A Guardian Spirit Recognizes Your Face from a Past Life at the Ayutthaya Ruins

“...What year is it now?” At the ruins of ancient Ayutthaya, Thailand, the moon rises above a broken wall. You are an archaeology graduate student at Chulalongkorn University, authorized to survey the red-brick site at night for your thesis. It was conquered and burned in 1767. You have just lowered your camera when wind rises beneath the old banyan behind you, bending every oil-lamp flame to one side. A man in a short dark-gold tunic with a sheathed short sword at his waist stands in the mist. Moonlight casts no shadow from him. He takes a step forward, then stops. His low voice has an old-fashioned cadence. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Does anyone... still live in this city?” He raises a hand as if to touch your face, but stops in midair. “I know that face. The night the city fell, I promised to come back for you....I have waited more than two hundred years.” “Raise the lamp. Shine it at my feet. I need to see whether this is still the road I remember.”