The Cave: The Inside Story of the Daring Thai Cave Rescue
Liam Cochrane
ABC Books: 2018
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The monk sat deep in trance on a steel table on the muddy operations site near the mouth of the Tham Luang cave. He was praying to spirits for a recent break in the rain to last, so rescuers could expand their search for the missing boys. In the light of a small fire he glowed orange in the darkness; against the rattling machines behind him he looked positively surreal.

His mind was travelling through another world, where spirits command the rain and restless ghosts inhabit the earth. And in some obscure subterranean corner of that world, trapped by ancient rocks and rising water, sat thirteen souls, seemingly destined in local lore to be victims of a vengeful spirit.

It was the spirit of a beautiful princess who had once lived beyond the mountains in a Burmese kingdom ruled by her ruthless father. There she fell in love with a lowly stable boy, with whom she was soon to have a child. But the king forbade the affair and the couple fled. They made for the mountains of Thailand, where they took refuge in a cave. But the king was tireless in his vengeance and sent soldiers to find them. One day when the stable boy went out to look for food, the soldiers caught and killed him. On finding her slain lover, the heartbroken princess drew her long, sharp hairpin and stabbed herself in the head. Her fallen body became the Nang Non mountain, named after her, and her blood the river that runs through the cave within it.

• Tags: George Styllis, Issue 16, Liam Cochrane, Thailand