The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim (the mitten read aloud .TXT) 📗

The next ten minutes are the longest I have ever experienced. Appa and I anxiously stand guard around Eomma’s sleeping body, and I don’t take my eyes off her chest to make sure she’s still breathing.

Just when I think I can’t possibly wait a single second longer, she bolts up in bed like a coiled spring and calls out, “No, no, no!” Her eyes are bloodshot and it looks like she’s been crying.

“What happened?” Appa cries, hugging her close.

“Are you all right?” I climb onto the bed to get near her.

She puts her head in her hands and sobs. “I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.”

“What did it ask of you?” Appa asks quietly.

Eomma trembles like a leaf. “He asked me to choose between my daughters. To pay for the cost of the last fallen star with one of their lives.”

Appa gasps and buries his face in Eomma’s hair. “Oh, my love, my poor, poor darling.”

“I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t,” Eomma sobs and pulls me close to her. “How could I choose between my girls? How?!”

My heart shrivels to the size of Hattie’s. Even with everything on the line, Eomma couldn’t save Hattie, because she wasn’t willing to lose me. The dokkaebi knew exactly what my eomma’s deepest fear was.

I know what I have to do.

“Psst.” I turn my head slightly and whisper to Areum. “I need you to knock me out.”

She blinks once. “Explain yourself, Riley Oh.”

“Just do as I say,” I urge. “Please. Just do it. And do it fast.”

She pauses briefly, as if wondering if she’s understood me correctly. But I guess the good thing about having a bird-woman yield to you is that your word is the final word.

The last thing I remember before my legs give out is Areum leaping off my shoulder and gaining size before slamming into the side of my head.

Ouch.

WHEN I NEXT OPEN MY EYES, I’m lying on the houndstooth carpet and Eomma and Appa have disappeared. I’m in the same room I was a second ago, but now the two lamps are emitting an eerie blue light. Areum must have succeeded in knocking me unconscious.

Getting onto my knees, I take some deep, calming breaths. My heart is beating so hard, it feels like the walls are pounding to the rhythm. Surely, the dokkaebi won’t be as bad as I’ve been led to believe. Maybe he’ll take pity on me and be nice?

I glance gingerly around the room. Aside from the details in the scary song everyone knows, I have no idea what to expect. I’ve never even seen a photo of a dokkaebi, so I don’t know how big they are. Could it be small enough to hide under the bed…?

Holding my breath, I quickly lift the dust ruffle and take a peek. Dust balls and a spider are all I see, and I let out a laugh. Of course he’s not hiding under the mattress—he’s a dokkaebi, not the boogeyman! But then I look closer. There’s a pair of feet on the other side of the bed.

What the—?! No one was there a second ago.

I close my eyes for a moment and then open them again. The feet are still there. And they’re in gold open-toed sandals—just like the ones my sister had on for her initiation ceremony.

“Hattie?” I scramble to stand. Her back is to me, but she’s wearing her golden hanbok, too. “Hattie!” I cry again as I lunge across the bed to get to her. I don’t understand how she’s here, but she’s here. That’s all that matters.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she swivels around.

“Hattie!” I say for the third time.

“Well, hello there, dear sister,” she says, smirking.

My gut drops. There’s something wrong with her.

As I take her in, her body starts shrinking. And her face melts into a new form.

“Ahh! You’re not Hattie!” I clamber backward to get away from not-Hattie. And when I look up, I am facing the most grotesque creature I have ever seen.

He’s the height of a chimpanzee, with greasy, stringy black hair and two sharp red horns sticking out of his head. His skin is the color of blood, and his steely eyes study me from underneath his thick brows. He’s wearing a small gold hoop earring in each ear, and his swollen nose protrudes from his face like a pus-filled volcano.

He sniffs the air, and his nostrils flare like those of an angry bull. “Oh, how I treasure the aroma of frightened human girl!” He leers. “What excellent room service, indeed.”

I retreat in disgust, and he chuckles menacingly. “I am very much looking forward to having a taste….” He takes a bite of the air in front of him, revealing his teeth, which look like a shark’s—sharp and deadly. The dokkaebi is definitely a creature from my worst nightmares.

“Welcome to my lair, Riley Oh.”

I hiccup. How does he know my name?

Then I remember we are inside my dream right now. I invited him in by conking out in his room. And that means he has access to my mind. Everything I know, he knows, too.

A shiver runs down my spine, but I immediately go on the offensive. “I’ve come to offer you a deal.”

He grins and a little bit of pus drips out his nose. “I assume you, too, are after the Godrealm’s last fallen star.”

I nod and try to stop my teeth from chattering. It’s not even cold in here. “I am. So name your price, dokkaebi.”

“I hope you are more fun to do business with than your mother was.” He steeples his deformed red fingers and taps them from pinky to index in contemplation. “Now let me see.” He pauses for effect, and his eyes flick from left to right as if he’s watching the highlight reel of my deepest vulnerabilities.

His eyes finally stop moving and then pinpoint back on me. “For the services rendered to