Just south of the Korean peninsula lies an island once called Tamna. Nowadays, visitors flock to the island to tour the beautiful landscape, but during the Joseon Dynasty, the place was considered useful only for horse-breeding and as a convenient location to exile political prisoners.

Yoon Jin, however, was one such Tamna native who had never owned horses, and she was far too immersed in her work than to have much time for court politics. This particular day was no different, and as cold raindrops began splattering the face of the ocean above, she held her breath and sank deeper into the dark water around her.

A moment later, Jin's feet touched down on the slightly-rocky surface of the seabed, sending up slow-moving puffs of sand at the disturbance of her arrival. In the quiet beneath the waves, it would have been easy to forget the approaching storm if it weren't for the ever-darkening waters.

Jin squinted, trying to make out the blurry shapes before her. She would have to be quick. The familiar ocean flora was usually a rainbow of sun-colored sea fans, flowery pink coral, and glossy kelp in shades of yellow-green. Now, however, the colors had dimmed, and everything was starting to just look very dark and very blue. Before long, she wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an abalone and a volcanic lump of rock.

A large, dark shape moved to her right, and Jin turned to watch one of the other haenyeo divers swim past. It was Cha Eunbi, already with a handful of sargassum stashed in the small net she carried. Not to be outdone, Jin pushed off towards the kelp forest.

Careful of getting tangled, Jin wove through the blades of kelp and kept her eye out for any easy-to-spot purples or reds. She belatedly noticed the spikes of the first sea urchin, and reached down with her hooked metal golgakji to snag the creature and drop it in her net. Just beneath a kelp blade farther away, there was another red one, and she quickly added it to her collection.

By now, the pressure of the water was ringing in her ears, and her lungs ached for a fresh breath of air. She was out of time. Turning towards the surface, Jin gave a strong kick and sped upwards, bubbles trailing behind her.

"Jin's here!" was the first thing she heard when she broke through the waves and sucked in a deep whistling breath. Eunbi had already surfaced, and the middle-aged woman was calling out names as the haenyeos returned from their dives. It had gotten stormier in the time that Jin had been submerged, and Eunbi's voice was hard to hear over the howling wind and sloshing water.

Another cloth-wrapped head popped up, gasping for breath.

"Solhee's back too!" Eunbi announced. "That's everyone! Let's get back to the rocks!"

"Just once more!" someone protested, and seven bobbing heads turned in the direction of the voice. It was Kang Mari, who at the age of fifteen had just completed her eight-year diving training, and had recently started working in the deeper water with the older haenyeos.

"It's too dangerous!" Eunbi objected. "We need to get back to shore before the storm fully sets in."

"But I saw a really big abalone right before I had to come up for air—if I go back now, I won't be able to find it again tomorrow!" Mari complained. "You all can head to the shore—I'll be right back!"

Before anyone could stop her, Mari kicked her legs up and dove back underwater. Beside Jin, her friend Solhee shook her head.

After a moment of hesitation, Eunbi repeated her order. "Swim back to the rocks!" she called out. They would just have to hope that Mari found the abalone soon.

Jin treaded over to her buoyed mangsari net, still anchored where she had left it, and dumped the urchins in with the rest of her day's catch. The other women approached their own mangsaris and did the same with their collections from the last dive. The oncoming storm had made sea creatures scarce during their diving session that morning, and the nets were not as full as they could have been.

"Mari had better hurry up," Solhee commented as she and Jin pulled up the ropes that anchored their mangsaris with a heavy stone.

Jin tucked the stone anchor in one arm and began dragging her net towards the outcropping of volcanic rocks that made up the jetty a few strokes away. "It is a bit inconsiderate to make us all wait for her," she admitted. "But I can understand how difficult it would be to pass up an opportunity like that. If the abalone is as big as she says it is, I probably would have been tempted to go back and get it too. They sell for a good price."

"But it's not safe for us to wait out here with a storm coming," Solhee grumbled, and Jin had to agree. The rain that had been drizzling earlier was coming down faster now, and Jin found herself looking forward to a warm blanket and a roaring fire once they safely got back to shore.

Jin pushed her stone anchor onto the jetty and then clambered up herself, pulling her net behind her. Solhee did the same, and the two of them sat facing the waves, huddled together for warmth against the wind.

By now, Eunbi and the other divers had also reached the rocks, but Mari's net and buoy still floated on the water.

"It's already been at least a minute," Solhee muttered nervously.

"She won't be able to stay down there much longer—she didn't have a lot of time to catch her breath before she went under again," Jin worried. Off in the distance, lightening flashed, followed by a rumbling thunder that carried across the waves.

"We need to be heading back, now," Solhee fretted. "What should we do?"

Jin looked around, only to see the other divers also shivering on the rocks, anxious gazes on the water as they waited for the young diver whose likelihood of returning was growing slimmer with each passing second.

They couldn't just sit there! Taking a deep breath to calm the unease roiling in her stomach, Jin stood up and stepped towards the edge of the rocks. If no one else was going to do anything, she would have to do it herself. "I'm going to check on her—someone else should bring her net in so we don't waste any more time." She glanced over her shoulder to Eunbi, who nodded her consent. Taking a last deep breath, Jin launched headfirst into the water.

For a moment, the ocean felt warm. There was no wind buffeting her anymore, and no cold raindrops against her skin. But as Jin continued to kick and pull herself down, the chilly temperature of the deeper water began to creep in. More unnerving than the temperature was the darkness—the shadows brought by the storm clouds had made it even more difficult to see than on the last dive just a few minutes earlier. She could only hope that Mari was somewhere close by.

Squinting, Jin tried to see through the gloom. She recognized the large dark mass on her right as the kelp forest, and cautiously drew nearer to the swaying fronds. It was the only place Mari could have gone—Jin looked behind her one last time, but the pale off-white of Mari's cotton suit was nowhere to be seen in the surrounding darkness.

Into the kelp forest it was, then.

Jin gently pushed aside the kelp blades, all the while thinking of how much she was going to yell at Mari when they got back to the surface. If it had been a regular, sunny day, she wouldn't have been so bothered, but the current stormy darkness and silence of the ocean, combined with the slippery feel of the aquatic plants brushing her skin, sent her heart hammering in her chest.

If Mari had already resurfaced, Jin was definitely going to yell at the girl. It would be a good exercise for her lungs, anyway.

Something slimy brushed against her leg, and Jin let a few bubbles escape in a silent squeak of surprise. That was it. She was definitely heading back to the rocks. She must have somehow missed Mari returning to the surface and was just down here wasting time—

Of course, that was when she finally found the girl. The kelp in front of her suddenly thrashed to the side, and Jin let out another bubbly yelp before realizing that there was a hand and, therefore, a person behind the plants. But when Mari failed to actually emerge, Jin furrowed her brow and surged forward, parting the fronds. Her air was almost up, but the girl had been underwater even longer than she had been—there had to be something wrong, and soon Jin found the reason.

Mari's foot was caught in some of the kelp, and she was trying to hack at the plant with her dull bit-chang, to no avail. In her panic, her hair had come free of its cotton wrap and braid, and floated around her head in long, dark strands. As soon as she saw Jin, Mari reached out and grabbed her wrist in a desperate plea for help.

Foolish girl. Jin clenched her jaw and swam closer to inspect the plant snarled around Mari's ankle. Taking the flat bit-chang from Mari, she wedged it between two of the main stipes that had twisted together and gotten stuck under one of the kelp bladders. She gently wiggled the instrument, and finally the mess loosened enough for Mari to pull her foot free. Immediately, the girl kicked out, desperate for air at the surface—but in doing so, her foot caught Jin on the side of her head.

Already weakened by lack of oxygen, Jin could only squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the pain to subside as she drifted in the water. When she finally reopened her eyes, her vision was a mess of spinning blurry shapes and dark spots. Her lungs were burning from a lack of oxygen, but she had no energy left to move. Weakly, Jin fluttered her feet in an attempt to kick towards the surface and reached a hand skyward as the bit-chang fell from her grasp. She wasn't going to make it.

Or so she thought, until she caught the shadow of a very large, very dangerous something moving through the depths of the kelp forest. Fear immediately shot through her, and with a renewed last burst of energy, Jin pulled and kicked her way to the surface as quickly as she could. Somehow, the thought of being ripped apart and eaten by some terrifying monster was far more frightening than the idea of just drowning.

"She's back!" Solhee called, while two haenyeos helped Mari out of the water. Still worried about the creature beneath her, Jin darted over to the others and dragged herself onto the rocky jetty, practically landing on a hooked fishing tool in the process. After all that had just happened, she really didn't care.

Meanwhile, Eunbi was busy lecturing Mari.

"—so selfish, thinking only of yourself. You put all of us in danger waiting for you. What if the storm waves had gotten too big, or lightning struck? And after all of that, you still didn't end up with that troublesome abalone. Of course not! It's too dark to see down there now!"

Jin closed her eyes and pretended that it was she who was yelling at Mari instead. Maybe, after she caught her breath, it would be.

I believe there are some terms that are in need of explaining. I haven't forgotten how many questions you tend to have for me. So, if you're careful not to poke me with your umbrella—careful, I said!—I'll get started on the answers.

I'm sure you're wondering what a haenyeo is, first of all. Say it with me, now: hay-nyoh. Rhymes with...actually, I'm not really sure what would rhyme with that. So forget it. I'm not going to bother.

Anyway, moving on—Yoon Jin and the other ladies are sea divers from Jeju Island, which was called Tamna back then. Men didn't really do much diving, and by the 18th century, the occupation was almost exclusively a woman's role, which led to a more matriarchal society on the island than in the rest of Korea.

What's your next question? I suppose I could explain more about the diving outfits. Haenyeo who dive these days have it easy, with goggles and wetsuits and fins. But of course none of this was around in Korea's Joseon Era. Instead, these women swam in short cotton swimsuits and wore a hair cloth instead of a swim cap.

What else was there? Ah. Among the haenyeos' tools are the golgakji: a sharp, hooked metal instrument used for snagging abalone, sea urchins, and octopi. Then there's Mari's tool, a bit-chang, which is a bit like a flat piece of metal used as a lever to pry abalone and other things off rocks. I don't really know how it works. I'm a mountain fox, not a diver.

There are a few more tools besides those two, meant for hacking seaweed and spearing fish and whatever other fishy things those divers get up to. But I'll skip those explanations and get to the floating nets. These mangsaris are large nets that float with the help of an empty gourd-turned-buoy, and are anchored in place with a rock. The divers would be able to drop off their catch in these nets and go right back underwater instead of swim around with a giant bag of purloined sea creatures or always have to swim back-and-forth from the shore to their diving spot. Makes sense, right?

Oh—here's the restaurant. Hold my umbrella and I'll open the door. The weather has kept most of the crowds away, so we have lots of seating options. Shall we pick a table by the window? That one in the corner looks good to me; that way we won't have so many people walking by and disturbing us.