WAY OUT TO THE NORTHEAST OF THE CITY WERE THE FLATLANDS, acre upon acre of prairie grass that waved in the warm winds blowing in from the ocean.

      The girl was taking the long road to her grandmother’s ranch house. She imagined it would take her no more than an hour, so she would still be in good time; she had promised to be there by noon. The weather station had warned of an electrical storm and dark clouds were already forming in the great skies above her.

      The girl had tried to coax her dog, a young husky pup, to travel with her in her bicycle basket, but the dog had looked up at the sky and howled when she tried to carry him from the house, his fur standing right on end.

      It was as if he knew what was coming. There had been talk of a tornado looking to bear down and she had a mind to see it begin to pick up before it whirled in. Timing, she knew, was everything when it came to tornadoes. They could whip up quick and vanish in minutes, the average for these parts being around twenty. You had to be careful – you mistime it and you might be snatched up inside that wind funnel, for you could not outrun a tornado, only sidestep it; this her nine-year-old self knew for a certainty.

      She hadn’t travelled more than halfway there when she realised she had left it too late. Turn back, keep going, it didn’t matter – she was never going to make it to the ranch before the storm struck. A lone tree grew out from the only raised piece of land in more than a hundred miles, a tree bent sideways by the relentless west wind and the only landmark on the whole horizon other than the marching telegraph poles.

      But it was a good landmark. She remembered how the tree grew out of rock, not a cave exactly but a pile of stones so heavy that they looked like they hadn’t moved in more than ten thousand years. The girl saw at once that if she could make it to those rocks and climb between them then she would escape the tornado’s hold.

      She let go of her bike and abandoned it right there, where it fell, on the tarmac road. She began to run across the open grassland, feeling the whipping wind as she fled. She ran, ran like the devil himself were chasing her, ran like all hell was biting at her ankles. The coarse grass was slurring her movement, wrapping about her legs, but she wouldn’t let it pull her down. There were the rocks and the half cave. She threw herself in just as the whirling funnel picked up over her head, and through the crack in the stone she saw