I knew better than to rely on miracles; I relied on sight, on the split-second wizz of purple before the bullet came, on the blue that glowed, soft and more deadly than water, the same colour that haloed the bodies of all the stupid people I could not see. I learned to point a gun at the sky before the noise of the helicopter broke through, before the bomb fell, before the buildings crumbled from shock and bodies burned.

I never wanted to see such a sight again.

The memory broke through, once, twice. In inoportatune moments, in dreams where the desert dust sheltered me. I travelled and bit out blood until I was good enough to walk through a battlefield and trust the blue at the edge of my vision. I walked and dreamed and when the nightmares came, Siam said it was okay to live.

But better by far, he told me, to have wanted it.

A miracle did not save Siam. I did not pray, even when I held the gun. It bit out fire and rage and bullets and did absolutely nothing. I thought for sure the gun would take on the colour of my rage, but afterwards it lay grey against my hand, immobile and cold. Just metal. It could have been twin to the one that ended Siam's life.

I did not lose my faith. Not in the life Siam raised me to inhabit, the one where he trained me to kill instead of hurt, the violence a promise to the idea that I deserved to live. If my sister had learnt to pick up a gun, if our parents hadn't allowed us to lock ourselves up with books and stories, would my family have lived? Or would I stare out at the world and not feel so dead inside?

I would always remember the way Siam's colour faded, his grey melting into the brown of his coat as his body cooled beneath my hands. It was not hard to hoist him into a grave but it was hard to leave it unmarked. I don't know him, his last name, or the labels he gave to home and family, if those things ever existed for him. There were no photographs in his pocket, just, only sometimes, names on his lips, half-formed things unconsciously mumbled in flurries of red, pink and gold. I used to watch them whirl, eddies of love I longed to grasp onto with my fingers.

I remembered breakfast tables and cheap dark drinks, swatting a children's menu from his hand with a scowl. I remember a scrap of cake for a date he didn't recognise, his western calendar not quite matching up to the one my family drew out for me as my birthday never quite rose up into visibility after they died. I remember oil lamps, his smile as I learnt to bear pain, whether it was from a fresh tattoo or from carelessly touching an oil lamp, the heat taunting my fingers with the illusion of light.

'Canaan; the promised land,' he said once with a smile that twisted, that mocked and curved, 'if only I could reach there. I guess I'll have to settle for making sure you get there, safe in one piece.'

I cannot remember if he said that before or after he named me.

Maria was my first miracle. The first person I saved because it was right and not because it would have been fulfilling some contract. She was soft; normal, the way I once was. I saw her fear when she saw the weapons in my room, her hesitation when I touched them, ruthlessly slick and with barely a shudder. But she never ran.

She sat with me, barely space between us and did not flinch when I looked at her. We sat in many places those precious few weeks, both under and above stone, in sunlight so she could taunt the red string between her fingers and make it shine crimson, like sand that glitters under daylight. Then we both stepped out of range and into darkness, into the shadows seeping beneath stone into my room, onto a bed where she could describe her photos, her fingers tracing out circles onto the duvet with a self-mocking smile. She never believed they would be any good, not even once.

I showed her where to step, where to walk, which alleys to avoid when looking for food. She was clumsy, stumbling into an imitation of my steps like a newborn kitten.

She was not used to my life and so I could not have kept her.

But I let her stay for as long as she needed, until she thought she could feel safe again. I never told her that her need was never as great as what I wanted. Perhaps I should have.

Maria was not just a single miracle. She was a repeating one. To this day I swear that when I uttered her name, a tendril of gold escapes. I never thought I could be similar to Siam, not like this.

Alphard missed Maria somehow. The spark from her gun never claimed Maria's life, though it left her blood on the floor. And I did not have to bury her, have to mar her grave with details she had freely given me.

I had loved Siam, even if he did not allow me his secrets. But I loved Maria even more, would have loved her even if she held back parts of her soul and denied me bits of her story, like the name of her sister or a shattered belief like the idea that her parents never loved her. Maria was hard and cracked in a way I had not realised before. Back before Siam, before my village lost its name, I had never doubted the love of my family. It was strange thought, that I had once been softer than Maria.

But her yellow still shone through.

One day, next year perhaps, I would have curled my fingers through her hand and watched her breathe. I would have thought these stray, simple things, like her face slack in sleep or the black line of an eyelash against the tip of her skin, all these would be miracles in themselves.

In another universe maybe.

But Maria pointed out colours only she could see, saw a world inside a marble, brought me ice-cream and reached for my hand when others had fled from it, fled from it for years. She asked to stay with me and my imagination flowed, teaching me what it would be like if I could only stop, stop like when I leant against my sister one dusty afternoon, heat through my nostrils as she crinkled the pages and read something I couldn't understand.

Maria gave me back my love for stories. But more importantly she didn't die because if it.

But she still could. So I left her behind, kept her sheltered in the white of a hospital as I tucked myself away with guns and a tense conversation with a lady in spectacles.

I could never have kept Maria. But I could set her free. The way Siam did for me.

I pointed at the plane. 'That's mine,' I said. And this time, I prayed.