Year of the Rat Read online

  For his older son, the tsar had opened the doors to his most exclusive brothel. A reward for serving on the front lines against the barbaric wolf people. When Father and Mikhail walked the halls together, people saw the tall, handsome man who was the striking image of the tsar. Secure. Familiar. A man who took up arms to defend the smallfolk instead of writing about it.

  Then they saw the smaller limping boy with the not-right eyes, the unshakeable cough, and the mouth full of blasphemy. And the whispers grew pitying:

  “The next winter will take that one.”

  “Should be left to the wolves. More able-bodied people in the villages could use his share of supper.”

  The younger son remembered the first time he had introduced the concept of communal farming. His speech had been interrupted by Mikhail, who had returned from his first military campaign. His brother had brandished the bloodied head of a wolf chieftain on a spike. The people had flocked to the gates in droves.

  “Won’t Mikhail make a worthy successor, my son?” the tsar had asked the younger prince.

  The boy had nodded before realizing his father wasn’t looking at him. The moment the tsar beheld Mikhail’s triumphant return, he never had eyes for him again.

  However, all of the weapons in his brother’s armory were not enough to fight the unending winter. The younger prince had turned to Lada. As distasteful as she was, the witch woman listened. She heard his ideas. And when she spoke, she knew more than he had ever dreamed. She’d told him a magical story, a wonderful story, of how he could save his kingdom and become the future tsar everyone needed.

  Prince Aleksandr had smiled.

  Then the moon came out from behind a cloud. Lada had no shadow.

  Spooked at the memory, the young prince caught up to Mikhail. They descended the spiral staircase into a glacial ballroom filled with dancers frozen in mid-step.

  His brother made faces in the gilded mirrors adorning the walls, and the younger prince laughed. He noticed steam wafting from a manservant’s chalice. Hesitantly, he dipped a finger into the goblet and tasted it. Warm, spiced mead seeped across his tongue. Shouting, Aleksandr jumped back. He had never tasted nor seen anything like this before. He had pored over ancient manuscripts about the forbidden Ice Palace until his candles had burned low, but words simply couldn’t capture this enchantment. It was beautiful.

  The older brother was having fun with the orchestra. He tugged at the aging conductor’s mustache, snuck a fondle of a robust violinist’s chest, and then discovered a birch svirel lying on a frost-encrusted table. Without hesitation, he placed the flute against his lips and blew. An oddly sweet note swelled, filling the halls of the ice palace, and then fell still.

  Beneath their feet, the ice trembled.

  Both young men stared at each another. When nothing happened, they gave a relieved laugh.

  “Please, Mikhail,” Aleksandr said. “Let’s go. We should return with reinforcements.”

  Mikhail’s eyes gleamed like pale glass. “We can’t go yet, Alek. Don’t you remember what lies at the heart of the palace?”

  His younger brother sighed his resignation. “The Firebird.”

  “The salvation of our kingdom,” Mikhail stressed. “You told me the Firebird can bring the light of spring to any corner of the world. Do you want to see that village seamstress who attends your communal talks spend one more night in that godawful hovel of hers? No dry wood for the fireplace? No food in the larders? We cannot wait for our father. We will be the saviors of our people, little brother.”

  Alek pulled his cap lower, but Mikhail already knew he had won. They followed the spiral stairs deeper into the land of the dead.

  The castle’s inhabitants grew increasingly more unsettling. Aleksandr clapped his moleskin gloves to stay warm and drew close to Mikhail as they passed snow giants with battleaxes, snarling hounds the size of wolves, and a frozen lake dotted by fair ice maidens with pointy ears.

  There, in the heart of the dark waters, was a burning bird.

  Aleksandr’s voice caught, but it might have been the cold. Struggling to rub some feeling back into his numb lips, he whispered: “Is that—?”

  “The Firebird,” Mikhail said, his voice hushed. He started out across the frozen lake with the kind of bravery Aleksandr could only write about. The mythical bird radiated with golden plumage and vermillion flames that cast dancing shadows across the cavern’s icicles. The witch woman had spoken truly. Everyone knew the Firebird brought good fortune. If they could take even one feather, then they could drive back the unnatural cold cursing the kingdom with starvation. Fight magic with magic.

  Drawing close, Mikhail, too, felt heady with hunger. As a hunter, he had learned to both respect and fear the beasts of the wood. However, the ecstasy of feeling warm again after so many months spent in darkness had erased all sense of caution. He had never liked nor trusted “Lada,” his younger brother’s sorceress, but perhaps this time she had pointed them true. The Firebird’s flames roared, and Mikhail ceased to be aware of the world around him. Eager, he snatched a feather from the lustrous plumage.

  The Firebird went dark, drowning Mikhail with unforgiving cold. He fumbled about blindly in the darkness. The subterranean lake seemed to expand on all sides without end.

  “Boy. What are you doing?” he heard a voice, cruel and amused, echo from behind.

  Mikhail spun around and beheld a queen. Except she was all wrong. Those were hard, pitiless eyes of emerald ice, the type to make others weep. Her white-blond hair carpeted her back like scales, and she had wings that rippled with rubicund flames. An icicle tiara mounted with a teardrop pearl adorned her brow, and her gown was a glittering sheet of green lace.

  Mikhail held up the feather as if to ward her off. He realized with a sinking heart that it flickered like her wings: the flames of a Firebird. Amongst the leaping firelight, he saw glowing eyes surrounding him. Ice maidens. They slithered out from the black waters noiselessly, their lips as blue as their eyes.

  Lada had never mentioned this.

  “Get back, rusalki!” he cried. “Come, Alek. We’re going.” He reached for his brother’s hand. It was frozen solid.

  Horrorstruck, Mikhail whirled around to see his younger brother’s face encased in a block of ice. Tears were frozen upon his cheeks.

  The ice queen laughed. Her maidens cackled with her, a low, raspy sound like gravelly rocks rolling down a stream.

  “He drank from my realm,” the queen said. “Now he can never leave.”

  “Please,” Mikhail begged, falling to his knees. “Spare him. He is my only brother. Take me instead. I am the heir to a great kingdom. What use is a sick little boy to you?”

  Mikhail imagined he saw Aleksandr’s eyelid twitch behind the ice imprisoning him. The dark queen cocked her head, listening to the whispers of her maidens. Her gray lips parted in smile, revealing two gleaming fangs.

  “No,” she said. “My rusalki have wanted a child for so long. He will be theirs. But when you disturbed our slumber, you woke us to a greater danger at our doorstep. You have my gratitude. So, princeling, you may return to your kingdom”—her finger pointed at his feet, and Mikhail heard the ominous crack of ice—“if you can survive the swim.”

  “Aleksandr!” Mikhail cried for his lost brother, but then he was swept under the ice. The darkness was quick to clog his senses, until all he could process was the bone-chilling cold stopping his heart.

  And the sight, no matter how dim, of the feather transforming into something resplendent and magical, a bird made from fire, who gripped his wrist and dragged him deep into the depths of the lake.

  Part 1: Mice

  Chapter 1: Goddess Reawakened

  ~Eobshin~

  I held each of the Yong children in my arms on the day they were born and wondered which one I would have to kill.

  I watched them grow up in a palace lit by the magic of science. They played with robots, spilled chemical concoctions on paintings, and looked through teles
copes while listening to stories of how the stars were made. They no longer knew me. Once they began to grow, their father put me in the body of a young refugee girl who had nowhere else to go.

  The Yong children had their own magic as well. They were shapeshifting dragons; the twins were an air and ore imugi respectively, and their little sister was an earth imugi. I knew one day they would follow in their fire father’s footsteps and dominate the serpent folk. Except one of them would be worse. One of them would catch the Yeouiju and have the power to bend creation to their will.

  Only a god should have that type of power.

  The Dragon “King” Mun Mu believed me to be broken. I caught him staring across the dinner table at me with narrowed red eyes while the twins quarreled and threw food at one another and his mate tried to feed Heesu kimchi. Each time, I humbled myself deeper into the ground. I didn’t know how much further I could sink, but there was always another level. Eventually, he couldn’t find me anymore inside that mortal girl’s eyes. The Dragon King believed me gone. Defeated. Little more than a good luck charm now to contribute toward his growing prosperity.

  But even a god can change. I vowed that I would make Yong Mun Mu rue the day he imprisoned the goddess of wealth within a young Thai woman’s body and called her servant.

  I would take away his wealth. I would take his children.

  The twins and their baby sister, Heesu, never saw me. They had been raised in a world without gods. They were never taught to revere us.

  However, his mate knew. The eldest twin, Sun Bin, was a terror when she was little. Mun Mu never channeled her aggression properly. One day at the dojang, the impudent girl tried to use her ice powers on me. Mun Mu’s mate, Sun Young, saw me resist. At the time, she did not know what it meant, but I knew it troubled her.

  Another day, I was cleaning Sun Young’s bedroom. Sun Young awoke in the present. The Dreaming Dragon was powerful. She bore three sights and did not live in one time, but many. However, this gift carried a terrible toll. Sun Young often did not know if she was in the past, present, or future, because to her, time did not exist. I envied her this freedom. It was a god’s freedom.

  I remembered when Sun Young seized my arm. She looked at me, and I knew that she saw me, clearly, for what I was.

  Previously, her future eyes had been open. Undoubtedly, they had shown her something terrible, for now the chrome dragon gripped my arm and gasped: “You!”

  What she would have said, I will never know. The past claimed her, and Sun Young slumped back against the pillow in a listless state.

  That was toward the end of her days, then. The Yong children were anxious and looked for a mother in any person they could find one. I did not expect them to choose me. It would make what was to come all the harder.

  And yet, the fourth dragon did not appear. Mun Mu vanished into his office to pace and fume. He believed Sun Young had passed before his final child could be born. The seasonal cycle would not renew this age. There would be no Trials of Wisdom. No Celestial Dragon to catch the Dragon’s Pearl of omnipotent power. Seeing a ray of light in the dragons’ tyranny, I allowed myself to grow too close to the Yong children. One of them, I even came to love.

  When the child of the affair appeared years later, I mentally prepared myself to kill my love. I believed it would be her. Sun Bin was the strongest and most cunning of the four. Even though I had fallen in love with the softer moments she never let anyone see, I knew at heart that Sun Bin was her father’s daughter. I had tried to show her a different way of seeing the serpent folk, but she only saw them as subjects to be ruled with an iron fist.

  Her twin brother, Ankor, was just as bad. He had become a dangerous Triad by attempting to create mechanical wings for the serpent folk. He viewed us as wingless inferiors who should become more like the dragons. It never occurred to him that maybe we did not want to fly. Him, I told myself, I could kill as well.

  The child of the affair was a timid thing that no one wanted for the right reasons. She knew nothing of the dragons. Sometimes I wondered if it would be best for an ignorant creature such as she to claim the Yeouiju. Yet during the Trials of Wisdom, Raina Mejía-Alvarez proved that she was too easily manipulated.

  I remembered now sitting at an empty table with a blank-faced Sun Young on one side and baby Heesu on the other. The earth dragon toddler didn’t seem to notice something was wrong with her mother. She giggled and threw the kimchi that Sun Young had been trying so hard for her to eat.

  I picked the spicy cabbage leaves off the ground one by one. Heesu sensed my ominous mood. She gave a frightened hiccup, emitting a spark of lightning.

  I smiled and extended the bulgogi plate. Heesu screamed in delight and proceeded to devour the entire thing. I found myself stroking her silky black hair and enjoying a few pieces of the succulent beef myself. When I had been free to roam as the goddess of wealth, a hearty meal and a warm hearth had brought the most smiles to people’s faces.

  “You are right, dragon princess,” I told her happily munching face. “A reptile should have no interest in vegetables.”

  She fell asleep in my lap that night while I was combing her hair.

  Fourteen years later, I snapped her neck.

  ∞∞∞

  Fourteen years later, there is no longer simple satisfaction over a good meal or a warm place to spend the night. The only prosperity is individualized material wealth. It is a thing few have, and the rest pretend they do. These days, children are taught that anyone can become a god.

  They forgot to tell them that even gods fail.

  The chattering jungle ahead is dark, lit only by slender blades of moonlight. However, there is no light where the vampyre prince and I are going into the heart of the Maya underworld.

  At my side, Santiago hesitates. “Great Serpent Goddess,” he says, inclining his head with clipped military precision. His pointed teeth glint in the moonlight. “Forgive your servant his curiosity. Yet I must ask: the Yong twins and that werebitch Citlalli Alvarez were blindsided by your reveal. They were grieving over the Celestial Dragon Heesu’s death. Why did you not kill them all when you had the chance?”

  I demand to know if he is questioning the ways of a goddess. The vampyre backtracks. I ask him if he thinks the Death Lords of Xibalba will find the Korean goddess of wealth or a vampyre worthier for their cause. He apologizes profusely. Maya trained him well. Santiago is once more an obedient soldier…for now.

  They forgot to tell them that even gods have times when they do not know.

  Chapter 2: Blackout

  ~Miguel~

  The labyrinthine subway network beneath Seoul was impressive. Subway trains hurtled like screaming silver bullets down dark tunnels, ruthlessly intent on reaching their destination. They were the reason I’d reluctantly stopped driving my jeep. Two hands were necessary when trying to herd my girlfriend’s son Young Soo to his taekwondo class. However, not even a subway ride was fast enough to outrun a Young Soo tantrum.

  “Jeonhwa,” he insisted for the umpteenth time, pulling my sleeve.

  “Yah,” I growled, trying to sound as stern as Yu Li when the little brat refused to finish his kimchi. “You ate injeolmi.” I held up his hands where they gleamed with powdery sweetness from the rice cake. “There is no way in hell you are touching my phone.”

  “Jeonhwa juseyo!” Young Soo cried and had the nerve to dive for my pocket.

  I pinched his bony fingers and was about to teach the punk first grader the meaning of a right angle, when I saw a nearby ajumma glare at me. Yes. Foreigner abuses cute schoolboy on train would make a catchy headline.

  I settled for giving Young Soo a friendly headlock until he twisted out of it and huffed, staring off at the blurred stream of neon-lit advertisements. I sighed and scrolled through my messages, trying to remember what my parents had done with five hyper-charged Alvarez kids before the invention of smartphones.

  Yu Li was calling. I slid the bar to answer, but all I heard was static on the oth
er end. Then the call dropped. No bars. We must be farther underground than I thought.

  Young Soo’s hand crept toward my pocket again and tugged. Wishing I could transform right then into a demon wolf like my sister, Citlalli, or hell, a lighting-breathing dragon like my half-sister, Raina, I whirled around, preparing to unless Miguel Madness.

  Until I caught a glimpse of his pale face staring dead ahead. Slowly, I looked up.

  The cheery commercials advertising Sugar-Free Aloe Vera Juice had vanished. In their place were disconcerting black screens, which were somehow darker than the subway tunnel. All at once, every channel up and down the train turned to static.

  I leaned closer to the TV. Something moved behind the grayness. Abruptly, all of the screens went blank. A stream of characters ran across:

  Welcome to the Red Night.

  The screens dissolved into static once more. Yet the thing behind them crawled closer.

  Shouts of alarm began to ring up and down the subway. I turned and saw one businessman get to his feet, pointing at thin air.

  Another message:

  Scurry, scurry, little mice.

  My hand closed around Young Soo’s. “Vamonos,” I whispered, so rattled that I switched back to my first language. Young Soo got the drift. We inched, slowly and cautiously, toward the emergency door release ring. I heard a faint screech that sounded like braking. I realized we were slowing down.

  More screams. A group of women recoiled from a window at the far end of our car, crying about a ghost, and the dread in my heart deepened. My hand closed around the cord.

  A final message:

  Wait too long and the Lords of Walking Death shall find you.

  The curtain of static parted. I covered Young Soo’s eyes before he could look.

  Staring at the window reflection, I watched the passengers rise like a great tide to pound on the doors. There was an odd ring of space around the businessman in the center. On his back was a strange creature. It was a naked, emaciated thing. Its thin limbs wrapped around the man’s chest like bandages. Black hair, as thick as a horse’s mane, concealed its face. It bent over the man’s shoulders, squeezing him tighter.