'Here we are, dear,' said Sunni, as if it were a party.

Mae turned and ran through each of the rooms. She heard the river's roar. She heard a creaking, in the walls, in the wooden beams, and she felt the weight of the mud leaning against the house.

'This house is going to go!' she shouted to anyone who could hear her. She went from bedroom to bedroom. The good fairy of the flashlight blessed the walls of each room.

In the last of them, Old Mr Doh stood, sobbing. He was trying to button his shirt and could not.

Mae imitated Sunni. 'Oh, good Mr Doh. This is Mrs Chung. It's time to go.'

He flung off her hand, impatient, sobbing, still fighting his way into his best shirt.

'No, no,' she cooed, and laughed. 'You look wonderfully elegant. Come down now.'

'My wife,' he said, dazed.

'She's waiting.'

The whole house groaned and listed forward.

'Mae!' screamed Sunni, from the street outside.

Mae simply seized him and pulled.

'Oh, oh,' he said, fighting the dark. She hauled him towards the stairs. The walls suddenly snapped forward, leaning, dust puffing out where the floorboards joined them. Everything was looser underfoot. She pulled him down the stairs, he lost his footing, and they skidded together in the dark, slammed vengefully by gleeful wooden steps, until they both tumbled into the kitchen.

'Leave me!' he said. He started to fight Mae, the light careering over the walls. Someone entered, seized him, and pulled. Out they all went, clattering against chairs, slipping on oil spilled from bottles, as if all the contents of the house had been upended. In the street, the Dohs waited.

'I told you he was not outside,' raged Miss Doh, to the others. 'It took Chung Mae, as always.' Miss Doh pushed the old man, turned in the darkness, seized Mae, and pushed her tongue into Mae's mouth.

'In case one of us dies,' Miss Doh said, and darted back.

All the world was careering like the light; the stars themselves seemed to threaten to fall.

Over the sound of water Mae heard a grinding rumble. She turned and saw headlights trailing up the road. Against the lights she saw water gushing up against tyres.

Siao, she thought. That could be Siao.

'You go on,' Mae said to Sunni.

'Where are you going, fool?'

'Back home.'

'Okay.' Sunni was suddenly in front of her. 'Mae. You were right,' she said. Mae began to move. Sunni gripped her. 'You heard me say that, didn't you? You were right!'

'Sunni! Yes. I heard. Go!'

'You go! And come back quickly!'

Nothing else was said.

Mae ran past the backs of the houses of the Hos, the Matbahsuluks and the Kemals. She held on to the corner of Mr Kemal's house to wrench herself around into Lower Street.

A sound like applause. If you hear it above you, you are dead.

This is it, Mae; one check on the house, and then you go yourself.

Her old house glowed white, like a cake under the stars. In front of it rested one of Mr Pin's old vans, empty and dark. The courtyard door was open. Mae ran in.

Her courtyard was knee-deep in mud.

'Siao? Siao?'

Mae shone the light. The door to the barn was shut firmly, mud already pushing against it. Across the surface of the mud, rivulets of water flowed. If there were no one here, she would run.

From inside Mr Ken's house someone wailed, 'I can't get out!' It was Old Mrs Ken.

Above them something hissed, like water on a skillet.

'The terraces are going!' Mae screeched. And she felt a click.

I have been here before, she thought.

Mrs Ken began to pound on the inside of the kitchen door, the weight of mud pushing it shut.

'The window. Break the window!' Mae called. She waded forward. Mud was a slow and heavy evil. It sucked at her feet, and held her back like glue. She could not advance. 'I can't get any closer.'

A chair was punched through the glass, which sparkled like snow, in the air on the liquid earth.

'Mae!' someone called, from by the courtyard gate. Mae turned and it was Kuei. He surged forward, pushing through the mud up to his waist. 'Mother! Mother!' He jerked, thrashed, tossed himself from side to side, rocking through the mud towards the broken window. Suddenly the mud heaved him forward and off his feet.

For the first time the thought came to Mae: We've left this too late. We could die.

A head, arms, then legs came through the kitchen window. 'Oh. Oh. Kuei! Help me out!'

The mud gripped Kuei and held him fast. His mother was out of reach.

'Kuei,' called another man. 'Walk on this board.'

Siao? Mae turned. Three men were carrying the lid from the coal-bunker.

There was Siao.

And there, helping him, was Joe. Joe! Where? How?

The three of them flung the broad plywood lid on top of the mud under the window.

'Jump down onto it. Maybe it will take your weight for long enough. Try to walk forward to us.'

'Mother,' Kuei said. 'Just fall forward. I'll catch you.'

Old Mrs Ken without another word pulled herself through the jagged window frame, and fell gently forward onto the raft. It listed down into the mud and she scuttled forward towards her son's hands. Kuei grabbed her and pulled her forward. Joe and Siao rocked forward and pulled as well. Kuei cradled his mother, who juddered out a single sob.

'Mae!' demanded Siao. 'What are you doing here!'

'Trying to find you!'

A current of mud pushed them back away from the gate, like some kind of living thing, a slug.

'How do we get out through this?' Joe despaired.

Mae remembered her washing line, strung across the courtyard. 'This way,' she said, flashing her good fairy light along the rope. Then she reached up and began to pull herself along it, through the mud.

Mr Ken said, 'Okay, Mama, pull, like Mae says.'

All of them seized the rope and pulled themselves forward. Mae turned at the gate, and shone the light on them.

There they were, her three men: her husband, her lover, and Siao. She looked at Siao's steady face. 'I got a message at the Teahouse,' he said. 'Joe had got to the Desiccated Village.'

Joe looked up at Mae, and then down, quickly, in shame.

Did Mae hear applause?

She turned to the open door, not daring to breathe, and looked behind.

There was a sound of delight – massed clapping from the eastern slope. The sound had a shape, a shape like a blade, sharp at one end, but widening behind. A wedge of the walls had fallen.

'That's it!' she keened, her voice box tight, wet.

Ssssh, said all the stones. They trickled like water, made a sound like water, were borne by it and their own weight down the hillside, one collapse knocking into the terrace below, catching it, knocking it free. Mae fought her way to the street and, glinting in the moonlight, she saw it, a flow of rocks on the eastern side of the bowl.

A river of stone.

'Come on!' she screeched again.

She looked behind her wildly; Ken and Joe were up to their ankles, and pulling Mrs Ken free.

Mae fought forward and pulled.

Then the applause started on the hill directly above them.

It was so slow, the fall of stone. Above them on the hill, a terrace wall turned sideways, grumpily, forced to move by the weight of stone settling on top of it. All of it slumped forward towards the school, to Sezen's.

They would not be able to get back to Upper Street.

'We've got to go this way,' said Mae.

They all ran. Mae shone the light. Doors left open, doors closed, Mae found she no longer cared who had managed to escape. As if something were jamming needles into her ears, there was a terrible sensation, a shivering in the air, in the earth itself, that was not quite a noise. It was something inside her head.

There was another sigh, in front of them this time. The hills groaned with relief, as if finally able to let loose their bladders and bowels. Three houses only, and they would come to the square.