The Sun, Moon and Tiger

There was a knock at the door, in the middle of a night so dark that no one could make out their own hand. A voice called in from the yard. It said it was Mother, home at last, and told them to open the door quickly. But the voice was hoarse, strangely low and thick. It was nothing like the voice Mother used every evening when she came home from work.

In Korea, grandmothers and mothers still tell this story to their children and grandchildren on nights when sleep will not come. Long ago, they say, there lived a widow who was raising two small children alone, an older brother and a younger sister. Their little house stood at the foot of a few hills. The mother worked as a hired hand, far from home. Every afternoon she crossed the hills, one after another, to come home to her children. In her hand she carried a few rice cakes she had saved for them.

That afternoon, the mother left work when the sky was already darkening. She hurried up the first hill on her way home. Halfway up, a huge tiger suddenly appeared and blocked the path. It roared and asked what she was carrying. Trembling, the mother handed the tiger a rice cake. The tiger ate it and stepped aside to let her pass. But before she had time to feel relieved, the same tiger was waiting for her on the second hill. It demanded another rice cake, or it would eat her on the spot. So it went, from one hill to the next. One by one, the mother had to give the tiger her rice cakes. By the last hill, not a single crumb was left in her hands.

Night fell completely. At home, the brother and sister sat by a small kitchen fire, glancing at the door now and then. They were waiting for their mother's familiar footsteps. But that night, the hour when she usually came home had long passed, and there was still no sign of her. The two children sat close together, restless and uneasy. All they could do was wait, while the fire in the hearth died down and the night grew thicker and thicker.

Then came the knock at the door. Sure enough, the voice said it was Mother, home at last, and told them to open quickly because it was very cold. The brother was about to stand up when he stopped short. The voice was rougher and heavier. It was not the voice Mother used when she murmured to them every evening. The sister put her eye to a crack in the wooden door. Outside, in place of Mother's familiar hand, there was a foot covered in thick, coarse fur, its curved claws scratching softly at the wood.

The brother and sister looked at each other. Without a word, they both understood that whoever stood out there was not their mother. They waited for the noise at the front door to settle a little. Then they slipped quietly out the back door and ran hand in hand into the garden. They made for a tall old tree that grew beside the well and climbed it as fast as they could. They had barely settled on a high branch when they heard heavy footsteps chasing after them. Then they saw the same tiger appear at the foot of the tree. It looked up at them and began to climb.

The tiger climbed a little way, then slid back down. It growled up at them, asking how two children had managed to get all the way up there. The quick-witted brother pretended to be honest. He told the tiger to rub plenty of sesame oil on all four paws, and climbing would be easier. The tiger did as it was told. With all four paws slick with sesame oil, it climbed a few steps and slid back to the ground, smeared all over with oil. The sister was so frightened that she blurted out the answer. She cried that the only way up was to cut steps into the trunk with an axe. The tiger heard her. At once it went to find an axe. Stroke by firm stroke, it cut steps into the trunk like the rungs of a ladder. Then it really did climb, coming closer and closer to the two children.

High on the branch, the brother and sister held each other tight. There was nowhere left to run. The brother lifted his face to the starry night sky and pressed his palms together. He begged Heaven to let down a rope for them. If Heaven pitied two children left all alone, he prayed, let it save their lives. As soon as he finished, a sturdy rope came slowly down out of the sky, right in front of them. The brother helped his sister take hold of it first, then grabbed it himself. Slowly the rope drew them both upward, farther and farther from the tree, and farther from the tiger growling below.

Seeing this, the tiger also turned its face to the sky and roared for a rope of its own. Another rope came slowly down. But it was an old rope, long since rotten. The tiger seized it gladly and climbed a little way. Then the rope snapped, and the tiger fell straight down into a field of sorghum below. It never got up again. People still say that from that night on, the stalks of sorghum in those parts have been a deep red, as if they still keep a trace of that long-ago day.

As for the brother and sister, the sturdy rope carried them all the way up into the high sky, to stand before Heaven itself. Heaven pitied the two children, who had just lived through a night of terror. So Heaven gave them a new place to live, higher than any hill and farther than any tiger on earth. The brother was chosen to be the sun. The sister was chosen to be the moon, to shed her soft light alone over the world, night after night.

But being the moon meant staying awake alone all night, in a vast darkness without end. Ever since what had happened at the door of their home, the sister had been afraid of the dark. So she asked Heaven to let her trade places with her brother. Heaven kindly agreed. And so the sister became the sun, and the brother became the moon. By day, the sister shone brilliantly across the whole sky. She shone so brightly that no one below could look straight up at her.

From that night on, no door ever had to hear that hoarse voice again, pretending to be Mother and knocking at midnight. There was only the moonlight, steady and gentle, flowing through the cracks of the doors each evening, like an older brother quietly watching over a sleeping household. And by day, the sun shines so brightly that no one can look straight at it. That is the little sister of long ago, who once trembled behind a door in the dark, and who now shines brighter than anything else in the sky.