GENERATION ONE
The Fire Trilogy
The King
the sovereign · chapter 1
His name never appears in the story. He was a young king people called gentle. The woman he loved was poisoned inside his own palace, and the day he learned whose hand had done it, he changed.
From then on he signed his decrees in blood instead of ink. The gentle king became a tyrant. What he set in motion runs on for three generations.
Appears in: Ch.1
Songs: The King's Path · Echoes of the Empty Palace · The Blood Seal
The king in Chapter 8 is his descendant.
Yeon-i
the woman erased from the records · chapter 1
Not one line of her survives in the annals. Her name was struck out and her grave left unmarked. She died of poison inside the palace, and whose hand it was went unnamed for a long time.
The entire story begins with this woman. Of thirty-six songs, only one is sung in her voice.
Appears in: Ch.1
Songs: Echoes of the Empty Palace · Shadow in the Fog
Yun-je
the scholar · chapters 1–3
Top of the state examination, and a censor at court. Exiled to Jeju for the crime of writing down what actually happened. He did not stop writing in exile, and his words crossed back to the mainland as songs.
After the uprising failed he died at the execution ground. To the last he said he had no regrets.
Appears in: Ch.1 · Ch.2 · Ch.3
Songs: A Blade at the Brush Tip · The Last Brush
Tal-swe
the clown · chapters 2–3
A market clown with no family name. He walked the tightrope by day and carried news by night, hiding a scholar's writing inside his own songs all the way to the capital.
On the night of the uprising he stood before the palace in his mask. He was the only one who got out. He threw away the mask and walked south as a storyteller.
Appears in: Ch.2 · Ch.3
Songs: The Market Street · Shadow on the Road
Jeong-an
the woman · chapters 2–3, 6
She lost her father to a purge and her mother to slavery, and shaved her head at twenty-three. Ten years on a mountain, and then she came down carrying a torch.
She burned everything and went back empty-handed. A generation later, three men climb that mountain carrying a ledger raised from the sea.
Appears in: Ch.2 · Ch.3 · Ch.6
Songs: The Woman at the Mountain Temple · The Empty Mountain · At the Temple Gate
age 16 · age 44Bun-i
the girl · chapters 3, 7
She grew up between rice fields in a small village in Jeolla. She was never taught to read, because she was a girl. At sixteen she found a sheet of paper beneath the floorboards and sat at the teacher's door for three days asking to be taught.
Forty years later, now the village teacher, the ledger from the sea and the war reach her in the same week.
There are two things she knows: how to care for people, and letters. The north needed both, and people who had both were rare. She holds a dying man's hand, listens for his name, and writes it down.
When the war ended she handed the ledger from the sea to a soldier of twenty. Because it looked like he would live a long time. Do not ask what it is, she told him.
Appears in: Ch.3 · Ch.7 · Ch.8 · Ch.9
Songs: The First Sprout · The Empty Line · I Listen for the Name · The Seal · The Salt Jar
GENERATION TWO
The Sea Trilogy
Su-gyeom
the scholar · chapters 4–6
Exiled for the same crime to the same sea. On the island he taught children to write in the sand — writing done where the waves erase it can be used by no one as evidence.
When the chest was opened, he understood. He had not been exiled for writing the truth. He had been sent to the place where the truth was buried.
Appears in: Ch.4 · Ch.5 · Ch.6
Songs: Road of Exile · Salt Letter
Bae-swe
the smuggler · chapters 4–7
No family name. They called him Bae-swe, the boat man, because he sailed. He raised a black-dyed sail only on nights when the moon hid, and survived thirty years by never asking what he was carrying.
He found the sunken ship, and he raised the first white sail of his life. And on the day the north was breached, he lowered it himself.
A man who had done nothing but run for thirty years stood in a line for the first time. And on the morning after the fighting, in front of the king, he put his hand inside his coat — and took it out empty.
Appears in: Ch.4 · Ch.5 · Ch.6 · Ch.7 · Ch.8
Songs: Black Sail · The Sunken Ship · Lowering the Sail · The First Line · Two Steps
Gap-su
the old fisherman · chapters 4–6
Forty years on that sea. The storm took his elder son, the fever the younger, and his wife went first, waiting.
In the middle of a storm he spoke quietly to the sea — if you have something to take, take me; if you have something to give back, give it back now. The next day the sea answered.
Appears in: Ch.4 · Ch.5 · Ch.6
Songs: Old Net · The Storm · Big Dipper
Ok-i
the diver · chapters 4–6
On land a woman who lowers her head; underwater, the master. A world where whoever holds her breath longest is above and whoever cannot is below, and that is all there is to it.
She was the first to see the wreck, and she brought up the names of twelve people. Halfway to the mainland she stood up in the boat — over there I am a woman with no letters and no name.
Appears in: Ch.4 · Ch.5 · Ch.6
Songs: Sumbisori · Beneath the Water · Ieodo
GENERATION THREE
The Iron Trilogy
The Blacksmith
the one who melts iron · chapter 7
His name never appears. Forty years standing in a forge in a village on the northern border. When the war came, every scrap of iron in the district was carted into his yard.
A bell from a temple, a prisoner's chains, a pot that cooked rice, the iron from the handle of some scholar's brush. He does not ask what it was. If it is iron, it will do.
He works alone. There were three of them once. The others went north first.
Appears in: Ch.7
Songs: The Anvil
The Soldier
the one nobody asked · chapters 8–9
His name never appears. He went to the front at twenty, and his armour did not fit — the shoulder kept sliding off. Bae-swe stood beside him in the line and never asked his name.
On the day the fighting ended, a woman who could write handed him a soaked ledger. Do not ask what it is, she said. He could not read, and because he could not read, he kept it.
His father carried him home from a frozen field. He lay there forty days. When he recovered he buried it in his mother's kitchen, inside the salt jar.
Sixty years later his granddaughter asks where it is. I don't remember, he says. Whether he really didn't, nobody knows.
Appears in: Ch.8 · Ch.9
Songs: The First Line · Frozen Field · The Salt Jar · My Grandfather, See
The Farmer
the soldier's father · chapter 9
His name never appears. He did not go to fight — they said he was past the age. So he stayed with the field and got through the winter.
Last year they ate all the seed. There was nothing to eat in winter, so they ate what was meant for planting, and there is nothing to plant this year. He ploughs anyway.
One morning the spade catches on something. He thinks it is a stone. It is not a stone. He takes hold of the shoulder and turns it over, and it is his son.
He carried him home. He was light — something you raised for twenty years cannot be that light.
Appears in: Ch.9
Songs: Frozen Field
The Granddaughter
the one who asks · chapter 9
Fifteen years old. Her name never appears. She goes to lessons to learn her letters, and the teacher told them to go and ask the old people about the old days.
She only has her grandfather, so she went to him. She asked about the war and he kept talking about the cow. When he showed her his shoulder she laughed — and she noticed his voice getting smaller when he told her the next part.
Where is that paper, she asked. I don't remember, he said. She should have asked one more time.
She does not know where it is. She only knows that it was. And here she is, telling it again.
Appears in: Ch.9
Songs: My Grandfather, See