I remember the morning I first saw them, running around over my body, crawling under my skin. Hundreds, thousands of tiny white men. Hard at work, they were running around on my belly, stamping down in heavy boots to make it flat. They had built some kind of apparatus to hoist my breasts up, and there were many of them with tiny scythes methodically removing every hair on my body except for my eyelashes, my eyebrows and on my head.

I can feel the pulse through the earth beneath my bare feet, the heartbeat of the land. Drums and voices throb between the trees, this tiny scrap of ancient forest, clinging on in a deep and hidden ravine. Many years, many lives have led towards this point and I am ready.

Deep in the centre of a dark forest there was a magnificent old yew tree, gnarled and twisted branches spreading wide. In its roots was nestled a well of fresh and sweet water that reflected the sun in the sky, even though the branches covered the sun. This well had magical properties and would show the truth to anyone who drank from it. So strong and pure was the truth, that a beautiful and fierce emerald-coloured dragon guarded it, for the truth was not to be taken lightly.

Biwa looked at her sisters over the body of their mother, mourning draping like a shroud about them all. Biwa had seen nineteen summers pass and felt grateful that her mother, Wraga, had lived long enough to know her grandchildren. Wraga had delighted in them, ready with a freshly made griddle-cake or even a bit of honeycomb in the summer, always a story ready, hovering at her lips, ready to be told again.