“I learned to play the pipes, as I shall tell you later, because my life was lonely, ugly as I was. I knew from an early age that I was different, but the first time I saw my own reflection in a puddle of rainwater, I was shocked and spent the whole day in denial, going back to the pond again and again, not believing what I saw.

I had seen only five years at the time. Now, I am past seventy. I have lived with my curse for that long. 

Was it the dirty trick of some terrible spirit of the pond? This is what I thought at first. I was out with my mother tending my father’s flock of sheep on the steep hillsides above our village. Even at five, I was physically precocious. I was big for five years old, and very strong. I could have herded sheep by myself, though neither my father nor my mother would let me. It had rained recently, and puddles of water remained in rocky pools and shallow puddles in the pathways the sheep trod. It just happened that one was still and dark, and as I passed by I could see the reflection of trees and clouds. I had never yet in my life seen myself, so I decided to look.”

— Excerpt from Chapter Three: My Youth

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