Chompa smoothed her hand across her mother’s damp forehead, like Ammi did when Chompa had a fever. It seemed to calm her, and Chompa sat watching her mother’s chest rise and dip with her breath, too troubled to sleep.

She tugged at the taviz. With a flicker of guilt, she touched the thread with her finger, and tried to cut it using her magic. But her finger made no mark on the knot.

She sighed, running her hands across the silvery patterns of the trelliswork the moonlight cast upon the quilt. There was a heavy cloak of silence over the world. But, beneath, a myriad of insect and bird and animal lives scurried and flittered and called. Those sounds were as much a part of the landscape as the shadows of the trees and the ever- dancing rice paddy. Chompa lost herself in them for a time, imagining the creatures busy in the darkness.

Then there was a cracking, crunching sound – so wrong that it seemed to rip the landscape.

Chompa held her breath.

Thud.

Crunch.

Thud.

Crunch.

The sounds were slow and deliberate, and getting louder. Feet on twigs.

Coming towards them.

For them.

Chompa pressed her mouth to her mother’s ear. Her heart was thumping, her hands slick with sweat.

‘Ammi, someone’s out there,’ she breathed.

Her mother sat up, straight-backed and now alert. She put a finger to her lips and whispered very softly in Chompa’s ear.

‘My shona, whatever happens, you must stay hidden. I’ve asked you to promise before. But now you really must. Promise me that you won’t come out once I’ve hidden you. No matter what. And if – if something happens to me, take my spellbook and study it well. And do not – do not remove your taviz unless you’re safe, and with someone you can trust.’

Chompa opened her mouth to ask why, but Ammi placed her finger on Chompa’s lips.

‘Shh – I’m sorry. I should have explained everything before, but there’s no time now – just promise.’

Her mother’s eyes were wide with terror, and Chompa found she couldn’t breathe. She nodded.

Ammi pushed Chompa under the bed. It was a very low frame, and she could barely squeeze beneath it. Ammi pushed boxes and tins after her, concealing her daughter. Chompa watched her silently through a gap in the boxes.

Ammi grabbed the small, bent blade of their kitchen knife.

Then a tall, broad shadow was blocking the door frame and the light. Chompa could see huge, wide feet in shining brown leather boots. Ammi pressed herself flat to the side of the door, clutching the little knife.

As the ribbons that hung in the doorway parted, Ammi sprang, jabbing with the blade.

There was a deep, hacking laugh – a big man’s laugh.

As Chompa saw the plate-sized hand in a dark blue sleeve enclose Ammi’s wrist and force the knife out, so that it clattered on to the floor, she bit hard on her fist so as not to scream. Ammi scrabbled madly as the man’s arms wrapped round her slight body. She was biting, scratching, spitting out words in the same cold language she had spoken in her dreams.

Everything in Chompa wanted to push the boxes away and launch herself at the intruder with her nails, teeth, her fear, and her fury. She couldn’t just lie there, in the dark, while her mother was attacked. But she had promised, promised. And the last time she’d broken a promise everything had gone wrong. She had to trust her mother now.

She heard brutal male laughter as her mother was dragged through the door, feet flailing.

‘Ammi! Ammi!’ she mouthed as she leaped from her hiding place towards the door.

(Excerpted with permission from City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak; Penguin Random House / Puffin; June 2023)