This is the text of the document found in the silver box. The words that I had not written and yet they were in my own hand, framing my own sensibilities. It occurred to me that perhaps my drifting thoughts had been animated upon the page. It also occurred to me that somehow I was being tested.
A mother’s testament
Mine was the son of no one, born of a passing star. I was bending over a stream, washing clothes, and there was suddenly a pulsing light and the sense that I had been pierced and filled with the milk of life. I never knew my parents and was raised among the people of our village. When I became with child, they were kind and did not judge me. I was provided for and cared for, as long as I was diligent, which I believed myself to be.
It was the year of the Shoorcha rebellion; the peasants were rising to protect their property. I worked hard washing floors and baking bread and mending. I was useful and content in my usefulness. I was in good health and yet my son was born with a terrible fever, his tiny body red, as if he had slid from the belly of an inferno. The women wrapped him in wool and placed him in a tub of ice and he survived. When they returned him to me he was wrapped in linen and his eyes were the color of frozen water. I named him Petri, because I laid upon a rock when he was conceived.
When Petri was yet an infant, something marvelous occurred. Our village was visited by a Major General, a princely descendent of the Rurik dynasty. All of the village came to greet him, the archangel of the royal, to get a glimpse of him or perhaps even touch the bridle of his horse. He dismounted and walked up and down the aisles that we had formed to let him pass. I was holding my babe in my arms, and he stopped before me. I could hardly breathe. He looked into my eyes and cupped Petri’s small head with his extraordinary hand and whispered '“the prince of anarchy” so low that I almost failed to catch the words. I watched him mount his black horse with its silver saddle. Everywhere the people were cheering as he waved to all and rode off into the dust.
It was a hard winter, the Elders in the village said they had never seen such a winter. Some of them died including the twin sons of the baker. But my little son thrived, welcoming the cold as though he had descended from a kingdom of ice.
That spring the resplendent General returned and found us. He asked for my hand, producing a locket with an image close to my own likeness, a picture of the mother I never knew. Our families had formed an alliance when I was in my infancy, and I was promised to him, but tragic circumstances kept us apart. He had recognized in my face the mirror image of my mother and returned to seal the bond of our parents. We traveled to Moscow in his royal carriage and were married in a private ceremony. On our wedding night, the blood that flowed as he took me for his own, proved that I was without stain . We lived in harmony and he embraced Petri as our son, born of a passing star.
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