“It’s okay,” I whispered.

He growled. I didn’t think that he could sense the vision, but he knew that I was disturbed.

“Keep going,” I told him. “Go on.”

He took a few uncertain steps forward. I continued to murmur encouragingly. The ground beneath his paws reddened, dark blood seeping out of the dirt. The smell of smoke and jasmine caught in my throat, chokingly sweet.

“They are coming, they are coming, they are coming, they are coming, they are coming…” The voice swelled from the earth below us: female, rasping, a relentless stream of fear. As I watched, the ground bulged with strange protrusions, fat red seedlings sprouting and unfurling in the sunlight. They squirmed beneath Claws’s paws and burst like pustules. I flinched and pulled my feet up higher. “They are coming, they are coming.”

The protrusions grew taller. They wound around Claws’s legs like river weeds.

“They are here.”

A scream filled the air, and I clasped my hands to my ears. The sound was inhuman and agonised; it stretched on and on, so loud that I thought my eardrums would rupture. The protrusions reached my ankles, and their touch seared my skin. I kicked them away.

With a wet, tearing noise like meat pulled apart, the vision ended. The protrusions crumpled to dust.

I breathed hard. Claws shied sideways, shaking his head and whining. His claws extended and scratched lines in the dirt.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Hey. It’s all right, boy. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I tried to stroke his head, but he snapped at me. I withdrew my fingers. The fur along the ridge of his spine stood straight up.

“Why don’t you let me down, okay?” I said gently. “It’s not far now.”

He whined again, but bent his knees. I loosened the harness straps, and slid off him.

“That’s better, isn’t it?”

I steadied myself against his flank, and Claws shivered. My ankle stung where the vision had touched me. Not serious. I stroked the Cat in jerky, mechanical motions. Had to keep my composure.

Millet grew on both sides of the road; we had almost reached the city walls. Up ahead, I could hear workers singing the day-end song. The evening was humid. Crickets rasped from the grain, and flies buzzed circles around us.

I took another deep breath. When I started walking, Claws followed me.

The singing grew louder as we approached the silos. Although harvest time was still a month away, the Fields bustled with temporary labourers. The Department of Food Management was collaborating with Water and Sanitation to introduce a new irrigation system, drilling boreholes below the Fields. It was proving more complex—and expensive—than anticipated. At around ten feet deep, the drills in the northern-most Fields had hit a hard bed of granite. The excavation team had assured us that they would break through the rock, but not before the end of the week.