Excerpt fromStar of the North, by D.B.
John
Prologue
Baengnyeong IslandSouth KoreaJune 1998
The sea was calm the day Soo-min disappeared.
She was watching the boy make a fire out of driftwood.
Credit: Courtesy Crown Publishing Group
The tide was rumbling in, bringing towering clouds that were turning an ashy pink.
She hadnt seen a single boat all day and the beach was deserted.
They had the world to themselves.
She pointed her camera and waited for him to turn his head.
Later, the photograph she took would show a strong-limbed youth of nineteen with a shy smile.
She handed him the camera and he took one of her.
I wasnt ready, she said, laughing.
In this photograph she would be in the act of sweeping her long hair from her face.
Her eyes were closed, her expression one of pure contentment.
The fire was catching now, wood groaning and splitting.
Jae-hoon placed a battered pan onto the heat, balancing it on three stones, and poured in oil.
Her necklace, later the object of such sorrow and remembrance, caught his eye.
He touched it with the tip of his finger.
He smelled of the ocean, and spearmint, and cuttlefish, and Marlboros.
His wispy beard scratched her chin.
The oil began to spit in the pan.
The clouds had turned to flame and smoke, and the sea was an expanse of purple glass.
His singing stopped midnote.
He was staring in the direction of the sea, his body as sprung as a cats.
Then he threw aside the guitar and leapt to his feet.
Soo-min followed the line of his gaze.
The sand was cratered and lunar in the firelight.
She could see nothing.
Just the breakers thundering in a dim white spume that fanned out flat on the sand.
And then she saw it.
A fountain was rising, just visible in the dying light.
Then a great jet of spray shot upward with a hiss, like breath from a whales blowhole.
She stood up and reached for his hand.
Soo-min felt her insides coiling.
She was not superstitious, but she had a visceral feeling that something malefic was making itself evident.
Every instinct, every fiber in her body, was telling her to run.
Suddenly a light blinded them.
Soo-min turned and pulled Jae-hoon with her.
They stumbled in soft, deep sand, abandoning their possessions.
But they had taken no more than a few steps when another sight stopped them dead in their tracks.
Figures in black masks were emerging from the shadows of the dunes and running toward them, holding ropes.
Reprinted from STAR OF THE NORTH Copyright 2018 by D.B.
To be published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, on May 22, 2018.
