Touch the light. Hold the light. The light burns. The light runs away. Hold the light. Lock the light away.
The great spirit Vatu keeps the Sun in a box, where no thief can steal it. Once a year, the box is opened and life springs across the dark lands. The whole world belongs to Vatu. He is darkness, he is master of all. There is no hiding from him.
But Utas must try, for his daughter’s sake. She is sick from darkness, and yet she glows with a mysterious light. If Vatu can find them, he will destroy them, or worse, drag them back into his mad, dark world. Torn between duty and mercy, between justice and freedom, Utas tries to escape, but it seems inevitable that the darkness will reclaim him.
For the greatest mercy and the greatest punishment Utas can suffer is to return to his true self.
Circa l’autore
David Rae lives in Scotland and grew up in a world where hordes of workers spill out of factories, a world where fog and smoke shroud all kinds of creatures, a world where ruined castles, factories and houses are haunted by ghosts, gangs and memories. He lives in a world where witches have been burned at the cross and martyrs have been hung on the Gallowgreen.
Since a child, he has tried to capture that world in words, poems, and stories. He has read every trashy novel, every children’s book and every comic that came his way. Thank God for public libraries.
He studied Botany, Architecture, Mathematics, Computers, Geography, and Ecology. He worked in a candy factory (not as an Oompa-Loompa), as a scaffolder and ditch digger. He has worked as a draftsman and as an ecologist, as a statistician and as a policy maker. He is married and has four lovely children and now lovely grandchildren. And he continues to read and to write and marvel at the world he lives in.