Air (or Have Not Have)

CHAPTER 23

Sweat woke Mae up.

She sat up in the dark, suddenly wide-awake and gasping for breath. She had been dreaming of the Flood; she had heard it, the spreading crash of water and stone.

She listened. Everything was silent and still, but she was soaked with sweat.

The air! It was hot, hot as summer, as hot as those nights when you have to sleep outside. She heard a rustling in the eaves, like something breathing.

Erjdha Nefsi.

Mae threw off the covers and stood up, listening. Very faint under the sound of moving air, was a sound as if the hills were being tickled.

She switched on the light, and looked at the TV.

Forty-five degrees Centigrade.

'Wake up,' Mae told the TV. She threw on old jeans, rubber boots, and a light coat. She strapped on a rucksack filled with blankets and tins of food. She jerked the trapdoor out of its socket and dropped the bag down to the kitchen floor below.

'Siao!' she called. 'Siao, are you there?'

There was no answer. If Siao had gone down the hill, and was in a house or a cafe, he might be all right. If he was on the road when it hit… Mae did not have time for imaginings. She spun back around and sent an audio file.

'Bedri. It's forty-five Celsius, the Erjdha is breathing, and I can hear the meltdown. I don't know if it's Flood or not, but please tell people: if it is at the worst, we will need help. It's four-thirty a.m. now, and I need to store battery power, so I'm sending this off, and leaving. Don't bother replying, I won't be here. If it's bad, I'll be at Kwan's.'

Mae pushed the machine off, and lowered herself through the trapdoor, badly scraping her forearm. She could hear her breath rattling like gambler's dice. She dropped to the floor, and hauled back the curtains to Siao's alcove.

Old Mr Chung slept, quietly smiling. He smelled of rice wine. Mae called him, and shook him. 'Mr Chung-sir! Mr Chung!'

She dragged him blinking out of sleep.

'It's here, Mr Chung, it's here, the Flood – get up!'

He had fallen onto the bed fully clothed. Mae knelt and jammed his feet into string shoes. 'Come, Mr Chung, come!'

She rattled him out of the house, into the courtyard under the stars. The hot wind had blasted the sky clean; everything was hot and clear. She explained to Mr Chung that Siao was still down the hill, he must get to Mr Wing's Big House.

Then Mae pounded on the door of the Kens.

'Kuei! Kuei! Old Mrs Ken. Get up! Get up! Erjdha Nefsi!'

The window overhead was thrown open, wood clunked against the wall. Silhouetted against the whitewash was Mr Ken's mother, hissing.

'Go away, you madwoman. My son is asleep. Take your fancies and

go.'

'Feel the wind! Feel the air! It's hot; it's nearly fire. It… is… here!' Mae thought: I don't have time for this, or for you. 'Mr Ken. Ken Kuei! Wake up!'

It's come, said a voice. This is what it was like.

Mae began to feel a kind of panic. 'Ken Kuei! You said you would help!'

The air is like fire and the water moves the earth.

Mr Chung suddenly said, 'I'll be back.' The old man trotted away bowlegged towards the barn.

'Mr Chung, we have to go!'

Mr Chung's voice had an unexpected edge. 'I can't leave my tools!'

Oh, no! Mae held her head. She shouted to them all: 'We all have to leave here now! Our court is in a very bad position. Both rocks and water will wash here, nobody must stay here!'

And suddenly, Old Mrs Tung spoke, calling Mrs Ken by her childhood name: 'Ting! Do as you are told! No more nonsense! Even as a little girl, all you ever wanted to do was stay inside the house. I've told you and told you what happened last time. The Flood is here. Darling daughter, you… will… have to leave this house!'

At the window, Old Mrs Ken's face fell. Hot wind buffeted the shutters.

Someone touched Mae's arm, bringing her back. 'I'm here,' said Mr Ken.

Mae gasped, recalled to herself. 'She's with me. She's using my voice!'

Mr Ken put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. 'I will get your father-in-law to safety,' he promised.

'And your mother and the Okans.' Mae swung her bag higher up her shoulder.

Mr Ken smiled, amused. 'Is there anything else?' They started to walk towards the gate.

'Yes. Start yelling.'

' "Happy New Year"?'

Mae saw him smiling, moonlight making him look young and merry. Okay, she admitted. I love him.

Old Mr Chung returned with his bag of tools. He bowed and greeted Mr Ken sweetly. 'Happy New Year.'

Ken swung open the courtyard gate for her. His smile cracked wider and he started to bellow, as if in a child's game: 'Happy New Year! The Flood is here!'

Mae joined in. 'This is no joke! The snows are melting!'

He looked up into her face. 'You know don't you?'

That he loved her.

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, yes I do. Now, let's go!'

Mae turned left down Lower Street. 'Get everyone up to Mr Wing's!' she shouted again to them both, and began to run.

The air pulsed as if there was something, huge and hot and alive, breathing down the back of her neck. Mae shouted as she ran: 'Dragon's breath! Wake up. Wake up!'

Already, down the cobbled slope of Lower Street, water ran in a current. Her feet made plashing sounds and her thick boots clunked on the uneven stones. She tripped and knocked her wrist against the side of Mr Kemal's house.

Her plan was to get to the mosque, to use the PA to warn everyone. She turned up the slope towards Sezen's.

^'Inshallah!' gasped Mae.

In hot starlight she saw: Already the snow from this lower slope was gone.

Mae ran up the hill, slipping on a glossy surface of mud and moss. The ground creaked with water as if it were an overfull barrel. Where her feet did not shoot backwards out from under her, they sank into mud.

Mae shuffled sideways to one of the usual runoffs. As she had hoped, it was gravelled, swept clean. It was also ankle-deep in racing water. Mae struggled up the slope against the current.

'Sezen!' she shouted. 'Sezen. Flood!'

Ahead of her on the hillside, a light went on. The wet slope reflected electric light like a field of broken mirrors.

The door opened. 'Madam Chung?' said a hesitant voice. Hatijah leaned out of the doorway, her husband looming behind her.

Mae stopped and windmilled her arms for balance against the current.

Hatijah called, 'Sezen has already left. She goes to wake the people of the Marsh.'

'Oh! She is a good girl,' said Mae.

'She has become one,' said Hatijah.

'You! What are you doing? Get to Kwan's! Get moving, now! Those terraces will be full of water, the walls will break!'

'We wanted to wait for Sezen.'

Mae felt a familiar stab of exasperation. She struggled up and out of the ditch. 'Hatijah! Sezen is not your mother, for heaven's sake; you have other children, get them out of here, now, now, now! Sezen has packed your bags, I know, just take them and leave!'

Hatijah was weeping. 'We can't leave our goat,' she said.

Inshallah. Mae relented 'Of course you can't, it is all your family's wealth. But Edrem, please tell her, life is more important than money. Let the goat go, perhaps it can save itself.'

Edrem's silhouette, tall, skinny and slow, murmured to his wife: 'We must go.'

Mae started to struggle higher up the hill, to the Shens. She shouted as she walked: 'Edrem, I rely on you! You take the children, Hatijah the bags, okay? Okay? And leave your lights on. We will all need light!'

Mae struggled up the hill, leaning on her hands. The hillside was sheathed in water, a solid rippling sheet that was seasoned with tiny cutting flints. The stones sizzled against her fingers like fat on a stove. My God, the whole hillside is moving!

All around her, suspended in the air, was a sound like sighing, a rushing sound of water, in a hundred thousand streams. It was a terrible sound, huge and gentle at the same time, vast as a world. As if Mae had heard the world for the first time.

That's it, that's the sound.

Unexpectedly, the ground flattened and Mae stumbled forward. She was at the schoolhouse. Already the dusty playground was a polished lake, reflecting the children's swings. Water poured out from one corner of the school as if from the spout of a pitcher.

Mae waded to the door and pounded. 'Teacher Shen! Teacher Shen!'

The door seemed to bounce open.

Mae felt another hot breath, but not the Dragon's. Moist, weepy, there was Suloi, her face sticky with tears. 'He won't come, Mae,' she said, and shook herself into sobs.

Mae hugged her sister from the Circle. 'What do you mean?'

A voice out of the darkness, like the darkness, growled, 'There will be no Flood. It is foolishness.'

'Oh, Shen, don't believe me, but believe the water, look at the ground! Shen, please come!'

Something wavered in the darkness, as if it were coiled, legless.

'There will be no Flood.'

Suloi backed away. 'He will not leave.'

Mae pleaded: 'Shen! Come outside! You can hear it. The snows are melting!'

'And the snows will run off, as they have for two thousand years. Do you think those machines of yours can change the world?'

'Do you think you can hold back a Flood? How? By teaching it arithmetic?!' Mae's voice broke with fury.

The darkness, the despair finally uncoiled and stood up. It cocked a rifle. The gun clicked in the darkness.

'I will not have scandalous filth such as you telling my family what to do,' said Despair, who once had been called Happiness.

'Go, Mae,' whispered Suloi, and gave Mae an invisible, loving push.

Shen growled, 'We stay here where we belong.'

Mae pulled Suloi to her, hugged her, whispered in her ear, 'Run in the dark.' Then she pulled back and ran and called over her shoulder, 'Live!'

The hills were laughing.

There was a giggling sound, thousands of chuckles as the water shook itself over rocks, down gullies. It slapped its way across the rock faces of the terraces.

Mae skittered down the slope to the square box of the mosque that had the public-address system mounted on its gable. She came to the door. She rattled it. The sound beyond was hollow. It was locked.

Who locks a mosque? It's never been locked! Mae had calculated, she knew it would take three hours to rouse each house in turn. Mae was near tears. She had planned and planned, but she had never planned that the mosque would be locked.

She would have to run to Mr Shenyalar, the Muerain. He would have the keys.

At least it was downhill. She turned and let the water and gravity carry her.

Mae staggered and slid down the hill. She skittered through the space between the Alis' and the Dohs'. She got tangled in old rusting bedding that someone had discarded. The springs made a merry sproing sound as she pulled her feet free. She half fell onto the cobbles of Upper Street, and spun herself into the concave frontage of the house of the Doh family.

Mae shouted up at the shuttered windows, 'Old Mrs Doh, all Dohs, wake up, wake up, there is a Flood, there is a Flood!' She had danced with them only hours before. 'Please wake up!' New Year, and everyone will be asleep, drunk, exhausted, happy.

Mae spun away onto the bridge. The little river roared, enveloping the arch in mist that stroked Mae's face and danced happily into her lungs. Over the stone balustrade, moonlit rapids shot white and hot and fierce down the gully. Mae remembered the ducks, the geese. Already they were a memory, already washed away. Below, the village square looked like an ocean, all glinting waves.

On the other side of the bridge, there was a huge puddle. Even here on Upper Street, a pocket of the road was flooded. Mae plunged down from the bridge and water poured in over the tops of her boots. Even now, the village was still asleep, still dark.

'Flood! Flood!' she shouted. Suddenly a flashlight flared around the corner of the back of the Haj's house.

'Mae, this way,' said a voice. It was her brother. 'We've got Mother up at the Wings. I've just been down to Lower Street.'

'Ju-mei! I need to get to the Shenyalars'.'

'Good, this is the way, down here.'

Mae waded towards him, the water above her knees. Ju-mei reached forward and grabbed her arm. Together they threshed their way down the rocky gap between the house of the Haj and his neighbours. The alley was like a water garden, all ferns and waterfalls. Mae and Ju-mei fell into Lower Street as if plunging into a river.

The current nearly swept them away. It poured around the corner of Ju-mei's house, rucking up like bedding, white as sheets.

Across the street was the Muerain's tall stone house, with its bronze plaque. Clinging to each other, Ju-mei and Mae crossed the torrent. It made them trip downstream as if dancing. They crammed themselves into the porch of the al Gamas' house to brake. Holding on to the rough walls, they pulled themselves upstream, as if up a cliff.

Something crackled. Mae turned to see the Haj's straw outhouse spin out into the current and down into the square. The square was a lake. The village's one streetlight glowed golden on waves rocking against the front doors of the Kosals' and the Masuds'. The outhouse roof, like a straw hat, swirled away on the current. The surface of the water roiled as if full of serpents.

Ju-mei pulled Mae into the doorway of the Shenyalars'. He pounded; Mae howled.

'Muerain! Muerain Shenyalar! Oh please, please open. Please wake up! Oh, Muerain! Muerain!'

Why, why didn't they move? They were religious Karz, they did not drink, they did not celebrate the New Year, why didn't they hear?

'There is a Flood, Muerain, please wake up!'

From somewhere down in the valley came a terrible spreading crash, as if someone had dropped a dresser full of china. The sound of breakage rolled, settled and then shushed to a halt.

The small terraces below the village were falling, collapsing into the waters.

The houses of the Pins and the Chus. Where Sezen was?

Mae was spurred by terror. 'Shenyalar. Wake up! Oh please wake up!'

A shutter moved.

'Who is it?'

'Mrs Shenyalar, it is Chung Mae. Listen, did you hear that noise?'

'Yes, yes indeed.'

'The Flood is here! Mrs Shenyalar, can your husband come with me, can he come and open up the mosque, so we can use the public-address?'

'Wait there, Mrs Chung,' said the wife.

Ju-mei began to shout at the other houses. 'Mr al Gama! The Haj-sir! Mrs Nan!'

A light went on at Mrs Nan's.

'Mrs Nan! Get up, get your things – go!' Mae shouted at the light.

The door of the Shenyalars' opened.

'Oh, Muerain!' Mae cried in relief.

'Inshallah,' breathed out the Muerain. He had taken time, the foolish man, to dress in his religious robes. He saw the river and its surging current, and the new lake at the foot of the streetlight. He heard the roar. He turned and looked at Mae, and his fine, thin features said mutely: You were right.

'We have to tell everyone,' she said.

Unhurried, the Muerain strode back into his house. 'Wife! Get the children, get food, and go at once to Madame Kwan's.'

His wife called, 'Surely it is too soon to worry?'

'It is too late to worry. I order you, wife: Out of this house and up to the house of the Wings'!'

'What are you doing?' his wife asked.

There was a flurry of footsteps on stairs. 'My duty!'

At that moment, the entire village was plunged into darkness. The power went.

'Inshallah!'

'Husband!'

'Get to the Wings'. I go!' shouted Mr Shenyalar.

Mae wrestled with her backpack, and felt the rubberized surface of a waterproof flashlight.

'I have two,' she said, and passed him one. The light flashed on the wet walls like fairies in a play, dancing ahead of them.

Mae turned to her brother. She kissed his cheek. 'Thank you,' she said. 'Don't go down. Lower Street is lost. Go up to the Soongs', the Pings', and Mr Atakoloo. Yes?'

'My place is with you,' said Ju-mei.

'It has always been with me, brother. But it is also with your wife and neighbours. Please go?'

Ju-mei paused, and then, very deliberately, gave his sister a long, low bow of respect.

Then he turned, shouting, 'Go to Wing's, don't go on Lower Street!'

Mae shouted, for a Muerain could not lose dignity to that extent. 'Everyone up! The Flood is here! Everyone up!'

Mae and the Muerain fought the current back up the gap between the Haj and the Nan households. Overhead, the stars glinted with merriment, the hills roared, everything was comic. The little people were finally seeing who their master was.

The current on Upper Street had gained strength. It sounded now like a waterfall; the little lake had reached up into the house of Mr Ping, and its surface rippled as it sluiced its way out between houses.

The Muerain hoisted up his skirts to show long hairless legs. He reached back for Mae, and ran, holding up his skirts like a dancing showgirl. The stars laughed. Around their feet stones swirled like the shards of broken pots.

The Muerain ran up the cobbles of the bridge. Below, through the pursed lips of the bridge's arch, the river made a noise like a child blowing through its own spit. Mr Shenyalar and Mae cleared the top of the arch.

More like a stallion now, all in white, the Muerain plunged down into the cascades that swept around both sides of the Dohs' ancient house. His sandals were snatched away from him. The Muerain nipped and minced and hopped across the stones on tender feet. Ouch ooch eek ouch.

The stars clutched their sides, their tiny eyes narrowed, wet with tears of laughter.

Ahead of them was movement. Mae shone her torch.

Mr Ken was giving a piggyback ride as if at a party, Mrs Okan's arms around his neck. Mr Okan shuffled beside them, clinging to the edge of his wife's dress and murmuring to her.

Behind them came Sezen's two sisters; Edrem, carrying his youngest child; and Hatijah, who was carrying the goat. Its eyes were round and pink with terror.

The Muerain said, 'Hurry up to Kwan's. The bridge will not hold.'

'The current is terrible,' said Mr Ken. 'Mae, come with us.'

'Not yet.'

'Mae, do not be so foolish. Please!'

Mae said instead, 'Loan the Muerain your shoes.'

A moment's pause, the sense of it was seen, and Mr Ken kicked off his galoshes.

'Is your mother out?'

Kuei shook his head. 'My mother is packing!' The Muerain hopped on one leg, pulling on the shoe.

'Packing! Does she think it's a picnic?'

'I know!' Mr Ken began to run to gain momentum to get him and Mrs Okan up the steep slope of the bridge. 'I'll have to go back for her!' he shouted.

The goat blinked and kicked in Hatijah's arms. Mae and the Muerain ran.

They ran straight into the rusting bedding now washed into the roadway. Blindly they bobbed and bounded their way over the springs. On the moonlit hill, Sunni's house was dark.

Out onto the bare slope, all trails gone. The stars glistened on the sheen of water. Ahead of them the white walls of the mosque glowed.

They reached the door of the mosque. Mae waited, panting. The Muerain suddenly slapped his own forehead.

'I've left the key behind,' he said.

'You what?' Mae felt like the water – torn, broken, swept away.

The Muerain stood back, raised a leg, and kicked at the lock. He was tall, strong, a herdsman. With a splintering sound and a shuddering of wood, the door chuckled its way backwards.

The floor was flooded. He grasped the wooden railing of the prayer stall, splashed across the floor to a staircase, and ran up the steps to the tower. Mae ran after him. The flashlight licked hungrily over the back of the speaker down to the batteries. Mr Shenyalar bent and kissed the batteries, tasting them to see if they still worked. He flicked a switch; there was amplified crackling. He began, low and dark, to sing.

Mae grabbed his arm.

'Muerain. Please!'

The flashlight glared angrily at her.

'I'm sorry, Muerain-sir. But most people sleep through a call to prayer.'

Pause.

'They turn over in their beds.'

Pause.

And his voice, rich and deep, said, 'The Flood has come. For our sins, our godlessness, the Flood is upon us.' It was strange. Mae could hear his voice, which was so close to her, roll and fall away all across the valley.

Then he said, 'Follow the advice of Mrs Chung. Take food, take blankets, and go to Mr Wing's. Do not go on Lower Street. Already you will not get past. Go on Upper Street. Now. The Flood is here.'

He turned.

'You go,' the Muerain said.

She paused. Somehow she had pictured herself calling the faithful.

'You must go and wake people. I can stay here.'

'Not too long,' Mae warned him.

'I have a duty,' Mr Shenyalar said. 'Go.' He passed her back the second flashlight. She turned and the Muerain's voice ballooned out over the sound of the water. 'The Flood has come.'

Mae staggered down the steps and then had to lean over. Acids shot like venom up from her stomach and out of her mouth. The fumes were acrid; she had difficulty breathing. Her throat was raw and sore. She knelt down and scooped up some of the water and drank.

Where could she do the most good? Sezen would have roused the plain, the houses in the low south. It was Sunni who had farthest to go; she was high, but next to the river. She would need to go down to the bridge to cross. Mae looked across and saw Sunni's house, high and alone. She blinked, and thought she saw it move on its foundations.

So Mae ran to save Sunni.

The hill between the high mosque and the high house was no longer flowing with water. It was pouring mud; the mud stirred around her like porridge, but porridge with teeth, for it was also full of stone. I will have to give up soon, Mae thought, I will have to save myself.

Already.

Another voice spoke, unbidden:

The hillsides dissolve like sugar in tea. That undermines the terraces and they fall. The houses fill with mud or are crushed by stone.

Ahead, the river leapt up, white and snarling. The river had become a kind of dragon, rearing up over its banks, leaping, challenging, and opening its maw.

Mae thought of Sunni, of their delicate chats in the ice cream parlour, of adjusting each other's hair. The stones nibbled her ankles, the mud tugged playfully. A boot was pulled free from her foot. Mae forged on, against what was becoming a tide of mud.

Sunni's high stone front step was already an island. Mae pounded on the door. She shouted. The river was louder.

The door was not locked. Mae ran into the darkened house. It looked so calm and normal and safe, with its rack of kitchen pots and new pool table in the living room.

'Sunni! Sunni! Mr Haseem! Wake up!'

Mae ran up the stairs – narrow, steep, unfamiliar. She had never been upstairs. She bashed her head on a beam. There were many doors. Which one? She pushed her way into a bedroom full of snores and reeking of booze. Starlight through the window fell over the bed, making chessboard squares.

'Wake up, wake up!' Mae cried.

Sunni jerked and sat up and then wailed and covered herself with the bedding, her face full of fear.

'What are you doing here? Get out!' Sunni wailed.

Her husband snored, fully clothed, still in his boots.

'Sunni, the Flood is here.'

'Get out of my bedroom!'

'Sunni, please, just listen. The snow has melted. Listen to the river.'

'Madwoman!'

Sunni was in a rage. She tried turning on a light. Nothing, no power. She got up and threw on a robe and stormed towards Mae and pushed her. 'Madwoman, get out of here!'

Mae pushed her back.

'Ow!' shouted Sunni, scandalized. 'Husband, wake up, she will kill us both!'

'Stupid cow, I don't know why I bother with a woman with cowshit instead of brains!' Mae raged, and seized Sunni by the wrist and pulled her out of the room.

'Husband! I am assaulted. Help!'

Mae's strength surged out of panic and anger, and Sunni was dragged to a corridor window.

'There,' said Mae.

Outside, the river was full and white. It filled the gully; it was pouring all around the bridge. It hauled itself over the top walls of Lower Street and down, a waterfall now. Under the steaming moon, they saw the entire valley. It glittered like a sea.

'My God,' whispered Sunni.

'See! See!' raged Mae. 'Who is the madwoman now!'

'It's terrible.'

'You are nearly dead! The hill outside this house is moving, whole and entire.'

There was a sharp breath; Sunni spun into the dark, wisps of white twirling after her, and went back to her husband. 'Wake up! Wake up!' Sunni shook Mr Haseem's bright-red face by the ears. She looked back at Mae.

'I know him when he is like this. He won't wake up,' she said.

'Leave him,' said Mae.

'Oh, you would say that – you hate him.'

Mae limped forward. 'I don't, Sunni, but it is too late for all but final things. Do you want to die with him?'

Sunni looked at her, blankly.

'It's come to that. If he doesn't wake up now, you either love him enough to die with him, or you go with me now. Now!'

'You hear her? You hear her?' Sunni shouted. She slapped Faysal hard on the face. He snorted.

'Wake up!' She slapped him again. He turned over. Sunni said to Mae, 'Okay, let's go.'

Mae turned and clattered down the steps.

'Don't hit your head on the beam,' Sunni said. Too late. Mae's eyes watered a second time.

Sunni grasped two tins of food as she soared through the kitchen.

Out into moonlight.

'Okay, we're together,' Sunni said. 'If one of us goes, the other tries to pull them free, but only for so long. We promise each other, ah. We save ourselves, but we try to help the first.'

'Right,' said Mae. 'But I'm going to Lower Street.'

'Madwoman!' said Sunni, again.

'I have to see if Siao has come back, if Mr Chung got out, if Sezen is okay!'

'Okay, but I'm not coming with you,' said Sunni.

'At last you are talking sense.'

'It will make a change, I admit,' said Sunni. The moving earth was unstable. Both of them fell into the mud. They thrashed their way to their feet, and held each other up.

'The flashlight!' said Sunni.

'I've got it, it's covered in mud.' Mae wiped it on her coat, and the light shone dimly again.

She pointed the light ahead.

On one side of the Dohs' house, the river had risen up. On the other, mud was mounting the back of the house like an unwanted lover. Mae and Sunni would have to cut down through the gap between the Dohs' and the Alis'. There was no other way down. Mud and water carried them down into Upper Street.

At some point the calling of the Muerain had fallen silent.

'Zeynap,' panted Sunni, thinking of her friend Zeynap Ali. They tumbled together onto the street. Mae shone the light. The doorway of the Alis' house was open.

'They're out,' said Mae.

From inside the house of the Dohs came yells and shouts. Mae cried, 'Dohs! I have a flashlight.' She ran. Inside the kitchen Young Miss Doh was flinging food into bags amid unwashed glasses and crumbs.

'Go upstairs, get my parents down!' Miss Doh raged – as if Mae were stupid, standing still.

Mae turned and ran up the stairs. In the upper corridor, Old Mrs Doh spun into the flashlight beam, waving her arms as if fighting cobwebs.

'This way!' said Mae.

'Who's that?' wailed Old Mrs Doh.

'Chung Mae.'

'What are you doing here?'

'Trying to help. These are the steps. Come on.'

Mrs Doh felt like a loose bunch of sticks in strong wind. She shook. 'What,' she said. Not even a question. Mae passed her to Sunni at the foot of the stairs.

'Here we are, dear,' said Sunni, as if it were a party.

Mae turned and ran through each of the rooms. She heard the river's roar. She heard a creaking, in the walls, in the wooden beams, and she felt the weight of the mud leaning against the house.

'This house is going to go!' she shouted to anyone who could hear her. She went from bedroom to bedroom. The good fairy of the flashlight blessed the walls of each room.

In the last of them, Old Mr Doh stood, sobbing. He was trying to button his shirt and could not.

Mae imitated Sunni. 'Oh, good Mr Doh. This is Mrs Chung. It's time to go.'

He flung off her hand, impatient, sobbing, still fighting his way into his best shirt.

'No, no,' she cooed, and laughed. 'You look wonderfully elegant. Come down now.'

'My wife,' he said, dazed.

'She's waiting.'

The whole house groaned and listed forward.

'Mae!' screamed Sunni, from the street outside.

Mae simply seized him and pulled.

'Oh, oh,' he said, fighting the dark. She hauled him towards the stairs. The walls suddenly snapped forward, leaning, dust puffing out where the floorboards joined them. Everything was looser underfoot. She pulled him down the stairs, he lost his footing, and they skidded together in the dark, slammed vengefully by gleeful wooden steps, until they both tumbled into the kitchen.

'Leave me!' he said. He started to fight Mae, the light careering over the walls. Someone entered, seized him, and pulled. Out they all went, clattering against chairs, slipping on oil spilled from bottles, as if all the contents of the house had been upended. In the street, the Dohs waited.

'I told you he was not outside,' raged Miss Doh, to the others. 'It took Chung Mae, as always.' Miss Doh pushed the old man, turned in the darkness, seized Mae, and pushed her tongue into Mae's mouth.

'In case one of us dies,' Miss Doh said, and darted back.

All the world was careering like the light; the stars themselves seemed to threaten to fall.

Over the sound of water Mae heard a grinding rumble. She turned and saw headlights trailing up the road. Against the lights she saw water gushing up against tyres.

Siao, she thought. That could be Siao.

'You go on,' Mae said to Sunni.

'Where are you going, fool?'

'Back home.'

'Okay.' Sunni was suddenly in front of her. 'Mae. You were right,' she said. Mae began to move. Sunni gripped her. 'You heard me say that, didn't you? You were right!'

'Sunni! Yes. I heard. Go!'

'You go! And come back quickly!'

Nothing else was said.

Mae ran past the backs of the houses of the Hos, the Matbahsuluks and the Kemals. She held on to the corner of Mr Kemal's house to wrench herself around into Lower Street.

A sound like applause. If you hear it above you, you are dead.

This is it, Mae; one check on the house, and then you go yourself.

Her old house glowed white, like a cake under the stars. In front of it rested one of Mr Pin's old vans, empty and dark. The courtyard door was open. Mae ran in.

Her courtyard was knee-deep in mud.

'Siao? Siao?'

Mae shone the light. The door to the barn was shut firmly, mud already pushing against it. Across the surface of the mud, rivulets of water flowed. If there were no one here, she would run.

From inside Mr Ken's house someone wailed, 'I can't get out!' It was Old Mrs Ken.

Above them something hissed, like water on a skillet.

'The terraces are going!' Mae screeched. And she felt a click.

I have been here before, she thought.

Mrs Ken began to pound on the inside of the kitchen door, the weight of mud pushing it shut.

'The window. Break the window!' Mae called. She waded forward. Mud was a slow and heavy evil. It sucked at her feet, and held her back like glue. She could not advance. 'I can't get any closer.'

A chair was punched through the glass, which sparkled like snow, in the air on the liquid earth.

'Mae!' someone called, from by the courtyard gate. Mae turned and it was Kuei. He surged forward, pushing through the mud up to his waist. 'Mother! Mother!' He jerked, thrashed, tossed himself from side to side, rocking through the mud towards the broken window. Suddenly the mud heaved him forward and off his feet.

For the first time the thought came to Mae: We've left this too late. We could die.

A head, arms, then legs came through the kitchen window. 'Oh. Oh. Kuei! Help me out!'

The mud gripped Kuei and held him fast. His mother was out of reach.

'Kuei,' called another man. 'Walk on this board.'

Siao? Mae turned. Three men were carrying the lid from the coal-bunker.

There was Siao.

And there, helping him, was Joe. Joe! Where? How?

The three of them flung the broad plywood lid on top of the mud under the window.

'Jump down onto it. Maybe it will take your weight for long enough. Try to walk forward to us.'

'Mother,' Kuei said. 'Just fall forward. I'll catch you.'

Old Mrs Ken without another word pulled herself through the jagged window frame, and fell gently forward onto the raft. It listed down into the mud and she scuttled forward towards her son's hands. Kuei grabbed her and pulled her forward. Joe and Siao rocked forward and pulled as well. Kuei cradled his mother, who juddered out a single sob.

'Mae!' demanded Siao. 'What are you doing here!'

'Trying to find you!'

A current of mud pushed them back away from the gate, like some kind of living thing, a slug.

'How do we get out through this?' Joe despaired.

Mae remembered her washing line, strung across the courtyard. 'This way,' she said, flashing her good fairy light along the rope. Then she reached up and began to pull herself along it, through the mud.

Mr Ken said, 'Okay, Mama, pull, like Mae says.'

All of them seized the rope and pulled themselves forward. Mae turned at the gate, and shone the light on them.

There they were, her three men: her husband, her lover, and Siao. She looked at Siao's steady face. 'I got a message at the Teahouse,' he said. 'Joe had got to the Desiccated Village.'

Joe looked up at Mae, and then down, quickly, in shame.

Did Mae hear applause?

She turned to the open door, not daring to breathe, and looked behind.

There was a sound of delight – massed clapping from the eastern slope. The sound had a shape, a shape like a blade, sharp at one end, but widening behind. A wedge of the walls had fallen.

'That's it!' she keened, her voice box tight, wet.

Ssssh, said all the stones. They trickled like water, made a sound like water, were borne by it and their own weight down the hillside, one collapse knocking into the terrace below, catching it, knocking it free. Mae fought her way to the street and, glinting in the moonlight, she saw it, a flow of rocks on the eastern side of the bowl.

A river of stone.

'Come on!' she screeched again.

She looked behind her wildly; Ken and Joe were up to their ankles, and pulling Mrs Ken free.

Mae fought forward and pulled.

Then the applause started on the hill directly above them.

It was so slow, the fall of stone. Above them on the hill, a terrace wall turned sideways, grumpily, forced to move by the weight of stone settling on top of it. All of it slumped forward towards the school, to Sezen's.

They would not be able to get back to Upper Street.

'We've got to go this way,' said Mae.

They all ran. Mae shone the light. Doors left open, doors closed, Mae found she no longer cared who had managed to escape. As if something were jamming needles into her ears, there was a terrible sensation, a shivering in the air, in the earth itself, that was not quite a noise. It was something inside her head.

There was another sigh, in front of them this time. The hills groaned with relief, as if finally able to let loose their bladders and bowels. Three houses only, and they would come to the square.

The beam of light teased them, showing them glimpses of the flood. The square had indeed gone. Most of the Kosals' house had collapsed. The western corner of it still stood, but the rest was spread as rubble across the new lake. A chair stood on the stone. Beyond the rubble, the river roared.

'We can't get across,' said Mr Ken.

'We could try climbing the rubble,' Joe said.

'Just beyond it would be the gully. We would just disappear into it.'

'Let's go back,' Old Mrs Ken pleaded.

'The house will be buried,' said Mae.

There was grinding, as if the sky itself were being milled, as if the hill were peppercorns – and in the light of the moon and stars they saw the bridge above them come away from its foundations.

The bridge heaved up and shrugged forward and skidded down the slope with a fall of earth and stone, down from Upper Street. There was an explosion of water, great white shooting jets of it. Wooden beams spun upwards into the air. A tangle of roots rose up, snagged itself, whiplashed down. The One Tree had fallen. The bridge moved down the hill. The bridge settled, still upright, leading nowhere.

Another crash spread out just above them. The Dohs' house would have finally gone.

One of her men jerked her. Which one? All of them moved into a veil of water. It pummelled their heads. It tried to drive them down onto the ruins of the Kosal house. They had to climb up a broken wall of stone. Someone reached down for her. She looked up into his face. It was Joe's face, looking worn, handsome, and sad. But not slow -fast, lean, and as awake as he had been when he was the leader of the young men. He hoisted her up.

First they climbed up the Tree. They walked along its ancient oaken trunk, all rough creases.

And then walked as if nothing were awry, across the old bridge. A waterfall thundered next to them, scented with earth and the mineral smell of freshly melted snow. A beautiful river huge and green washed under them and down onto a valley that was a sea. The Tuis' house stood above the water, its upper storeys only. Otherwise, the southern wing of the village was simply submerged. Kizuldah looked like a seaside town, as if it had always been that way, with a breakwater of stone.

Lower Street fell away below them to the west, and the hillside was flowing across it. Everything was moving: rocks, shrubs, earth, as if in migration. The earth looked like a herd of buffalo going to a lake to drink.

'Oh! Oh,' sobbed Mrs Ken. 'Everything's gone!'

They had to jump down from the bridge, twice the height of a man, into swiftly flowing water. The current slammed into Mae, taking her breath and her strength. One of her men caught her; she caught him; they both caught Mrs Ken and whoever was holding her. Together they pulled each other up onto the street that was gushing water, white rapids over the cobbles. Cobbles were solid underfoot.

They were going to live. They ran up the hill towards Kwan's.