Kaineus always knew he was meant to be a girl.

Growing up amid the hills and vales of Thessaly in what is now northern Greece, he had been given a name – not Kaineus, which came later – reflecting the family trade. His father Elatos, whose name means ‘fir-tree’, was a woodworker, a member of the Lapith tribe. The child was strong and sinewy, and was surely destined to become a fine woodworker and a good fighter. But he didn’t feel like a boy. Dressed in traditional long, soft, tunics by his doting, horse-loving, mother Hippeia, and happily tinging his lips with the juice of red berries, he waited for the day to come to renounce his maleness. At the age of six he went to his mother and told her that he was a girl.

Hippeia did not disagree. The child’s features and slim figure were undoubtedly feminine. She went to Elatos and said “We have a daughter. By the will of the gods, she has always been a girl”. They changed the child’s name to Kainis, a name that means ‘born anew’. Henceforth Kainis would grow up as a young woman, the apple of her parents’ eyes.

When Kainis was sixteen, a rough sailor called Poseidonios who had arrived at the port of Iolkos spied her walking alone by the seashore. Aroused by the girl’s lithe figure, he ran and seized her from behind. As she shouted and struggled, Poseidonios carried her into a clearing surrounded by trees and raped her, discovering to his pleasure and to her horror that she was both girl and boy.

The assault had a terrible impact on Kainis. Returning home, she told her parents that she would reclaim her masculine status. Henceforth Kaineus, would prepare himself to be a warrior, never again to be taken advantage of by any man. Kaineus trained himself in the art of fighting, intent on wreaking personal vengeance on those who sought to attack the Lapiths. His strength was unyielding, and his warrior skills came to the notice of the king of Iolkos, Jason, who persuaded him to join the expedition on the ship Argo to the Black Sea.

In the course of his travels, Kaineus discovered the new and deadly kinds of weaponry used by the inland tribes of the Asian hinterland: swords and spears made of iron. Returning to Thessaly, Kaineus was summoned to southern Greece, where a ferocious boar had been ravaging settlements near the town of Kalydon in Aitolia. Along with other fierce companions, they hunted down and killed the boar. Though many members of the heroic band involved lost their lives, the iron spearpoint of Kaineus inflicted a fatal blow on the dangerous beast.

Kaineus and his fellow-Lapiths had reason to be concerned about enemies closer to home. A fierce tribe in the area, the Kentauroi, were known for fighting on horseback with wooden clubs and stakes. They had tamed the wild horses that inhabited the plains of Thessaly, and used the creatures to shattering effect in battle. So unusual at the time was the sight of men on horseback that later generations would think of the Kentauroi as creatures who were half-men and half-horse: Centaurs. The hostility between the Lapiths and Kentauroi came to a head at a wedding party, at which increasingly drunken Kentauroi started to make aggressive advances on Lapith women. A brawl turned into a battle, with both sides sending for reinforcements.

The horsemen of the Kentauroi thunder across the plain to do battle with Lapith warriors, the most effective of whom is Kaineus. Some of the Kentauroi recognise the warrior who was once a girl, and taunt him for it. But their fate is sealed. The wooden stakes of the Kentauroi cannot match the iron weapons with which the Lapiths are armed. As the staunchest warriors and their horses fall to the Lapith spears, a group of Kentauroi surround Kaineus. They bludgeon him to the ground, and try to smash his iron weapon to pieces with their clubs. Finding it impossible to do so, they hammer the offending iron spear, like a nail, into the earth.

Kaineus does not die. Buried in the ground, he remains alive. A boy that has been a girl, a woman that has become a man, she remains ready to fight for eternity: to fight for his name, for her honour, for their intertwined identity.

Kaineus is rising.