I walked with the gypsy lady for an hour before she spoke to me. She used the time instead to size me up, muttering to herself all the while.
"Yes, yes, pretty yes, will grow up fine, yes, a maid or a cook, yes, or better yet, yes, hmm, maybe her mother tells the truth, yes. Does your mother tell the truth, Arielle"
I must have looked confused, because she continued.

"Does your mother tell the truth that you sometimes know things that haven't happened yet?"

"Yes," I answered simply.

"Good, good. Can you control it?"

"No," I told her. "I don't know how."

"You will allow me to test you?"

I shrugged my shoulders, trying to affect nonchalance, as she stood considering how to find out if I really could do what I claimed. I was terrified of this odd woman, who looked to me like the witch from a fairy tale. She was not old; she could not have been more than a handful of years older than my mother, not beyond thirty, certainly. She wore a blue scarf wrapped around her head, with big silver hooped earrings. Her dress was long and of many colours, and on her feet she wore workman's boots. He hands were heavy with rings, and her wrists with bracelets, and she smelled of what I now know to be incense. He hair was still pure black, and her eyes were a deep amber. I looked into their depths and I saw…and I saw…

"A boy. It's a boy."

Her jaw dropped. I know this phrase is often used as a metaphor but in her case it was absolutely apt. Her jaw dropped, revealing two rows of yellowing teeth.

"So your mother was not lying. I have told no one…no one…"

She shook her head, and looked at me with something akin to respect.

"Keep my secret Arielle. Do no wrong by me and I will look after you."

"Look after me how? Where do you live?"

She laughed at me, a laugh unexpectedly high and bright.

"Everywhere and nowhere, child. I am part of what you might call a travelling show, and now you are too. You, my dear, are going to be a fortune teller."

I was appalled.

"But I don't want to be! I want to go home!"

"Believe me, it is better to be free and a gypsy than shackled and not. We have wasted too much time already. We must be at the camp by noon. From now on, I am your Aunt Elina. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I answered, "Aunt Elina."

"Good," she smiled, "good".

We walked for perhaps two more hours. I felt my feet were going to fall off by the time we reached the camp. It was larger than I expected, with tents for the exhibits and caravans where the gypsies lived. Aunt Elina took my hand and dragged me through the camp, past families cooking lunch over open fires, past entertainers practising their acts, past horses and past the occasional caged freak. These last frightened me, and I stayed close to Elina's multicoloured skirts.

She took me to her caravan, a tiny poky thing with a small stove, a small bed, and the entire collected detritus of a life.

"You need to sleep now, child. I will bring you food later, and then we shall see if you can impress the customers."

I obeyed, and I slept.

She woke me when the sky was dark and there were the gleeful shouts of visiting villagers come for an evening's entertainment. Elina thrust a bowl of soup under my nose, urging me to drink it down quickly so that she could dress me for my 'act'. I obeyed again, and drank it so fast it burned my tongue.

"Now, let me see, yes, no, not that, too old, darker, mysterious, child wonder, yes yes yes" she muttered to herself, and she hunted around the small space for my costume. I waited placidly, and permitted myself to then be dressed head to toe in black, with a black veil over my face.

"What am I to do?" I asked, as she pulled me out of the caravan and down the steps.

"Simple," Elina answered. "Gaze at their palm until something comes to you. If nothing does, tell them that either love, fortune, or luck is coming their way. Alright?"

It was not alright at all, but I nodded.

She took me to a dark tent, where I sat at a wobbly table on a wobbly chair. Elina stood outside and tried to attract punters.

"Have your fortune told my the child seer, a girl with the gift of the ages, she knows all, she sees all! What about you miss, do you want to know if love is coming your way?"

They came, for hours and hours they came. Men and women, young and old, all wanting to know their future. I gazed at a hundred hands that night, and none told me anything. I kept to what Elina had told me, and they all went away satisfied. It seemed I had another gift - that of the liar.

The last visitor was a man, clearly also a gypsy. He looked at me in a way I didn't like, as if I were something to be bought and sold.

"Hello lovely" he said as he sat down. "Show me what you can do, then!"

I shuddered involuntarily as I took his hand and gazed automatically at his palm. And there I saw. I saw everything. In this man's hand, I saw my entire future, my entire life. It was the first time I saw that face. That face, so twisted and contorted, with eyes that burned with an intensity that drew me in…and I saw…

"You are Elina's lover," I said to the man, trying to control myself.

He laughed, and told me I was right. "Carry on, darling, what else do you see?"

"Money," I answered.

He laughed again, and patted me on the head.

"Run along now, sweetheart. Fetch your Aunt Elina for me, and then get off to bed."

I left, hurrying along to the caravan in the cold night air. Elina was sat on a stool, brushing out her long black hair. She looked up as I opened the door.

"You did well tonight. Keep it up!"

"That man wants to see you."

"What man? Oh, do you mean Vrack?"

"Is he the father of your child?"

Elina's face clouded over.

"Did you tell him about that?"

"No. Why is it a secret?"

"I have a bad feeling about it, yes? You understand? No, of course you don't. Now tuck yourself in. I'll be back soon."

I tucked myself into bed, and fell quietly to sleep, still in my costume. When I awoke the next morning, Elina had not yet come back.

This was the pattern of my life for six long years. I would spend my mornings and afternoons learning to cook, to weave and sew, to make things to sell, then I would spend my evenings telling fortunes in my tent. Sometimes I saw real things, sometimes I made them up. Usually, what I saw were terrible things that could not be told; deaths, accidents, the loss of money, starvation…I grew old before my time looking at other's misery, especially Elina's. Hers are secrets I do not wish to share, but suffice it to say that she suffered greatly in her love for a man who did not want the burden of children.

Then things changed, as they were wont to do. One day in November of…goodness me, I was thirteen so it must have been 1859, yes the year of the Austrian war, one day Vrack returned to the camp after a month's absence. At this time the camp was no longer near my old village, but deep in Picardy far on the other side of Paris. It was the furthest from my old home we had ever been.

Vrack did not return alone. He walked into the camp shortly after lunch, dragging behind him, bound and in chains, a shivering skinny boy with shaggy hair covering his face. The boy was perhaps a year or two older than me, with light brown hair and skin that was originally pale but had been browned with grime.

Elina called out to Vrack "What have you got there?"

Vrack hauled on the chain so the boy fell to the ground.

"I bought him from a man up near the border. Look at this!"

Vrack raked back the boy's hair and held up his head so we could see his face. It was the face I had seen all those years ago in my vision when I first met Vrack. This was the first time I saw the one who would change my life forever.