James was up at 5:30 on Sunday.
Maya heard him leave the bed and didn't open her eyes immediately — she'd been half awake since 4:00, listening to the rain. It had changed quality sometime in the night. Heavier, more insistent, with a low pressure to it that was different from the previous three days.
She got up at 5:40 and found James at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a mug going cold beside him.
"The watch got upgraded to a warning at 3 am," he said. "The Wren is at 89% of flood stage. They're projecting it crests sometime Tuesday morning."
Maya stood at the kitchen window. The street below Fenwick Street had standing water from one end to the other — not deep, not dramatic, just present in a way it hadn't been yesterday evening. The drain at the corner was leaking.
"The eastern bypass?" she said.
"Clear right now. The main route crossing is already showing surface water." He turned the laptop toward her. "By tonight, I wouldn't want to test it."
She looked at the forecast. Then at the street. Then at the plant stand.
"We leave today," she said.
"Yes."
She got on her cushion and did her session first.
[ STATUS ]
Stage: Mortal
Body Condition: Healthy
Cultivation: Qi Gathering — Stage 5, Established (46%)
Heartwood Connection: Active
Source: Mangifera indica
Forty-six percent. She wrote it down and went to wake Sam.
Sam took the news with the focused attention of someone receiving a mission briefing.
"Are we going to Grandma and Grandpa's?" he said.
"Yes."
"Because of the flood?"
"Yes."
"Is there going to be a flood in our apartment?"
"We don't know. We're leaving before we find out."
He thought about that. "Can I bring my bridge project?"
"It won't survive the car."
"The pieces will."
"Fine."
He got up and started getting dressed, then stopped. "Does Gerald know we're coming?"
Maya looked at him. "Who's Gerald?"
"Grandma and Grandpa's cat. He lives in the utility room. He doesn't like people he doesn't know."
"When did you meet Gerald?"
"Last time we visited. He bit Dad." He considered this. "I think he'll be okay with me though."
"Go get dressed," Maya said.
Claire appeared at 6:30 with her hair still damp and her notebook already in her bag.
"I called the bookstore," she said. "Harriet told me not to come in. She said half the street is already underwater and also — her words — 'if you show up I'm sending you home and then I'm questioning your judgment.'"
"Harriet is correct," Maya said.
Claire looked at the plant stand and opened the storage cupboard without being asked, found a box, found a second smaller one, and started lining them with tea towels.
"The horsetail goes in the big one," Maya said.
"I know." She held up the aquatic moss vessel. "This one needs padding so it doesn't slosh."
"There's bubble wrap on the top shelf."
"I see it."
They worked around each other in the kitchen while James moved through the hallway with bags and the particular efficiency of someone who had been planning the logistics since Saturday.
They were out of the apartment by 8:15.
James carried the mango tree — pot wrapped in a towel, tucked under one arm, the leaves brushing his shoulder. Sam had appointed himself guardian of the box containing the horsetail and was carrying it with the careful solemnity of someone transporting something important, which meant he was walking very slowly.
"Sam," Claire said from behind him. "We're going to be in the stairwell all day."
"I can't go fast. It'll tip."
"It won't tip."
"You don't know that."
"I'm directly behind you. I'll catch it if it tips."
"What if you miss?"
"Sam."
"What if—"
"I won't miss."
He considered this and picked up the pace marginally.
Mrs. Okafor from 3B was in the stairwell heading down with her own bag.
"You're leaving?" she said.
"Family outside the city," James said.
She looked at the mango tree under his arm. Then at Sam with the box. Then at Claire with the aquatic moss. "How many plants are you taking?"
"Just the important ones," Sam said seriously.
Mrs. Okafor looked at him. "How do you decide which ones are important?"
"These are connected to Mum's cultivation practice," he said. "The others are just plants."
There was a brief silence.
"Safe travels," Mrs. Okafor said, and continued down the stairs with the expression of someone filing an unusual experience away for later.
The lobby had two inches of water on the floor. The building manager was there with a mop and the look of a man who understood he was losing but hadn't decided to stop yet.
"Third floor should be fine," he said when he saw them. "You're doing the right thing."
The street was worse than it had looked from the window — ankle deep at the kerb, the drain at the corner completely overwhelmed. Sam walked through the standing water without any particular concern. Claire walked through it grimacing. James held the mango tree higher and moved quickly.
The car park was elevated slightly above street level and dry. They loaded everything in. The mango tree went in the footwell of the back seat with James's jacket around the pot to keep it upright. Sam climbed in and looked at the arrangement.
"It's good," he announced. "I'll watch it."
"You don't need to watch it," James said.
"Someone should watch it."
"It's a plant in a pot. It doesn't need watching."
"What if we go around a corner fast and it tips?"
James looked at him in the rearview mirror.
"I'll watch it," Sam said, and did.
The city thinned as they drove east. Greywell's dense blocks giving way to lower buildings, then edge development, then open countryside that was visibly saturated — fields lying under shallow water, ditches running full, the hedgerows darkened with three days of rain.
Sam fell asleep at the forty-minute mark, leaning against his seatbelt. The mango tree sat in the footwell unwatched.
Claire had the river gauge data open. "91% now. Rising about a percent every thirty minutes."
"Monday night," James said.
"Probably." She paused. "The main crossing is showing fifteen centimeters of surface water according to the traffic report."
"Good thing we took the bypass."
Maya had been looking at her phone. "Sandler replied. The institute went into lockdown at 6am. Emergency protocols running. The specimens are documented." She put the phone down. "She said the greenhouse took water overnight. Ground level access is closed."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
"The data is backed up," James said.
"I know." She looked at the rain on the windscreen. "Two years of controlled specimens."
"I know."
She looked out the window. The fields were grey-green under the flat sky and the road was empty ahead of them and somewhere behind them the Wren was still rising.
"The Voss review is in March," she said, which wasn't about the specimens at all.
James reached over and put his hand briefly over hers on her knee. She turned her hand over and held it for a moment, and then he needed both hands for the road and she went back to looking out the window.
Aldenmere appeared after two hours and twenty minutes — a village set on a slight rise above the surrounding farmland, old stone buildings along a main street, a church tower visible from the bypass. James turned onto the lane running along the village edge and pulled up outside a stone house with a low wall around the front garden and a light on in the kitchen window.
June Reeves was at the door before they'd finished parking.
She was sixty-three, James's height, with the kind of face that had been pretty when she was young and was now something better — she'd had strong opinions for sixty-three years and most of them had been correct and it showed. She looked at the car and then at the rain and then at all of them piling out and said, "You took the bypass?"
"Yes," James said.
"Good. Your father wanted to drive to Greywell this morning to help and I told him not to be an idiot." She looked at Maya and hugged her properly. "You look well. Have you been sleeping?"
"Yes, Mum."
"You don't look tired, which is different from what I normally see." She looked at Claire and held her face in both hands for a moment. "Harwick. Well done, you."
"Thanks, June."
"Don't thank me, I didn't do anything. Don't be modest either, you worked for it." She released Claire and looked at Sam. "You've grown."
"I know," Sam said. "Also Gerald bit Dad last time but I think it was a misunderstanding."
June looked at James.
"It was not a misunderstanding," James said. "That cat has a vendetta."
"Gerald is fine," June said. "He just doesn't like sudden movements."
"I didn't make a sudden movement. I sat down."
"You sat down suddenly." She looked at the mango tree under his arm with the towel around the pot and the leaves slightly flattened from the journey. "Is that it?"
"That's it."
She looked at it for a moment — really looked at it, the way someone looked at something they'd been told was significant and were deciding for themselves whether they believed it. "It's a good-looking tree," she said.
"Everyone says that," Sam said.
"Do they." She looked at him. "Come in. Thomas has the kettle on and he's been in the garden since 7am pretending he wasn't waiting for you."
Thomas Reeves was at the kitchen table with four mugs already poured and the particular composure of a man who had decided decades ago that his family was going to be interesting and had made his peace with it. He was sixty-six, broader than James, with the same dry humor that appeared in James as a slight shift around the eyes and in Thomas as something more visible.
He looked at the mango tree when James set it on the kitchen counter.
"That's the cultivation tree," he said.
"Yes," James said.
"June explained it to me." He looked at James. "She explained it three times. I understood it the first time but she kept going."
"I was thorough," June said, from the doorway.
"You were very thorough." He looked at the tree again. "Where does it need to go?"
"South-facing window," Maya said. "Good light."
"Sitting room." He stood up. "I'll move the things off the windowsill."
"Thomas, I can do—"
"Sit down and drink your tea. You've been driving in that weather for two hours." He picked up the mango tree from the counter, assessed its weight, and looked at James. "Heavier than I expected."
"It's been growing fast," Sam said, climbing onto a kitchen chair.
Thomas looked at him. "How fast?"
"Seven and a half centimeters in one morning once. It was a Wednesday." He picked up a mug and looked at the contents. "Is this tea or coffee?"
"Tea," June said.
"Can I have the other one?"
"That's your grandfather's."
"Can I have his if he doesn't want it?"
"He wants it."
Thomas took the mango tree to the sitting room. They heard him in there moving things, unhurried.
Maya's phone rang while she was drinking her tea. She looked at the screen.
"It's Mum," she said.
"Oh, she's been waiting," June said, with the tone of someone who had spoken to Ruth Osei that morning and knew exactly how long she'd been waiting.
Maya answered. "Hi, Mum."
"Finally. Are you there? Are you safe? Is everyone with you? How was the road? Your father wants to know if James took the bypass or the main route because Victor, I told you they'd take the bypass, you owe me — sorry, Maya, your father is being—"
"We're here, we're safe, everyone's fine, we took the bypass," Maya said. "Hi, Dad."
"I didn't take the main route," came Victor's voice from somewhere behind Ruth. "I said I wasn't sure which route they'd take."
"You said main route. I heard you say main route."
"I said I didn't know—"
"Victor."
A brief silence.
"Hi, Maya," Victor said. "Glad you're safe."
"Thanks, Dad."
"Is the tree okay?" Ruth said.
Maya looked at the sitting room where Thomas had just placed the mango tree in the south-facing window. "The tree is fine."
"Good. I want to see it. Come for lunch — I'm making enough for everyone, tell June and Thomas to come as well, I already called June but she pretended she hadn't decided yet which I don't believe for a second."
From the kitchen table June, who could clearly hear this, picked up her tea with an expression of complete innocence.
"We'll be there," Maya said. "What time?"
"Twelve. Twelve-thirty. Whenever you get here. Don't bring anything, I have everything. Actually bring the tree, I want to see it properly."
"Mum, I'm not carrying the tree across the village."
"Why not? Is it heavy?"
"No but—"
"Then bring it. I want to see what all the fuss is about." A pause. "Victor says to tell James that the market is going to be fine and not to worry."
Maya looked at James across the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows. "He's not worrying," she said.
"He's worrying," Ruth said. "I can tell from here. Tell him Victor says it'll sort itself out. He's been through three of these."
"I'll tell him."
"Twelve-thirty. Bring the tree."
She hung up.
Sam had found Gerald.
Or Gerald had found Sam — it wasn't entirely clear. Either way they were in the utility room together, Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor and Gerald sitting approximately eighteen inches away examining him with the specific assessment of a cat deciding whether someone was worth tolerating.
June stood in the doorway watching this. "He usually hides when there are visitors," she said.
"I sat down slowly," Sam said. He looked at June. "Also I think he can tell I'm not scared of him."
"Are you not scared of him?"
Sam looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at Sam. "No," Sam said. "He's just a cat."
Gerald walked forward three steps and sat down again, closer.
"He likes you," June said.
"I know," Sam said, with the satisfaction of someone whose hypothesis had been confirmed.
By mid-morning the mango tree stood in the south-facing window of Thomas and June's stone house, the horsetail and aquatic moss flanking it, the winter light falling across the leaves. The loop was running at its passive level as if nothing had changed.
Maya sat in the armchair across from it with her notebook open and looked at the tree for a moment before she wrote anything.
Outside the village was quiet and grey and the hills to the north were dark with cloud. The fields below Aldenmere were waterlogged but holding. Six feet of elevation between the village and the flood plain, the same six feet that had kept it dry in 2009 when everything lower went under.
The tree would be fine here.
Everything else she'd figure out when the water went down.
She opened her notebook and started writing.