Rolling onto my side, I reach out a finger to touch the wall, tracing the charcoal picture I’ve drawn – a tree hung with orb-like apples. Nanna’s gods promise an afterlife where you can dwell in beautiful gardens filled with sweet-smelling trees and music made by water tinkling into fountains. With a huff, I roll onto my back, linking my fingers beneath my head, and wonder what Emee would make of our idea of paradise.

She would probably say why should Cerels have such a place, and not Travesters? No, we’d die and find the Travesters running even paradise.

* * *

Two days later, me and Jorzy are in the scrublands outside our father’s camp, lying on our fronts in the long dry grass of an abandoned piece of land. Some distance away, beyond a high wire fence, is the yard of the wild camp. Single wooden buildings are placed in a cluster like toy blocks.

“It must be too early yet for them to come out,” says Jorzy.

It’s his day off from the factory, and he’s asked me to show him the wild camp. We’ve been here once before, but not for a while. It makes me wonder what he’s got in his mind. Being alone with Jorzy like this, I’m itching to tell him about Marina, except she would kill me.

“Doesn’t matter.” I shrug. “They don’t have a routine, from what I’ve seen. They come out at odd times.”

A glossy cricket hops onto the back of my hand, and I flip it away. An airship drones overhead, its plump body casting a long shadow on the ground, and I hope the crew in the cabin won’t notice us down here.

“Sometimes, when you think they’re due to have some exercise, they don’t come out at all.” I push a shank of hair back off my forehead. “I dunno if it’s a punishment, or maybe somebody forgets to let them out.” In my mind, the men in the wild camp are sort of like penned cattle, milling around aimlessly, waiting to be let outside.

Jorzy squints ahead. Sun glints off iron roofs. “What are all those men doing in there?” he wonders out loud.

“I hear noises sometimes,” I admit. Jorzy doesn’t know how often I come here, just watching and listening. “Hammering. That kind of thing. Maybe they’re building something.”

My brother snorts. He rolls onto his back and closes his eyes to soak up the sun. He must miss being outside. “Right. Like they first told us. How the men were being taken away to work on the roads.”

There’s nothing I can say to that. We were told one thing, but another happened.