Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago

FOR NINE LONG years, Blimunda searched for Baltasar. She came to know every road and track from the dust and mud, the sandy soil and treacherous stones, experienced many severe frosts and two blizzards, which she survived only because she had no intention of dying just yet. In summer she was blackened by the sun like a log drawn from the fire before it turns to ashes, and her skin wrinkled like that of a parched fruit, she was a scarecrow amid cornfields, a ghostly presence amongst the villagers, an awesome vision in tiny hamlets and abandoned settlements.

Wherever she arrived, she inquired if anyone had seen a man with his left hand missing, as tall as any soldier from the royal guard, with a full beard already turning grey but, should he have shaved it off in the meantime, a face not easily forgotten, At least I haven't forgotten it, and he could be travelling along the common nighways or along paths crossing the countryside, just as he might have fallen from the sky in a bird made of iron and wicker with a black sail, balls of yellow amber, and two globes in base metal that contain the greatest secret in the world, even if nothing should be left of all this except the remains of the man and the bird, lead me to them, for I need only touch them in order to know who they are. People thought that she must be mad, but if she lingered there for any time they found her so rational in everything else she said and did that they began to doubt their initial impression that she was unsound of mind.