She was crouching on a flat roof. She was hungry, and she had been hungry for two weeks, ever since the boats had failed to come down the river, leaving the market stalls devoid of their usual goods. The crowds were complaining, but only because they could not treat themselves to sugared sweets or meat steamed in its fats. It was different for her. The hunger made her ill, and two weeks was the longest she had gone in living memory without a bite to eat.

She was watching a pack of children in the street below. 'Pack' was a good word for them; they were scrawny and dust-coloured, just like the dogs of Inuzuri, with their ribs pushing out through their skin. They ranged in age from a slack-jawed toddler to two boys in their early teens. One, the smaller of the two, had gone on ahead and slipped beneath one of the market stalls: the one selling fresh water. She watched as he retrieved a length of rope from his pocket and looped it around the stallholder's ankle, securing the other end to the leg of his table.

She liked these boys.

A boy of about Rukia's age darted forward, snatched one of the flagons and made a break for it back the way he had come. She caught a flash of his red hair and bare feet as he raced into the alley on her left.

"Stop! Thief!" The shopkeeper went after him. In so doing, he pulled over his table and upset ten or fifteen more flagons of clean water. The child who had been beneath broke cover like a fox, striking out in the opposite direction to the first. He snatched up another of the flagons as he ran.

It took the stallholder less than a minute to free his ankle. The air was blue with his swearing and, all around him, figures hunched in doorways or lying prone in the street, glanced up from their reveries, disturbed, perhaps, from dreams of a living world. The trader took off after the first boy, but, as soon as he was gone, the others swarmed over his wares.

Rukia knew the rooftops better than she knew the alleyways. She was on her feet and following their progress through the streets, leaping from one building to another. This was her domain and she was sure-footed no matter how discordant the architecture of Inuzuri. Here, a roof thatched from bamboo; here, a mere lean-to of corrugated iron, and here, a flat balcony of stone and slate.

The pack of boys was coordinated. Their separate lines of flight led them back towards each other, converging in a wide alley that was otherwise deserted. What they hadn't counted on was, perhaps, the persistence of the shopkeeper who had followed the red-head easily through the crowds. When it was clear to her that he must catch at least one of them, Rukia slid down into a narrow space between two houses and waited.

The boys came tearing past, spilling water as they ran. She was going to have to time this just right.

She sprang out of the opening just as the shopkeeper came charging into view. He ran headlong into her, tripping on her legs and she watched in delight as he went flying, only to land face down in the dust.

The boys had faltered in their flight, staring back in awe at their saviour.

"Run, you idiots!" she yelled. She jumped onto the stallholder's head as he tried to raise it, slamming his face back into the dirt. The boys needed no more motivation than that. They ran.

She remained, perched atop her fallen enemy until he remembered himself enough to start flailing at her. Then, unlike the others, she escaped by shimmying up the nearest wall as if the laws of gravity need not apply to her.

She had no intention of being caught.

She was like lightning over the rooftops. Experience had taught her that you could never run too far. Many times, she had gone to ground, hidden herself amongst discared crates and boxes, only to feel a hand close around her ankle. She had never grown used to the beatings that followed. So she was determined to stay one step ahead of the man on the ground.

The illusion of order in the centre of Inuzuri, its tumbledown geometry of houses and alleys, began to dissolve at its edge. Here, there were no houses as such. There were sheets of metal propped up by stone wedges. There were boxes and blankets and bodies in between. The very edge of town was reserved for souls that needed no food, no water and, seemingly, no shelter or protection. They stared at those who passed with empty, sightless eyes. For them, this was not a reality at all. Their hopes, their pleasures, their very minds belonged in the world of the living and all they had now were the shadows of their memories. Rukia slowed as she reached them; they had always scared her, those souls, seeming, to her, too much like empty vessels.

To her surprise, the boys were standing on the edge of the slum, their bare feet sinking into the mud. She jumped down to the ground. They turned towards her. Wary. A little hostile. The leader of the pack was the red-head. He was neither the biggest nor the eldest, but he was big enough and old enough and his eyes were, by far, the cleverest:

"What's your name?" he demanded as she approached.

Now that she had stopped running, the exertion caught up with her. She folded her arms across her chest, trying to steady her breathing:

"Rukia."

"You're from round here?"

"Yes."

"I've never seen you."

"Well, I've never seen you either."

He cocked his head on one side, appraising her, then seemed to make a decision. He jabbed one finger towards the slums:

"Mainly, we live out here."

"Here?"

"You have to go past this rotten area. It's a barn, or it used to be. It's where we hang out now. It's alright. Are you okay?" he added: "You look in bad shape."

"It's nothing. It's just" – she wondered how much she should tell him. People didn't tend to want to know she was different from them. Yet these boys had gone to great lengths to steal fresh water and that, in itself, was unusual – "I get tired," she admitted.

"Do you want to come back with us?"

"Renji!" cried one of the others in horror, as if his invitation had violated an unwritten code. The red-head glared at him:

"What?"

"She's a girl!"

"I get that. She's alright. Well?" He turned back to her.

"Do you have food?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you need to eat?" she asked. They glanced at each other and, suddenly, Rukia no longer cared what they thought of her. The most important thing was that she sate this hunger, somehow, anyhow: "Well, I need to eat," she told them forcefully: "So I have to know if you've got food!" Renji was looking at her with a mixture of surprise and wariness:

"Yeah, we've got food," he said,carefully. "So come with us, Rukia."