"How shall we know where the light is, you ask me. The answer is simple: only light knows its way through the darkness. Only darkness can answer whether the light finds its way."

  The Book of Life

  Neither Dara nor Sothiya discussed their concerns about their daughter, not with neighbours or friends, not with family. Only the monk knew anything about their newborn daughter's oddities, and Dara knew he would never betray their trust. Mama Fha noticed, though. It didn't take long before the old woman commented on the odd presence in the baby's eyes, like she understood everything happening around her. Like she was observing. As custom dictated, neighbours came with gifts to celebrate the new baby, mostly food like steamed fish in curry and mango, or sweet packages of dried fruit. They all wanted to see the little miracle, of course. A couple of them commented on the eye colour but nothing more, so it was hard for Dara to comprehend when and where the rumours started. Nor could she understand why anyone willingly wasted their time gossiping about a baby. An irritated sigh escaped Daras lips as she hung the undry to dry on the patio, her baby on the bnket next to her in the shade. The day was turning out to be unbearably hot, making every breath seem like it cked enough oxygen. The heat had the usually busy street behind their house now being still and void of people. No one stepped outside unless they had to. The only one seemingly unaffected by the heat was the baby. Dara had kept track of the number of times she'd seen the baby lift its head up today. Seven times. She didn't know what to feel about it. She was proud, of course. Her girl had to be some kind of child prodigy. A three-week-old baby simply shouldn't be able to do that. Eight weeks. That's when this was to be expected. Her baby didn't seem to want to follow expectations.

  Had it been only that, Dara would've been happy. But it wasn't only that. It wasn't even combined with everything else unusual with the child. It was a feeling. A presence. It scared her so much. Those years in the jungle... She'd been thankful she didn't have children then. But after, when her and Sothiya finally got to settle in their little house, she'd longed so for it to happen. When she finally got pregnant, it had felt like a miracle. She was almost forty. All she wished for was a healthy child. A normal, completely normal, healthy child. She didn't want Malen to be special, she just wanted her to be safe, healthy and to have a good life. Growing up, getting an education, working, maybe even travel if that's what she wanted... Find love. Have children of her own. Miracles equalled problems that Dara did not wish on her daughter. Or herself, to be honest. She watched the baby while shaking one of Sothia's wet shirts. The baby was sleeping and Dara's heart ached at the sight of her calm little face. She couldn't be sure about what was considered normal to feel of course but she felt like the love she had for this child was almost too strong. It felt compulsory. Unable to control. It didn't feel like her own feelings but something forced upon her.

  She was just turning away from the baby, back towards her task of hanging undry, when she registered something in the corner of her eye. She froze. Slowly turned back. Her thoughts suddenly slow and unfocused, her reactions just the same. She faced the child and just stared. For several seconds.

  "What the hell..." Dara couldn't get her body moving fast enough, she needed to get to her baby but she was so slow, far too slow. She sank to her knees next to the sleeping child, not knowing what to do next, because her daughter's skin had started to glow with a bluish light. Or, pulsating with it was more accurate. Dara could see through the skin, she could see little veins and she could see a little heart pumping blood through them. She could see lungs heaving with every breath, like she'd been illuminated from behind, making her see-through. But the light didn't come from behind, it came from her. She was the light. Tears started streaming down Dara's face. All she wanted was a normal, healthy child.

  "Dara? Dara?? Are you ok?"

  She could feel the sun shining behind her closed eyelids, that's how she realised they were closed. Closed, and unable to open. She heard Sothiya saying her name, and she wanted to open her eyes but it was impossible. She wanted to say something, but no words came out of her mouth. Her tongue felt swollen and rough, her lips hard and stiff. The skin on her face was hot. She could hear Sothiya breathing fast, worried. She felt his cool fingers over her cheek, her forehead, her neck. He was looking for an injury, she realised. Slowly she realised she could sense her own hands again. She could move her fingers. But still, she couldn't open her eyes. She swallowed, once. Twice. Come on. Open them. Open. Open. Open. Sticky eyeshes reluctantly released their grip on each other and let in a narrow slit of light. Slowly. A bit more. More. A bck silhouette with blurred edges slowly shaped into the man she loved, worry in his eyes, drops of sweat in his hairline. And that's when a bolt struck through Dara's body and she could see everything. She could see every pore in his skin. Every tiny muscle moving as he looked at her with his beautiful, dark eyes. And she could hear everything as well. His heartbeat. The wind. His hair moving slightly with it. She could even hear the sunlight. She could smell the detergent of his shirt, his sweat, the hot asphalt in the street outside. And more. Curry. Soap. Familiar scents, mixed with a new one. One that didn't belong. Hospital. He smelled of hospital. Why? Dara didn't care to think about why she was even able to smell that on him, she didn't care. She sat up slowly, Sothiya aiding her.

  "What happened, Dara? I found you here on the ground, Malen next to you." Dara realised he was holding their daughter on his arm. Dara stared at her.

  "It.. was her. It was the girl."

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "Sothiya, her skin started glowing like a firefly. I swear. I was doing the undry, and I looked at her. A light was coming from her. And I could see right through her skin. And then I touched her... I think I did, anyway. That's as far as I can remember."

  "I don't understand. What do you mean by glowing? Was she on fire??"

  "Yes – no. Not like that. She was glowing. Like the charcoal under grilled fish. The light came from her."

  Sothiya sat down next to Dara on the ground as she stared at him. The sensations she'd experienced were starting to wear off and she was thankful for that. So many strange things was happening and it was starting to get impossible to ignore them.

  Sothiya believed what Dara told him. He knew it was true, he just didn't understand how.

  "What were you doing at the hospital?" Dara's voice sounded hoarse, but her eyes were steady on him. Wanting truthful answers. He realised they needed to be completely honest to each other from this moment on. Still, Sothiya stared at her. How did she know?

  "I didn't mean to keep it from you. I thought I should get some answers first, before worrying you. You have enough with the... baby." He hesitated. "I've been feeling unwell in the st few days. Dizzy, drained, feverish. Aunty wanted me to get checked out so she gave me some money and Dr. Tanghanungan took some tests, nothing's clear yet. Maybe we both have some kind of virus. Maybe that's why you fainted."

  Dara felt anger bubbling.

  "Tep Sothiya, I'm not sick. Your daughter drained me in an instant when I touched her glowing skin and you know I'm telling the truth. Malen isn't just special, or gifted. She's not human. You may continue to stick your head in the mud like a swamp lizard, but I won't. And I'm not the one ill here – you are. Now what did the doctor say? Don't you dare try to lie to me again." Sothiya sighed, but a small smile pyed in the corner of his mouth. He loved her fierceness.

  "My flower, I took the tests just today. It will be days before I know anything. The doctor thought it could be iron deficiency, or maybe an infection. I'm ordered to drink plenty of broth out of red meat or poultry, to eat as much cabbage as possible and he recommended I didn't drive the motorcycle if I could avoid it. I also got some pills, for the infection."

  "So, it's an infection then?"

  "No, he's not sure, I mean. It could be. He won't know until the results from the blood tests came back. I'm scheduled to go there again on Monday."

  Sothiya did indeed lie, even though the woman in front of him deserved total honesty. The matter of fact was, Sothiya was afraid. Telling her about the full extent of things made it real, and Sothiya didn't want it to be real. So, he lied and said aunt Fha gave him the money, when in fact he borrowed it from a colleague after he colpsed at work in front of dozens of people. He didn't tell her about how his colleagues had to carry him to the supervisor's car and drive him to the emergency. He didn't let her know about the now infected wounds in his mouth, after involuntarily and repeatedly biting himself, or the muscle cramps that came and went for no apparent reason. He didn't tell her about his suddenly irregur heartbeat. He didn't tell her, because he just couldn't. He accepted this could end his life, he had a Buddhist upbringing and although not practicing he still believed. Death wasn't the end. And if that was his fate, he wanted to make sure to live as much as possible until then. He didn't want to spend his st moments alive, with Dara and Malen, wasting time talking about brain haemorrhages, dangerous tumours or epilepsy – all things the doctor expined to him could be reasons for his condition. He wanted to spend it making his beloved Dara smile, he wanted to share every meal with her and to sleep next to her every night on that simple mattress in their simple home. He wanted to wake up every morning and smell the soap from her short cut hair, hair she never grew out longer than to her ears because she couldn't stand the thought of seeing it braided ever again after one, horrible night in the jungle that Dara had only ever spoke of once and never again. But most of all, Sothiya didn't want to think about leaving Dara alone with what he was beginning to realise would be great hardship: raising Malen. Keeping their daughter safe from other's as well as herself. Sothiya had gone to the monk too, without telling Dara. Searching for answers. The chosen one, the monk had told him. To Sothiya it didn't look like Malen had been chosen for extraordinary gifts, but more a curse. The monk had also told him about mador len. Dara never expined where she got the name from, but Sothiya wanted crity. He reached out to one of his old professors in Bangkok, who in turn got in touch with a man in London. Sure enough, mador len could in a more hopeful way be transted to mean the chosen one, but the words actually meant choice of impermanence. Sothiya didn't have to look up the meaning for the word impermanence. And he didn't think that sounded hopeful at all. Yet he never asked Dara to give the child another name. He knew it would make little difference. Calling the child Minghem or Napreh, or Saint Mary for that matter, wouldn't change the fact that he started to deteriorate the day his baby was born.

  "What are we going to do, Sothiya? People are already talking. There was a time when people would line up outside our house to be blessed by the child, but those aren't the times of today. Most don't want a miracle. They don't care about blessings. They want the strange and unusual eliminated, for it only draws attention nobody wants. You know that as well as I do, don't you?" Sothiya nodded.

  "I know. We need to prevent it from getting any worse or there's a risk they're going to try to take her away from us."

  "If it gets worse, if people keep talking, they're going to take her. They'll lock her up in some institution somewhere, hide her away to stop the talk of a divine saviour being born." Sothiya raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  "Is that actually what they're saying?" Dara snorted.

  "Among other things. That, or the devil. Apparently, the neighbourhood's divided. The area between the fish shop and the bike shop thinks Malen is a warning of bad things to come. They say such horrible things, like seeing a fire burning in her eyes so strong it scorned them or getting sick after touching her once when meeting us at the market. Which in itself is interesting news given I've never even been to the market with Malen, not once in her short life." Sothiya grinned.

  "It's just gossip."

  "Yes, it is. But I don't know what's worse, because from our house all the way up to Chim family, they're saying she's indeed a miracle. Sidhartha himself reborn in our girl, or an angel. The lies are even more preposterous, they say she cured blindness and saved crops just by spreading her ughter with the wind."

  "How did this grow so big so fast?" Sothiya shook his head. "I don't understand. Can't they see she's just a little girl?" The look on Dara's face told Sothiya it was time to address what he knew they needed to.

  "She's not. You know this as well as I do too. Let me guess; you've been feeling sick since the day she was born? You don't have to answer, actually. I know it's true, and I feel it too. She affects us both. And the things that she can do, you've seen them yourself. She's even listening to this conversation now, understanding every word. Can't you see it?" Sothiya looked at the girl in his arms. Pale green eyes, clear and focused, met his. So full of crity and wisdom it felt odd in a baby. It frightened him. The child y motionless in his arms, meeting his searching eyes with her calm ones. Then she blinked and let go of his gaze, instead turned towards her mother, and that's when it happened. It was almost as if she was showing them, like she wanted to eliminate any doubt once and for all. For a second, her skin pulsated with a glow, like a wave. Sothia say veins through the suddenly transparent skin, and then it was gone. But he'd seen, and so had Dara.

  "There!" She stared at the baby, then at him.

  "Dara. Under no circumstances can we let anyone know about this. We must protect Malen. We have to keep this a secret."

  "But how are we supposed to do that? What if she shines up like a New Year's ntern in front of the neighbours, or in the market, or the schoolyard?"

  "It doesn't matter. We have to find a way."