A Wish in the Dark

by Christina Soontornvat

  Nok suddenly realized where she was. This was the famous Tanaburi Cavern. The mouth of the cave opened out above the river. At noon, sunlight would pour in through the hole and make the Buddha statue appear to glow. It was past noon now, almost two o’clock, so the statue was already in shadow.

  Nok tore her eyes away from the statue and looked to the mouth of the cave. A boy’s form stood silhouetted with the blue sky behind him.

  “Stop right there,” called Nok, her voice startling her as it rang off the limestone. She held her staff in front of her and took slow steps forward.

  Pong backed away, toward the cave mouth. He held his shoulders hunched forward and his hands out in front of him. He looked scared.

  He should be. The drop down to the river below was more than fifty yards. There was nowhere for him to run.

  With a little leap in her stomach, Nok realized she truly had him caught.

  “Stay where you are,” she said, more confident now. “If you come peacefully, you won’t be hurt.”

  “Back to the temple?” asked Pong. “Why? So you can put me in handcuffs?”

  Nok straightened her staff in front of her. “Only if necessary.”

  Pong took another step back. “And then you’d take me back to Namwon, wouldn’t you?”

  Nok advanced slowly, confidently. Even though she was smaller than Pong, she felt like a giant. It was a rush, this feeling of being the bearer of justice. She wished that her parents were there to see her.

  “Not Namwon,” she said. “You’re too old to go back there now. You’ll have a trial, and afterward they’ll send you to the men’s prison. To Banglad.”

  Pong shuddered. Suddenly, he leaped forward, trying to run past her. But Nok was too fast. She swung her staff down in front of him. It whistled, a pale blur, and then hit the stone with a loud crack, blocking his way. Flecks of loose limestone crumbled off the cave ceiling and rained onto her shoulders. She spun her staff again, forcing him back toward the ledge. As a girl, she wasn’t supposed to touch a monk, much less attack one. But Pong was a fake. The rules didn’t apply to him. Nok was prepared to do what she had to, even if it meant wrestling him to the ground.

  Pong’s eyes flickered wildly. “I’m not going to Banglad,” he said, panting. “I’m not going to any prison. I don’t belong there. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You escaped,” said Nok, holding her staff steady. “You broke the law.”

  “A law that says kids have to live in a jail? You’d blame me for breaking a law like that?”

  “Do you realize that if you would’ve just stayed where you were, you’d be released by now?” she said. “You’d be free if you’d just followed the rules.”

  “The rules are stupid!” Pong cried, so loud that it made Nok take a step back. “And unfair!”

  “Call them whatever you want,” said Nok, steadying her feet and her voice. “You still have to follow them. Otherwise, what good are they?”

  Pong was breathing hard. His head was bent and his shoulders curled in, as if he’d already been put in handcuffs. He looked at her from under his hairless brows. “That’s so easy for someone like you to say.”

  Nok narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s easy for you to follow the law,” said Pong flatly. “It was written for people like you. For families like yours.”

  “How dare you talk about my family!” Heat rushed to her temples. Her voice was rising, too. She sounded out of control and she didn’t like it. She tried to calm herself, but the words tumbled out of her mouth too fast. “Yes, we follow the law, because that’s what good people do. Good people obey the rules, and if they don’t, they accept their punishment. You don’t get to break the law just because you think it’s not fair. You don’t get to just decide for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong!”

  “Then who does?”

  It was a stupid question, a question for a classroom or a philosophy discussion, not a question to be asked in the middle of an arrest. But Nok didn’t have an answer for it. Her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth while it waited for her brain to come up with words.

  Behind her, in the woods above the cave, she heard voices and the sound of people crashing through the brush outside the sinkhole.

  She exhaled and held her staff steady. “Give yourself up peacefully,” she said, her voice calm once more.

  Pong stood in a half crouch, his knees bent, like an animal ready to spring at her. Nok raised her staff. She let the nervous energy inside her pool into a ball, but then she paused. If she struck the ground with her staff, she might damage the statue. She might even cause the ceiling to cave in.

  “Give yourself up,” she repeated. “And you won’t be harmed.”

  She heard familiar voices behind her.

  “Nok!” called her father. She turned her head to see him climbing down the opening at the back of the cave, with villagers following behind.

  “I’m here, Father!” She smiled, relieved to see him, proud that he was seeing her like this. “I’ve got him!”

  Nok turned back to Pong just in time to see him leap off the edge.

  A far drop, farther than it looked from the top.

  A hard smack, harder than you’d think water could feel.

  A bubble of air, trapped by monks’ robes, lifesaving, but disappearing fast.

  Desperate treading, gurgling, clawing for the surface.

  A barge, right on time, swinging its back end wide, near enough to throw up waves, but too far to reach.

  A crusted rope, stained green from months of trailing off the barge’s hull, forgotten.

  Frantic grasping. Catching! And then climbing, hand over hand, lungs on fire.

  Grateful breathing. Weakly clinging to fraying nets.

  Hopes sinking, like the waterlogged gold-brown robes.

  This barge is the wrong barge.

  This barge is not bound south, for the sea.

  This barge is headed north, back to Chattana.

  As soon as Nok’s eyes opened that morning, she knew her father wasn’t there. He woke early, as she did, and she’d become used to hearing his shuffle across the wood floors, the sound of his pen scratching across paper, and his regular cough, kept soft as he tried not to wake her mother.

  Nok lay on her pallet for a long while, looking up at the ceiling while the sunlight warmed the room.

  She usually woke earlier than this, but it had been a late night. By the time she and her father and a group of villagers got down to the water, the sun had already begun setting behind the mountain. They found Pong’s robes floating near the shore, but no body. She’d stayed up with her father, watching the villagers drag the river with nets and bamboo poles.

  Mrs. Viboon had stood with them, sobbing. “He can’t swim! Oh, why, why didn’t we teach him to swim?”

  Nok kept her distance so no one could see her scowling. She liked Mrs. Viboon, but she wished the woman would hush up. The more she wailed about Pong drowning, the less likely the villagers would listen to Nok and start searching the riverbanks.

  “There’s no point,” said Mr. Viboon, holding an empty net and nearly in tears himself. “We won’t find him there or anywhere else. He’s gone.”

  Nok’s father looked into the dark jungle lining the shore and nodded. “There were boats in the water when the boy jumped, weren’t there?”

  Mrs. Viboon wailed again.

  “It’s most likely that he was run over by the barge, sir,” said Mr. Viboon. “The robes we found were shredded. Trapped under a big boat like that? No one would survive.”

  Nok was so frustrated. Why couldn’t anyone else think it possible that a boy who had tricked everyone around him his whole life was tricking them all at this moment? She didn’t know what was worse — that no one would listen to her, or that the entire village was racked with grief over a criminal’s supposed death.

  Nok was angry at everyone and everything, but mostly she was ang
ry at herself. She had been so close to catching Pong, and she’d failed.

  She slipped out of bed and went to her window. A servant was sweeping the empty driveway with a frayed broom. The carriage was gone. Nok wondered if her mother was gone, too.

  She walked to the dresser. Her mother had packed her a dress, the way she always did, even though she knew by now that Nok would never wear it. As she reached out for the dark fabric of her spire-fighting uniform, the sunlight fell across the scar on her arm.

  Nok traced her fingers over the puckered skin that ran from the base of her palm almost to her elbow. She knew the scars so well. If they suddenly rose up into a terrain full of valleys and peaks, she would be able to travel them blindfolded.

  She had been only three at the time of the accident. She didn’t remember getting hurt, but she did remember being tended to afterward. It had been late at night. She recalled the crush of servants around her, fussing over her, and her father’s voice shouting for the doctor.

  “Come quick! She’s in here!” And then his face, leaning close to her, his smile masking his worry. “It’s all right, Nok. You’re very brave. You’re such a tough girl.”

  She knew she must have been crying. What three-year-old wouldn’t cry after getting burned? But when she thought back on that night, she couldn’t remember making any sound. She could only remember the people crowded around, telling her how tough and how brave she was.

  Most of all, she remembered her mother holding her close and sobbing. She could feel her mother’s tears wetting her own hair. She could smell her mother’s perfume, the scent of tuberoses that followed her still wherever she went.

  “I’m so sorry,” her mother had wailed. “Oh, I’m so sorry. So sorry. Nok, baby, sweet baby, I’m so sorry.”

  Nok’s mother’s maid rubbed her back. “An accident, ma’am,” she kept repeating. “It was an accident. You aren’t to blame.”

  The doctor had rushed in, wearing pajamas under his coat. “Tell me what happened,” he said, kneeling in front of them as he opened his bag.

  Nok remembered glimpsing her mother’s dressing table through a gap between the servants’ bodies. A shiny jar of some sort of medicinal cream lay on its side, the lid on the floor. The candle on the dressing table had been blown out already, but its wick still smoked. Her big brother stood in the doorway to the room, wide-eyed and scared.

  Her parents looked at each other, but it was the maid who answered the doctor’s question. “The baby was playing with her mother’s creams. She got some on her arm, and when she got near the candle, it caught her.”

  The doctor sighed. All the wealthy West Side women kept secret candles to burn for good luck, even though it was against the law. But he made no judgment. He couldn’t very well scold one of his best clients.

  “I’m so sorry!” her mother wailed.

  “Hush, ma’am,” said the maid, almost sternly. “It was an accident.”

  Nok traced her fingers over her scars again. No one in the family talked about that night. Even though the doctor kept their secret, fire was still forbidden. It wasn’t worth talking about such things and getting the whole family in trouble. Best to forget about it entirely.

  Normally, Nok would have been happy to do just that. She would much rather think about the future and leave the past behind. But this was one memory she wanted to hold on to: no pain, just her mother holding her close, rocking her back and forth, and the smell of her perfume in her hair.

  The memory faded as Nok pulled on her uniform. The long sleeves slid down over her arms, all the way to the wrists.

  Downstairs, she was surprised to find her mother awake in the sitting room, her hands folded over her lap, looking out the window. She glanced at Nok when she heard her come in, then turned her face back to the glass. In the harsh light of the morning, her cream-colored powder looked caked and dry.

  “Everyone says the country is so quiet,” said her mother, “but these birds are deafening. What can they be saying to each other?”

  Nok walked farther into the sitting room and took a seat across from her mother. “Where did Father go?”

  “The carriage took him down to the pier early this morning. He ordered a fast boat back to Chattana. I’ll go on a slower barge later this afternoon.”

  Nok noticed there was no mention of her. She looked at her mother and waited.

  When her mother turned her face, it was set as though she’d been sitting at the window composing what to say and how she’d look when she said it. She glanced down at Nok’s arm and sagged. Her face softened and she sighed, and Nok could tell that the words that came next weren’t the ones her mother had practiced.

  “Nok, your father and I have been talking, and we think it could be good for you to stay here in Tanaburi for the rest of the school year.”

  Even though Nok had known this was coming, she still felt the words like a punch.

  Her mother shifted in her chair. “Tanaburi is close enough to the city that we can come visit easily. And I went to the village school yesterday and met the teachers. It’s actually very impressive. You’ll have a good education here.”

  “I’m already getting a good education in Chattana,” said Nok, finding her voice again.

  “The countryside is healthier for children,” replied her mother. “The city is too harsh a place to live.”

  Nok kept her voice calm. “It isn’t harsh for me, Mother. I like it there.”

  “You don’t know how hard it can be because you’ve been sheltered. But soon you’ll see. The way gossip runs wild in the city. It can cut worse than a knife.”

  “I don’t care about gossip,” said Nok.

  Her mother shook her head. “You will if —”

  Nok held her breath, waiting for her mother to finally say it out loud: If people find out you are not mine. You are an embarrassment to this family.

  Instead her mother cleared her throat and straightened the rings on her fingers. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  Now it was Nok’s turn to forget the words she’d practiced. She had made the case to her mother in her head, over and over again. She’d wanted to be very grown up and logical, but she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding whiny and childish.

  “I’m not trying to have that kind of life, Mama. The kind where it matters what people say about you. I don’t want to be in society and do things like go to parties. I want to join the police. No one cares about the police enough to gossip about them.”

  Nok’s mother looked out the window again. It was a look that said Nok didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I’ve researched everything,” Nok added. “About what it takes to join the police force. Anyone can do it as long as they pass the exams and the physical tests. You can try out when you turn eighteen. Just let me try. If I fail, then I’ll come back here and stay in the country, like you want.”

  Nok’s mother sighed again. She seemed to be considering.

  Nok pressed her case. “I know I’ll make it. And Father could get a recommendation letter from the Governor himself.”

  “The Governor?” said Nok’s mother, whirling to face her. “Do you know why your father has left so suddenly? I made him go. I wanted him to explain the situation before the Governor gets wind of it. Do you know how all of this looks? Before, it seemed that your father merely lost a boy under his care. Now it’s clear the boy escaped! And not only that, but he fooled a monk and was hiding right under your father’s nose. Escaped — twice! Even if they can prove the boy drowned, this whole thing has made our family look like incompetent fools!”

  Nok sat frozen, stung by the words. She didn’t know which hurt worse: the accusation that she’d brought shame on her family or the way her mother kept saying “your father,” making it sound as though they were a duo, separate from the rest of the Sivapans.

  Her mother stood up in front of Nok. “You are going to stay here and go to the country school. This is the right place for you.
It’s a good village full of good people.”

  “But, Mother . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear a word about it! You will respect our wishes as your parents.” She took Nok’s hand and pulled her up to stand. She looked down at her daughter’s arm, covered by the sleeve of the spire-fighting uniform. Suddenly, she hugged Nok close.

  “I know this isn’t what you think you want,” she whispered. Nok was surprised to hear her voice quiver. “But sometimes life doesn’t give us what we want. We don’t get to do everything we wish, and we have to deal with what we’re given in the best way we can. I know you’re angry. But you’ll forgive me one day. It’s amazing what the heart is able to forgive.” She pulled away and cupped Nok’s face in her smooth hands. “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

  And with that, she walked out of the room.

  Police Officer Manit took deep breaths and rolled his shoulders back, trying to wake himself up.

  I’m getting too old for the night shift, he told himself as he strode down the walkway along the shore. The Gold lights of Chattana’s West Side twinkled across the river. Manit thought about the officers assigned to that side of the city. Talk about a cushy job. An officer could walk around with their eyes shut over there and never miss a thing. Not like here, where the streets were getting more crowded and rougher all the time.

  Manit passed the piers where the big fishing boats docked under hazy Amber orbs. As he walked on, the Crimson and Amber lights gave way to Blue, and then to Violet. The loud vrumm! of orb motors faded, replaced by the splashes of bodies diving into the river. Dozens of people, many of them children, treaded water, checking crab traps and hoisting river prawns up to their parents and friends, who waited up top with buckets.