Calling
Prologue
Starr. That is who I am. I am not human. I do not know what I am. But I am Starr.
I was shunned when I was but a tiny babe, because of the silver marks on my body. I was born with a silvery speck in the very center of my back. It glowed when I was at the peak of any emotion. Every time I learned an important lesson, or whenever anything important happened to me, the speck grew. When I learned to speak, for example, it burned with a strange, radiant luminosity, like moonlight wrinkling obliquely across a shallow dew pond at midnight. It burned, but not like a normal burn, more like ice ripping your back open. I did not cry out, though it is the worst pain you can ever imagine. The speck grew in a thin, wiry spiral on my back. It wound around itself three times, like a snake coiled and ready to strike.
When I learned that I was not welcome among my people, the strangest thing happened to me. I was lifted into the air, and the light shone all around me, like snow-white moonlight. The marks stretched their way across my body, and down my legs and arms. My auburn hair turned pitch back, and my pale blue eyes forest green. I grew tall and strong, lithe and swift. That is what happened on the day that I celebrated my fourteenth summer.