The tin spangles on her gown caught the light. There, she found the Wild Woman, pouring a leather bucket of water over her tangled hair. Ignoring two jugglers, a clown walking on sticks, and a tumbling dwarf, she circled around to the sprawl of covered wagons on the far side of the hill. The girl pushed her way out through the crowd. Waving her feathered crown, she disappeared from view. The girl followed the Wild Woman with her eyes as she jumped from the horse and bowed out. A pixie child, people sometimes called her, because of her diminutive size, her fair coloring, her unsettling gaze. Her gown of gray serge was adorned with a necklace she'd made herself from hedgehog teeth. She wore a close-fitting cap tied under her chin with ribbons, her golden curls falling down her back to her waist. She was small for her age, often taken for a four-year-old - until she spoke, that is, with a matter-of-fact maturity well beyond her years. In the hamlets and caves and forests beyond, people were starving and violence ruled. It was 1650, year eight in the reign of young Louis XIV - a time of famine, plague and war. She presses her hands to her cheeks in wonder. Slowly, she raises her arms to the cloudless sky and shrieks a piercing war cry.Ī pale girl - barely tall enough to see over the rails - watches transfixed, imagining her own thin arms outstretched, her own feet planted on a horse's broad back. The Wild Woman puts out her hands, her diaphanous skirts billowing out behind her. Its tail streams, and its hooves pound the dust. It tosses its big head, throwing off gobs of sweat and spittle. The crowd cheers as the lathered horse picks up speed. 'The Wild Woman!' announces the showman, flourishing a black hat. Her crown of turkey feathers quivers under the burning summer sun. A Romany woman in a crimson gown flashes by, standing on the back of a cantering horse.

Mistress of the sun by sandra gulland