“That’s you, Mama Coco?” Maya asked.

Mama Coco patted her hand. “ S’rae l’or, ” she whispered. “ Chhmuol toh. Tiny bird. Now you sing.”

Leo’s eyes were wide. “Me too! It’s singing, ‘ Chop, chop, eat your porridge !’”

“That’s me before the long walk,” Mama Coco said quietly. “Before I came here. I left my pteah behind, but I carried it in my mouth. Every Khmer word is a brick from that house.”

“ S’rae l’or, chhmuol toh, ” she sang softly, stirring a pot of rice porridge. “ Jasmine rice, tiny bird. ”

“ Pteah, ” she said. “It means ‘home.’ But it also means ‘the place where the fire never goes out.’ You feel it in your chest, not your head.”

“ Orkun, Mama Coco, ” Maya said. Thank you.

She handed Maya the photograph. “You are the keeper now. When I am silent, you will speak. You will say ‘ s’rae l’or ’ for the rice, ‘ phleng mưt ’ for the rain, ‘ pteah ’ for the place where the fire never goes out.”

Mama Coco smiled, and her face crinkled like a paper fan. She pointed to the steam rising from the pot.

They both froze. From the kitchen came a sound like wind chimes made of honey. It was the voice of their great-grandmother, Mama Coco.

“ Phleng mưt, ” she said. “Rain song. When my mother was a girl in Siem Reap, she said the rain sang a different tune for each person. For the farmer, it sang of growing. For the child, it sang of puddles.”

Mama Coco closed her eyes. Outside, the first fat drops began to fall, drumming on the tin roof. Tock. Tocka-tock.

Maya pressed her ear to the cardboard door of the fort. Inside, her little brother Leo was giggling. The fort was really just a blanket draped over Grandma’s old sofa, but to Maya, it was a ship sailing through a sea of carpet.

“Leo, shh! I hear something,” Maya whispered.

That night, Leo dreamed in puddles. And Maya dreamed of a wooden house on stilts, where a fire burned eternal in the hearth, and a girl with a silk skirt was waiting to welcome her home.