She wondered what they looked like. There were mostly geometric drawings in the long corridors and the arenas. Squares like gameboards with little markers as if they were playing draughts and someone interrupted them. Landscapes too, rows and rows of stylised trees with low-hanging branches like the ones in the fields and forests around them. There were pictures of people too, but all different types of people: people who looked like horses with hands and people who looked like crocodiles but upright. Sometimes row and rows of statues or beings doing things. Framed like looking through a window. Or the same form multiple times like it was vibrating. Outlines drawn on top of outlines.

There were people with hands and feet and faces that were familiar too, in amongst the other stuff, but not many. It made her think of what the adults called the memories that were supposed to come on you at puberty. Most of the adults in the settlement had them. No one knew where they came from but they were helpful in making art. The people who had them said it was like having a library of images in your head. You just had to draw them.

She wondered if the buildings meant anything or if they were just houses people lived in and public buildings they conducted their business in. There were towers at the edge of the settlement, thin ones made of multicoloured bricks brought from lots of different places. At least she thought they were from lots of different places, they weren’t the same colour as the soil around here and the colour seemed baked into the brick, not painted on. Paint would flake anyway after all these years. These people probably had ships that took them to other planets.

The building she was in now was enormous, maybe a palace or a temple though most people who had studied the ruins said they didn’t have palaces and weren’t very religious, so maybe it was where people met and talked of their experiences. It could be a large indoor market or a sports arena. There were benches on the side walls with pictures above them, they looked like rows and rows of dancing buffalo, stamping lots of feet and with garlands on their heads. Each following the other around the room. She lay on the bench to look up at the ceiling.

There were so many pictures it looked like a festival. People selling things, things changing hands or tentacles wound around pieces of bone. Some were like knuckles, some had protruding horns. A group of people dancing, on two legs this time, with their hands in the air. A lake with trees around it, stick trees with protruding branches like those she’d seen. There was a group of such trees near the village where she lived. But there were other trees, with tight roofs like umbrellas or mushrooms, leaves wound close together. And there were mountains too, those she’d seen above the ruins but she hadn’t seen a lake.

She took her sketchbook and some charcoal out, meaning to copy the drawings but first she shut her eyes, trying to separate them in her head. She thought about the pictures and what they might represent. How they might fit together. When she opened her eyes it was dark and she was lying on her side bent around her bag. Her sketchbook was over the bag. The straps stuck out. The bench she was lying on was hard. How did she fall asleep. She wasn’t supposed to be here after dark. Her mother had told her over and over again not to go to the ruins after dark. Where was she? What should she do? How would she get home?

She knew where she was but she couldn’t see anything. Where did she enter the building? She looked for an area of greater darkness that meant a doorway, then gave up and followed the bench around, keeping her hands on it, till there was no more bench. She hoped that meant a doorway that would take her where she wanted to go. She imagined the dancing bulls staring down at her. What if they charged?

When she was finally out of the room, there was the corridor but it was lighter. Half outside and half in, it was really a colonnade with a wall on one side that she put one hand on, and columns on the other side. She followed it to the entrance, holding on to the wall the whole way.

Now what? Which way to go? She remembered passing one of the towers on the way in and she could see one not far away, to the right. They were wider at the base, she remembered and got narrower as they rose and they were made of bands of different coloured bricks. But was it the same tower? She remembered lots of towers. The path was downhill to her village from there. She didn’t know if it was the right tower but she thought the path looked downhill. And she hadn’t walked far into the ruins. She couldn’t see really. Everything was grey but more dark grey. She went right anyway, if it was the right tower she would see the lights of her home.

She got to the tower but there were no lights. It went downhill anyway, so she followed it but it was so dark. She had to walk carefully because she couldn’t see the path, only trees on either side and they looked black and frightening. As if they were about to attack her with low hanging branches. She kept walking from tree to tree, grasping one branch after another and hoping she seemed friendly. She tried to grasp the branches lightly. Some of the leaves were sharp.

She thought of her nice warm friendly room and wished she was there. She prayed she was, even though she didn’t believe in any higher being. Just get me there, she prayed to the universe and anyone in it who had more power than she did. If you get me there, she thought to the universe at large, I’ll build a shrine to the people of the ruins. A whole wall, she thought and began to design it as she hauled herself from tree to tree. She was still going downhill so she kept going. She thought about making all things she had seen. She could make the dancing bulls out of clay. She imagined a series of shelves for all the shapes, circles with horns and garlands of flowers, she could make those with real flowers that grew nearer home. She wished she could walk in the fields and it wasn’t so dark.

How would she make the lake? She could make a bowl and fill it with water and make a hole in the shelf where it would be flush with the shelf as if it were the ground. She could find stones in the field to put around the lake. She could stick them together to make strange shapes, like bones with horns, but how would she make the trees? Could she sow the leaves onto sticks?

That’s when she fell. She hadn’t remembered a hole in the path. Now she remembered. At least she was going the right way but her leg had fallen under her. She tried to stand but it hurt. The ankle might be twisted. She grabbed the nearest tree, harder than she meant to, but she still felt wobbly. She couldn’t stand properly. She couldn’t put any weight on one of her legs. Now what?

She wondered if she should ever have left the ruins. She thought they’d probably be searching for her, at least she hoped they would, and they’d find her easier in the ruins than on the dark path. And she wouldn’t have hurt her ankle. Oh well, she thought, too late. Maybe she should just stay here. She sat more comfortably but she was bored. Not at first, she thought about the ruins and her wall of remembrance but after a while she wanted to do something. Get back to her room somehow but she couldn’t walk. She tried lifting herself.

She got herself standing and held on to a tree but how would she get to the next one? She’d have to feel along the ground. At least she’d avoid any more holes that way. She sank back down again and began to pull herself along when she heard her name. She stopped. “Laila,” she heard and then she saw lights. They were coming along the path. She felt it all fall down, the weight of survival. It wasn’t on her shoulders anymore.