Tag: korean folktale

“The bit of bone swung from the grubby twine tied around her neck every time she bent towards a corpse. Round and white from a thousand years of sun, it looked more like a marble, like a gonggi stone that a child could toss into the air and catch on the back of her hand. But it was indeed the top knuckle of Min’s little finger, where she had spelled her heart one morning, lifetimes ago. In the blue haze of dawn, she had chopped it off with a butcher’s knife, just like her mother had, and her mother’s mother before her.”