Emrallie shouldered Bibi’s pack and turned as if she didn’t care whether they followed her or not. Bibi walked after her, moving stiffly, but benefiting from the absence of the pack’s weight. Sorrel followed. The cramping in her lower abdomen seemed to pull her into the ground. She wanted to tell her mother she had got her period and that she was glad to find her alive, but Bibi was ahead of her, following a path that only the Tribal girl could see.

CHAPTER 16 – RAVINE

They strode through the night with the PlAK off. A fuzzy moon spilled an ungenerous light over the land. The Tribal girl moved at a silent, surefooted pace as if she could see in the dark. The Lowlanders dislodged pebbles, tripped on rocks and got caught by bushes, but together they moved steadily uphill, changing direction often. Sorrel had no idea where they were. She wished she could stare into the PlAK’s screen, for its connection to the satellites which kept track of where things were.

She thought of her life in Bana, and her friend Sesame, almost certainly lost to her now. She wanted to tell her the Tribals were real. She thought of the sea-egg she’d shared with her mother on the day they joined the ranks of the displaced. She pushed away her anxiety and let the journey take her over.

“Right. Pay attention now.” Emrallie had stopped. “We’re going behind a boulder in a minute, and there’ll be some ropes attached overhead. We have to rappel down a cliff. You wait until I’m down; then you follow.”

“Rappel?”

Emrallie sighed. “Good thing you’re wearing belts. I have string.”

“String?”

“Turn on the PlAK. You’ll need to see.”

They stood on a ledge over a sheer cliff face descending into darkness. Emrallie had taken off a layer of the gauzy material and the Lowlanders saw she wore a kind of harness around her torso. She passed a rope fixed to something high above their heads which Sorrel couldn’t see. Emrallie took the string from Sorrel and stretched it out to see how long it was. “Can work,” she muttered. “Guatan lucky.”

She tied the end of the string to her harness and handed the other to Sorrel. “When I get down, I’ll take off the harness. You pull it up and put it on your mother. Lucky we’re all about the same size. See this? It’s a carabiner. Fasten it to the harness and send her down. Then we’ll do it for you. Watch how I do it now.” She tied and retied the rope several times through the metal clip she held. “Can you do that?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Don’t step off the cliff unless the rope is holding you.”