She dwelt in a stone house that lay at the end of a path just beyond the village confines. She was old, as old as anyone could remember. Some feared here, naming her beldam; others called her only the old soothsayer; but most took no heed and if asked simply referred to her as that old woman in the stone house.
But it was known, by those whose business it is to know, that the old woman in the stone was something altogether more.







