Gwangju Writes: The Stolen Bride

Astrange tale, this. In olden times, a man would carry off his wife-to-be in a chair held up by poles. This time, she was lost along the way. Her maidservants, too. All lost in the darkness of night. Her intended husband, the bridegroom, went mad with despair. It was the act of bandits. He found some footprints near the empty chair and vowed to never stop pursuing them.

Not far on the path, he met a mason, busy with chisel and stone. “Why in such a hurry?” he asked.

“My bride was kidnapped by bandits. I intend to get her back.”

“Ah, not long ago, my own dear wife was kidnapped,” said the mason. “Let me come with you.”

Together they followed the trail of footprints till they met a woodcutter digging up roots. He too had lost someone special – his daughter. Next, a basket maker, who had lost his little sister. They made a pact to catch the bandits and recover their loved ones.

For days, they crossed mountains and rivers. They passed through deep valley recesses no one had ever seen or heard of before. Suddenly, the trail stopped near a large rock. The four pushed and pulled, but try as they might, it would not budge an inch. The mason took out his hammer and chisel and began to chip away. After three days of work, it finally broke apart. A dark hole was revealed, and peering down, it seemed endless.

The woodcutter went up the mountain to collect a pile of vines, which he used to make a rope hundreds of feet long. Still, it was not enough to reach the bottom. He kept at it for three days until the rope stretched to a length of three thousand feet. Meanwhile, the basket maker wove a basket out of willow branches, large enough to hold a man. He attached it to the woodcutter’s rope.

The mason got in the basket first. The other three would stay above and hold the rope. They slowly lowered him down, but before he got halfway, he was overcome by fear and shook the rope, signaling that he wanted to be lifted back up. The woodcutter went next, only to make it a little more than halfway before he too got scared. The basket maker fared no better.

It was up to the bridegroom now to ride in the basket. He told the others to wait at the top until he shook the rope. The descent took ages, but he finally made it to the bottom. It was pitch black all around, except for one streak of light in the distance. He crept towards it.

The cavern’s eerie light grew brighter. Past a small hill, he was struck by the sight of a village full of row after row of tile-roofed homes. Outside the village’s front gate was a well. Beside it, a willow tree. The bridegroom climbed up the tree. Soon after, a young woman came out holding a water bucket. He recognized her as one of the maidservants.

The woman was lifting water out of the well when a handful of leaves, torn off by the bridegroom, dropped into the bucket. “Please, willow, do not lose your leaves,” she said, “or I will cry.” She poured out the water and drew another bucketful from the well. But he spoiled her work by tossing another handful of leaves. She heaved a great sigh. “I will cry, willow, if you lose your leaves!”

She heard a rustling and looked up to see the man perched on a branch. “Oh, aren’t you the bridegroom?” she asked. “How did you get here?” She was beside herself with joy. He told her all that had happened since that fateful night. He meant to catch the bandits and needed her help.

“A hundred men cannot topple the bandit leader,” she said. “For a hundred days, he goes out to kidnap and steal, then he comes back for a hundred days to rest. Ten days ago, he set out. You should flee before you meet with disaster.”

“Nonsense, I just got here,” said the bridegroom. “I will wait and make plans for his death. Now show me where he lives.”

The maidservant had no choice but to do as he asked. She led him through twelve gates, each guarded by wild beasts. She threw food at their feet to keep them from leaping at the stranger. At last, they reached the bandit leader’s tile-roofed house. It was massive, with dozens of side buildings. In one

of these, she guided the bridegroom to keep him out of sight.

Outside the door, still open, he heard her say, “Madam, the bridegroom has come.” He turned and saw his stolen bride, no longer his, but the bandit leader’s wife. She rolled her eyes and then glared at the maidservant.

“That fool, lock him up in the cave,” she said, and slammed the door shut. Soon the servants came and escorted him to his new prison, a shallow cave with a stone door.

Alone in the darkness, he felt so much sorrow at having come all this way to rescue his faithless bride, only to be met with such a hostile welcome, that he considered ramming his head against the wall, so that he could die now instead of at the hands of the bandit leader. Before he could act on this resolve, the door swung open and in came the maidservant.

“Sir, don’t lose heart. Now that you’re here, you can use this time to build up your strength and kill the bandit leader. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes,” he thought, “to die in this cave for nothing would be wrong.” He would follow the advice of the maidservant. From then on, he was brought three meals a day with a bowl of water. She also let him out every night so that he could train for his upcoming fight.

“See that rock there?” she said, pointing to a nearby boulder. “The bandit leader uses it to play marbles. You need to be as strong as that.” It was past even budging for him. Bolstered by ginseng water and nightly practice, after three days he could move the boulder. After ten days, he could lift it to his waist. A week later, he could raise it over his head. It took a month before he could fling it like a boy’s marble.

The maidservant showed him a stone tower, hundreds of feet high. “The bandit leader can jump to the top in a single bound,” she said. It was another month of hard training, leaping higher and higher, drinking bowl after bowl of ginseng water, before the man could do the same. “That’s the bandit leader’s knife,” she said. “If you can wield it at your pleasure, you are ready to face him in battle.” The man could barely even lift the blade, so every night, fueled by ginseng water, he put all his effort into training. After three days, he was able to remove it from its sheath. After ten days, he could hold it in one hand. A week later, he could swing it around. In a month, he could parry and thrust like a true swordsman.

Three months were now past. One day, he heard a rumbling like thunder. “What’s that?” he asked the maidservant.

“The bandit leader’s coming,” she said.

The thunder became a crashing, till the whole earth shook. The sky darkened and a fierce wind blew. Amid all this tumult, the bandit leader strode into the court. His wife, the stolen bride, rushed out in her ornate socks to greet him.

“What did you bring for me this time?” she asked with a pettish smile. “I’ve been sitting here quietly at home, but I caught someone for you.”

“Eh, you caught someone?” asked the bandit leader, a glint of anger in his eyes.

“My so-called husband somehow crept in here. I’ve got him locked in the cave.”

“Is that so. Well.” Glad for a chance to do something vile, he called over one of his bandits, ordering him to bring out the prisoner. The bandit hastened to the cave, but upon entering, was knocked to the ground with a single flick of the bridegroom’s finger. When the bandit failed to return, another was sent, who received a fist to the face, then another, dispatched with a kick in the gut. A fourth bandit was flung out by his collar.

The bandit leader was consumed with rage. He met the bridegroom outside the cave, where both drew their swords. The duel was intense, with a furious clanging as the blades met. To get more space for the combat, they leapt in the air, slashing at each other with deadly intent. It was no gentleman’s affair. The air was whipt up all around them, becoming a dense fog to the observers down below.

Then something dropped from the sky. It was the bandit leader’s arm. But instantly it flew up to rejoin its owner. Then the bandit leader’s leg fell with a thud. It, too, flew up. Next came the bandit leader’s head. The maidservant ran off to gather some hot ash in her skirt. She poured it on the neck so that it could not reattach itself. That was the fatal blow. The bandit leader’s body fell lifeless.

The bandits, a cowardly bunch, surrendered themselves to the bridegroom. They broke open the storerooms where the leader had kept the treasure and his captives. The mason’s wife was there, the woodcutter’s daughter, and the basket maker’s little sister. On horseback, the bridegroom carried off his spoils of war, along with the women, now free, and the maidservant.

The rope, and only way out, was still there when he got back. He sent the women up first, then the treasure. When it was time for him to escape with the maidservant, there was no rope to be seen. His three fellows had run off, after claiming the treasure for themselves. In dejected spirits, the two wandered back to the village. They found an old man fishing by the river and asked him how they could return to the world above. He clapped, calling forth a white crane. “Ride that,” he said. He gave them seven carp from his fishing net. “Whenever the crane gets tired, give it a fish. If you fail in this, it will drop from the sky and kill you all.”

They thanked him and climbed onto the crane, the bridegroom in front, and the maidservant near the tail. The crane unfurled its wings. On the still air they beat a steady ascent. As ordered, the bridegroom kept it fed with fish. But soon they were down to one fish, then none, and the crane became listless without the strength to go on. The bridegroom fed it a piece of his leg, which the crane was gracious enough to vomit up later, placing it back on his leg. Thus the “knee,” that loose piece of flesh on our body, came into being, and the bridegroom and maidservant made their escape. They married, lived a long, happy life, and died the day before yesterday.

Photograph by Ian Chen on Unsplash.

The Author

Stephen Kagarise is an English teacher from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been living in Gwangju since 2012, when he began studying Korean at Chosun University.

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