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green mould that grew there, though the taste of it made me retch.
    The barn was near the centre of the village and the square of frozen, churned-up earth they called a green. It was where the elders went to pass judgement on village matters. The whole village gathered there that first day to debate what to do with me. The law prohibited the killing of children under the age of twelve without a special dispensation from a priest of Askaan. Elder Gallen ordered a messenger on a fast horse to ride to the nearest town, find the temple there and bring a priest back, urgently.
    I listened to my mother plead for mercy. I was only a child, she said, only a girl. She offered to leave the village and take me with her. She begged to be allowed to bring me food and care for my injuries. A few others – including Eilik the blacksmith – sided with her, but the elders overruled them.
    I was mad, they said. No one must go near me until the priest had come.
    The messenger returned the next day. I heard the commotion as he – and the men he had brought – arrived. I was nearly too faint with thirst and hunger and the cold to care. But somehow all the bruises and pains I had acquired the day before didn’t hurt as much as I had expected. I rolled painfully through the straw and muck until I could press my eye to a chink in the wooden wall of the barn.
    A golden-robed priest of Askaan, with a white beard and a stern, fatherly face, dismounted from a golden horse. He handed the reins to Elder Gallen, who stared at them as if he had never seen leather before.
    There was another man with the messenger. A slight, slim man. His head was bald, and it gleamed in the early morning sun, but he looked young, not even as old as my mother. His face was smooth and unlined, and his eyes, although I could not see their exact colour at that distance, seemed dark and grim. His robe was black, and so was his horse. He was a priest of the Other.
    That was when I really began to believe that I would die.
    The two priests directed tables and chairs to be brought out to the centre of the village. They wanted to question everyone.
    Ulem and Marik were forced to leave their beds to testify that I had howled like a wolf and foamed at the mouth, while my eyes had glowed with an unearthly light – and I had attacked without provocation and tried to bite out their throats. They questioned my mother too. Had I shown signs of madness before? Had I ever spoken strange languages or blasphemed; shown any desire to eat raw meat?
    Ma denied it all, but I could hear in their voices that they did not believe her.
    They stopped for a midday meal. The smells of cooking meat and vegetables should have made me drool, but my mouth was too dry even for that. My cramping stomach made me curl into as tight a ball as I could with the chains wrapped around me.
    At the end of the day, as the light coming through the chink in the wall turned orange, the priests ordered the barn to be opened. Elder Gallen did not like that. He said I was too dangerous. When the holy men insisted, he offered to give them a pitchfork each, just to be safe. They refused that too.
    Slowly, creakingly, the barn door was pushed back.
    I heard my mother cry out and the sounds of a struggle, as if someone were holding her back. I could not see her.
    The priest of Askaan took a few steps towards me, then he backed away, putting up his hand to cover his mouth. The barn stank, not just of animal dung but of my own. I had fouled myself. I had had no choice in the matter, but the shame did what the fear had not the power to do. It broke me. I began to cry silently, my body shaking with painful sobs.
    “They gave you quite a beating, didn’t they, child?”
    I squinted up at the man who had spoken. His voice was mild and kind. It was the priest of the Other. He crouched beside me, apparently unaffected by the smell, and took my chin in his hand, turning my face gently towards him to examine me. His fingers were dry