It rained and it rained and it rained.
The shabby frontier polis of Gythion grew hodge-podge on a mesa isolated by gullies and gulches of piled clay and debris weathered off the Upper Plateau. Eleven months out of the year, Gythion’s people descended their mesa under the hot sun, turning down the track to Turtamos, or over to Antinoesis, or into the plains to Thyatira, fording a thin brassy trickle of water in the arroyo. In late summer, heavy rains swept the Plateau face. Then, the barren, dry gully lands boiled with red, muddy chaos. The mesa became an island accessible only by hopper.
The cliffs and spires and rugged valleys of the Badlands slouched beyond the plunging waters, and the towering slopes of the Plateau ranged beyond in the north as far as you could see, east and west, eight kilometers high.
Lonely traders took the trails by mule north in dry weather. Today, a sea divided Gythion from the Badlands.
Sriyani couldn’t decide if being stuck on an island excited her or frightened her. Maybe she liked it better when it was desert. She walked the trail to the switchback, as far as she was permitted to go, and she took her brother Senarath. He lay on the edge of the road looking down, heedless of mud. She stood with their umbrella, trying to stay dry.
“Wow,” he said. “Look at the waves! Look at the foam! Our house could float away in that!”
“It looks like a river of curry. Yuck.”
They watched the yellow, russet, and gray foam boiling against the cliffs.
“Hey! Something’s in it,” Senarath said. “Look!”
He pointed. She squinted. “A branch?”
“From what? No trees up there.—Oh, it’s a barrel!”
“No, it’s too big.”
The children leaned further. The flotsam tumbled and spun, disappeared, bobbed up, and struck the cliffs. An eddy caught it and swept it into a cleft in the mesa.
“It’s a boat,” Senarath said, edging out on a projecting rock.
It was an odd boat, short, wide, deep, tossed lightly on the cataract.
“Betcha it sinks.”
“Something’s in it,” Sriyani said.
They lay there watching it bob and dip, battered between projecting slabs.
“It’s a kid,” Sriyani said. She knelt and gripped the rock tight with one hand, umbrella in the other, her mouth open.
“No!”
“Yes, look. I can see her face.”
“How do you know it’s a girl? Could be a boy!”
“Come on.” She jumped to her feet.
“Whoa, where are you going?”
“Closer.”
Senarath followed. “Mum says this is as far as we go.”
“We can still see the switchback,” Sriyani said reasonably. “We’re not near the water. And it’s been going down for three days.”
Senarath wasn’t reluctant, and he tagged along. Their coveralls were already red with mud from the knees down, and their boots were clogged with it. They’d take a shower when they got home, so more mud and water was no burden on him. Still, the huge crashing waves chewing the cliffs…intimidated.
“Imagine how she feels,” Sriyani said. “Ohmigosh.” She leaned over the road’s edge again, folding the umbrella and passing it to him. The face, meters down, looked up, mud-spattered. The little girl’s mouth (Sriyani was certain it was a girl) opened and shut, but if she shouted, Sriyani couldn’t hear her. The boat jerked. Sriyani gasped—it almost broke free—settled back. Slammed back.
“What’s she doing in a boat in that?” Senarath said.
Sriyani sat and hung her legs over the fissure into boiling, flooded darkness. The boat settled in the cleft six meters below or so, rattling left and right. “I could climb down to her.” She hesitated, looking at the places she’d put her hands and feet. Like any Gythion kid, she’d scaled the mesa in fair weather but not on wet, muddy rocks.
Now Senarath was alarmed. “Nah, you’ll die. Let’s run find Dad!”
Senarath studied the boat, banging, its prow jammed among ledges usually forty meters above the gully bed. “No time,” she decided and started descending. “Stay here!”
“Sri!” he cried, anguished.
The rocks were slippery. She wedged herself between them, elbows, knees, hands, boot toes. Above her, she saw Senarath’s wide-eyed face, fingers flexing as if imagining climbing after. Don’t you dare, she thought. Holding on, she looked down. The tiny figure clung to the bottom of the boat, mouth working. The girl was wrapped in wet, mud-stained cloth.
“I’m coming!” Sriyani yelled. “I’m coming!”
Twice, she thought the boat would be ripped away. Twice, it settled back. The figure lay inert until Sriyani was close enough to reach a slender brown hand. “I’m here!”
Rag-wrapped fingers grabbed hers. The girl rolled to her knees, running with dissolved clay. The boat wobbled and bobbed on the cold, boiling foam. Sriyani’s heart hammered. “How’m I gonna get you out?” She jammed her bootheels in the cleft, gripping the rock face with one hand, and tugged at the girl, hoping she’d let go of the little shell’s frail gunwale. Sriyani did not know much about boats, but she thought it looked more like a hollowed-out gourd. Maybe it would break.
“Come on!”
A perilous instant, the other child hunched in the bottom. The deep slice in the mesa’s face focused a megaphone of flood and sound and chaos at her, a disconcerting pandemonium. The hand Sriyani held trembled. Sri looked up at Senarath and then at the other child. “Gotta pull you,” she said into the maelstrom and yanked. Hard.
The girl leaped, almost grasshopper-like. Sriyani wrapped an arm around her, heels slipping—caught herself—
The disburdened boat sprang on the ruddy scud, caught a wave, then was sucked away.
“Come on!” Sri cried. “Come on!”
Out of the boat, the girl was more confident. She clung wetly to her rescuer a moment, heaving with breath inside her caked wet windings, then climbed on her, past her, heading with determination towards Senarath.
The two children ascended, fingers in handholds, Senarath shouting encouragement. When the girl from the boat reached the top, she hung, panting, and Sri’s brother pulled her the last half meter.
“Sri!” He put out his hand. Gasping and exhausted, weighing kilos more with mud in her pockets and boots, she let him drag her to lie, coughing, in the road.
The rain washed her face as she stared at the gray sky, her black hair spreading in the red mud.
“Dad’s gonna be mad,” she said. “How’s Mum gonna get this coverall clean?”
“Tcha!—you’re a hero. You saved her, Sri!” He danced with the umbrella.
“Yah. Yah, I did.” She rolled over. The little girl was no bigger than Senerath. “How’d you get out there? Ohmigosh, come on. Can you walk?”