The little girl could walk, and she and Sriyani hobbled, rock-battered and cramped, with Senarath through the cutting and to the mesa’s top. It was big, kilometers across, with fields and orchards spread out around the little town’s rough grid of buildings and streets and ragged shade trees. It connected to the Badlands and the rest of the Plateau-edge by a long, slow saddle-back now underwater.
Their house was close. Mum, in the collective fields pulling the last of the turnips with the other women, saw the disreputable figures trudging the road.
“Sriyani!” she shouted, and “Senarath!”
She came running, mud flying off her boots, and other women came after, kerchiefs and shawls wet with the slow drip from the sky.
“What in the world have you done?”
“There was a girl in a boat—“
“Sri got her out! I helped pull her up!” Senarath brandished the umbrella.
“You went to the water?”
“She would’ve drowned,” Sri said.
“We told you—“ Mum looked at the little girl, shivering in her rags. The girl crouched in the muddy lane, knees jutting up as high as her ears, fingers digging into the regolith slurry and gravel.
“Oh, my heavens,” Mum said and picked the child up. “Whose are you?—Ana, run to the nomarch’s office and let them know a child fell into the flood.” She tried to wipe the girl’s face, but it was caked and bruised. “Why don’t I recognize you? Are you from off the mesa? Oh, my god—“
“She was in a boat,” Sriyani repeated.
“A boat! Get the nurse too, Ana!” she shouted after the woman. “Let’s get you out of these rags. Your father,” she said, “is going to kill both of you. We told you not to go near the water.”
Behind their house, a rooftop tank supplied a shower. In good weather, it was sun-warmed, but in wet seasons, it had to be heated to lukewarm by an electric coil. The little girl tolerated the chilly shower and the gentle wiping and scrubbing.
Mum brought one of Senarath’s old coveralls that hadn’t been shared back to the collective, and a towel, and surveyed the situation.
“My,” she finally said.
Sri sat back on her heels.
“Yah, I know,” she said. She hung up the ochre-stained facecloth.
“Well,” Mum said, “let’s get her dressed.”
The clothes fit poorly, and no shoes would, so they put her inside by the heater with a cup of water, which she greedily drank. The nurse arrived shortly and had to sit down.
“What’s happened to her?” she asked.
The children eagerly told her, but the girl herself squatted with her cup.
“She’s blind,” the nurse said when they were done. She sat cross-legged on the floor and took the girl’s hand. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
Blind or not, the girl turned her face to her. The nurse bit her lip but squeezed the hand and laid it on her knee. “I’m Nurse Vanderbilt.” She touched the child’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
“Kho,” the child said.
“Where are you from, Kho?” Sri asked, sitting by the nurse.
“Where can she be from?” Mum said.
“There’s settlements up the Plateau edge,” the nurse mused. “She was in a boat?”
“Like a hollow gourd,” Sri said, hands describing it. “Really small, really floaty.”
Kho turned her face to Sri. Sri felt…or heard…a tingling patter across her skin as Kho moved her eyeless face back and forth. Sri raised a hand and felt the half-sound pattering on her fingers.
“Are those scars?” Mum asked. “Did she ever have eyes? I don’t even see—”
“I don’t know,” Nurse Vanderbilt said. “I don’t…think so. I don’t know where they would go…”
“She’s really pale,” Senerath said.
“She needs to eat,” the nurse said.
Mum scooped some turnip out of the pot on top of the stove. Kho—no, watched wasn’t the right word. But she turned her face towards Mum, and took the spoon and the bowl unerringly, as if she could see it. She seemed to look in the bowl, then put some of the mashed turnip into her mouth.
“My,” Mum said again.
“She has a lot of teeth,” the nurse said, shaky.
“She likes turnip!” grinned Senerath. “She can have all of mine!”
Sri sat next to Kho, felt the stroking tingle pass across her again. She touched Kho’s knee. “I’m Sri,” she said. “Sri!”
Kho’s hands were broad, with wide, flat, dark nails, with three fingers and a thumb. They closed gently on Sri’s arm. “Sssree,” Kho said. She squeezed lightly, and let go. “Kho.”