people? Nuri still didn’t fully trust him. Who was he? How did he know him? When did they meet?

[At that time, if only I had met you earlier.]

Could it be related to his accident? When Nuri was ten years old, he fell between rocks and passed out with his legs trapped. Absolutely no one came to help him as the seawater came up to his chest.

No one knew if someone had pushed him or if he had fallen on his own, but it was the village head who found him and saved him.

The village head was a hero for saving his life, and for a year, Nuri’s mother did sewing work for his house without receiving money.

Even if her son became lame, at least he lived, his mother said many times. Nuri didn’t know why his memories of that time were fading away.

At that time, what if it wasn’t the village head who found him, but the water demon? What if it was him who pulled him from the sea and saved his life? When he woke up, there was driftwood in his sleeve.

Nuri walked home, thinking that maybe the water demon’s saving of his life was a little more convincing than the village head’s.

There was a large black bird inside his house. When Nuri stopped walking in surprise, the black bird spat out a fish as if it was spitting it out, and then disappeared.

There was a fish flopping on the floor. The fish was longer and bigger than Nuri’s forearm. Nuri stared at the spot where the bird had been left for a long time. He had never seen a bird that big in his life. Maybe it wasn’t a seagull, he thought.

“But why are you throwing up fish in my house?”

Nuri had never fixed a bird’s leg like anyone in the fairy tales. So there was nothing to repay the favor. Besides, it was the first time he had seen such a big bird before. Nuri blinked, unable to touch the flailing fish.

After carrying the potatoes back to the kitchen, he carried the fish to the stove in a strainer with holes in it. The fish quickly became motionless and went still. Nuri stared at it, then turned away. There was no bird in sight. The sky was full of overcast clouds, drenched in water.

“Thank you.”

Nuri muttered in the air. It was a big, valuable fish, whether it had been accidentally vomited up, or spat out in the wrong house. Steamed or boiled, it will last for days.

“How to clean it…….”

Nuri muttered to himself and went into the bedroom. It was just as dank inside as it was outside. Nuri grabbed his change of clothes and headed to the bathroom.

A yellow hose was connected to the entrance of the water pipe and a red water basin was placed. There was a barely conventional toilet flushing. Even with groundwater, the water tasted faintly of the sea.

Nuri stripped off his clothes and turned on the water, washing his face with the cold water running from a short hose.

The water demons don’t appear wherever there is water, so maybe they don’t appear here, he thought absurdly.

Nuri couldn’t tell if he wanted him to show up or if he didn’t want him to show up.

* * *

The black bird hovered in the air and entered a black rock cave. There, a merman was sitting on the shore. His transparent green eyes were focused on the bird. With no smile on his face, he tossed some right-sized fish at the bird.

“Well done, Argo.”

It was the only thing merman could do for him now. The merman watched as the bird gulped down the fish, and only then did he dive deeper into the ocean. The energy of the deep sea was dark with the wrath of a furious Dragon king of the sea.

A mermaid should rightly object to the death of a person, but he did not. He thought that if a person had sinned, he deserved to die. Humans, they had to. Humans who are endlessly greedy without showing any regret for their wrongdoing.

The only exception to his rule was the lighthouse keeper, who had human blood in him. The one who was too scared to attack him, the one who was afraid yet shouted at him to be careful.

‘He is the same, he hasn’t changed.

The merman recalled the face of the child he had seen fifteen years ago. He was a grown man now, but his round, clear eyes were still the same. Even the glint in his eyes.

The merman sank deeper into his thoughts.

The opportunity to punish the man he hated so much had arrived. It was revenge and punishment permitted by the Dragon King of the sea.

It was up to the merman, with his long green fins, to decide how to do it. All the mermaids scattered across the sea stood at attention to his presence.

“ Lord Poseidon [5] .”

The merman looked at the young mermaids bowed before him. Looking at the top of their heads, the thought of the child crossed his mind.

The child who must have been puzzled after receiving the big fish, the kid who was human but could not be punished.

He has to make sure that that child doesn’t get hurt. The merman’s green eyes darkened. A turbid mix of hatred, love, and genuineness in it.

* * *

1. Weeds are unwanted plants growing in combinations with crops
2. Mukbap (묵밥) is a cold soup made with muk and sliced vegetables, and is a nutritional food for farming households.
3. A line in a field that is made for planting seeds in by a farming machine that turns the earth (plough)
4. Muk is a Korean food made from grains, beans, or nut starch such as buckwheat, sesame, and acorns and has a jelly-like consistency
5. Lord of the sea has the highest rank of mermaids; he is the commander and educator. It is the only mermaid capable of killing humans on demand. It is a respectful way to address a merman or any male figure of authority in the underwater world. Poseidon is a Greek god of the sea, and he is often referenced as a symbol of power and dominance in mermaid lore.