Princess Bari’s Long Walk

Abandoned as a baby for being a girl, Princess Bari grows up to make an impossible journey—and saves her parents who abandoned her.

The king and queen of an old Korean kingdom already had six daughters. When the seventh was born, the king’s disappointment was so great that he had the tiny girl put in a box and floated away on the river. She was given no name—just “Bari,” which means “discarded.”

Spirits guided the box to the shore of a kind old couple who raised the child with love. Bari grew up gentle, patient, and unusually brave.

Years later, the king and queen fell gravely ill. No medicine could cure them. A shaman delivered the news: only the water of life, hidden at the far edge of the spirit world, could save them. No ordinary person could make such a journey.

Six daughters refused. The spirit world was full of monsters and trials.

Then word reached the old couple’s cottage. Bari heard, and without hesitation, she began to walk.

She crossed mountains where tigers blocked her path. She spoke gently to the tigers, and they stepped aside. She crossed rivers of fire. She held her breath and leaped. She reached the spirit world’s keeper, a great warrior-god who set her three impossible tasks. She completed each one with steady patience.

Finally she asked for the water of life. The keeper looked at her for a long moment.

“Who do you carry this for?”

“For my mother and father,” she said simply, “who threw me away.”

Silence. Then the keeper bowed his head and gave her the water.

Bari walked back. Every step of the way, she helped others she met—a lost child, a hungry spirit, a grieving family. She arrived home just as the king and queen breathed their last breaths.

She poured the water of life on their lips. Their eyes opened.

The king looked at his seventh daughter—the one he had discarded—and understood what he had thrown away.

Bari became the first shaman, the guide between the living and the dead, who forever helps lost souls find their way home.