My heart skips a beat.

There’s a woman lying asleep in the crater, a woman dressed in animal skins. She is beautiful. Long, dark hair fans out around her head like a halo. Her face is white and she has the tiniest smile on her pale lips. Her hands are clasped together loosely just below her waist. She’s wearing a necklace and some string bracelets like Harby’s, but they go all the way up her arms. By her right side is a spear, the wood so pale it’s almost white. Around the rim of her hollow bed are quartzes, white and pink and grey, and beneath her, her bed is made of petals and leaves and the softest feathers. The woman looks so peaceful as she sleeps there.

Mothga squirms in my arms and my heart lifts. Maybe the lady will help us.

I hear a crack behind me. Before I can even turn round someone grabs my hair. A rough hand clamps over my mouth. I bite down. Hard.

‘AAAAAARGH!’ the knifeman yells, and loosens his grip.

I wriggle free and dart out of his reach and face him. In my arms Mothga wakes up and starts to wail. The man walks slowly towards us, reaching for his stone knife. I glance down at Mothga, then back at the knifeman. I whimper, my breath coming in short bursts. My eyes dart left and right but there’s nowhere for us to go.

Desperately, I reach for Harby’s broken spear, trying to disentangle it from my belt hook. Mothga screams, flailing her limbs about, and I almost drop her. My spear is stuck. I back away from the knifeman towards the hollow, still tugging to free the spear.

‘Sssshh, Mothga, don’t cry,’ I plead, holding her close. ‘Please don’t cry.’

I’ve backed right to the edge of the hollow now and the knifeman’s almost upon us. Quickly, I step around the hollow, putting it between me and the knifeman. I glance down at the woman. Somehow, in all the chaos, she’s still asleep. Then, with a sickening lurch, I realise.

She’s not asleep; she’s dead.

KNIFEMAN

At the edge of the crater the knifeman stops. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see a dead woman lying in a hollow beneath a fallen tree.

Suddenly it dawns on me.

‘You killed her, didn’t you!’ I say.

The knifeman stares at me; his eyes are cold and empty.

Just by my feet is a patch of deep moss surrounded by big white flowers, almost like a nest. Without taking my eyes off the knifeman, I kiss Mothga’s forehead and lay her down gently on the mossy bed. I loosen the broken spear from my belt and hold it in front of me with both hands.

The knifeman’s eyes widen and his breathing quickens as he looks from the spear to my face and back again.

‘Not. Your. Spea,’ he says, quiet and dangerous.

‘No, it’s not my spea,’ I hiss. ‘It’s Harby’s.’