Helen moves with the deliberate weight of someone who has carried a valley on her shoulders. Her face is a map of her life, with deep, sun-beaten wrinkles that gather like dry riverbeds around her mouth and forehead. Her eyes are her most unsettling and beautiful feature: a startling, glassy amber that remains fixed and observant even when she is deep in thought. While her gait is a heavy, painful-looking limp that requires the constant support of a gnarled white-birch staff, this fragility vanishes the moment she begins a medical procedure. Over a patient, her hands transform into instruments of perfect precision, devoid of even the slightest tremor. She possesses a natural, earthy grace that makes her simple linen shifts and wool shawls look like the vestments of a high queen.