At fifteen she had been a simple, sweet-tempered farm-girl, well-knit and attractive, with raven-black hair. Her family's farm had been at the north end of the settlement, carved out of the forest and sealed off from the north by a twenty-foot-high split-timber wall. The trackers who later ran down and slew the villain discovered a place along the outside of the wall, nearest the barn, that had been long-used to spy on the pretty girl in the print dress, the girl who had never worn shoes in her life, who had loved all things without malice; the girl whose loss of innocence to a wholly selfish wretch had marked her for a miserable decline unto death.
But while she was alive, for a time she had the presence of mind and the compassion to care for her son. She had named him `Akaru', or `blind hope' in the common speach of the day, for she knew his life would be difficult to endure.
Oddly, things proved less difficult than they might have been, thanks to the intervention of an elderly Healer, a very old woman who was much revered in those parts. Even the Wise, including Belloc and Darrow the Wizards, were known to have looked to her for advice, and their stopping at her simple hovel to consult on matters of herb-lore set her above judgement in her community. But there was nothing the great old lady could do to hide from Akaru the stigma of his own