The Year of My Eas

"I had seen young warriors under that painful process, and had stood by as they yelled in pain and reluctant patience while the most elaborate designs grew up. But to blodwin's grief, who would have had me equal to any of her tribesmen, i had ever scorned to be made a mosaic of superstition and flourishes," he writes. "And now here upon my skin, nigh over to my heart, was the sketch and outline of what seemed a small new born maid, all beswaddled in the british fashion."