The Beloved Daughter by Alana Terry Page A

were still a two-day’s hike from the mountains themselves, and once we arrived at their base we would spend at least another week crossing their wintery passes.
    It was too dangerous to light a fire this close to town, so we sat with our backs to the wind and shivered with cold. It was Shin who first tried to break the strained silence.
    “You are a courageous girl.” Shin stared at a tree branch where a solitary brown leaf flapped in the howling wind.
    “You can’t think me courageous after this morning.” I poked the snow with a small stick while the defiant leaf flapped in the breeze.
    “I know how brutal guards can be,” Shin whispered into the night. I winced at this unwelcome reminder of exactly how familiar Shin was with the torture and cruelty of the underground detainment center. I wrapped my arms around my chest and turned away from him. “But you have your spirit left.” Shin reached his arm out to me and then dropped it to his side again. “You carry around in your heart a hope that is a mystery to me.”
    I shook my head. “You must be mistaking me for the Old Woman.”
    Shin packed a handful of snow into a ball and threw it at the leaf, which finally surrendered and fluttered into the snow bank below. “You just don’t know how strong you are,” he grumbled.

 
     
     
    Weary Traveler
     
    “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30
     

     
    Shin and I woke up the next day with the sunrise. We skipped our morning meal and continued walking northwest. I was so unaccustomed to wearing boots that in the afternoon my feet erupted in painful blisters.
    “I’m afraid we can’t stop yet,” Shin apologized. We were too close to the inhabited area of Kilchu-up for comfort, he explained, and we still had several more hours to walk before we could stop safely to build a fire. By nightfall, the soles of my feet were covered with open sores.
    When we finally found a forested area to spend the night, Shin cut long strips off the top of his burlap bag and bandaged my wounds with gentle hands.
    “I’m sorry.” I didn’t even think to ask what he was apologizing to me for.
    The following evening, after yet another day of hiking in strained silence, Shin bandaged my blistered feet again. Shin cared for my wounds with such tenderness that I might have expected him to be a life-saving physician instead of a detainment center guard who worked for the National Security Agency. It was that night I finally found my voice.
    “How old is your daughter?” I asked. The treetops were covered in hoarfrost that reflected the grayish-pink of dusk.
    “She is seven,” Shin told me. I was surprised, expecting her to be older. While he dressed my second foot, Shin told me of his family. “My wife died of complications after childbirth. Our daughter was born with club feet … and some other abnormalities.” Shin glided my boot on, careful to disturb the bandages as little as possible. “Since the doctors believed our daughter’s condition might be genetic, my wife was sterilized. She died of infection when our daughter was only two weeks old.”
    “And you raised her by yourself?” I asked, trying to imagine how a man whose job was to torture and kill could nurture his own child when he went home from his shift at the detainment center.
    “She went to nursery school, allowing me to continue my work at the …” Shin stopped himself. “Allowing me to stay employed.” He rubbed his hands together before putting his gloves back on. “There never was a sweeter child born. When she turned five, they didn’t let her attend grade school. She couldn’t talk. She wasn’t even toilet trained and had many other problems.” I wondered if the guards Shin worked with knew about his daughter’s disabilities. A tender father who doted on his handicapped kid didn’t seem to fit the image of the typical National Security agent.
    “Her grandmother, my mother-in-law, moved in with us to care for my