The Dokkaebi in the Chimney

The lid of the rice pot lifted.

Nobody had touched it. There was no wind in the kitchen. The lid was cast iron, heavy, as thick as a big roof tile, and yet it rose by itself off the mouth of the pot, gave a little hop, and came down again. It did not fall outside. It dropped straight into the pot.

The cook, who was sitting by the fire blowing on the coals, turned her head to look.

The rice was boiling, and the starchy water was foaming up to the rim. The lid lay neatly at the bottom, sunk in the steam.

She rolled up her sleeves. She leaned forward. Then she reached into that steaming pot to fish the lid out.

It was far too hot. She snatched her hand back, shook her fingertips, blew on them, and reached in again. This time she hooked it. Up came the lid, blackened and dripping, and she set it back squarely on the mouth of the pot.

She had taken exactly three steps away.

The lid lifted again.

Now is the moment to say who was doing it.

Koreans call him Dokkaebi. It is said that of all the goblins in that land, he was the most mischievous.

But the strangest thing about him was not his mischief. It was where he lived.

He did not live in the forest. Not under a bridge. Not at the top of a tree. He lived in the sooty flues that run beneath the floor of the house, from the kitchen at one end to the smoke hole at the other. To him, the warm floor of a Korean house was a roof over his head.

He lay in there all day long. In the soot, in the heat, in the smoke.

The story goes that he was as black as night. His skin and his eyes could not burn, so fire was to him what water is to a fish. He had no lungs at all, so no amount of smoke could make him cough even once.

He did not care for sunshine, or for the outdoors. No one had ever seen him out in the street. It was not that he was good at hiding. It was that, for him, nothing outside was as much fun as the kitchen.

Now back to the kitchen that night, because the night was still long.

After the pot lid came the dish cupboard.

The cupboard hung right above the cooking fire, stacked with bowls, plates and spoons. Just as the cook bent down to pick up some firewood, the whole cupboard began to clatter, clatter, as if someone were standing inside it, skipping and hopping among the dishes.

The cook put down the firewood, walked over, and opened the cupboard doors.

The bowls lay still. The plates lay still. The spoons lay still. Not one had moved from its place.

She closed the cupboard again.

Clatter.

Then it was the turn of the laundry bats.

The laundry bats were something the women of the house used every day, because clothes had to be beaten smooth after washing before anyone could wear them. That evening they vanished, every one. Not a single bat was where it belonged. The household turned everything upside down looking for them. They searched under the mats, behind the doors, in the corners of the kitchen, and found nothing. Hiding the laundry bats was another trick he adored, just as much as the pot lid.

And above everyone's heads, along the wooden beams that crossed under the roof, came the sound of light little feet running from one end to the other. Wherever they ran, dust and cobwebs came drifting down. That trick he loved too.

In a house like that, a habit took hold over time. Whenever anything odd happened, people blamed it all on Dokkaebi. If the father's topknot got caught in a rat hole, well, that could only be his doing.

But the funniest part of the whole story lies right here.

This creature who could walk through fire unharmed, who breathed smoke all day and never coughed, was afraid of a silver hairpin.

It is true. One tiny piece of silver, a single hairpin, was enough to make him shy away. He did not like the color white either, so he kept far away from snow-white clothes stiffened with starch and hung up in the house. And he did not like red either.

So the women of the house simply wore silver pins in their hair, starched their clothes as white as could be, and laughed while they worked. Between the two sides it was more like a friendly game than a chase. No one in the house was afraid of him. He was the only one afraid, and only of the hairpin.

That night, the game ran a little long.

The cook had been up since it was still pitch dark. She lit the fire, washed the rice, cooked it, set out the trays, then lit the fire again, and cooked again. Each time she finished one task, something in the kitchen clattered, fell, or disappeared. Again she got up. Again she picked it up. Again she went searching.

By late at night, the stack of bowls from supper was still piled high beside the stove, and the table was still not wiped. She sank down onto the floor, meaning to rest a moment and then finish.

The floor was still warm.

She laid her head on her arms. And she fell asleep.

The whole house went quiet.

No more clatter in the cupboard. No more running feet along the beams. No more lids hopping about.

That night's mischief had gone too far. It had worn the cook out so badly that she fell asleep right in the middle of her unfinished work, and a kitchen whose cook is asleep has no one left to tease.

The cook woke just as the sky was turning pale.

The stack of bowls beside the stove had been washed spotless and set upside down in a neat pile. The table had been wiped, dry and clean, without a single streak.

She asked all through the house. No one owned up.

People still say this was quite ordinary for him. He would tease the cook all night long, but when he saw someone work past their strength and drift off to sleep, he quietly finished the rest of the work. He washed the bowls. He wiped the table. Then he slipped back into the smoke flues under the floor, without a sound.

And the smoke hole at the far end of the house stayed open as it did every night, small and black, set low against the ground.

Back in the kitchen, the iron lid sat right where it belonged, square on the mouth of the pot, as still as if it had never stirred at all.