Babies tend not to have theological beliefs. They are busy enough just learning basic self-care tasks like breathing without suffocating, sucking milk and digesting it so that enough of it exits at the other end, and focusing their eyes.

Nobody had warned Raina how difficult eating was. She tried as hard as she could, but her mouth was the wrong shape. When she did manage to get any in at all, it went down the wrong way and made her cough.

Ma knew she was trying, though. She was going to take Raina to a place where they could make her better, she said. Only it was a long walk, and Ma was very tired, so they'd have to wait until she was stronger before they set off. Raina just needed to be a good girl and keep on trying to live, keep on trying to suck enough milk not to starve.

When she woke up, Ma wasn't there. Neither was Da. He'd been cross last night. Raina was still getting used to seeing what their faces looked like, but she knew their voices, and she knew when they were cross. It was her fault, she knew, because she couldn't sleep because she was so hungry, and it made her cry. Ma had told her it wasn't her fault, that Da was just cross because he was tired, so he'd gone to his own Ma's house to sleep, and then he'd feel better. And she'd rocked Raina in her arms and sung to her, until at last Raina had started to grow sleepy, and Ma could put her down, lying on her back on her piece of sheepskin in her cradle at the foot of the bed.

But now Ma wasn't there, either. Had she got cross with Raina and decided to leave, as well? No, she wouldn't do that. She'd just gone outside for a minute, she was coming in now…

No. Somebody was coming inside. It wasn't Ma or Da, or Da's Ma. It was the scary lady, the one Ma wouldn't let come into the cottage, the one Da called 'Baba Yaga'.

Raina tried to shout for help. But there was nobody to hear – or nobody who could hear the difference between a cry that meant, 'I'm hungry!' and one that meant, 'HELP!'

Baba Yaga's hands reached into the cradle. Her hands were thin but strong, like Ma's, but they weren't gentle like Ma's. She held Raina up, close to her face.

'I knew it!' Baba Yaga said. 'My one girl, the one I thought was clean of the stain. And then she goes and hides something like this! I spoiled her, that's the problem – let her grow up soft, so she thinks she doesn't have to do her duty like I did. Have to keep the world clean of the stain.'

eHHer hand grasped Raina's head and twisted, and it hurt –

And then nothing hurt any more. She wasn't in the cottage, where she had been all her life since she got born, but somewhere outside. There was green below her, with blotches of other colours, and blue above her.

Someone was holding her, gently like Ma did, not the way Baba Yaga had grabbed her. It was someone who looked like Ma, only not tired and worried the way Ma always did.

'Oh, My little one!' she said. 'Did they decide to send you back to Me, just because of this?' She stroked a finger across Raina's lip. Raina could feel it tingling. It was a nice feeling, but strange at the same time.

'If you stay with Me, I will love you, as Harra did, and keep you safe, as she could not,' said the kind woman. 'But if you do, you will remain forever a baby.'

Raina hadn't thought about the possibility of not being a baby forever. But put like that, it did sound a bit boring.

'Or, if you prefer, you may go with My Daughter,' said the kind lady.

Raina saw a girl looking over at them, a big girl with arms strong enough to hold her, and with a freckled face with a healed scar on her lip that, Raina somehow knew, matched the scar that was now on her own.

'You know she'll want to come along with Me!' said the girl, laughing. 'Come on, let's have a look at you.'

Raina stretched out her hands, and jumped down to join the other girl. By the time her feet had touched the – grass, her mind supplied the word, and flowers – she was as tall as the other girl had been – except that the other girl had now grown taller. 'You can't catch Me!' she said.

'Who are you?' Raina asked. She hadn't known she could speak – but then, if she could stand up tall enough to hold the hands of someone who was nearly a grown-up, why not?

'We're gods,' said the girl. 'My Ma's the goddess of childbirth and healing and mothers, and I'm the goddess of springtime and growing and learning and poetry, and girls and women who don't have children.'

Raina thought about this. 'My Ma doesn't have any children, now,' she said. 'So does that mean she belongs to you, as well?'

'No, not at all!' said the older goddess. 'Once a mother, always a mother. And that is even true of her own mother – even she will belong to Me, if she can ever want and accept forgiveness.'

'Was that the scary lady? The Baba Yaga?'

'That's right,' said the older goddess. 'The one who murdered you, because she didn't understand that it was wrong. She thought she was simply doing what mothers have to do.'

Raina thought some more. It was strange having a brain that knew about ideas like forgiveness and understanding, when she'd been a baby only a few minutes before. 'So – she can't go to the gods unless she wants to be forgiven, and she can't want to be forgiven if she doesn't know she's done anything wrong?' she said. 'Does that mean she doesn't go anywhere, when she dies?' She didn't want to feel sorry for the scary lady who had hurt her, but it didn't seem quite fair to blame someone for not knowing something.

'The people down below believe so,' said the older goddess. 'They think that if they do not burn funeral offerings for her when she dies, she will be sundered forever, left as a ghost until she dwindles to nothing. But the destiny of her soul is a decision that only Mara herself can make – when she is mentally fit to make it.

'Right now, there is little I can do if she will not listen to Me, because she is so certain of knowing My mind that it would not occur to her to ask. But when she dies and her spirit comes before Me, I can heal her mind as easily as I healed your lip. And when the reality of her life is laid out plainly before her, only then can justice be decided.

'Do not worry, little one. She will never have the power to hurt you again, and she is being watched to ensure that she does not hurt anyone else.'

'But the important thing is, people need to learn about why they don't need to kill babies,' said the girl goddess. 'Did you know, your Ma's going to go to college? And then she's coming back to Silvy Vale to be a teacher!'

Raina wasn't sure what that meant. Even with her now nearly grown-up brain, the words college and teacher didn't come with pictures the way ideas grass and flowers, and even forgiveness and justice, did.

'Watch,' said the Daughter, 'and I'll show you the future.'

Author's note: I was apprehensive about writing this, because I didn't feel able to write the Daughter the way Cazaril experiences her. Then I decided that I don't have to. This is the way Raina as a child experiences her, for now.

The meadow they are standing in looks a bit too Earth-like – but then, these are deities who originated on Earth (or a planet that looks very Earth-like, anyway!). And besides, most of the Barrayaran herbs would have scratched and stung Raina's bare feet.

I had always thought that Raina belonged to the Daughter, so when I read Knot of Shadows I was uncomfortable with the idea that infants return to the Mother when they die, although older children are sorted to either the Daughter, the Son, or the Bastard. So I decided that Raina has a choice.