I AM FIVE when it is my father’s turn to host the games. And there was my mother, dribbling wine on herself. Was I a changeling, inhuman? He scowled at me, watching. The colds and cramps that seized my peers left me untouched. The best that could be said of me was that I was not sickly. Quickly, I became a disappointment: small, slight. She did not seem to notice a change had been made. In pity, the midwife gave my mother a pillow to hold instead of me. When I was delivered, a boy, he plucked me from her arms and handed me to a nurse. That is how they knew she was quite stupid. When at last they pulled off the veil, they say my mother smiled. If she was ugly, there were always slave girls and serving boys. Her father had been scrupulous about keeping her veiled until the ceremony, and my father had humored him. He did not find out until the wedding that she was simple. It was a good match: she was an only child, and her father’s fortune would go to her husband. He married my mother when she was fourteen and sworn by the priestess to be fruitful. HE was a short man, as most of us were, and built like a bull, all shoulders. MY FATHER WAS A KING AND THE SON OF KINGS.
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