Part 1
Lin peeked out from underneath the stall's awning to look across the field at the Mekong. The river's banks are dry. Only a small stream cuts its way through the mud in the center. The banana trees on the near side stretch their branches wide to soak up the tropical sun. She wipes the sweat from her forehead, exhales, and returns to the shade. This is tradition, but today, it's so damn hot. She should have waited until later in the afternoon to come to the outdoor market. Judging by how few people are here, the other parents thought better to come later, too. At least she beat the crowd.
"Mommy! I want the yellow one!"
"Ami, calm down. We'll get it," Lin placates her 3-year-old, daughter. "The marigold, please," she says in Thai to the older woman behind the piles of flowers on the craft table.
The old auntie sorts through the whites, blues and oranges to find a yellow and clips the flower's stem short. She hands it to Lin who hands it to the toddler. The little girl stabs it right in the center of the pancake-shaped Styrofoam cylinder.
"Oh-oh, you're very good at this!" the old auntie says to Ami. "What would you like next?"
"I want to put banana leaves all around. Like a crown!"
"Good idea!" the auntie says. Lin nods to allow the purchase. The auntie reaches into a basket underneath the table and pulls out a handful of banana leaves pre-cut and folded into neat identical triangles. "Is this your first krathong?" she asks Ami.
"Umm…yes!"
"We floated one last year, but this is her first time making her own," Lin explains.
"It's wonderful you want to keep the tradition," the auntie says.
"My mom took me here when I was little. I moved back from America with my family last year."
"I thought I recognized you." The auntie smiles and looks down to Ami. "Do you know how to put these on?" she asks.
"Umm…no!"
"It can be tricky. You take a toothpick. Be very careful. Don't poke yourself. Very sharp. And you stick it through the side of the leaf here, and stick the other end into the foam." The old auntie secures the leaf to the krathong so that the top of the triangle sits above the flat part of the cylinder. "Can you do it?"
Ami picks up a banana leaf and pokes at it uselessly with a toothpick. "Ehhh. Mommy, help!"
Lin exhales through her nose. "Okay." She hunches over the table and starts decorating.
"Mommy, I want a white flower next!"
Lin's husband, Sean, and their eight-year-old son return from their walk around the other stalls. Her boy is licking a popsicle. Her husband has a stick of deep-fried meatballs in one hand a bottle of beer in the other. Beads of condensation have formed all around the bottle. Lin tilts her head to the side and squints.
"Already?" she asks.
"Hey. It's Sunday."
She straightens up, removes the beer from Sean's hand and takes a sip. It's cold and good.
"Daddy, look!" Ami snatches the half-finished krathong from the table and holds it up to her father's waist. "Is it pretty?"
"Beautiful, baby girl."
"Hey! No fair!" Ami spots her brother's popsicle. "I want one, too!"
"I knew you would." Sean takes a second popsicle out of his pocket and takes off the wrapper before handing it to his daughter. Lin takes the krathong from Ami so she can go for the sugar.
"It's red!" Ami puts the end of the popsicle in her mouth. "And cold."
"Anything for me?" Lin asks.
Her husband gestures with his empty hand. "You said you didn't want anything!"
"I changed my mind." She takes another drink of his beer. "I'm keeping this."
The auntie behind the table motions to Lin to hand her the krathong. "I can finish it for you, dear."
"No. Thank you," Lin says. "We'll finish it."
"Do these things really work, Mom?" her son asks
Lin smiles and puts her hand on the back of her boy's head, lacing her fingers through his curls wet with sweat. "They're for the water spirits. If we show them respect by floating the krathong, they might give us a big rain storm and refill the river."
"The only way the krathongs are going to work is if we strap bombs to ‘em, go up to China and float ‘em at that God-forsaken dam," Sean says. Lin raises her eyebrows at her husband and then looks away.
"Can we?!" her son asks.
"No. But we can put a sparkler on top," Lin says to her boy.
"Yeah, yeah!" Ami shouts and bounces sending popsicle droplets in different directions. Several land on the white parts of her dress.
Lin hands her son twenty baht. "Take Ami and go pick one out." She points to the next vendor over. The boy takes the money and his sister's hand. Lin rests her head on her husband's shoulder and watches their children. He reclaims his beer.
She looks back at the depleted Mekong. "Are we going to be okay?"
"Always." Sean takes a drink "You should finish the krathong, though. Just in case."
Lin lets out a small laugh through her nose and picks up another toothpick and banana leaf.
"That's why we're here."
Part 2: Phra Mae Khong Kha
Lin skids down the bank into the dried-out riverbed of the Mekong being extra careful not to drop the krathong she painstakingly decorated hours earlier. Despite her grip on the cylindrical flower arrangement, a yellow marigold comes loose and falls into the red dust at her feet. She bends down to pick up the flower, shielding her eyes from the mercifully setting sun. Her husband, Sean, follows her into the riverbed with two quick strides of his long legs. He carries their 3-year-old daughter, Ami, in his arms. Their 8-year-old son jumps fearlessly from the bank. He and his legs are growing, and he's eager to show off.
"Liam! Be careful!" Lin scolds her son in Thai. Liam lands in a crouch with one arm raised behind him imitating whatever nonsense he's last watched on the iPad she regrets letting him have.
"I'm fine, Mom," he talks back in English.
"Where we doin' this?" Sean asks, plopping Ami into the dirt. He scans the riverbed.
A dozen other families have gathered in the riverbed in different clusters, most in the middle where there's still a trickle of running water, but still. Lin thought there'd be more.
A girl, not much older than Ami, dark-skinned with a long ponytail, sets her own krathong into what's left of the river. Her Styrofoam cylinder of flowers and candles inch its way down the narrow stream, traveling a few meters at best before bumping into the rainbow traffic jam made by the krathongs floated before hers. Sean smacks a mosquito against his pasty white arm.
"Here's fine." Lin leads her family to a puddle away from the crowd. The water is shallow, still, and murky.
"Does this count?" Liam asks.
"Of course." Lin answers. "As long as it's water, Phra Mae Khong Kha will hear our prayers."
"Don't forget the fireworks!" Ami shouts.
"Got it!" Liam whips out the sparkler he bought from his pocket and hands it to his mother. Lin sticks it in the center of the krathong and kneels in the dirt next to the water. Ami leans in close.
Lin raises the krathong to her forehead and addresses the goddess of water. "Phra Mae Khong Kha, ka. Your river has run dry. Please bless us with rains so the river may flow again." Lin lifts the krathong to her husband. With a flick of his lighter, he lights the sparkler and then a cigarette dangling from his lips.
"Ooh. So pretty!" Ami squeals. "Loy, loy, krathong!" she sings.
Lin floats the krathong into the puddle. It spins clockwise in the water and Lin's family goes quiet and watches. The firework sheds its sparks quickly at first, but comes to a stop halfway down the shaft. A tiny bubble breaks the surface of the water.
Then another.
Then a hundred-thousand more boil to the surface. Lin feels no heat. The puddle grows, flooding beneath her feet as though a great spring has been liberated. Lin falls back reaching out for her daughter. She misses; her fingertips pass through her dress. Her hands land in the new waters behind her with a splash, but she feels no wet.
She looks to her family. Ami remains fixated on the krathong and the un-extinguishing sparkler– a smile frozen on her face. Lin tries to speak but the sound of her voice fails in her lungs. Panicked, she moves to lift her daughter out of the waters, but her arms pass through Ami's body as easily as the air around her. She falls forward, again splashing into the unfeeling waters. She turns to her husband. Sean's gaze is fixed on their son. His cigarette glows bright red as if he's taking a drag in perpetuity. Her family is unfazed, unmoving, and unaware of the waters rising around them.
Lin screams, but still, her voice is muffled and powerless. She tries to stand but finds her body too heavy to move. Her hands and knees sink into the clay beneath her. Gradually, the sight of her family and the setting sun diminish as she falls into the depths of the now raging river, swallowed completely by waters she cannot feel.
Only the krathong is now visible to Lin in absolute darkness. It spins with its unextinguishable sparkler in relative position to her as though she hadn't moved at all. It grows. Its crown of banana leaves, folded into perfect triangles, shoots up to ten, no a hundred times the size around its base. The toothpicks that held them, now the size of logs and its blooms wild and unearthly.
The face of a giantess, perfect and feminine, ascends from depths invisible below the once spinning krathong. It's now at rest and adorning the apparition's head. Sparks containerinue to flicker and fall, but never reach the giantess's rising form.
The giantess notices Lin and smiles as the remainder of her great body and throne surface from the darkness. Her back rests on a brilliant paper-thin cloth, shimmering in blues and purples from a light source unseen. Her breasts are wrapped in emerald silk with a twinkling golden embroidery competing in brilliance with her throne and containerrasted by the caramel-colored skin of her face and bare torso. Her dress begins again at her hips and ends at her ankles.
Her throne, too, reveals itself. A great beta fish floats the giantess above the darkness. Its scales glint in reds, purples, and blues with no glow. Its fins, now revealed to be the giantess's backrest, billow in currents, but do not falter in their support. The great fish looks at Lin, flaps its mouth twice, and pays her no more attention.
Lin falls to her knees and prostrates before the realized vision of the goddess of water.
"Sawasdee ka, nong Lin. Look up." Prah Mae Kongkha speaks in a gentle voice. Lin feels the goddess's words in her bones and lifts her head. "You pray for rain? Why? It rained no more, not much less than years before."
"Ka, Prah Mae Kongka ,ka." Lin's voice has returned. "The river is dry. There is no water; no fish."
"That is not my doing, child." The goddess inhales the invisible waters around her and exhales bubbles from her nostrils. "Your water is being stolen. I cannot change the hearts of thieves."
Sean was right. It's the dams, not the annual drought. Lin tightens her shoulders and folds her hands into a wai. "People are leaving the village. Without the river, it will die. Please help us," she begs.
"You've only just returned, no?" the goddess asks.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"This is my home."
"But is it theirs'?" The goddess looks to Lin's family who has reappeared in the darkness. As Phra Mae Khong Kha turns her head, her nose and lips melt into the profile and trunk of a great elephant.
"It will be." Lin, too, looks to her children, smiles still frozen on their faces. She relaxes her shoulders, inhales, and nods.
"You must make it." The goddess turns back to Lin, her face reformed and human.
Lin locks eyes with Prah Mae Kong Kha and stands. She puts her hands to her side and clenches her fists. "I know."
The goddess smiles with her eyes. "Go."
Ami bounces up and down in front of the puddle and sings again, "Loy, loy krathong!"
Lin scoops Ami up into her arms and squeezes her tightly.
"Wah!" Ami squeals, surprised to be lifted. "Loy, loy krathong!" she containerinues.
"There's more to the song, you know," Liam says matter-of-factly to his sister.
"D'you know it?" Sean asks him, breathing out a puff of smoke. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. The screen casts a glow on his face, now bright as the sun has sunk fully behind the horizon. The sparkler extinguishes into the base of the krathong, beneath the stems of the flowers now above it.
"Sort of," Liam responds.
"I'll teach it to them," Lin says.
"Hey look at that." Sean turns his phone towards Lin. The weather app is open. "Forecast calls for rain tonight."
"Great news," Lin says, smiling back to her husband.
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