Nunu’s words come through a haze. I can’t seem to hear them, and when I do hear, I can’t understand. This is too huge, too impossible, to be true – and I am too black and empty inside to feel anything at all. Something in me is broken and will never be right.

Mama doesn’t need to understand words. She wails in pure grief. Nunu is crushed and pale; her face twists as she repeats the goldsmith’s words, as if she’s reliving the horror of his memories herself. Her story is incoherent with sobs. Maybe his was too.

A sudden thought, like a flash of light through my darkness: The goldsmith said everyone who could fit was on that ship: Pellie’s nearby! That’s why I’ve been hearing her in my head!

‘Where are the Lady and her family now?’

‘The Lady said the ship must wait till the next dawn, for the rituals of sailing season. The captain was like your dada – he knew they couldn’t wait.’

‘The Swallow Clan didn’t board?’ I hear my voice, a whisper in the distance. ‘None of them?’

Nunu shakes her head. ‘None, nor my family neither. Goldsmiths and jewellers is all; and the sailors and their families.’

‘But it doesn’t mean they died! They’d have fled to the hills and farms again. They’re safe on the other side of the mountain, Nunu, I know they are!’

‘No one was safe.’ Her voice drops to a whisper, as if she’s afraid of her own words. ‘The goldsmith’s skin is scarred by the rain of embers, far out to sea though they were. Fire and rock poured onto the island and the sea around it. Boats burned on the waves. There are mountains now where once were fields; cliffs where once was shore. Nothing lives – the island is gone, child, as sure as if it’s sunk under the sea.’

My mind is blacker than the night around us –

this time the truth won’t be pushed away.

I told Pellie she was no oracle

but perhaps she is,

her spirit voice in my head

all of her that is left.

And still my mind screams

because how can Pellie,

all of her family,

Ibi’s wife and his baby,

the farmers who cared for us –

everyone we’ve ever known –

be gone as if

they never were?

I can’t believe it

and I won’t.

Mama and Nunu sob through the night,

but it seems that I slept

because Nunu is shaking me awake

and I run stumbling

through a morning grey as my soul

for the headcount at dawn.

I know now why slaves don’t speak –

there are no words

for the loss of all hope,

for a life without joy

that is no life at all.

I move through the day

of gathering rot

and hammering shells

and if I could feel

I would be one of the creatures

crushed between rocks –

but I cannot even feel pain.

Though I’m wrong that slaves can’t feel –

there is a ripple, almost of joy,

when the overseer with his cruel pig face

says that midsummer comes tomorrow

and the Lady has declared

that even the slaves –

no-good and lazy as we are, he adds –

will honour the great mother

and the sun still pale from the war of gods;

call them to strength on this longest day –

though the priest-folk,

processing in purple,

don’t want the stink of the slaves who made it

so we will honour her here

with what song and praise

such lowly creatures can offer.

Pellie’s voice says clear:

‘A day of song and praise

will have no headcount,’

so I stumble home again at dusk.

I have no plan,

but Pellie does.

It feels so good to wake next to Mama and know that I don’t have to return to the purple works for a day, that I snuggle against her like a child. But Mama moans in her sleep and I don’t need Pellie’s voice to tell me to wash. I rescue my stinking shift from its thorn bush outside our door – Nunu was right, no human or animal has ever tried to steal it – and pull it on to go down to our secluded beach.

Mama and Nunu have been invited to honour the fishers’ goddess with them, but Pellie has other plans for me.

The morning is warming already, though the water is still cold at first step. I pull off my shift and drop it into the shallows; wade out further.

‘Undo your plait and get your head under the water!’ orders Pellie.

If she wasn’t a spirit I’d argue back. But she is, so I duck under and splutter up, splashing and scrubbing, over and over, letting my ponytail and forelock float free. The sea warms around me, holding and rocking, washing me clean; my body relaxes as if it doesn’t know that nothing will ever melt the frozen blackness inside. Lights dance on the water as the sun struggles to rise from behind the hills to the east, far beyond the purple works. I sing the dawn, alone out here in the water, though from beyond the point I can hear the fishers singing their own song, Mama and Nunu with them.

What am I doing alone on this sacred day? Why aren’t I with my family?

‘You’re doing what the great mother bids,’ says Pellie. ‘Your way is not with the fishers.’

‘Or the priest-folk or the craft-folk or the slaves,’ I snap back, but go on singing, even though I’m too numb to care whether the sun becomes strong or gives us this longest day of the year.

The day that I should have been starting the fourth and final season of becoming a woman, celebrating rites that I will never learn, for a land that no longer exists.

‘You’ll learn if you listen!’ says Pellie.

I pull my shift out of the shallows and shake it. Something white flies free, and I catch it mid-air, my hand snatching before I have time to think, the way it did when Pellie and I danced with balls, throwing them back and forth to each other, four small balls in the air at once.

This one is just a pebble, smooth and white, perfectly round and no wider than a fingernail. It’s not gold or a jewel, but I would wear it as a necklace if I could; use it as my seal-stone. Even my frozen heart knows that it comes from Pellie. I will keep it forever.

So I pull on my damp shift, finger-comb the curls that flow past my ears now, and tease out the tangles of the long hank before tying it into its bouncing ponytail again. No plait today; even hair needs to dance wild and free to celebrate the goddess in her strength. I retrieve my sacred skirt from the hut and wrap it around me, the flounces falling straight and the waist wrapped tight. My pebble is knotted securely into the tail of the sash; whether Pellie is oracle or friend, I need her with me.

I’m as ready as I can be, though I’m glad there’s no mirror.

I still don’t know what I’m ready for.

‘You must climb to the goddess’s mountain shrine,’ says Pellie.

‘But the rituals were at dawn! And I’m not allowed.’

‘The people are returning now. You’ll not be seen, but the goddess will hear you.’

‘I’ve already given everything we have. I’ve got nothing left!’

‘There is always something left,’ Pellie says firmly, in her oracle voice.

The peak shrine is clear from here. There are taller mountains, but this one is a perfect, rounded cup of a hill. It will be two hours of walking before I get to the base.

I think Pellie’s spirit will guide me, but she has disappeared; maybe she thinks I don’t need her now. The town is deserted as I pass, and the trail to the mountain is wide. Sometimes it twists so that I can see the snake-line of people winding down towards me, too far away to tell how many or how fast they’re walking.

Then I hear the music: the chanting of ecstatic song, from the Lady’s clear soprano to the chief’s deepest bass, threaded through with the piping of flutes and the clatter of rattles.

How far away? I ask Pellie.

No answer.

I keep going, peering around each bend before I step, and am at the foot of the mountain before I see the first priest-folk coming towards me. I can tell the Lady and the chief because there are guards in front and behind them, but even the guards are chanting. There’s time to wrap my skirt more tightly around me, scramble through two thorn bushes and rest with my back to a tree.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to be here, or if it matters if they see me. I just know that I need to do this, and do it alone.

The bushes around me are too thick to push through; I’ll have to wait till the path is safe. I curl up in the dirt between the roots of the tree, and doze in the shade.

When I wake, the sun is close to its full height and the path is empty. I start to climb. The heat beneath the haze is kiln-hot and my throat is already dry – but I am tougher now than I’ve ever believed I could be. The trail is steep and the higher it goes, the more often it’s nothing but rock to rock, a high step up where I’m guessing the Lady had the support of her guards so as not to bring ill omens with a stumble and fall.

I do it alone and I don’t stumble – and though my parched throat won’t sing loud, I hum the goddess’s song under my breath.

Goddess of all

we sing your praise;

give us long days

for fruit and field.

Mother of all

we bring you gifts

give us long life

for flock and herd.

Since I don’t have a gift, I sing the hymn over and over, the endless verses that list every fruit and grain, every green and growing thing that the sun’s warmth will ripen and we will eat: olives and barley, pomegranates and lentils, because even those harvested in winter or spring need this midsummer heat to grow.

The rote words stop me thinking about my only true wish: take the world back to the way it was a year ago, when all I had to worry about was when I would start my bleeding and my Learning.

Stepping off the path

I shelter a moment in the arms of a rock

so old it’s been hollowed by gods

like the huge trunk of a tree

blasted open by lightning –

and though it’s a rock,

it has the same god-feel

as the wishing tree at home.

The shrine is clear from here:

red pillars and doors

into the side of the hill,

the bull-horned altar

with its splash of blood,

the offerings around it –

with vultures hovering –

and the priestess-guardian

in the shade of the wall.

Since the earth mother shook

half a year ago, on the shortest day,

I’ve done all that I could,

lost more than I can believe,

suffered more than I knew I could bear.

Even now,

clean and combed in my sacred skirt

blood reddening my feet

I’ve climbed the mountain alone

offering my songs –

and the goddess laughs.

Outcast that I am –

neither priest nor slave –

I cannot approach the shrine

that the priestess guards.

I thought I was broken,

dead inside and couldn’t feel –

but that numb deadness

was deep as the sea –

my rage is swelling like the murdering wave:

red fury, weighted with darkness

because it’s Mama I hate

for losing her spirit,

Dada for leaving us;

Glaucus for dying –

and me for betraying my clan

and becoming a slave.

But now, my body shaking

like the earthmother’s trembling,

my fury erupts

blinding and deafening

like the gods at war;

scorching my veins

like the rain of fire

that scarred the goldsmith;

swallowing me like the burning rocks

that killed my land,

my clan, my friends, my home.

We are nothing –

the chips the gods play with

in their gambling games –

the only one to hate

is our goddess, mother of all.

She’s betrayed us,

over and over,

not honouring the gifts

we sacrificed,

demanding her rites

as she destroys our world.

I shriek my fury –

if the priestess hears, I don’t know or care –

I can’t think or feel

anything but hate –

I scream until

the rage drains

and I feel the warm slither

of a snake across my toes –

messenger of the goddess,

from her world to ours.

‘Follow,’ says Pellie.

‘You must sink into darkness

before you can rise.’

I don’t know what she means

because Pellie

is no longer my sister-friend

but a spirit oracle.

Deep in my belly I know that she’s gone

but am glad of her voice –

though I wish she’d still speak like my friend.

The snake disappears,

but a second trail leads from this rock;

I leave the path to the shrine

and follow the hill’s great curve

to where the rocks gape open –

a door to the underworld,

the great mother’s belly –

and I see the flick

of the snake as it enters.

I don’t need Pellie to tell me to follow;

I’ve hated the great mother –

as well as my own

and now I must pay.

l follow the snake

into cool blackness,

walls wet with the mother’s weeping,

and in the emptiness of caverns

touch pillars of tears,

growing as stone from ceiling and floor.

No light or sound, no heat nor time

nor scent of any living thing,

but I creep on and down

sliding on a foot-worn way;

heart thudding,

thick fear rising

entering the belly of the mother

with nothing to offer –

but my feet go on as Pellie ordered

slipping down in the blackness

past the tear-built rocks;

till I feel water rising to my knees

and am blinded by light –

a bolt from the sun at its peak

to the belly of the earth

lighting the pool I stand in

with the neglected rock altar

waiting for gifts.

I have no gold

or bronze or precious things –

nothing except myself –

like the fish-bitten diver

who took his agonies to the deep

and gave his life to the sea god.

The fishers will care

for Mama and Nunu;

there’s no trade to be done

for a disappeared land –

and a purple slave

is no use to anyone.

And yet

there’s a difference between

living a life that’s no use

and leaving it forever.

I’m more afraid

than when the house fell

or the gods fought

or we fled the palace

because I can’t see a priest or a knife

and I don’t know how

the goddess will take me –

I only know

that I don’t want to die.

‘Great Mother,’ I plead,

and for that moment of loving life,

I forget my misery,

the fatigue and fear of a purple slave,

‘let me live to serve you –

if not as my clan, then however I can.’

Standing in that pool, in the light

with deepest darkness all around

waiting for death, or a sign

I go beyond fear;

the world spins,

my head so light it might float

my gaze goes black

and my body limp,

falling and knowing that this is the end.

Waking spluttering, shivering

in the cold pool of tears –

adding mine to them –

my bumped head so real I must be alive.

I need to learn why.

Weak as a newborn,

I drink and bathe

in the great mother’s tears;

life flows through me, quick and strong,

my ears so sharp I hear each drop

trickling through caverns,

my eyes so bright I see

under the water,

around the base of the neglected altar

pretty pebbles and shells, left for the goddess

who doesn’t need gold or jewels

but a perfect offering from the heart.

‘I have nothing,’ I’ve said,

but that’s not true.

In a knot at the end of my sash

is the sea-polished pebble,

Pellie’s gift that speaks

of laughter and love,

and friendship beyond death.

This, the most precious thing I own,

so small an offering

on the great rock altar –

till the shifting sunbeam

shines it like a jewel.

‘Well offered,’ says Pellie, in her oracle voice,

‘and –

back in the sunlight and the world –

when the purple, the white and the red are one,

you will thrive too,

for you have faced death’s darkness

and will enter life new.’