“Well . . .”
“It’s about the third definitely not haunted house . . . I don’t think you can count on viewing it any time soon . . . we’ve just confirmed it went out to sea last night . . .”
“Went out to sea?”
“Harriet, this house, seriously, this house . . .” There was a spray-mist sound as Miss Maszkeradi drew on the solace of some bottled serenity or other. “May I speak with you confidentially?”
“Yes, of course,” Harriet said, accepting Salomea’s pantomimed encouragement to put the call on speakerphone.
Miss Maszkeradi told them the legend of the third house, the island house. The legend began at the foot of a volcano’s bed, the volcano having lain dormant amid fields of silver grass for hundreds of years—long enough to have acquired at least six different and equally accurate names, long enough to have watched over many lives and deaths, and many changes, of which the appearance of this third house was one . . . a minor change for a mountain, but a big headache for an estate agent—
“What year were you born, Harriet?”
Harriet told her.
“Right. That was the year that some disembodied voices were heard talking amid a few fronds of silver grass one night—”
Miss Maszkeradi thought Harriet would interrupt at that point, but she didn’t. She and Salomea were on the same side of the table now, cuddled up and listening. And so Miss Maszkeradi went on to relate that the two friends who heard the voices talking were convinced at first that there were people talking out of sight—the voices were talking about building a house. They’ll be here soon, and we don’t even have anything ready for them, one of the voices said, and a second voice replied: Whose fault is that? Mine? And then the first voice said: Don’t start, I don’t want to get into this, let’s just make the preparations . . .
Night sky, silver grass, and a scattering of yellow, green, and red dots, the cold light fireflies emit from their bellies—that was all the two witnesses saw as they overheard this conversation. Could it have been the fireflies talking? Quite a discovery, if so: not only do fireflies speak, but they speak Korean. The fireflies may not have been the ones speaking, but they do appear to have been the ones who built the house—
“This heartless woman, selling us on a house we can never buy,” Salomea whispered.
It seemed to the two witnesses that there had been tens of fireflies at first, but once discussions regarding measurements and positioning had been concluded, thousands more fireflies flocked to that spot and—all this is sworn to—grouped themselves according to hue of phosphorescence. The yellow team tackled the foundations, and the green team sorted out the roof, and the red team did everything else. They worked all night, and the witnesses watched all night and couldn’t identify the material the fireflies were working with. It dripped like honey but quickly set into glass-like panes, which the fireflies shaped before setting them into place. And the shaping of these panels was one of the loveliest things the witnesses had ever seen. The panels were cut with light, but not as cleanly as lasers cut. The fireflies would gather into one glowing body. There was a red team, a yellow team, and a green team—and when everybody was ready, they flickered as one and the panels were divided at the spot of the collective flickering; rough at the edges but the pieces looked very nice together once the house was standing in three dimensions. It looked like a house you could eat. By then it was morning, and the fireflies made themselves scarce. Naturally the two witnesses wanted to have a look inside this house. They approached but didn’t reach it. They walked through the silver grass for a long time, even ran, to see if that would speed anything up, but the house never got any closer. A German hiker had slightly better luck a few weeks later; nobody knows why . . . the house seems to have moods. Anyway, the German hiker recognized this as a gingerbread house, a classic gingerbread house at that, straight out of a story he’d been told as a child. A group of tourists from Kyoto who also managed to snap some photographs of the house don’t think the house is made of gingerbread; they reckon it’s made of thinner, crisper stuff . . . That’s yatsuhashi, they said. Both the hiker and the tourists got close enough to see a signboard set up in front of the house, and neither party was able to read it, though Miss Maszkeradi’s familiarity with Druhástranian meant she was able to tell them what the sign said:
Only those who have nothing can enter this place.
Until recently, when it went out to sea, it was said that the house didn’t really move; it only seemed to move. After all, the only thing that’s changed about it in the years since it first appeared is the overnight addition of a nutritional label that states the millions of calories the house contains. But in the year 2013, a woman whose name we don’t know made it to the front door of this house. The woman made it to the front door but couldn’t get in; the door was locked with a double lock the woman took her time inspecting. She states that only two strangely shaped rings can unlock the door of this gingerbread house. Yes, rings, the type you wear on your finger . . .
Harriet Lee, you’re right about that house being a last last last last chance for you and Gretel. That it is and that it will be, and a long time from now, when you have nothing left, we’ll meet at that house and pass through it. You can hardly hear me right now, and that’s good. Better to listen to Salomea repeating that you’ve got to watch out with instinctual biters because they just take one bite and then leave the rest. Yes, Salomea is repeating this with the slightly anxious bravado of someone who is no longer sure that theory is going to hold up to practice this time.
Oh, you’re definitely not listening to me anymore, Harriet Lee. So for now I’ll just say that I, your scribe, your friend, hope I’ve also managed to be a friend to all your other friends. Let’s talk when we get to the house, that third unhaunted house.
See you there.
(Just as I’ve seen you here.)
October 17, 2016, Bupyeong-gu, South Korea—April 4, 2017, Prague, Czechia
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Dr. Cieplak, thank you, Marina Endicott, thank you, Sehee Choi, thank you, Tracy Bohan, thank you, Jin Auh, thank you, Sophie Jonathan, thank you, Misun Seo, thank you, Yoonjoe Park, thank you, Sarah McGrath. And I’m grateful to Sora Yu and all at Seoul Art Space Yeonhui.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, along with five novels—most recently Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2013, she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.