one spot: pinks and greens, blues and golds. The ripples vanished from sight, scurrying into the ground. They came back in blotches of solid colour, spreading like inkblots but not mixing together. The colours flickered and pulsed, then settled down into the same muddy red tones as the tank’s surroundings.
‘We should go now,’ Geoffrey declared.
‘We can’t leave him.’ All the same, Sunday stood up. Geoffrey stopped where he was, glad that his sister had finally seen sense. He made a gallant effort to lean into the slope, ready to offer his hand when she came back within reach.
But Sunday was behaving strangely now. ‘This hurts,’ she said in a slurred tone, and made to touch her forehead.
‘Come up here,’ he said. ‘We should go home now.’
Sunday, still balanced on the tank’s sloping flanks, looked at him. Her whole body was shaking with tiny but rapid movements. She was trying to say something.
‘Sunday!’
She fell backwards, off the tank and down the slope. She hit the earth and rolled, all tangled limbs and bouncing hat. She came to rest at the bottom of the hole, where it was waterlogged, with her arms and legs spreadeagled, face-down in the mud.
For a long moment, all Geoffrey could do was stare. He wondered if she had broken any bones. Then, dimly, he realised that his sister might not be able to breathe.
He crept sideways, crossing the edge of the landslide and returning to where the ground was still firm and covered with grass and bushes. He had enough presence of mind to lift the cuff to his mouth and press the thick stud that allowed him to speak to the household.
‘Please!’
Memphis answered quickly, his voice deep, resonant and slow: ‘What is it, Geoffrey?’
Words tumbled out of him. ‘Please, Memphis. Me and Sunday were out exploring and we found this hole in the ground, and the rains had made the earth slide down, and there was a tank sticking out.’ He paused for breath. ‘Sunday tried to help the boy inside. But then she got a headache and fell off the tank and now she’s on the ground and I can’t see her face.’
‘Just a moment, Geoffrey.’ Memphis sounded impossibly calm and unsurprised, as if this development was no more or less than he had anticipated for the day. ‘Yes, I see where you are now. Go to your sister and turn her over so that she is lying on her side, not her face. But be very careful climbing down. I will be with you shortly.’
Something in Memphis’s matter-of-fact response helped Geoffrey feel less frightened. It felt like it took an age, but at last his boots were in the same waterlogged ground and he was able to squelch his way over to his sister.
She didn’t have her face in water – it was pressed into a raised patch of dry earth, with her mouth and nose unobstructed – but she was still quivering. Suds of foam bubbled between her lips.
Something buzzed in the air above them and Geoffrey tugged up the brim of his hat. It was a whirring machine no larger than the tip of his thumb.
‘I see you,’ Memphis said, speaking from Geoffrey’s cuff. ‘Now do what I said. Turn your sister over. You will need to be very strong.’
Geoffrey knelt down. He didn’t want to look at Sunday too closely, not when she was quivering and foaming.
‘Be brave, Geoffrey. Your sister is having some kind of seizure. You must help her now.’
He set the wooden aeroplane down on the ground, not minding that the mud dirtied the red paintwork. He worked his hands under Sunday’s body and tried to shift her. The violent quivering alarmed him.
‘Use all your strength, Geoffrey. I cannot help you until I arrive.’
He groaned with exertion. Perhaps she jolted in such a way as to aid his efforts, but with a lurch she finally came free of the mud and was no longer face-down.
‘Geoffrey, listen carefully. For whatever reason, there is a problem with Sunday’s head, and her cuff does not appear to be responding correctly. You must tell it what to do. Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two red buttons, one on either side. You must press them both at the same time.’
Their cuffs were similar, but his didn’t have those two red buttons. They had only come after her tenth birthday, which meant they had something to do with the things the neuropractors had put into her head, the things he didn’t have yet.
He lifted her arm, fighting to hold it still, and tried to get his thumb and forefinger around the cuff. It was hard. His hand wasn’t big enough.
‘What will happen, Memphis?’
‘Nothing bad.’
The red buttons were much stiffer to press than the blue ones on his cuff. After a moment of panic he realised that he would need to use both hands. Even then it was hard. At first, he must not have been pushing them firmly enough because nothing happened. But he tried again, applying all his strength, and with miraculous suddenness, Sunday’s seizure stilled.
She was just lying there.
Geoffrey sat by her, waiting. She was breathing, he could see that. Her eyes were closed now, and although she was less animate than when she had been standing up on the tank and looking at him, he felt in some indefinable way that his sister had returned.
