Nunu says that when the goddess belches, it means change is coming.

This is the greatest belch I’ve ever heard. We’re halfway up Crocus Mountain, on the ridge where the grassy slope turns to rock; six excited girls and their mothers or aunts or grandmothers, warm now from the hour’s walk, though our bare feet are cold. As the dawn sky streaks pink and yellow over the sea, the earthmother’s body trembles like a wave. It’s still quivering when the belch erupts from her mouth. The stench steams up from the deep waters of the bay like the burp of a man sick from eating three-day-old fish.

But because it’s the goddess, no one coughs or waves the stink away. We all stand straight, left hands holding baskets and right hands on hearts, until the ground is still.

We’d danced our way here, toes tingling in the autumn chill; skipped singing through the awakening streets and on the road up the hills. It’s the first morning of our journey to becoming women. In a year we’ll be weighed down with the Learning of the Swallow Clan – the songs, dances and rites that care for our island – but this morning the goddess demanded nothing but joy.

The mothers danced too: Mama and Pellie’s mama right up to the hills, and Alia’s grandmother hardly at all, but even she smiled and swayed as if her mind was dancing. And they all sang. I never knew women so old could still be girls when they wanted.

Pellie, friend of my heart,

born the same spring –

playing, talking, growing together

all the days since then

until she started her bleeding

six moons ago, in the spring of this year.

Preparing to enter her Learning,

wearing her flounced skirt and shift,

leaving behind the tunic

and shaved head of childhood –

and me with it.

One by one, the girls of my clan

started their bleeding –

even Alia, youngest of all –

till I wondered if I’d be left

a child forever

and alone.

‘Be patient,’ said Pellie –

as if she were wise and old

with barely time to speak to a child –

for she was deep in the mysteries

of becoming a woman

and we could no longer share

our thoughts and laughter.

More alone

than when Ibi married,

leaving this house for his new wife’s family,

or when Glaucus sailed to Great Island

to be ambassador there for our small land –

because my brothers are so old,

nearly twenty summers,

we have shared much,

but never our thoughts.

More alone even

than when Dada sails each spring

with his ships full of goods

to trade in the farthest points of the world –

because Dada always comes back.

And though Pellie hadn’t left

I didn’t know if she’d return

to be my heart-friend again

if I didn’t start my bleeding

before this night’s full moon.

Then my despairing Mama

when the moon was nothing but a crescent line

sacrificed a goat to Great Mother,

collecting its blood in a bowl,

telling Cook Maid to prepare a pudding

with that red blood

and singing loudly to the goddess

till I’d eaten it all,

my belly full to cramping –

and the next day, my bleeding came.

At last, I entered the Lady’s House,

to live in silence with the goddess;

my head shaved one last time –

one curl at the front and tail at the back

the promise that my hair will grow

thick and curly as my cousin’s has.

Released from silence as my bleeding ended,

washed and dressed in my fine new shift

I stood before the shrine

for the Lady to wrap me

in my wide flounced skirt

so all the world could know

I’m a Learner in the Swallow Clan.

Now Pellie and I

are on the journey together,

sister-friends again.

The earth is still moving.

Is the shaking all over the island, or just here on the mountain, a sign to her maidens?

Mama drops her hand from her heart. ‘Gather well,’ she says, not mentioning the belch or the shaking, so we don’t either. We spread out across the ridge, searching for the goddess’s sign that life will renew again now the autumn rains have come. The morning is dawning bright and sunny, and we need to gather the crocuses before the dew dries.

I find one quickly, pale purple petals blooming against the rocks, yellow stamens and long orange stigmas waving.

‘Pick from above,’ Mama tells me. ‘Don’t let them turn upside down.’ She shows me with her fingers, and I pluck my first crocus, laying it gently in my basket so that not one grain of the precious saffron will be lost. Now I know why we had to weave the bottoms of our baskets so tightly. I wove ten before I got it right, and wondered why I couldn’t just take one from the kitchen, but it makes sense now I’m here: my offering in the basket I wove.

I spy another flower further up the hill, and climb towards it, my bare toes monkey-sure on the rocks, bracelets and anklets jingling. Mama watches closely, but I must be doing it properly because her eyes close in the autumn sun, welcome after days of rain. I climb further. Another crocus and another, higher up the hill and around, ignoring rocks under my feet and prickles scratching my ankles, till my basket is full. When I straighten I can’t see anyone else, not Mama or the other girls or their mothers. The town and its harbour are below; but now I can see the bay again, the deep blue water in the crescent of land, and the rocky islet in the centre where the goddess’s breath hovers.

A sudden twittering fills the air. A cloud of swallows is passing overhead, leaving us for winter. I call them to stay, because they’ll take the goddess’s daughter with them and there’ll be no warmth till they return – I’m not ready to be stuck inside weaving for long wet days.

But I’ll be part of the swallow dance tonight!

It’s almost worth seeing them go. I stand and watch them out of sight, hand on heart.

I try not to look at the little dots of boats on the bay. I wonder if the boys are out there, on their own quests. We all know that fishing is part of their initiation, just as they know crocuses are part of ours, but the details are secret, and we mustn’t talk to each other during our Learnings.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t think about them, or that Pellie and I don’t wonder what they have to do, and how they’re going, and most of all, who we’ll choose when the time comes for us to marry – whether it will be one of the boys we know, or someone from outside.

Mama says the Learning will tell us, and we’ll know when the time is right.

I hope so. Because I can’t even imagine it.

I find two more crocuses and balance them on top of the purple mound in my basket.

‘Thank you, Great Mother,’ I say. Joy floods through me like sunshine. Ever since I started the tasks that would lead to my Learning, if I do one tiny thing wrong, Nunu tells me how lucky I am to be born into this family, because my skills would never be good enough to be craft-folk. But the truth is that the Swallow Clan’s work is what matters. We offer the rites the gods demand, and the other clans serve us so we can. That’s the only way our home and its people can thrive, because we’re not simply priests and rulers – we’re the bridge between the land and the gods. And today the goddess is pleased with me.

Then she hiccups again. Her shaking throws me to the ground; I land on my hands and knees, dirtying the beautiful skirt it’s taken me so long to weave. My right hand is scraped and bleeding; pain shoots up my left arm. Worst of all, as my wrist bends backwards, I let go of my basket. It bounces down the rocks, scattering the precious flowers – purple petals, yellow stamens and sacred orange stigmas – across the hill.

In the silence

as the goddess stills,

girls are screaming,

mothers calling

and I am sliding

eyes tear-blurring

scrambling to each flower

to brush off the dirt

and lay it carefully in my basket

as if it had never fallen.

Hearing Mama’s voice,

‘Leira, Leira!’

and calling back,

racing around the rock

into her arms.

But the hug is quick

now she knows I’m safe

and she calls out to know who’s hurt

and if all are here.

Rastia’s mother

has a twisted ankle;

Alia’s basket is bent

because she sat on it hard

and Pellie’s bitten her lip,

trickling blood down her chin.

There are bruises and grazes,

skirts dirtied and even torn,

but nothing worse

and as Pellie and I stare and whisper –

I show my red wrist

but don’t mention

dropping the basket –

Mama shouts

that we must return now

and present what we have

at the temple.

Mama has a loud voice

so people generally

do what she says –

and we all need to see

what’s happened in the town.

‘Pellie and I can run ahead,’ I suggest.

‘You’re carrying offerings to the goddess,’ Mama snaps. ‘We’ll take them to the temple in the proper procession.’

Her voice is sharp with fear, the same fear I can feel in my belly – because my belly doesn’t care that the earth is the goddess’s body; it just knows that the ground shouldn’t move like the sea.

But we’re gathering her crocus! She would never harm us on this day!

This is the ninety-ninth year since the earthmother’s shaking destroyed the old town. Now we have the most beautiful city on earth. Dada talks about the places he visits on the ship: cities that have been there since before memory. Even when he tells us eye-flashing, hand-waving stories of giant pyramids and other wonders, he admits that parts of these towns are old, dirty and crumbling. They’re not painted in new styles every second generation, like the shrines of our temple and homes.

‘Our mothers were painted together,’ I heard Mama snap at Pellie’s mother one day last spring, when Pellie had started her bleeding and I hadn’t. ‘We can’t break the tradition!’

‘…but if Leira hasn’t started…’

Mama gave a huff that I didn’t know she’d use to her cousin.

‘She was named for my mother…of course she’ll be there.’

When I was little, I thought Nunu was my grandmother. Saying so was the only time Mama’s ever smacked me: ‘My mother was Swallow Clan, not a slave!’

I haven’t got it wrong again.

Whatever this painting is, I’m guessing it’s in part of the temple that I haven’t been admitted to yet – and that I’ll see it soon. Because Leira, my grandmother’s name and mine, is the name of the goddess’s autumn flower, the saffron crocus we’ve picked today.

The goddess shakes again, a long, trembling sigh.

If the temple falls, I’ll never see what Mama was so upset about.

It won’t fall. The town’s buildings are strong and new, built to shake and keep standing when the goddess belches.

‘Sing!’ Mama commands, and we gather closer together, the women leading us on the path down the hill, along the ridge where we can see the ocean dark and blue on both sides of the island. We’re singing for the goddess, but she helps us in return, chasing away fear with our songs.

We pass the wishing tree, an olive planted at the spring by the goddess herself with a hole in its ancient trunk just big enough for a girl to slide through, leaving her wish in the tree like a snake leaves its skin.

No time for wishing today – Mama leads us straight past, barely slowing to salute the sacred tree. Now we have to walk fast and try not to breathe in as we sing, because the wind is gusting up from the south, bringing the stink from the purple works.

‘Aren’t you glad we didn’t have to make our own purple dye?’ Pellie whispers.

I can see Mama listening. I don’t answer, just crinkle my nose in disgust so that Pellie nearly laughs, and her own mother turns sharply.

But we’d never have to make our own purple. Mama says the Learning teaches us how things work in the world: like making the baskets, we need to understand dyeing so that everything we weave, or have our servants weave, will be as beautiful as it can be. We collected madder roots and weld plants, mashed and boiled them to make our own red and yellow dyes for our skirts, but the few drops of purple came in a tiny flask, like one for perfume, with the smell gone.

The goddess loves purple in every shade, from the pale mauve-blue of her crocus, to the blood-darkness of the richest murex dye. But the only thing we need to know about the dye is that we’re the favoured few with the right to wear it.

I sing a little louder in praise.

When I was small

I followed Nunu wherever she went

and on once-a-moon family days

we visited her brother and his wife.

There Nunu’s nieces –

and their husbands and children –

are always in the workshop,

carting red soil and white,

mixing and pounding it into clay.

They round balls in the palms of their hands,

thumbs in the middle to pinch out a pot,

smoothing and fining the edges

with nimble fingers.

They roll tubes long as snakes

to coil upwards into jars

taller than my head,

taller even than the grown-up nephews.

The sister-in-law who rules it all

throwing a lump on the wheel,

spinning it round,

the pot growing tall between her hands –

and all of them singing,

coaxing the clay into a pot –

or plate or vase,

a drinking cup or sacred jug –

whatever the gods call up

through the potter’s hand and mind.

Or so it seemed

to small Leira,

watching potters’ fingers

form effortless magic

while my own stumbled

over a small lump –

my snakes bloated

my pots lopsided

no matter if I held my breath or sang,

my work always

slapped back into clay

to be remixed and used again,

never good enough for the kiln.

In this workshop

it doesn’t matter who you are,

only the worth of your pot.

Till I was ten

or perhaps eleven

and pinched out a bowl,

fine and even;

good enough, said the old ones

to be baked and saved.

Mama’s smile when she saw it

was knowing and wise

but the bowl was placed in a basket

and never used –

the best I’d done

was not good enough.

I sulked to Nunu

‘I wish I’d been born to a family like yours!’

And Nunu laughed

till she spluttered and choked,

‘A family like mine,

who sold me to your grandmother

to pay their debts!

It was that or go down

to purple slavery,

never admitted to town again –

I saved them from that, at least,

till my young brother grew lucky

and married into the clay.

But even in this workshop,

do you see them living in a house like yours?

They make the pots

but your family trades them –

it’s to the Swallow Clan the profit goes.

So never wish

for what you don’t know –

because if you do

the gods may hear.’

Of course, when I said that I wished I’d been born into a family like Nunu’s, I meant the family her brother had married into: craft-folk who are as free to travel the world as my captain father. Sometimes I look at the life my mother leads, ruling our home and slaves, second only to the Lady in leading our clan, and I want to break free as a fledgling trying its wings.

But I hadn’t known that people from other clans could become purple slaves. The ones who’ve been born into it are used to stinking like rotten shellfish and not being allowed into town, but it would have been terrible for Nunu. She was lucky that my grandmother bought her – though I only said that once.

‘May you never need luck like that,’ she’d answered, with a look that made me shiver.

I wonder if purple works girls have their own kind of Learning when they start their bleeding – and quickly make the sign against evil. The goddess is grumpy enough – I don’t want to make her any angrier by thinking about that disgusting clan on a sacred day.

The path widens and I link arms with Pellie.

The hills turn to fields; the slopes aren’t as steep and the grass is dotted with sheep as well as goats. The flocks are a restless, bleating mass; goatherds are shouting and dogs barking. Their panic bleeds into us; my heart beats faster and I think Pellie’s does too. By the time the town appears, I’m trembling so hard that I’m not sure if it’s me or the earth. For a moment I imagine the buildings tumbled, the bright rocks, red, black and brown, strewn like counters in a game…

The town is whole. From here we can see it laid out like a mosaic, the farms leading to the small houses and workshops, then the flat roofs and windowed top floors of the great buildings in the centre, the shadowed triangle space between our house and Pellie’s and the road leading down to the temple and the harbour.

I’m concentrating so hard I forget to sing, but now the chorus swells:

As the goddess wills,

so all will be well.

She gives us life,

we offer her ours

and all will be well.

I join in, and know it’s true.

As we reach the farms, people are outside their houses, looking nearly as lost as their sheep. Two houses have broken walls, and the farmers are so busy staring at them or moving furniture into an animal shed that they forget to salute us. Don’t they know we’re carrying the great mother’s flowers? We sing louder till they put down what they’re carrying and stand with their hands on their hearts.

The path becomes a road that splits into a web of narrow streets, covered with the dust and rock shaken from house walls. A path has been swept down the middle of the street from the Lady’s House to the temple, small piles of brick shards, pebbles and dust on either side.

This is not how our procession should be, but Pellie and I walk down it, arms still linked, trying not to step on the gravel.

I hope Nunu is watching from the window as we pass our house.

You’re not a child now! I remind myself, and don’t turn to check.

At the door of the temple, Pellie and I squeeze hands – we never need words for what’s in our hearts – and go to our mothers. Two by two, we step inside, Mama and me first, then Pellie and her mother, and the others after.

And two by two, we sigh with relief: there’s no hint of dust or disturbance here. Of course the goddess would never harm her own shrine! The smooth vestibule floor is soothing on our scratched feet; the stone benches are cool on our bottoms, even through our heavy skirts. We sit and study the paintings: the goddess’s daughter Kora, her wounded foot dripping its life blood onto a crocus; one of her maidens offering her a necklace of golden beads, and the youngest maiden, veiled in the fishnet shawl of the swallow dance.

No one’s told us what happens in the Learning. Even this morning I didn’t know we were going to pick crocus until Nunu put out my ceremonial shift and flounced skirt. The shift is red, finely woven with a pattern of stars and dark bands on the front edges and sleeves. It’s longer than my girlhood tunics, going nearly to my ankles. The sides and front are open so I can walk free, though when my skirt is wrapped around me, nothing can be seen that shouldn’t.

Nunu dropped the shift over my head, helped me lace it up to cover my breasts, then pulled it smooth and even to wrap the skirt around my waist, tying the long sash with a bow at the back.

The shift is much finer than anything I could weave. The skirt took long enough – last winter I felt as if I never left the loom, Mama was so worried about my finishing it before I started my bleeding. When she put it in a chest without saying a word, I thought she’d noticed where I’d pulled too hard and a line had puckered. I wonder what happens to girls who don’t ever weave their skirts straight, or make their baskets tight, or find crocus flowers in the mountains? What if they never finish their Learning?

But Mama smiled this morning when I came out in my finery, and Nunu wiped her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking. Mama gave me new gold hoops for my ears and Dada gave me an anklet set with blue lapis lazuli and bright rock crystals that shine in the sun.

I look down quickly, glad to see it’s still there, not pulled off by a prickly branch when the earthmother shook. The bracelets on my puffy left wrist aren’t as loose as they were this morning, but at least I didn’t lose them.

Two maids place basins of water on the floor, and we wash our faces, hands and feet free of dust. Mama smooths my short fuzz of hair.

‘Come, Leira,’ says the young priestess, appearing in the doorway so suddenly I jump. She’s three years older than me; her name is Kora now that she’s the Lady’s assistant as well as her daughter, though I remember when she was Gellia and lived next door.

My heart is thumping as I pick up my basket. It thumps harder when I follow her up the staircase, between the painted scenes of Crocus Mountain. I’m climbing steadily closer to the earthmother’s mysteries, and I don’t know if I’m ready.

At first all I can see is the Lady on her tall ceremonial chair, her eyes dark with kohl and her necklaces of golden dragonflies glowing. Then I realise that every wall is painted with the story of the crocus. Behind the Lady, the goddess is seated on her painted throne, a monkey offering her a crocus and a winged griffin standing guard behind. But the strangest of all is realising that the girl pouring crocuses into a pannier is little Alia, while on the other side of the window, Pellie, red curls and all, balances a full basket on her shoulder. And on the next wall, talking to Kora who used to be Gellia, is a gatherer with a shaved head and a turned-up nose: me.

It’s as if the great mother has been with us on the mountain all day, watching and painting instead of belching and shaking.

I don’t belch, but I do tremble.

‘Oh!’ is all I say, before Kora shakes her head and I close my mouth again. No wonder the mothers were arguing, because Rastia, Tullie and Chella were picking today too, and they haven’t been painted. Every one of them has longer hair and a straighter nose than me and would look better on the wall – because even Pellie could never pretend that my nose is straight. If I were a clay statue, the potter would be sent back to reshape it.

Now that ridiculous nose is there for every maiden and woman to see, until after I’m dead and gone.

Better than not being there at all!

I’m especially glad I’m there instead of Rastia, because her nose may be perfect but her spirit is mean. The only thing she’s said to me since her first stay in the Lady’s House was, ‘You’ll understand if you ever start bleeding…it’s too bad you won’t do your Learning with Pellie and me.’

Suddenly I don’t care about my snub nose, because I’m the one who’s on the wall with Pellie.

Mama’s eyes flick

and she almost smiles,

as the Lady watches me

blush red as my shift.

But I remember to salute –

hand on heart, eyes down –

‘Praise the mother of all,

mistress of animals,

goddess of saffron,’

I say, and the Lady nods.

Her warmth glows like sunshine at noon

and when Kora holds out a pannier

I pour in the flowers from my small basket –

a tiny offering in the great.

Kora points to a chair and a stool

so Mama and I sit

while Pellie’s mother

and Pellie come in.

I see my friend staring,

hear the same, ‘Oh!’,

and she too turns red

as a sunburned fisher –

and adds her flowers to mine.

I watch the other girls as they take in the paintings – Rastia bites her lip, but Chella smiles in surprise at recognising us. I don’t know if I’d have smiled if it had been her instead of me.

The Lady begins to sing the story of the crocus, which is also the story of the earthmother’s daughter, who dies when the swallows leave and is reborn when they fly back in spring. It’s very long – but finally we are chanting, ‘Kora, Kora, your maidens call you!’ and following Kora who used to be Gellia down the stairs.

I can’t help a little sideways glance at my portrait as we leave.

But I’m also starting to think about dinner, because it’s a long time since breakfast. Maybe I could sneak a couple of figs or honey cakes from the kitchen as soon as I get home. I’ll ask Nunu to draw me a bath too, because I’m tired as well as hungry and I can’t wait to tell her about the painting.

But Kora leads us to the back of the temple and pours the precious flowers out onto a table. The room floods with scent.

‘Your mamas will do one first,’ she says, and we watch, our empty baskets at our feet, as each mother picks up a crocus.

Mama pulls the petals back to where the three red threads become one, pinches the pistil out from the yellow stamens around it, and places it in a dish on the centre of the table. The petals are dropped into my empty basket.

Pellie’s mother sniffs with annoyance. I’d been concentrating too hard to realise that it was a race, but of course it is. And of course Mama would win.

‘Speed is good,’ says Rastia’s mother, ‘but an offering to the goddess requires perfection.’

Mama points to a second, plainer dish. ‘Exactly. Any damaged ones can be used for trade, but only the perfect will go to the goddess.’

She’s won again, because she was perfect as well as fast, and by agreeing she’s turned the reproof into praise.

I will never be as smart as my mother.

‘Goddess guide your fingers, Learners,’ says Kora, and I reach for my first flower. It’s fiddlier than it looks, and takes long moments.

I catch Pellie’s eye. I wonder if being on the painting means that we should be good at this, and if it’s a bad omen that I’m not.

The pile of flowers looks much bigger on the table than it had in Kora’s pannier. It doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller.

The mothers are eagle-eyed, watching each other’s daughters to see that we don’t miss a stigma or waste a grain of the precious saffron. Pellie sneezes, blowing petals across the table. Rastia laughs and Pellie looks as if she might burst into tears.

‘Breath of the goddess,’ says Kora, and Rastia tries to change her laugh into a sneeze too.

But now a yellow stamen is in the pot of perfect red threads.

‘Who did this?’ Rastia’s mother hisses. ‘Are we Egyptians, to cheat the goddess?’

My mother’s eyes narrow. Everyone knows that Dada’s grandfather was Egyptian.

Kora snatches the yellow thread and drops it into the nearest basket. ‘No harm is done when quickly mended.’

It’s the only thing that’s quick. By the time Chella lays the last three stamens in the pot, our fingers are stained red, our stomachs are rumbling and we look as tired as servants.

But we still need to follow Kora and the pot into another undecorated room, hot as a midsummer day, with a fresh crack in the wall that we pretend not to notice. Kora spreads the threads on a fine mesh over a brazier, sings a quick prayer, and leads us out again.

‘Farewell, Learners,’ she says.

We’re free.

Mama takes my hand as we cross to our home. ‘My almost-woman child,’ she says, and kisses my forehead.

Nunu greets us at the front door, guarding us from the uproar in the kitchen. She’s nearly in tears as she tells Mama that the maid Tiny was carrying a tray of honey cakes up the stairs when the house started shaking. She was thrown to the bottom, bruising her leg and bumping her head on the hard stone steps; the tray broke and the honey cakes were smashed. She kept falling over every time she stood up and Nunu finally sent her to bed. Worse, Cook Maid dropped the bucket of snails and by the time they’d got Tiny settled the snails had disappeared into corners – they’ve only just got half of them back again.

‘And upstairs—’ Nunu adds, as if she might as well get all the bad news over with at once.

‘Not the shrine?’ Mama interrupts.

‘No, not that,’ Nunu says, and Mama breathes a sigh of relief. ‘But the swallow vase that belonged to your grandmother fell off the windowsill and smashed in the street. I cut my foot when I went out to see.’ She lifts her skirt to show the cut foot, but Mama is already rushing up the stairs to check the rooms herself.

The shrine room looks bright and clean, the red stone floor shining as if no dust dared to make its way in here – no, it’s damp under my feet; it’s just been washed. Only the swallow vase is gone from its window niche, disappeared as surely as the swallows I saw fleeing this morning. There are a few small cracks in the frieze around the top of the walls – a warrior has lost his spear and one of the ships has a gap in its sail. It looks unlucky and I hope the painter can fix it soon. But the shrine table in the corner is clean, waiting for offerings, and the boys on the walls are still walking towards it, carrying their fish.

Which reminds me. ‘Nunu, we’ve been to the temple and I’m—’

‘Leira!’ Mama snaps, quickly making the sign against the evil eye. Nunu is making it too, as if she knows what I was going to say. They both look shocked, and now I am too. How could I be so stupid? Pointing my fingers, hoping it’s not too late, wondering what ill luck I could have brought against myself.

But how did Nunu know?

The painter! She’s visited so often since my bleeding, coming upstairs to chat to Mama while we were weaving. All the while she was observing me, storing me in a secret place so she could put me on the wall. My parents must have shown her the earrings and anklets before they gave them to me.

‘The jewellery is the Saffron Maiden’s, first made for your grandmother’s grandmother,’ says Mama. ‘I’ve kept it safe for you since my mother died.’

I don’t remember my grandmother’s face or anything she said, but I remember knowing that I was special to her.

‘But who has that Saffron Maiden been since then?’

‘The goddess and her attendants exist without us,’ says Mama. ‘They don’t age or die with the faces borrowed for their paintings.’

I’m still thinking about this when Dada comes in. He puts his hands on either side of my face, studying it. ‘My almost-woman child,’ he says, just as Mama did, and kisses my forehead.

The sea smell is strong on him, which is strange because the ships are stored in the shipsheds for the winter, their sails and rigging being mended and spliced.

‘Has the captain been paddling at the beach like a small boy?’ I tease.

Everyone freezes. I don’t need Mama’s warning glare to stop talking; my fingers flash again: I’m sorry, earthmother, forgive me, god of the sea, I didn’t mean to ask about sacred secrets. But even though I guessed that the Learning boys were on those boats in the bay, how could I know that Dada would be guiding them?

I should have. What other man of the Swallow Clan is a ship’s captain, the master of our trading fleet? When the room we’re in now is the sea god’s shrine?

What happens to a Saffron Maiden who offends the gods twice on her first day? Three times if you count dropping my basket.

‘Leira’s bath is ready,’ Nunu calls, and I escape up the stairs.

The bath is hot and scented, strewn with petals of summer-dried flowers and orange threads of saffron. The water turns gold and so do I. I’m truly a Saffron Maiden. I absorb the knowing with every fibre of my body, and the more golden my skin becomes, the more I feel it with pride instead of fear. I see the line of Saffron Maidens stretching back through time to my great-great-grandmother, and know it goes on back past her, to before our town was built. One day I will have daughters, and a daughter and a granddaughter and great-granddaughters who will follow on till the end of time.

Nunu brings me honey cakes and cheese to eat in the bath, and ale to drink, and I know that she wants me to go on soaking up the saffron for as long as possible. Finally she holds out a towel, and I step out of the tub so she can pat me dry. The yellow stain doesn’t rub off; I study my outstretched golden arms as Nunu dresses me, and they are beautiful.

My embroidered red shift has been shaken clean; the three layers of my woven skirt have been brushed and the small tear from a prickle bush mended. Even my jewellery has been rubbed to a new glow. Nunu smooths olive oil onto my fuzzy head, and brushes my forelock and pony tail into loose curls. She tugs hard at the tangles the way she always does, making me yelp, and then snaps at me to hold my head still as if I were a child.

But when she tells me to go to my mother, it looks as if there are tears in her eyes too.

Mama is in her room, freshly clean and made up, though the make-up pots are still open and she’s holding the fine brush in her hand. I sit on a stool and she works on me like the painter worked on the wall. Bright pink lips and nails, and rouge-red cheeks like hers, but instead of kohl, she smudges a saffron paste on my eyelids and the tops of my ears, till they are as yellow as my stained fingers.

A shiver like the earthmother’s trembling runs through me – the face in the mirror belongs to the Saffron Maiden on the wall, and I don’t know if I’m still me underneath.

Mama opens the chest under the niche where the house goddess sits, and takes out the tiny bowl I made last month. Each of the Learners made one, but I was the only one who’d played with clay before – and Nunu’s brother’s family are the best potters in the land. They make the fine pots for our clan and the temple, and the swallow pots that Dada trades around the world.

It was Nunu’s sister-in-law herself, younger than Nunu but twice as cranky, who taught the Learners. She pretended that she’d never seen me before, though of course Pellie knew the truth. And suddenly I understood Mama’s knowing smile about the little pot I took home when I was a child – maybe it wasn’t just that it wasn’t good enough to be used. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know I’d already played at one of the crafts of the Learning. Better to let everyone think that even a girl who’s late to bleed can be gifted at something.

Now, my shift laced to just below my breasts, my skirt swinging, my wrists and ankles jingling, I take my little bowl and follow my mother into Triangle Plaza.

The street is empty. Women wave from the windows, but servants, children, men and boys are forbidden to see us until the goddess has received our gifts. And yet, if Dada spent the day with the Learning boys, surely they’ll be going to their part of the temple too.

What if we see them? What if I bump into a boy and have to marry him at the end of my Learning?

I don’t even want to think about it!

But if any boys are in the temple, they’re safely hidden in their own section. Only Kora waits for us in the entrance.

In the hot, heavy-scented drying room, she portions out the dried saffron threads into our tiny bowls. We climb the Crocus Mountain stairs again, bowls held reverently in our two hands, mothers following with our baskets of petals.

The Lady, waiting on her throne, beckons for us to tip our saffron into the urn on her lap. With a moistened, crimson finger, she draws a sacred three-in-one pistil on our cheeks.

Kora hands her a jug of honeyed wine, and the Lady pours it into our empty bowls, draining the last of it into two cups for herself and Kora. ‘Drink, crocus-learners,’ she says, ‘for not a grain of the goddess’s saffron must be wasted.’

She drains hers at a gulp, throws her cup to smash on the altar stone, and watches us with a strange half-smile. I gulp mine down in the way Mama has always taught me not to, and smash my bowl.

I was so proud of that little pot. I thought it would stay in our house forever, to be treasured like my great-grandmother’s swallow vase – though that’s smashed now, too. Wine and emotion are spinning in my head, and then I understand. Making pots is not for the Swallow Clan. I see my childhood dream smashing with the bowl, but there’s no time to feel sad because Kora has picked up a flute, and the Lady is dancing.

‘Come!’ she calls, and the six of us join hands to circle her. Our hearts are thumping; our legs are awkward, afraid of stumbling or kicking the Lady by mistake. Then the mothers begin to ululate, shrilling an exalting lu-lu-lu over Kora’s high, wild music, and we circle faster and faster, finally breaking free to whirl and spin as the Lady does, our ponytails flying like her long black curls. The mothers toss the flowers from our baskets; mauve-tinged petals flutter like butterflies before being trampled underfoot. The room fills with the sweet crocus scent, flooding my senses like the honeyed wine; the other girls are a blur and so are the mothers – all I can see is the Lady, still dancing while one by one we drop to the floor around her. I can hardly tell if she’s twirling or the room, except that her golden dragonfly necklaces are flying as if they’ve come to life.

Maybe they have, I think. Maybe this is the magic.

But she stops, finally – just comes to a halt, still smiling, not dropping sick and dizzy like the rest of us. She sits on her tall throne, barely panting. Her left foot is bleeding from a pottery shard, like the earthmother’s daughter before the swallows take her. Mine is too. It doesn’t hurt; I wonder if it’s a sign.

‘Goddess keep you, my crocus-learners,’ says the Lady. ‘My almost-women.’

I think that means the night is over, but it’s not. We drink another cup of wine, and then the Lady and our mothers sing:

Dance for the blooming crocus,

born of autumn rain,

dance for our dying Kora

crying in her pain,

dance for the flying swallows

till they bring her back again.

As they sing, our mothers drape us in the wide fishnet shawls of the swallow dance – how could I forget? – then Kora takes my hand – me, the newest Learner – to follow the Lady down the stairs and out to the street, with the other girls and mothers following. The waiting people sing with us, holding torches high as we dance through the town, our shawls opening and closing like wings of the swallows we’re calling to bring the earthmother’s daughter home next spring.