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 manor of Crosset, one man now lived who embodied the terrifying tale.

  Mirram Hild, the Farmer.

  Once sure his wife and the babe would live, Farmer Hild resumed his business, ever the stoic chap he was. He’d never sought to know why his seed had produced the only Greeneye in Crosset in two generations. He’d never voiced his fear of the endless misfortune Greeneye children would condemn all that strayed within their sight 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 harder. He considered his life normal, save for the occasional abnormal day folks would say came with raising a lass with glowing green eyes, but Mirram would say a teenage daughter. Of which he had three, and one a-coming.

  One such day began ordinary 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.

  For their turn with the clerk, they’d been queuing in the tender spring sun long enough for slobbering lips to run dry of gossip, of castle guards standing sentinel whispering to each other out the corner of their mouths, of passing castle workers nudging each other and hissing behind their hands. As if one still must read lips with seventeen years’ worth of experience.

  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! So on and so forth.

  Draken also served as the butt for many a local joke.

  Dun leave yer sheep with Draken Armorheim. Man had fat little Lord Hadrian on a leash, and the boy escaped!

  Come now, boy’s a prodigy, they say.

  Not if Johnsy caught that wee devil in the first place!

  Mirram and Draken tried not to think this was why 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 and wedged to his chair to cushion his spine. One hand supported his heavy head, the other jotted down date and time in his enormous ledger.

  “Name and business, whichever of you will go first.”

  Draken nudged Mirram’s shoulder so he edged a half-step forth.

  “Mirram Hild, sir. Me son Myron found apprenticeship.”

  Mirram produced a folded piece of parchment 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 gawked at Mirram as if he’d just passed the most brazen round of wind in Lord Crosset’s court. Ink dripped from his 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.”

  The clerk raised his eyebrows, puckered his lips, dipped a melodramatic nod, then flourished his hand at the ledger.

  “And you’re here to edit your family registry?”

  “Yes, sir, for me son Myron. Figured I get to knock a few latts off me taxes?” Mirram agreed with enthusiasm. With luck, he could hurry back and catch up on 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 smirk on his lips.

  “Forgive my surprise, my dear chap. Didn’t expect to see a father settling his taxes with a daughter hauled off to court. Then again, not the first time for this one.”

  He picked up Myron’s letter, scouring it for signs of tampering. Now was Mirram’s turn to freeze. He glanced at Draken, who seemed just as confused, then spun back, scrabbling at the table.

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  “Sir, me daughter? Which one? What for?”

  The clerk looked up. His expression morphed from derision to genuine concern. Quill and letter fell from his hands.

  “Goodly Freda, you haven’t heard?”

  Harried footsteps pounded on the flagstones, overtaken by a strident scream.

  “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 last, her sweaty hand latched onto Mirram’s hairy arm.

  “The Ice! They’re putting her in the Ice!” she gasped, clutching a stitch in her side.

  “What ice? Who? What’re 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 ceased to exist. Barely feeling his feet, he dashed across the bridge, Draken and Jezia hurrying in his wake.

  

  The Trench was a strip of barren, sunken land on the other side of the moat. By the time Mirram, Draken and Jezia arrived, the bobbing heads of the whole town’s busybodies had lined the lip of its pit. The gallows leered overhead, empty noose swaying in the breeze.

  Amid the jostling, jeering, fist-shaking peasants, Mirram caught sight of portly Jason Boszel the Merchant, 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 along. The three men emerged to the front, feet skidding to a lurching halt.

  Two youngsters knelt beside the gallows’ base, surrounded by torture devices wooden and metal, pebbles and remnants of spoiled produce. One a boy, the other a girl. Both not a day above seventeen.

  Pebbles, rotten eggs and moldy bread pelted them as they sat, hanging by their wrists from pillories. The girl’s pillory, instead of wood, was a block of clear, bluish ice. The infamous Ice Pillory of Crosset.

  “Deke! Meya!”

  Draken sprinted to his only son. Deke, a stocky lad with a long, freckled face and shiny hay-colored hair, turned at his father’s voice. He creaked an apologetic smile as the warden with a bushy mustache waddled in to block Draken’s path with his club and ale belly. One arm over his forehead to shield his skull from the barrage, he yelled,

  “One more stinkin’ egg while I’m down ’ere, and there’ll be Fyr to pay!”

  Seeing the club waving high, the restless villagers behaved with much grumbling. Mirram turned to the girl in the Ice Pillory, his fourth yet most troublesome offspring, Meya.

  She looked ordinary enough, with red-gold hair in two fraying braids that soaked up the dripping ice for her threadbare woolen dress. Under a dusting of dirt, 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, with an eerie glow like a cat’s eyes at night, and a similar lack of emotion.

  “What in the three lands have you done this time?” said Mirram coldly.

  “There you are, Hild!”

  Mirram spun around to a bald head gliding towards him across a lake of brown hair. The man pushed his way to the front with menace in each clomp, suntanned skin stretched taut over bulging muscles scored by popping veins.

  “Been wanting a chat about what your Greeneye devil did to me boy here!”

  The man jerked a thumb at his son. Mirram craned his neck. Trailing a step behind, half-hidden by his father, was a scowling lad a couple years older than Meya. The spitting image of his father, save for his bleeding lips and the swollen, purplish bruise over his right eye.

  “You sure, Grogan? Wanna chat about Gregor’s knack for getting his arse stuffed by folks 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, then turned to Meya. She’d remained silent but was relishing the strife. “Meya, what happened, lass?”

  “Wage fraud and undue violence,” the warden piped in. “Wench struck a deal with the other farmers. She’d slip her furlongs into theirs. Once they got their pay, they dock the fee and pay her the rest. That’s still twice the Greeneye rate!”

  Draken massaged his forehead. The warden nodded at Gregor.

  “Three whole moons wench been at it. Brave young Gregor Krulstaff here caught wind of it. Told the landlord. Got a nice roughing up for his trouble.”

  “Not before the snitch got his share, he dinnae,” 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, so he tattled. Saw him sniveling behind the landlord and I just thought, if I’m gunna get the pillory, might as well earn it.”

  The crowd’s furor swallowed the rest of Meya’s tirade. Pebbles and mud balls sailed through the air 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! She tainted the wheat again!” a housewife wailed.

  “We dun need another famine, devil!” a fisherman snarled.

  “Monster!” a huntsman pointed his bow. Whereas his wife shrieked,

  “Wee Timmy woulda been eight next week, you demon-spawn!”

  Meya heeded their blessings in turn, eyes glistening with tears on her vacant face. 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, shielding his head with his arms.

  The warden grimaced, although that might have been his response to the juicy splat of the half-onion sliding down his cheek.

  “My dear chap, do you think us so heartless? Wench asked for the Ice!”

  “What?” Draken cried, eyes bulging. He rounded on Meya. “Are you out of your mind, lass?”

  “’Tis a warm day, Farmer Armorheim.” Meya grinned, wincing as a cool, dry wind lambasted them. Growling, Draken turned to the warden.

  “How much?”

  “Two old silvers. Each. No haggling.” The warden smirked.

  Grinding his teeth, Draken snatched his purse. He churned through the bronze for the silver ten-latt 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 sight. He surfaced and found Mirram’s solemn brown eyes.

  “Take this. Free your son.”

  “What about Meya?”

  Mirram forced the coins into Draken’s slack fingers.

  “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 her first!” Draken cried, a trembling finger jabbing at the hysterical crowd.

  Mirram didn’t waver.

  A dull thump silenced the din. Draken wheeled around. Meya lay flat on her back, her hands having slid free of the Ice Pillory after a quarter-hour. The feat should’ve been impossible, warm day or no, without breaking one’s thumbs or having one’s hands axed off to end the torture.

  Meya stood, wiped her dripping hands on her dress, then dusted off the dirt. As the crowd gawked, clutching mud raised in mid-throw, she turned to the warden.

  “I’m free to go, I believe?”

  The warden nodded, 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.”

  Would you say every weekend is too frequent?

  

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