A DREAM OF LIGHTS
A powerful and moving stand-alone novel for anyone who loved A GATHERING LIGHT or BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY, in which a teenage girl struggles against the odds for survival in a North Korean prison camp… From the author of A Brighter FearYoora is a teenage girl living in North Korea, dreaming of the lights of foreign cities while eking out a miserable existence in a rural northern village. But then she makes a mistake: she falls in love. With someone far removed from her social class. Someone dangerous to know. When tongues start to wag, her father is executed and she is taken to a prison camp in the mountains. There, escape seems even further from her grasp. But Yoora is about to learn an important lesson: love can surprise you, and it can come in many forms…
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For my children…
Jess – female mannequins should be called ladykins
Dan – remembering your wellies, bunny blanket and fireman’s hat
and Bowen – no, I won’t say anything about kisses and heart shapes and feeling loved
…because sometimes I wish you didn’t have to grow up.
Contents
About the Publisher
It began with something so simple.
A dream.
Of a city like no city I had ever seen before, no city I could possibly have imagined. A city at night-time, down whose streets I floated, mesmerised, as I stared into the white headlights of cars flooding towards me, red trails following behind, more of them than I thought could be possible. Lines and rows and streams, speeding and blurring and hurrying past and around me and away into some distance, some destination, somewhere.
A dream so vivid.
Where I tilted back my head, and my eyes traced the buildings as they stretched for ever up into darkness, with windows lit orange or yellow or white. Another to my side with slatted blinds, half-drawn curtains, or windows bright with flowers in vases or pictures in frames or potted plants resting on sills.
Around me, red jostled with green on street signs showing me where to go, or pink with blue on shopfronts, flashing neon letters or symbols, advertising cinemas or rooms or food.
A dream so real that as I strolled down the narrow streets, I could breathe in the smells of food drifting from restaurants and takeaways, could taste the sweetness on my tongue without knowing what food it might be, and I could run my hands through the steam rising from cookers and ovens and hotplates, condensation like dewdrops on my skin.
I could hear music blaring from bars as I passed, words I didn’t understand, rhythms thumping in my chest, and I watched people dancing in clothes of all sorts of colours and styles, and I felt the joy in their smiles.
It was magical.
And then I woke up.
I woke up in the depths of our winter; so dark I could barely see my hands in front of my face, so cold frost was forming in my hair.
I didn’t know buildings could be built that high and not fall over, or so many cars could fit on one road without crashing, or music could sound so alive, or clothes could be that bright, or food could be bought in shops and smell so delicious. It had been so real I expected the dew to be still on my fingers and the taste still on my tongue. But there was nothing.
I was sixteen, had never been allowed a permit from the government to leave our village. Didn’t know, had never seen, what lay over the hills and past the fields, or what was at the end of the road that stretched past us, that maybe three cars had driven along since I was old enough to know what a car was.
Maybe beyond us, I thought, in other villages, people have electricity to light their homes at night and the streets around them. Maybe they have enough fuel to keep the fire lit in winter, to stop the windows freezing up on the inside, and to keep the family warm enough so they don’t wake in the morning with lips that are blue and bones that are stiff. Maybe there are places like that somewhere here in North Korea. Maybe our capital, Pyongyang. Maybe that was the city I dreamt about.
I sighed. Maybe it’s a vision our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, has put in my head. Something He wanted me to see.
On the mat next to me, I heard my father’s covers and blankets move. “Another bad dream, Yoora?” His words disappeared into a yawn.
I rolled over to him. “A strange one,” I replied, and I described to him what I’d seen, with the best words I could summon, when so much of what I’d seen I had no words to describe.
“Do you think it could be real?” I whispered.
For a moment he said nothing. I listened to his breathing slow down and a cough catch in his throat, and I watched the tiniest reflection of light in his eyes as he shuffled over towards me. I felt his warm breath gentle on my face. “Yes,” he whispered in my ear. “Yes, it’s real.”
“Where? Further south?”
His hand took mine and rested it on his head, and I felt him nod slowly up and down.
“Our capital? Pyongyang?” I asked, amazement and excitement prickling at me. “Do you think, do you think that maybe, maybe, if we work hard enough, we’d be allowed to go there?”
