Air (or Have Not Have)

'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