In the realm of Arcadia, Earth is a myth. The ancestors of the people living there fled from the ancient Roman Empire long ago, but no one can find that anymore, no matter how much they explore the realm. The older teenagers are taught the age-old riddle at Higher Learning. Janet of the Blue Flame is a citizen of Arcadia, of The Triple Cities. She gains hard-won knowledge, both about Arcadia and herself. On the day and night of her Sweet Sixteen, everything opens to her. Suspicion becomes certainty, and her life makes a hard turn, both left and right simultaneously, tearing her apart at the seams. She has always had a sense of falling, falling without end. The old, cruel oracle at the fair did not tell her anything she did not know. Her eyes open wide, and she sees the far bigger existence. Arcadia is so small, and so isolated in the scheme of things. Everything she believed she knew is called into question. The truth is that Janet of the Blue Flame is born a sorcerer, one with powers of the mind and the body far exceeding those of most others, one in a line reaching far back in antiquity. She encounters an older, experienced sorcerer. She becomes his apprentice, and he takes her far beyond everything she has known. Then, after hard, brutal trials of the mind and the spirit, he gives her her devoirs, her proof of a successful initiation... ... leaving her in to pick up the scattered pieces of whatever remains of her life. The apprentice has become a sorcerer. The shattered Janet of the Blue Flame is ready for the world.
