A Wish in the Dark: Chapters 37–49

There was a forlorn murmur in the crowd, and many people bowed toward the makeshift memorial at the front of the room.

A strand of tiny Violet orbs hung over a charcoal portrait of Ampai. Bouquets of flowers and a dish of tangerines flanked the drawing.

Mark nodded solemnly. "I served her as best I could to the very end. And now I feel that it's my responsibility to determine how we will go on without her..."

A burly man in a sleeveless shirt stood up near the front of the room.

“Please, please!" called Mark, struggling to be heard over the clamor. “Please, everyone, sit down and be quiet or we'll never get anything done!"

When I escaped, I left you alone to fend for yourself.

On the corner of his desk were two stacks of papers that he still had to transcribe into his border control notebook before he could leave for the evening.

The cave mouth above was a yawning black chasm.

The white wispy shape formed the body of a man.

More tiny bundles of white floated down from the direction of the city. They glided past Pong like glowing lotus blossoms, cooing soft as kittens. Father Cham gathered each luminous baby to him and gave them bracelets.

It was the same exasperating thing he'd done back at the temple when he disagreed with Pong but wanted Pong to figure out why for himself.

The world is full of darkness, and that will never change. But now that Pong had learned the truth about the Governor and where he came from, the words didn't hold the same power as before. They seemed thin and flimsy.

Father Cham leaned toward him, his face held taut with expectation.

In fact, as Nok approached the Giant’s Bridge, the canals and alleys were almost completely empty. It was eerie, but she didn't have time to wonder what was going on.

Nok's father's mouth distorted into a frown and he looked over his shoulder at the West Side with contempt. “How dare he!” he said through gritted teeth.

He pointed discreetly to the people standing around them. "You see all of them? They're undercover police..."

The Governor would listen if Pong invoked Father Cham's name, and Pong could show his own bracelet as proof.

He eyed Nok spitefully as he worked on an orb for a woman holding a baby in her other arm.

“I told him that it wouldn't be safe for kids like him to be hanging around the city. Things are about to get dicey around here.”
“What do you mean, dicey?"

He wore a pristine white robe that pooled in silky puddles at his feet.

When the Governor finally spoke, his voice reverberated across the silence.

"Citizens, I don’t know who has persuaded you to gather here in defiance of the law, but it is time to end this foolish escapade.”

“I have decreed that any demonstration against me is a threat to our city," he called out. “And those who participate will be punished with the harshest sentence."

“Do you really want to go back to the days before I came here, before we had order and light? Surely now you remember the dangers of fire. Or have you forgotten what it was like when the people of this city wallowed in ash and died in the mud?”

The people couldn’t help but listen, mesmerized by his terrifying descriptions of those dark days. Nok was just as entranced as everyone else, but then he said something that broke her concentration.

He was seething.

He raised his hands, and the tension on the bridge ratcheted even higher.

The entire shoreline had gone dark. Above him, the crowd on the bridge cried out, and then he heard anguished wails coming from the place where the city should be.

A disheveled-looking Commissioner Sivapan broke through the line of kneeling guards and grabbed his daughter.

The crab legs scrabbled down his neck and under his collar, and the last thing he remembered was those crab legs curling themselves into the back of his shirt and pulling up very, very hard, almost as if they were fingers.