This pattern continued virtually unchanged until she was approaching puberty. Then, one day, she slipped into the forest as usual while her father was cutting wood and simply never went back. She wandered deeper and deeper into the forest. She was at peace and felt no fear. When night fell she curled up into a ball on the ground and went off to sleep, confident that no harm would befall her. She wandered for weeks, living on berries and the fruits of the forest. She seemed to know instinctively what she could eat and what she could not. Eventually she came to a glen in which there was a grove. The grove was beautiful and peaceful and she felt at home there. That night she curled up in the grove and went to sleep as usual. When she awoke she saw an old man sitting on a log staring down at her. She wasn't frightened of him and stared back calmly without a word. He introduced himself as Brenwyn. He explained that he was a druid and that this was his grove. He asked her for her name and where she was from. She shrugged and said simply that names were unimportant and that he could call her whatever he liked. As to where she was from, that did not matter either as she knew she would never go back there. The old man was intrigued with this young girl who seemed to show so much wisdom for her age and after some thought named her Karma. He sensed in her a natural affinity with nature, stronger than he had ever sensed in anyone before. They talked all day and long into the night and Brenwyn agreed to teach her to become a druid and to impart to her everything he knew about nature and the wilderness.

As the years passed, Karma's powerful oneness with nature became more and more apparent to Brenwyn. Not only did birds and animals seem drawn to her but she seemed to commune completely naturally with the whispering of the wind, the babbling of the brook, the crackling of the fire and the gentle rumbling of the earth. The elements spoke to her as they had never spoken to him. In due course she grew into a mature young woman and one day she suddenly announced to him that the wind was telling her that it was time to go. She said it calmly and without emotion, as though she was telling him that it would rain later in the day. The old man, despite all his training, could not control his emotions the way that she seemed to and his eyes brimmed with tears as she packed her meagre possessions and left the grove without a backward glance.