1st 5 Pages June Workshop - Oh Rev 2

Name: Christine Oh

Genre: Young Adult (Fantasy - Time Travel)

Title: The Handmaiden

Pitch:

Rebecca Lee is a Korean-American teenager who gets sent back 200 years in time to Korea due to a family curse.  Rebecca discovers that her one of her female ancestors, Hera, was an instrumental player in helping the queen escape from evil conspirators, but she makes an error and the queen is caught and killed.  A mysterious shaman intervenes and casts a spell that whenever a daughter is born into Hera’s bloodline, the girl is sent back on her 19th birthday to try and fix the mistake, but every daughter ultimately fails and dies.

When Rebecca goes back to the Joseon era, she finds her way into the royal court as a handmaiden and befriends her great ancestor, Hera.  As Rebecca adjusts to the court life, she realizes that the fairy tale her dad told her growing up is more than just a bedtime story; it’s filled with clues to help Rebecca when she goes back.  The closer she gets to the queen, Rebecca's questions whether Hera is at fault and learns more about the shaman's curse in bringing her back.

First Five Pages:

Rebecca tucked her chin into her scarf as she walked into the biting cold air.  It was almost winter in Seoul, and she could practically smell the unfallen snow as she left the hotel.  She thrust her hands in her thin windbreaker and cursed herself for not wearing her down jacket instead.  Her mom had been right about the weather, but Rebecca was too stubborn to go back in and change.  She’d rather freeze to death than go back to her hotel room and face her mom.  They’d been fighting all week and Rebecca didn’t want her to have another chance to say she was right.

Rebecca pulled her phone from her messenger bag and switched it to airplane mode.  There, she thought defiantly.  Now no one can tell me what to do or ask me anything else about him.

Dad.

For a brief moment, Rebecca faltered in her resolve to not think of him, but she shook it off and started to walk. 

Despite the cold, the streets were bustling with people, heads bent over their phones as they made their way through the crowds.  Loud neon lights cluttered the building walls, listing everything from restaurant items to karaoke rooms.

Rebecca stopped in front of a small stall with an elderly woman crouching over an almost dead fire, picking over a mound of roasting chestnuts.  As she stared at the prices listed on the handwritten sign to her left, Rebecca knew the ajumma was looking her up and down, trying to figure out if she was Korean-American.  

“Hello!”

The ajumma had guessed correctly and spoke to her in English.  Like most people from Seoul, she knew that despite looking full Korean, Rebecca was not raised in the motherland. 

“Hello.  Can I have a small bag, please?”  Rebecca responded back in perfect Korean and the ajumma’s eyes widened in shock.  She passed over the small bag of peeled chestnuts and collected three won from Rebecca, all the while peering even closer at her face. 

“But how do you speak Korean so well?” After a week of being asked the same question by relatives, taxi drivers, and random acquaintances, Rebecca replied back in Korean sassily, “Because I’m Korean.”

She walked away and popped a hot chestnut in her mouth, blowing through her teeth as she bit into it.  Pushing past standing crowds and stalls selling street food, Rebecca turned left onto a quieter street.  Rebecca didn’t get very far before a poster for the local exhibition stopped her in her tracks.

The poster was a black and white photo of a young woman wearing a simple Korean dress.  Her hanbok gave no indication of the woman’s social class; the dress lacked embroidery and the fabric was made from cotton not silk.  She was not someone the majority of Korean population would deem beautiful.  Her eyes were not almond shaped, her skin was pockmarked, and her forehead was too wide. And at first glance, Rebecca didn’t think much of the girl, let alone imagine her to be royalty until she noticed the ornate pins tucked in the mounds of hair that was braided and piled on top of her head.  

What struck Rebecca was the young queen’s expression.  She knew that expression well; she’d seen it written plainly across her dad’s face many times when he was on the cusp of getting angry.  The picture captured her defiant – her brow was furrowed and eyes narrow.  Her lips were pressed into a straight, firm line as though she were biting back her tongue.  In Rebecca’s attempt to alleviate her grief, she’d forgotten all about that face until she found her father’s expression staring back at her in black and white.  Her stomach turned as she saw her father’s eyes peer down at her.

She scanned the poster and saw that the exhibition was nearby but closing in a half hour.  Rebecca phished out her phone and switched the mode back from airplane.  As she opened her Google Maps app, her phone vibrated as her mom’s texts came flooding in.  Groaning, she swiped the texts away, resolving to respond once she got to the exhibition.  She typed in the address and followed the blue arrow on the app down the street.     

Thoughts raced through her mind as she speed-walked to her destination.  Is it just that I miss him?  Am I turning into one of those crazy people who start seeing dead people everywhere?  I might actually have to take up Aunt Jimin’s advice and go talk to someone.     

Rebecca reached the museum’s front entrance and pushed through the glass doors.  The exhibition was small and only a lonely security guard scrolling through his phone seemed to be in charge.  She walked towards him and the guard looked up at her with a bored expression.  Sensing her question, the security guard pointed toward a sign that simply read FREE and went back to his phone.   

Rebecca ducked into the next hallway and walked into the first room.  She made her way through the displays of silk robes and jade hair pins, but paused when she came to a painting of a young woman kneeling on the ground.  Despite the painting giving away no distinctive features of the woman, Rebecca knew instantly it was the queen. 

She began to read the description below the painting.    

A long time ago, there once lived a king who loved his queen very much.  The young queen was noble, wise, and above all else, loved her people.  The king often deferred to her judgment much to the dismay of his royal advisors and thus, a plan was hatched amongst the court to remove the queen by death.

The queen soon learned of the plot and trusting no one but her closest handmaiden, she devised a plan of escape that would expose the conspirators while keeping the king’s trust.    

On the eve of the attack, three riders were dispatched to alert the queen of the safest route of escape.  But upon receiving the three scrolls, the queen was betrayed by her most faithful--

Rebecca paused.  She had heard this story before.  Multiple times in fact.  It was the only story her father had told her growing up.  For a while when she was young, he told her the story of the doomed queen almost every night.  But there was something wrong.  In her father’s version of the story, there were four scrolls, not three.