As the jungle began to dry out, Kun Pa went to work again laying bricks. At night he played his wooden flute, the notes slipping like water running through the house. Kun Mere’s sewing machine no longer lost power.

Kun Ya still complained that her hands hurt and stayed in her room, but Noi began to paint outside, going off by herself to the clearing.

“You should sell the umbrellas,” Ting kept insisting. “They’re pretty. Make some money.”

One night she added, “Please hurry, Noi. Another girl, only twelve years old, came today. She didn’t cry, though. If you cry, your eyes get sore and you can’t see the parts well.”

Ting switched off the light, and the darkness leaped close. She laid a hand on Noi’s forearm. “Please think about it.”

“I think of nothing else,” Noi said. “How can you bear the factory? Isn’t the work hard for you, Ting?”

“Sometimes. But not always. Kun Mere lets me keep a little of the money I earn. I may buy you something soon.”

Noi stayed silent. She couldn’t tell Ting that no present could make her forget the sight of her at work in the factory.

“Ting is getting too tired,” Kun Ya said gently from time to time.

“She’ll become used to it,” Kun Mere always responded.

Each time Kun Ya protested, Kun Mere frowned. Her wrinkled forehead looked like a pool of water disturbed by a breeze.

The harvest got under way. On the walk home from school, Noi saw men and women cutting the rice with scythes and beating the long stems to release the grains. With harvest, preparations for the festival of Loy Krathong were beginning.

She began to walk faster, as though by hurrying, she could make the festival arrive sooner.

“Loy Krathong is coming, Ting,” Noi reminded her one night.

“I’ll have to work, you know.”

“On Loy Krathong?” Noi couldn’t believe that anyone would work on a festival day.

“Even on Loy Krathong. It’s not so bad, Noi. I’m sure they’ll let us play a radio.”

One day Noi spotted a pickup truck inching down the jungle lane in front of the house. The bed was loaded with earthen lights to sell. “He’s here, Kun Mere!” she shouted.

Kun Mere descended the ladder with her small purse of coins, Noi climbing down after her.

The man counted out the one hundred and sixty-one lights, setting them two by two in rows on the soft ground.

“I want to pay for my own this year,” said Noi. From her pocket she drew eleven of the coins she’d earned with Kun Ya.

Another day the man returned with kome — paper lanterns that would hang in the trees and doorways.

“Which one?” Kun Mere asked Noi.

Noi touched the lanterns of translucent paper and the long streamers, the colors entering her body. Each color produced a different sensation: The yellow expanded inside her like a flower blooming, the pink fluttered, the dark green created a feeling of woody texture. The lanterns were all so beautiful that Noi had a hard time choosing.

The man began to fold the kome and wrap them back in the cellophane.

“Choose,” Kun Mere urged, moving so close that Noi could feel her breath on the back of her neck.

“It’s hard. . . .”

Kun Mere’s face suddenly softened with a smile. “I know you love colors, Noi,” she said. “Colors make you look so happy.” She slipped her arm around Noi’s shoulders, then lifted up a lantern shaped like a lotus, with long paper streamers of red, purple, and gold. “How about this?”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Noi put the lantern inside where it wouldn’t get wet. That night, she dreamed she heard the sounds of Loy Krathong music.