I get that I’m ugly, OK. Even my mother couldn’t bear to
look at me. She did her best, mind, fed me and clothed me, tried to keep me
from the prying eyes of the village. But she never once actually looked me in
the face, not that I remember. And I guess the shame of having produced such a
horror as me got to her in the end because one day she just upped and died in
her sleep. Village priest took me in for a while, but there were whispers,
first that she’d done away with herself because of me and then, when that
wasn’t enough, they started saying that I’d done her in. Priest told me he
didn’t think he could protect me from them. He gave me a gold coin and a slice
of bread and sent me off out of the back door just as the mob appeared at the
front. Seven years old I was, ugly as sin and all alone in the world.
