Air (or Have Not Have)

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.