“She’s my mother. I couldn’t leave her in Bana. I told her I would come back for her.”

“Your choice. You know the way out.”

“I could never find my way back.”

“I think we can move now.”

“My mother…”

“Forget your mother.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

“Well, tell your story to Caroni. That’s all I can say. She’ll decide.”

“Who’s Caroni?”

“The Zorah.”

“What’s a Zorah?”

“Elder.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-five or so. You finished talking?”

“What’s your name?” Sorrel asked.

“Emrallie is my band name.”

“Are you a Tribal then? We thought you were a myth.”

She shrugged. “That’s what Lowlanders call us. And yeah, let them think we don’t exist. We go now. Stay close. Put your hand on my shoulder and watch where you put your feet.”

“You don’t have a flower name,” muttered Sorrel. “You’re not from Bana.” Emrallie did not reply.

CHAPTER 14 – BIBI

My mother loved Sorrel from the moment she first held her. I think she gave her hope. How bad could anything be if babies were still being born? She chose her name. “She mustn’t be soft, like a daisy or a rose. Call her Sorrel, something red and spiky. And December used to be the picking time for sorrel.”

She held Sorrel in her arms and told her stories of the Convergence.

You should sing to her or tell her stories for babies, I would say, or talk about before when everything was better. But my mother only talked about what had happened. She said the Convergence was like an avalanche in cold countries, sweeping everything before it. Power cuts, then crash of the grid, followed by three years of darkness before solar panels brought electricity to homes. Ever new diseases. Failure of antibiotics. Collapse of water delivery systems. The relentless hurricanes, until the dust from a thousand deserts took to the air and shut down the hurricanes.

We rejoiced, she whispered to Sorrel, because there were no hurricanes, but we didn’t realize how much water they brought. Six years of drought; the rivers dried up, fires raced up hillsides. And then the rain came back. Nobody had seen such rain, maybe a month’s worth in an hour. A new name: rain bomb. Cities drowned. The forests fell, the trees simply fell over when the earth couldn’t hold them. The soil washed off and turned the sea grey. The trade winds died. The white people, the rich people, left in panicked migrations for the north. The Renaming. The flower naming, of roads and airports and hotels and Domin buildings, as if changing the names of things could save us.

Then, The Fury.