When her thirst was slaked, she pulled off her sodden boots and socks and stripped to the skin. The rain sluiced off her head and shoulders and she ran her hands over her body, feeling the dirt and sweat of their journey dissolve leaving her light and strong. She shivered a little, a feeling so unusual that she was not sure what it was at first. She was outside in the day. She beat her clothes against the side of the cable car and wrung them out, then she lay them on the bushes around her and surrendered to the sensations of her body.

The rain was slowing. She could feel the heat gathering again. The air itself felt wet. Her feelings of exultation vanished.

She heard the cable-car hatch open. “Are you okay?”

“More than okay. It was great.”

Bibi asked nothing more.

Sorrel gathered her wet clothes in her arms. She felt a flicker of embarrassment at greeting her mother naked, then a surge of defiance. Who cared if she was naked in this shattered place?

As she approached the ladder, Sorrel saw that the rain had washed away the dirt that covered the writing on the side of the cable car – El Dorado. She climbed up the ladder.

She laid her soaked clothes on the roof, wondering briefly if they would blow off as soon as they dried. Before she climbed down into the car, she looked up at the sky. It was the clearest she had ever seen it and almost blue. The land was clean and so was she. She let herself down into the car. Her mother said nothing about her nakedness.

CHAPTER 12 – THE CULVERT

Water had leaked in through the hatch of their shelter, turning the dust inside to a thin sludge. There was a dry space at the rear because the car was tilted forward. Her mother had stored the backpacks on top of the metal seats during the storm, so they weren’t soaked.

Sorrel hesitated, not wanting to lie in dust or sludge, but there was no choice. She felt briefly sorry for Bibi who had missed being in the downpour. Then lassitude filled her. She stretched out in the dust and plunged into sleep.

It was dark when her mother shook her awake. “Time to go, One,” she said.

“Maybe we should stay. It’s a pretty good shelter.”

“We need water. And the people who’ve been here will be back.”

They left the cable car and resumed their climb, following the columns in the light of the fully charged PlAK. The slope became steeper still and sometimes they had to drop to all fours. “The trail is getting better as we go higher,” Bibi said. “That’s worrying.”

“I want to find people. I still don’t see why we have to presume everyone is dangerous.”