The bandits strike before we reach the fork in the path.

We’d stopped when the sun was high, drunk some of the souring milk and eaten half the meat. The day was cool enough that Nunu and I were still wearing our cloaks, but Mama insisted on wearing the fine fishnet shawl instead. Then she didn’t like the way I’d rolled her cloak to tie around my shoulders, and took it back, draping it on top of the shawl. I knew she’d be too hot but it was easier not to argue.

Our ceremonial shifts were fine enough to pack into one basket, but before going on, we’d picked more leaves and nestled the jewellery into the other one, under the remains of the meat. I hated taking Pellie’s bracelet off, and my earrings, but being accused as a thief would be worse.

‘Glad to get rid of them,’ Nunu said, rubbing her bony wrists as she pulled off Mama’s gold. ‘Don’t feel right!’

It doesn’t make any difference; it all happens so fast. I’m in the lead on the narrow goatpath, Chance at my side, Mama behind me and Nunu with her crutch at the rear. Mama’s lost her stick again and I haven’t stopped to cut her a new one.

A demon roar; men dressed in rough skins are grabbing me, ripping my basket away, yanking my arm nearly out of the shoulder. Chance growls, springs and yelps; there’s a punch to my ribs before I can scream, and I’m sprawled across the rocks, pain shooting down my hip.

The men rush on, still shouting, and now Mama is screaming, spinning off balance as they rip the cloak from her shoulders and shove her away, and I can’t breathe because she’s landed on top of me, hard and heavy. Chance is beside me, whimpering.

Nunu hits the last man with her stick but he just laughs, grabs the ale bag and keeps running.

Two men, three, four? It was all so fast I don’t even know.

‘No, no, no,’ Mama moans, trying to sit up, squeezing air out of me with every move. I gasp, and she realises she’s lying on me. For an instant it jolts her back into herself. She scrambles off me, onto her knees, kissing my forehead. ‘Leilei,’ she moans, ‘no, no, no?’

I’ve landed on my right side; pain tingles from my right wrist up to my shoulder and down from my left yanked-out shoulder to my fingers, but what frightens me is the deep throbbing pain from my right hip and thigh. I have landed on the dagger.

How long does it take to bleed to death?

I didn’t even use it – and it’s killed me.

Stupid, stupid.

How will Mama and Nunu survive without me?

I can’t die! I won’t. Goddess help me, this is not my time.

Very carefully, I roll from my side to my back. Mama is still leaning over me. Chance has stopped whimpering and is licking my foot. Nunu is moaning, kneeling on all fours. I watch them as if they are a distant painting, and touch my hip. Finger the torn fabric of my skirt, feel my bare skin beneath. It hurts to touch.

Hurts…but my fingers aren’t wet. No blood – the skin is whole. I’ve landed on the flat side of the blade; I’m bruised, not wounded. I’m not going to die.

‘Goddess leaping,’ breathes Nunu, crawling over to check Mama and me. ‘Those slime-eating sons of demons – I thought he’d killed you with that punch.’

‘So did I,’ I say. ‘Can you stand?’

‘In a minute,’ says Nunu.

I start shaking then, so hard that my teeth chatter. Mama strokes my forehead till it stops. Then, slowly, carefully, we help each other to our feet. I find Nunu’s stick where the bandit threw it. We check the ground in case something small, an earring maybe, has fallen from the baskets, but we’d packed them too well. All our gold is nestled in the leaves, waiting for the bandits to find when they’ve eaten our meat.

Maybe they only wanted the meat. Food, and whatever drink was in the nearly empty ale bag. They might not even notice the jewellery.

I hope they never find it! Better for it to be lost in ashes and dirt!

I don’t want those horrible men – those slime-eating sons of demons – to touch the Saffron Maiden’s beautiful earrings and bracelet that were my grandmother’s grandmother’s and then mine; I don’t want them to shove Pellie’s bracelet onto their wrists; I don’t want them to see our embroidered shifts. I want to throw up when I think of our gold in their filthy hands.

What I want doesn’t make any difference. Our food, jewellery, ceremonial shifts and Mama’s cloak are gone. The clothes we’re wearing, the two warm cloaks and the light net shawl, the necklace hidden around my waist, and the dagger: these are all we have left.

We keep on walking. Just before the fork we see the settlement the goatherd warned us about. A skin-clad figure is in front of one of the huts, and even Mama understands that we have to go as quickly and quietly as we can.

We keep tight together, walking crouched and nearly holding our breath, till we’re out of sight on the path to the sea.

Even then we don’t feel safe. I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again. That man, that demon-bandit hit me! Punched me, on purpose, as if I were a slave. A nothing.

No one has ever hit me before. I didn’t know it could happen. The pain in my ribs reminds me with every breath; the pain in my leg reminds me on every step.

And the pain in my stomach reminds me that we have no food.

Ahead of us is a creek: thick with ashes like the first one, but still flowing. Chance laps at it and we follow, scooping water with our hands. We rest there with our sore feet cooling in the stream until lying on the ground hurts more than standing up.

We have nothing to carry water in, so I hate to leave the creek. But I don’t know where it goes, and we need to find a palace where there are priest-folk, people like us, who will take us in and help. So we drink as much as we can hold, filling our bellies full to bursting, and follow the path. We don’t get far before we have to stop to pee.

The sky is still murky, making it hard to tell when night is falling. It seems so long since the bandits hit us that I’m starting to believe we’ve walked through an afternoon and a night without noticing.

Now it’s suddenly, definitely, night; a blackness of no stars or moon, and we’re still on the path. After trying to be invisible all day, now I long to see a friendly fire.

There is no friendly fire; no food, warmth or shelter. We lie down where we are, and I am as stiff as an old woman in the morning, aching and limping like Nunu; Mama could be the youngest, though even she moves more slowly than usual. Chance moves hesitantly, as if his ribs are as sore as mine. Nunu thinks the yelp I heard was the bandit kicking him. But once he’s stretched and yawned with the rest of us, he feels well enough to briefly disappear and return stinking like a dead goat. Which is probably exactly what he’s eaten and rolled in. He’s so pleased with himself that he can’t understand why we don’t want him to rub against us.

I sing the welcome to the sun as it begins to rise, though my voice is no stronger than its brightness. Then we go on walking.

It’s late in the afternoon before we come to another settlement, a cluster of farmhouses and buildings. There are no choices now. My stiffness is easing, but Nunu is stumbling and has fallen twice. And Mama hasn’t stopped her low no, no, no chant since she woke.

‘Hush, Mama,’ I tell her. ‘Singing will make you even thirstier.’

She looks at me as if I’m speaking a strange language. ‘No, no, NO!’ And she goes on singing.

I step back out of sight. Undoing the sash of my skirt, I slip Mama’s necklace from around my waist, and wiggle the silver dragonfly off the chain. Nunu helps me fasten the necklace around my waist again and tie my skirt securely on top. The dragonfly stays hidden in my hand.

‘We need something to trade,’ I say to Nunu’s look, and she nods.

The farmers here are not as welcoming as the goatherd, but they are not bandits. They line up suspiciously as we approach, shooing children behind their mothers, as if we might eat them.

One woman stands in front, flanked by men holding clubs. I approach cautiously and salute. The goatherd convinced me that we should stay as close as possible to the truth without admitting to our clan.

‘We have run from the riots in Tarmara,’ I tell her, and hand her the silver dragonfly. ‘I offer this emblem of the goddess, in honour of her guiding us to you in our quest for shelter.’

She takes it with a slight, suspicious smile that turns to wonder as she studies it. The dragonfly is surely the finest thing she’s ever held.

The men relax their grips on their clubs; some wander off to continue what they were doing before we appeared. ‘We don’t shelter runaway slaves or thieves,’ says the woman. ‘But we will honour the goddess by offering you food and shelter for the night.’

Runaway slaves or thieves? How dare she!

Nunu glares at me. ‘We thank you,’ she says, and I swallow my hot words.

We sleep on the floor of the main room. ‘They don’t trust us near the stores,’ Nunu whispers.

That’s probably smart. How much hungrier would we have to be before I would steal to stay alive?

But we’re not hungry now; we’re not cold and the door is closed against wild beasts. My dagger is tucked into my waistband, though I sleep so soundly that when a young boy shouts that it’s sunrise, for a moment I don’t know where I am.

My leg doesn’t know either. It throbs with pain from hip to knee and I don’t know if I can walk to leave.

But I can, of course I can. The family sings the dawn – all of them, the whole community out in front of the buildings in the grey light, singing as one, staring at us until we join in too. It’s not the same as our song but the tune is simple and the words easy to follow, even in this rough dialect. It’s a strange way to do it, but the sun rises so quickly that it seems it approves. It might even be glowing a little more brightly again.

They share their breakfast porridge with us, the barley warm and filling in our bellies, and point us on the path to Gournia. We’ll be there by nightfall, they say.

‘Which nightfall?’ Nunu grumbles.

But I’m excited. I can’t help it. The pain in my hip and leg is easing as I warm up. And the haze definitely isn’t as thick today – we can already see further over the hills than we could yesterday. We’ll see the sea again soon. I feel anxious not seeing that blue. It’s not natural to have land on every side.

Even Nunu cheers up as we walk. Mama hums a cheerful no, no, no song, and when we come around a bend and look out at a greyness that is definitely the sea, I sing praise to the goddess. She answers by showing us a tree to rest under at noon – and before nightfall, just as the farm woman said, we see the stone walls of a town. Houses and workshops stretch down to the sea, and a tall building in the middle must be the palace of the priest-folk.

As the sun sets, we hear a chorus of chirping, and the hazy red sky fills with birds, swooping and darting: swallows. The sign of our home, of spring and rebirth.

We will be safe now.