A Wish in the Dark

by Christina Soontornvat

  Pong started to protest that he certainly hadn’t taught his teacher that lesson, but the old man was off and walking down the road again.

  “The Great Fire was so long ago,” said Pong. “But the babies are still showing up here?”

  Father Cham turned and gave him a surprised look, as if Pong had questioned that objects fall down when you drop them. “Of course they’re still showing up,” said the old monk sadly. “The people are still desperate.”

  They rounded the bend in the road, and the low plaster building that made up the Tanaburi Village School came into view. Most villages had craft schools, where boys and girls learned how to weave cloth, carve wood, and master other skills that would land them steady work when they grew up. Father Cham had insisted that Tanburi’s school also teach literature and mathematics. It was a much better education than Pong had gotten at the prison and even rivaled some of the private schools in Chattana.

  “Ah, Father Cham, you’ve come!” said the headmistress, bowing when she saw them come through the gate. “It is an honor to have you here, as always.”

  “I got your message at the temple,” said Father Cham. “We would’ve gotten here sooner, but my friend is a slow walker.” He winked at Pong. “Where is she?”

  The headmistress smiled. “In my office. Right this way.”

  Pong followed behind them as they passed the classrooms. He glanced inside at the children bent over their workbooks. He would never join them — it was too big a risk that his tattoo would be seen — but he liked watching them from a distance. He always searched the boys, expecting to find Somkit’s face grinning back at him, even though he knew it was impossible.

  They entered the headmistress’s office, and Father Cham leaned on his staff as he lowered to the floor in front of a woven laundry basket.

  “Oh, my goodness, look at you!” the old man cooed in a high voice that Pong had never heard him use before. “What a sweet little melon! Coo-curoo! Ja-ka-jee!” he squealed as he tickled the baby’s foot. She gurgled happily.

  Pong and the headmistress both laughed to see the old man so natural with the baby.

  “Poor thing, she was very dirty when they brought her in,” said the headmistress. “We had to give her a bath right away.”

  “Well, she looks clean as anything now, ma’am,” said Father Cham with a smile. “Not fat enough, but we will change that. Yes, we will.” A look of worry rippled over his smiling face. “Have you found someone who can take her?”

  “Yes, you’ll be happy to know that a farmer in the next village wants to adopt her. He and his wife haven’t been able to have children.”

  “Ah, the Srinavakool family — yes, I know them. She will be happy there. Well, let’s see, what do I have for this special girl? Oh, yes. The most vulnerable among us always deserve the greatest blessings, don’t you agree?”

  Father Cham reached into a pouch he kept tied at his side and pulled out a long woven cord. This one was far more special than any bracelet Pong had seen the old man use before. It was braided from red and gold threads, and it was quite thick.

  The old monk leaned over the basket and looped the braid around the baby’s wrist. As he began to tie it, he recited the prayers and blessings that Pong had heard him say a hundred times at the temple, but then he ended with another blessing, different from the ones he usually gave: “May you walk in peace wherever you are in the world.”

  The baby, who had been fidgeting and kicking just a moment before, became very still and very calm. She looked into Father Cham’s wrinkled face with her shining black eyes.

  Outside, children’s voices rang out over the soccer field. The headmistress turned her face away from the basket to see what was going on outside the window.

  “Children!” she called. “What have I told you about wrestling . . . ?”

  Pong started to follow her gaze when he noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye. A wavy glimmer of light rippled on the ceiling. He looked up at the spot where the golden light danced, and he tracked the shimmer back to Father Cham and the basket. Pong gasped. A light as bright as sunbeams shone out from the place where Father Cham’s fingers tied the bracelet on the baby.

  The headmistress turned at the sound of Pong’s gasp. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He looked at her, then back to the old man. The strange shimmer was gone.

  “What . . . ?” whispered Pong. Bright spots danced in front of his eyes, as if he’d stared at the sun too long.

  The baby gummed her slobbery mouth on her new bracelet. Pong stood bewildered. He looked at the headmistress. She blinked a few times but didn’t seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  Father Cham leaned against his walking stick with a groan. He faltered and nearly slumped to the floor. Pong rushed over to help him stand.

  “Are you all right, Father Cham?” asked the headmistress with concern.

  “I’m fine,” he answered with a wide smile. “Just an old man’s old bones.” He patted the baby’s head. “She is going to make her new family very happy. Thank you for letting us meet her. We should get back to the temple now, shouldn’t we, Pong?” He leaned heavily on Pong’s arm.

  “My groundskeeper has an errand to run back in the village,” said the headmistress. “I’ll have him walk with you.”

  She gave Pong a look that said the groundskeeper was only going along to make sure that Father Cham didn’t fall again. But the old monk waved his hand at her. “Don’t trouble him on my account! My friend here can barely keep up with me as it is.” He tapped Pong’s leg with his walking stick.

  Before they bid goodbye to the school, the headmistress motioned Pong aside and whispered, “You should keep a good eye on him. He’s not young like he used to be. He tries to fool everyone that he’s not getting old, but I notice these things. I’m more observant than the average person.”

  When they were back on the road, Pong cleared his throat and said, “Father Cham, about that —”

  “Not yet, Pong,” said Father Cham, puffing with each step.

  Pong fell quiet, and the two of them walked on in silence until they were well out of sight of the school.

  “Please, Father,” said Pong, unable to keep the words from bursting out any longer. “Back at the school . . . with the baby. I thought I saw . . . something.”

  Father Cham tilted his chin very slightly. “Oh? What did you see?”

  “I . . . don’t know exactly,” said Pong, still a little dazed. “I thought I saw a light. A really bright one. It didn’t last very long, and when I looked closer, it was gone.”

  Father Cham stopped and tugged Pong’s arm to halt his steps. “You saw that?”

  Pong nodded.

  Father Cham searched Pong’s face for a long moment before smiling again. “The other monks say you have a gift for noticing which trees will bear fruit first. I have a feeling they’re mistaken about what your gift is for.”

  Before Pong could ask what he meant or what had actually happened in the schoolroom, they heard the commotion of a large group of people. They had now reached the edge of the village, where almost half the town had gathered in the street around a horse-drawn coach. Pong stared. No one in their village could afford horses.

  “It seems we have a visitor,” said Father Cham, pointing ahead with his staff. “And a very fancy one at that.”

  The carriage door swung open and out stepped a man with an official government uniform, followed by a woman wearing a gold-flecked dress. A girl with chopped-short hair and a sharp black gaze climbed out after them. She wore a spire-fighting uniform.

  Pong’s heart shrank to the size of a peppercorn.

  Warden Sivapan and his family had arrived on the mountain.

  When Nok Sivapan climbed out of the carriage in the village of Tanaburi, she didn’t recognize Pong at all. Having regular meals had filled out his once hollow cheeks, and he was three inches taller than her now. That sticking-up hair of his had been shaved of
f, and his monks’ robes also helped to hide him.

  Nok, on the other hand, had just grown into an older version of the sharp-eyed girl who Pong remembered visiting Namwon from time to time. She hadn’t sprouted up the way he had. She was small, though her regular spire-fighting practice kept her strong. Her hair was still chopped straight across her shoulders, and she wore the same wary, serious gaze.

  Even if Pong hadn’t been dressed as a young monk-in-training, Nok would probably have glossed over him.

  She was distracted.

  Her family rarely traveled outside of Chattana City, and the small mountain village was a curious sight. They had left the twins at home and had taken a barge downriver to the base of the mountain, where they had boarded a horse-drawn carriage.

  “Horses!” her mother had gasped when the carriage rolled up to the dock. She lifted her sleeve to cover her nose against the musky green smell. “Haven’t you told them who you are? They should send an orb-powered coach for someone in your position!”

  Nok’s father sighed. “They don’t have orb coaches this far from the city. We’ll be inside. You won’t have to smell anything.”

  At that, one of the horses lifted its tail and plopped out a contradiction to his statement. Nok offered her mother her arm to help her into the carriage. The driver clucked once, and they began to roll slowly forward.

  Nok’s mother patted the sweat off her nose with a handkerchief and looked worriedly out the window. “We’ll never get there by nightfall at this rate! I told you we should have left earlier. I don’t want to be caught in the country in the darkness.”

  Nok’s father reached over and patted her knee. “It couldn’t be helped. There’s only one barge that stops at Tanaburi, and we were on it. We can stop at the temple and still get to our house with plenty of time to spare.”

  “Don’t call it our house,” said Nok’s mother, pushing his hand away. “It’s a rental. One without running water, don’t forget!”

  “It’s the nicest house on the mountain,” said Nok’s father patiently, sneaking a smile at Nok. “The one reserved for visiting officials. Besides, what can we do? It’s the country. They don’t have the same luxuries that we do in Chattana — though that should change after this visit.”

  The family was in Tanaburi because someone from the Commission on Law and Light Regulation had finally noticed that no one in the village had ever bought an orb. At least there was no record of anyone from Tanaburi visiting one of the Charge Stations, where most of the country people could purchase small amounts of light from the vast stores produced by the Governor.

  Were the villagers using fire? Nok’s father had no interest in making arrests, but he did plan to give the village leaders a talking-to. Sure, Tanaburi was a scrap of a town with one school and a tiny temple, but they still had to follow the same rules as everyone else. It was high time that someone official educated the poor villagers on the benefits of orbs and the powers of the Governor. That was one part of the reason Nok’s father had decided to come.

  Part, but not all, as Nok knew well.

  “Imagine,” grumbled her mother. “The Governor’s own Law Commissioner going to the bathroom in an outhouse! If we wanted that sort of treatment, we could have stayed in a slum on the East Side.”

  Nok listened to her parents go back and forth about how short or long their visit to Tanaburi would be. Outside the window, the fields of tall sugarcane gave way to lined rows of papaya orchards, and then to forest, as the carriage rumbled slowly up the mountain road. If her parents would have stopped chattering, it would have been very quiet.

  Nok liked it quiet, and this would have been a peaceful and pleasant outing if she didn’t know why she was there. But she did know, even though her parents had worked hard to keep it hidden.

  Like most parents, Nok’s were terrible at keeping secrets from their children. For example, they never told Nok or her siblings when their father was switching jobs, and if they did, it was always called a “promotion,” even when everyone knew it was no such thing.

  A promotion should have meant more money and prestige, not less. The first “promotion” happened four years ago, when Nok was nine and her father was still warden of Namwon. A boy disappeared from the prison that year, and it was a complete mystery what happened to him. Another little boy had sworn that he’d seen the missing kid climbing the mango tree onto a branch out over the river. Maybe he fell in. The child’s disappearance was ruled a drowning, but everyone whispered about Nok’s father behind his back. What kind of warden lets a child slip through his fingers?

  The incident brought the prison under review. The Governor’s officials looked into the record books and found that Nok’s father ran Namwon half-heartedly. He hardly spent any time there, as if he didn’t even want the job in the first place.

  So Nok’s father was “promoted” to a desk job at the courthouse. Nok thought the quiet courthouse was actually perfect for him. He liked to read and study and be by himself. He belonged behind a desk, not running a big operation like a prison. He could have been happy there if Nok’s mother had let him. But courthouse lawyers don’t make good salaries. Nok’s brother was at an expensive university. Her sisters, the twins, would join Nok at private school soon. So Nok’s mother wheedled and cut deals with her society friends, and by a sheer miracle, she landed Nok’s father an even better gig: Chief Law Commissioner.

  He had no staff and few responsibilities — just touring around the province and checking the court record books. Best of all, it came with a fat paycheck. Nok’s family moved to a bigger house in one of the West Side’s best neighborhoods. Her mother was back on the invite list for fancy parties. With everything going so well for the family, her parents should have been happy.

  But something was the matter.

  Nok’s mother had been watching her. Even now, as the carriage creaked slowly up the mountain, Nok could feel her mother looking, her eyes disappointed and full of sadness.

  It was as though Nok had done something wrong. But that was impossible. She had never once in her life done anything wrong. Nok was the perfect daughter. That wasn’t bragging, not when it had been such hard work.

  She was at the top of her class at school, beating every other girl her year by miles. And last month she had won the citywide spire-fighting championship for her age group. Everyone from the city had come out to watch the competition. That was when Nok noticed her mother’s stare for the first time.

  It had been the best night of Nok’s life. Her opponent was a tall boy with a loud mouth named Bull. More like Mouse, thought Nok as she swept her leg behind his knee and toppled him backward onto the mat. He sprang back to his feet quickly, his staff ready to strike. But Nok could see the uncertainty in his eyes, the horror that he was about to get beaten by someone smaller than him in front of everyone he knew.

  She, on the other hand, was the quickest she’d ever been. It was as though she could see his movements seconds before he made them. She blocked his attacks easily, holding her staff steady while his quivered with every clack. Nok felt the strength of all her years of training surging through her muscles, gathering into her core in a ball of energy.

  Bull staggered back from one of her blocks, and she knew the time had come to finish him off. She raised her staff and brought one end down hard, onto the floor, performing a feat that no one except the most skilled spire-fighting masters could do: The ball of energy flowed out through her arm, into her hand, and down the staff. It radiated out, shook the floor, and threw Bull off his feet and onto his back. The force of the blow blew back the hair of the spectators in the first three rows. The crowd sat in shocked silence for two heartbeats, and then they jumped to their feet, roaring her name.

  Later, Nok stood between her parents, holding the trophy, feeling both drained and giddy, while her father’s colleagues came up to congratulate them.

  “Thank you, thank you!” said her father, shaking their hands. “Wasn’t she amazing? Yes, she’s
worked so hard for this, so hard. She trains every day for hours!”

  Nok almost laughed. She’d never seen her father so talkative. His glasses sat skewed on his nose, and he was smiling so big she could see his molars.

  “Good fight, little Nok!” said one of his friends from work. “You are making your parents so proud.”

  “Yes, a hard worker, just like your father,” said another, patting her shoulder. “And his spitting image, too!”

  Nok had quickly looked down at her feet to discourage more comparisons. No one could deny she had inherited her strong chin and dimples from her father. Nok’s older brother and her sisters also shared those traits, but they looked like their mother, too: slim as herons, with long limbs and graceful fingers. Nok, on the other hand, was short, with muscles thickened from all the spire-fighting practice.

  “Perhaps she resembles some distant relative,” other family members had started to say. “Far back in the bloodline.”

  “Yes, far back,” her mother had said. So far that no one need bother looking.

  But her mother was looking. Looking all the time and thinking something Nok could only guess at.

  And then, a few nights before they were to leave for Tanaburi, Nok had overheard her parents talking as she lay in bed. Her father’s voice was a low, steady hum-hum. And there was a higher-pitched sound she didn’t recognize.

  Nok got up from her bed and tiptoed out of her room and into the hallway. Spire fighting was an ancient practice, and one of its elements was the “Nothing Step,” a way of walking so quietly that nothing — not even the dust — knows you are moving.

  She crept closer to her parents’ door. Their lights were still on, and she couldn’t make out their words over the buzz of the orb lights until she was just outside the doorway. As she leaned her ear to the door, she realized what the high-pitched sound was.

  Her mother was crying.

  “There, there,” said her father soothingly. “Please don’t make yourself so upset. We’ve lived with it for this long, and we can wait it out. No one knows.”