Ma Marigold

Town Elder

“I can’t think indoors. I find that an answer is often hiding in the shape of a cloud, or in the sound of the wind through the leaves.”

You’ve never known how old Ma Marigold is. She does not seem to age, though her unlined face has always been framed by tumbling locks of steel-grey hair. The pockets of her apron are perpetually filled with plant cuttings, sweet smelling herbs, and small treats for the village children who bandy around her ankles like a raft of ducklings.

Whenever Ma has any serious thinking to do, she takes a kitchen chair out into the village square and puffs away on her corncob pipe.

You learned to read and do your sums sitting at Ma Marigold’s knee, as did all the children of Devlin’s Dower. Though she is tall and striking, children warm to her patient, soothing manner. You have never seen her lose her temper.

“People don’t change. I can look at an old man and still see the child he once was.”