In Latakia, the saying goes, there are two days in every man's life he dreads the most.
One is the day his wife gives birth.
The other, no less feared, is the day the babe opens its eyes.
And they are glowing green.
In the little manor of Crosset, only one man alive had lived that terrifying tale.
His name was Mirram Hild, the Farmer.
Once sure his wife and the babe would live, Farmer Hild went about his business as usual, like the stoic chap he was. He never sought to understand why his seed had produced the only Greeneye in Crosset in this generation. He never voiced his fears for the endless misfortune Greeneye children were known to condemn people in their vicinity to. He simply worked the fields, dawn till dusk, six days a week, to feed the wee babe and her three older siblings.
He made love to his wife every weekend. She went on to bear him three more children, prompting Farmer Hild to work even harder. He considered his life normal, save for the occasional abnormal day that came with raising a lass with glowing green eyes.
One such day began as an ordinary one in mid-April, seven years after the Crosset Famine. Farmer Hild stood before the clerk's table, tucked under the shadow of Crosset Castle's town gate, flanked by his best friend, Draken Armorheim, also the Farmer.
They'd been queuing for three hours in the tender spring sun for their turn with the clerk. All the while, castle guards standing sentinel whispered to each other out of the corner of their mouths. Passing castle workers nudged each other and shot furtive glances at Mirram and Draken, gossiping behind their hands.
Mirram could read their lips without looking.
The Greeneye's father! That him? They say he prayed to Chione for another son. That's why Freda cursed him! Have you seen those cursed eyes? Simply monstrous! Yada yada yada.
Draken was also the butt of many a local joke.
You know what they say, dun choose Draken Armorheim to watch your sheep. He had fat little Lord Hadrian on a leash, and he let the boy escape!
Mirram and Draken tried not to think that was the reason they were such good friends.
The young clerk, at least, seemed too beleaguered to care—his long golden ponytail lank with sweat, his gray-green silk cloak bundled up and wedged to his chair to cushion his spine. With one hand, he propped up his heavy head. With the other, he jotted down the date and time in his enormous ledger.
"Name and business, whichever of you will go first."
Draken nudged Mirram's shoulder. Mirram edged a half-step forth.
"Mirram Hild, sir. Me son Myron's joined a guild. He'll leave me house next week."
Mirram produced a folded piece of parchment from his trouser pocket and smoothed it on the clerk's wooden table—his son's letter of apprenticeship from Yorfus of the blacksmith guild.
The clerk perked up. He stared at Mirram as if he'd just passed the most brazen round of wind in Lord Crosset's court. Ink dripped from the tip of his aloft peacock quill.
"What's your name, again?"
"Mirram Hild, sir."
"Mirram Hild—as in, the father of Meya Hild?"
I do have six other children, you know.
Mirram refrained from rolling his eyes with much difficulty. For Freda's sake, what was the problem with these people? He'd produced six perfectly mundane children, yet they still wouldn't stop pointing at that one with glowing green eyes!
Mirram heaved a sigh and grinned through his grimace.
"Yes, sir, unfortunately."
He offered a joke. The clerk raised his eyebrows, puckered his lips, dipped a few dramatic nods, then flourished his hand at the ledger.
"And you're here to update your family registry?"
"Yes, sir, I'd like to move out me son Myron. Figured I get to knock a few latts off me taxes fer that?" Mirram agreed with enthusiasm. With luck, he could hurry back and catch up on some last-minute work in the fields without further discussion of his infamous offspring.
The clerk gawked some more, then shook his head. He recorded Mirram's testament in beautiful, connecting letters, a grin of amusement on his lips.
"Forgive my surprise, my dear chap. Didn't expect to see a man here settling his taxes while his daughter's on trial. You must despise the lass."
He picked up Myron's letter, scouring it for signs of tampering. Now it was Mirram's turn to freeze. He glanced at Draken—he seemed just as confused—then spun back, grasping the table edge.
"Sir, me daughter? Which one? What for?"
The clerk looked up. For the first time, his expression morphed from derision to genuine concern. Quill and letter fell from his hands as he gawked at Mirram,
"Goodly Freda. You haven't heard?"
Harried footsteps pounded on the flagstones towards them, overtaken by a strident scream.
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"Farmer Hild! Where's Farmer Hild?"
A red-faced young woman sprinted up the snaking line, black ponytail swinging, darting eyes scanning every mustachioed face. All the men shook their heads. At long last, her sweaty hand latched onto Mirram's hairy arm.
"The Ice! They're putting her in the Ice!" She gasped, panting, clutching a stitch in her side.
"What ice? Who? What are you talking about, Jezia?" Draken demanded. Jezia's blue eyes were wide with horror.
"Meya! They're putting her in the Ice Pillory!"
Meya.
The world around Mirram seemed to have ceased to exist. Barely feeling his feet, he dashed back across the bridge, Draken and Jezia hurrying in his wake.
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The Trench was a strip of barren, sunken land on the other side of the moat. By the time Mirram, Draken and Jezia arrived, a ring of spectators had filled the lip of its pit. The gallows leered over them, its empty noose swaying gently in the breeze.
The stench from the mound of fermenting waste beside the castle's wall floated across the moat, hanging yellow over the bobbing heads of what looked to be the whole town's busybodies.
Amidst the jostling, jeering, fist-shaking peasants, Mirram caught sight of a familiar portly man, Jason Boszel the Merchant. He was teetering on tippy-toes, craning his neck.
"Dad!" Jezia yelled as they hurtled in. Jason whirled around, then scampered towards them.
"Finally! Where in the three lands have you been?" Jason grabbed Mirram's shoulder and ushered him forth, "Damn warden's not taking new coins! Hurry!"
Jason plunged into the crowd, dragging Mirram and Draken behind him. The three men emerged to the front, their feet skidding to a lurching halt.
Two youngsters knelt beside the gallows' base, surrounded by torture devices wooden and metal, pebbles and remnants of rotten produce. One a boy, the other a girl. Both not a day above seventeen.
Pebbles, oozing tomatoes and moldy potatoes pelted them as they sat, hanging by their wrists from pillories hunkering above their heads.
The girl's pillory, instead of wood, was a single block of clear, bluish ice—the infamous Ice Pillory of Crosset.
"Deke! Meya!"
Draken cried as he sprinted toward his only son.
Deke whipped around at his father's voice. He was a stocky lad with a long, freckled face and shiny hay-colored hair. He creaked an apologetic smile as the warden with a bushy mustache waddled in to block Draken's path with his truncheon. One arm over his forehead to shield his skull from the barrage of rocks and rotten vegetables, the ale-bellied man yelled,
"One more stinkin' tomato while I'm down 'ere, and there'll be Fyr to pay!"
Seeing the truncheon waving high in the air, the restless villagers behaved one by one, albeit with a lot of grumbling. Mirram turned to the girl in the Ice Pillory, his fourth yet most troublesome offspring, Meya.
The girl looked ordinary enough, with red-gold hair in two fraying braids that soaked up the dripping ice for her threadbare woolen dress. A smatter of freckles paraded across the flat terrain where the bridge of her nose should have been.
Her eyes, however, were a vivid, unnatural green that gave out an eerie glow of their own, like a cat's eyes at night, and betrayed a similar lack of emotion as she stared back at him.
"What in the three lands have you done this time?" said Mirram coldly.
"There you are, Hild!"
A barking voice cut across before Meya could reply. Mirram spun around to find a bald head gliding toward him across a sea of brown hair. The man pushed his way to the front with menace in each clomp. His suntanned skin was stretched taut over bulging muscles scored by popping veins.
"Been wanting to have a chat about what your Greeneye devil did to me boy here!"
The man jerked a thumb at his son with a snarl. Mirram craned his neck to see. Trailing a step behind, half-hidden by his father, was a scowling lad a couple of years older than Meya. He was the spitting image of his father, except for his bleeding lips and a swollen, purplish bruise over his right eye.
"Really, Grogan? You wanna chat about Gregor's knack of getting his arse stuffed by people half his size?"
Deke called. The crowd roared with laughter. Gregor shot a dour glare at him, then the back of his father's shiny head, shaking with rage and embarrassment.
"Quiet, Deke!" Draken snapped. He turned to Meya. She'd remained silent but seemed to be relishing the strife, "Meya, what happened, lass?"
"Wage fraud and undue violence." The warden piped in. Having gleaned all he needed from his little roll of parchment, he tucked it back in his belt.
"Wench struck a deal with the other farmers. She'd slip the fields she worked into their share. Once they got their pay in the regular rate of ten latts per field, they'd pay her back nine latts, and keep one latt as fee. In case you can't count, that's twice the Greeneye rate."
Draken massaged his forehead. The warden nodded at the skulking Gregor,
"Wench been at it for three whole moons. Brave young Gregor Krulstaff here finally caught wind of it. Told the landlord. Got himself a nice roughing up for his trouble."
"Not before the snitch got his share, he didnae." said a familiar, cold voice. Mirram shot Meya a silencing glare. She spared him a glance, then sneered at Gregor, who trembled with fury.
"He was in it from the start. Then he got greedy. Wants to double the fee. I said no, and he tattled. Saw him sniveling behind the landlord and I just thought, if I'm gunna get the pillory anyway, might as well earn it."
The crowd's furor swallowed the rest of Meya's tirade. Pebbles and mudballs sailed through the air, this time with insults thrown in.
"Chop 'em 'ands off! That'd stop ye wreaking havoc fer a bit 'fore they grow back!" Brodel the Butcher brandished his blood-crusted knife.
"She tainted the wheat! What if there's another famine?" A housewife wailed.
"You've outstayed yer welcome in this town, devil!" A fisherman snarled.
"Monster!" A huntsman concurred, pointing with his bow, while his wife shrieked,
"Me little boy would be here today if not for your famine, you demonspawn!"
Meya accepted their complaints in turn. Her face remained vacant, but her eyes glistened with tears. Draken cursed under his breath,
"Warden, this is madness—The Ice? For fraud? The lass is seventeen, for Freda's sake!" He yelled over the hubbub as he shielded his head with his arms.
The warden grimaced, though that might have been his response to the juicy splat of the half-tomato sliding down his cheek.
"My dear chap, do you think us so heartless? Wench asked for the Ice!"
"What?" Draken cried, eyes bulging. He spun around to Meya, "Are you out of your mind, lass?"
"Tis a warm day, Farmer Armorheim." Meya grinned, wincing as a gust of cool, dry wind lambasted the clearing. Growling, Draken returned to the warden,
"What will it take to free them early?"
"Two old silvers. Each. No haggling." The warden obliged with a smirk.
Grinding his teeth, Draken snatched his purse. He churned among the bronze for the grayish-white gleam of the silver ten-latt-coin or the copper five-latt, even as he knew he'd find none. Not the old ones.
A roughened palm carrying two old silver faces entered his sightline. He looked up and found Mirram's solemn brown eyes.
"Take this. Free your son."
"What about Meya?"
Mirram forced the coins into Draken's slack fingers.
"Take it. He's here because of her."
"I'll leave when she leaves, Farmer Hild!" Deke shouted.
"Mirram, her hands will rot! And that's if they didn't get to her first!" Draken cried, a trembling finger jabbing toward the hysterical crowd.
Still, Mirram didn't waver.
A dull thump sounded from behind. The crowd fell quiet. Draken whipped around to find Meya lying flat on her back. Her hands had slid free of the Ice Pillory after a mere quarter-hour. A feat that should've been impossible, warm day or not, without breaking your thumbs or asking someone to chop off your hands to end the torture.
Meya picked herself up, wiped her dripping hands on her dress, then dusted off the dirt. As the crowd gaped in silence, hands clutching mud raised in mid-throw, she turned to the warden.
"I'm free to go, I believe?"
The warden nodded, his eyes darting between the still-solid Ice Pillory and Meya's hands. Her freedom secured, Meya turned to Draken with a toothy grin.
"Like I said. 'Tis a warm day."