Epilogue

Seokga

A lone cherry blossom is carried away on a soft breath of wind, swooping and soaring through New Sinsi’s bustling streets and past glittering skyscrapers. It flutters by a Creature Café, where coffee roasts and pastries bake, rising and glistening with pearls of sugar in ovens. The cherry blossom is content to roam New Sinsi until it flutters delicately to the ground—but something peculiar happens first.

Perhaps the sudden gust of wind is summoned by one of the wind deities—Yeongdeung Halmang, or one of her wily sons—or perhaps it is simply one of those spring gusts that carry with it the recent memory of a winter storm. Whatever the case, the cherry blossom rises up, up, and up, floating far above the mortal realm and into the heavens where it finds itself flying toward a dark forest where heavenly maidens wash their wings in a burbling brook, and where a small wooden palace sits nestled between the maples and oaks. Through the narrow crack in the dark door the cherry blossom squeezes, escaping into a world that is so much bigger than it appears on the outside. A new sort of forest, where the trees have transformed into scrolls and fluttering pages and the soft, mossy ground into a smooth, yet uneven, floor.

The breath of wind, with one last exhale, sends the blossom fluttering deep through the stacks, too fast to note that each vast section has been meticulously organized by an expert hand. There is everything from tattered, raunchy romance novels to historical tomes the size of a small horse. Yet the blossom sees only the small cottage nestled peculiarly in a bookish grotto, encircled by swirling shelves. It has a thatched roof and a small green door, and the cherry blossom is just as confused as a cherry blossom can manage to be as it finally comes to rest atop the cheery welcome mat outside.

Welcome! greets a jaunty but messily embroidered scrawl.

Keep Out or Else, reads a much spikier font below.

A moment later, the door swings open. Seokga the Trickster steps on the fragile blossom as he ventures into the library’s depths, hiking three miles for the specific book its librarian requested.

Hwanin giggles as he sits atop Seokga’s shoulders, small hands stretching out to brush against the spines of books. His older brother smiles.

They’re in the Dark Stacks now, where the light from the Shallow Stacks’ window doesn’t permeate. He and Kisa have done an admirable job cleaning the Shallow Stacks toward the front of the library from its snow-like piles of dust and pest infestations, but back here, it’s as wild as ever. Mushrooms sprout from cracks in the floorboards. Bats rustle up above, and there’s a small demon population inhabiting the Deep Stacks of the library.