Between worlds

The rain hammered against the taxi windows as Seoul's lights blurred into watercolor streaks. Daliah Goldenrod pressed her forehead against the cool glass, her stomach tight with anticipation and dread in equal measure. The audition letter crinkled in her coat pocket, a paper promise of everything she had fought her mother to achieve.

"National Theater, yes?" the driver asked in accented English.

Daliah nodded, checking her phone. Twenty minutes until her audition slot. Twenty minutes to prove that her father's death ten years ago had not been in vain, that her love of ballet was not the curse her mother claimed it to be. She could still hear her mother's voice from their last argument three days ago, sharp and breaking: *He was coming to watch you dance when he died. How can you still want this?*

But how could she not want it? Dance was the only place where her plump body felt weightless, where her five-foot-five frame could expand to fill a stage, where the grief of losing her father transformed into something beautiful. In New York, she had been good. Here in Korea, she could be extraordinary.

The taxi lurched suddenly. Daliah's head snapped forward as tires shrieked against wet asphalt. Time fractured into crystalline moments: headlights flooding through the windshield, bright as stage lights. The driver's shout. Her own hands bracing against the seat. The deafening crunch of metal meeting metal.

Then, nothing.

Daliah opened her eyes to darkness and the smell of earth. Not hospital antiseptic. Not burning rubber. Earth, rich and loamy, mixed with something floral she could not name. Her body ached, but distantly, as though the pain belonged to someone else. She tried to move and found herself lying on grass, staring up at a night sky so thick with stars it looked like someone had spilled diamonds across black velvet.

*Where are the city lights?*

She pushed herself up, and the world tilted dangerously. When it steadied, she saw trees she did not recognize, their branches reaching like calligraphy against the stars. Beyond them, the curved silhouette of a roof, its edges sweeping upward in a way that seemed both foreign and familiar from history books.

A twig snapped behind her.

Daliah spun, her dancer's balance saving her from falling. A figure emerged from the shadows, slight and dressed in pale hanbok. In the moonlight, the person appeared young, with delicate features and alert eyes that assessed her with startling intelligence.

"Who are you?" Daliah demanded, though her voice came out smaller than she intended. "Where am I?"

The stranger's eyes widened, taking in Daliah's modern clothes, her short hair, her dark brown skin. For a long moment, they simply stared at each other.

"You should not be here," the stranger finally said in Korean. Daliah understood, though she had only studied the language for six months. The words seemed to bypass her ears and plant themselves directly in her mind. "This is the palace grounds. If the guards find you..."

"Palace?" Daliah looked around wildly. The building she had glimpsed was closer now, its architecture unmistakably traditional, unmistakably old. Not a reconstruction. Not a museum. "What palace? I was in Seoul. There was an accident."

The stranger stepped closer, moving with a grace that reminded Daliah of dancers she had known. "Seoul?" A pause. "You mean Hanyang? Are you ill? Your speech is strange, and your clothing..."

Daliah looked down at herself. Jeans. Sweater. Modern coat. Her audition clothes, slightly rumpled but intact. No blood. No sign of the crash except the phantom ache in her bones. She raised her head and met the stranger's eyes.

"What year is it?"

The question hung in the air between them, absurd and terrifying.

The stranger's expression shifted from suspicion to something that might have been concern. "The thirteenth year of King Sunjo's reign."

The name meant nothing to Daliah, but the implications crashed over her like a second collision. Impossible. Insane. Yet the stars above held steady, and the night air carried the scent of wood smoke and incense instead of car exhaust and concrete.

"I am Hong Sam-nom," the stranger said, and something in the careful way those words were pronounced told Daliah this was not the whole truth. "You are clearly far from home. Whether you are mad or something stranger has occurred, you cannot be found here like this. Will you trust me to help you hide until we understand what has happened?"

Daliah thought of her mother's face, angry and afraid. Her father's empty seat at her recitals. The audition she would never dance. Then she thought of the headlights, the moment of impact, and the impossible sky above.

She had crossed some threshold she did not understand, and there was no road back visible. Only forward, into this strange night, with this strange person who looked at her with unexpected kindness.

"Yes," Daliah whispered. "Help me."

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