I babbled on a bit, telling Frey all about my funny dream. His ears flicked back and forth, which was the only sign I had that he was listening. But after a moment of that, he went back to grazing, and I figured he was tired of hearing about my dream and my retelling of the story of Mrs. Pearson’s goat.
He was right. Such things were in the past. I didn’t mention how I’d seen a rock in Mrs. Pearson’s hand when the village had turned on me, even though I’d given her free labor over a span of many years. I would need to bathe such remembrances from my mind so as not to become bitter over the town’s assault on me. What was done was a raw sore, but I needed to be thankful for the fact that they hadn’t just left me in the town square the day I showed up, a naked baby wrapped up in a huge banana leaf.
I’d often wondered over the years why a mother would do that. Had she been too sick to take care of me? Had I been unwanted? Was I the result of an embarrassing situation the mother had found herself in? I suspected that either she or my father were witches. My powers had to have come from somewhere. And if one of them had witch knowledge, why had they not prevented an unwanted pregnancy?
Why had they chosen that particular village to leave their discarded baby? I doubted my parents had been people from the village where I grew up. Someone would have noticed a pregnancy, especially of an unmarried woman. But, I supposed, the mystery would never be unraveled. It had happened. I’d been born and left. The village assumed I was an orphan.