She had crawled under her bed and heard the beating, her father’s grunts and cries, trailing off into silence. The Domins had taken him away by the time they emerged from hiding and she was left to imagine what the beating had done to his body. A crumpled piece of paper lay on the kitchen table. Bibi had read it out loud, tears sliding down her cheeks. “The whole skynut tree?” she whispered. “Not a first offence?” It was a stupid, despairing act – to cut down the tree with nuts still on it.

A year later, Sorrel had watched from a window as two males killed an old woman on the street. As with her father’s arrest, it was dusk, and she had just got out of bed. She’d opened a window and saw an old woman carrying a basket of old-time custard apples, probably on her way to one of the illegal, pop-up markets. No one liked old people; they ate, got sick, didn’t work and were burdens on the young. Besides, they were the cause of the Convergence. It was not exactly legal to kill them, but even at ten, she knew people looked the other way. The two young males on the other side of the road were wearing the Squad badge of violence trainees. People avoided violence-trained men, but the old woman did not notice them until they began to cross the road. She looked around, searching for help or escape, and then stood still. Laughing, the males took her basket away. The taller man slapped her, as if he were conducting an experiment. When she fell, the other man kicked her once, twice. The old woman folded her arms over her head, offering no resistance. “We should rape her,” the taller man said, biting into a custard apple.

“What for? She’s dried up like dead coral.” They took up rocks from the side of the road, and took turns smashing her head until it wasn’t hard anymore. They wiped their hands on the old woman’s clothes and walked away, eating the custard apples.

A few minutes later, she heard the howls of feral canines and shut the window. In the morning, the old woman’s body was gone. She never told anyone what she had seen.

“You’re daydreaming again,” Bibi said, staring at the PlAK. “Pack some string. And rope. Wrap it around your waist. How many knives do we have?”

“One good one. And an old paring knife but it’s dull.”

“Pack them anyway. Come, look at this – looks like an old water tank. Before the climb gets really steep. About a third of the way up.”

“So what?”

“Means there used to be water there. Maybe it’s where the dry stream will take us. Maybe it’s shelter. Come here. Your eyes are better than mine – what’s this?”

Sorrel stared at the PlAK. “I don’t see anything.”