Her eyes were of different colors the left as brown as autumn the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old or thereabouts her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God it seemed had withheld that possibility as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touchedby genius by madness by the Devil or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever. p.33