Walking home from the communal pasture was an occasion when one was Meya Hild.

  The reason? Two words—Marinia Hild.

  All seven Hild children were remarkable in some way. Marin’s way was beauty. Such was her beauty, Crosset’s young men created a class for her, one higher than Gold, Diamond. She could marry any man in town without paying him a single coin.

  Being the only Greeneye in Crosset, Meya also had her class, Dung. It didn’t help that she often reeked of pig droppings, either. The lowest class defined by law was Pebble.

  Either way, she must work hard to save a large dowry. Who gave shite if hard work in scorching daylight made a lass less desirable? As opposed to dung, which stank less and didn’t squish underfoot once laid out to bake.

  Marin could’ve married early if it weren’t for Dad. Like most pretty maidens, she spent her days indoors, helping Mum with housework. If her skin were any fairer, Meya could’ve scraped lead white off it and sold the powder to rich ladies in Meriton.

  It was difficult for lads of marriageable age to gain purchase on Marin. The solution? Two words—Meya Hild.

  Every evening, Meya would saunter through the village, trundling a wheelbarrow of hens, trailing a pig on a leash, receiving letters, flowers, jewelry and food to pass to Marin. For a fee. Perhaps once them dongheads learned to stop calling her attention with “Oy, Dung!” she’d deign to do it for charity.

  The inflow of young men trickled to a stop a good dozen paces from Hild Cottage. Dad was armed with a sickle mounted on a broom handle, sharpened for gutting. Suitors knew to give the house a wide berth.

  Meya shut Hanna and the chicken in, left the wheelbarrow beside the coop, heaved up the bulging sack, then trudged to the door.

  The instant she entered, a confused din of greetings befell her from the family crowded around the pot hanging over the hearth-hole.

  “Have you latched the coop?” Mum asked, as always worrying about every wee thing in the three lands except Meya’s wellbeing.

  “You alright, Meya?” Maro made no move to hide his concern, which was why Maro would always be her favorite brother.

  “Any bullies at the pasture today?” Marin demanded. Meya probably would’ve gotten along with Marin had her skin not been so white it glowed in the firelight.

  “Where’s your collar?” Morel couldn’t give less damn.

  “Is it true you kicked Gregor Krulstaff in the crotch?” Marcus abandoned his bowl and darted in.

  “What’s that you got there?” Myron pointed to her sack.

  “Show me your hands!” Mistral squealed, eyes sparkling with delight.

  Dad made no move to acknowledge Meya’s return. Only when Mum made to hand her a bread bowl did he growl between mouthfuls of bread and stew.

  “No dinner, Alanna.”

  “Please, Dad. She was just trying to help,” Marcus pleaded.

  “Quiet, Marcus.”

  Dad had told them about the Ice Pillory. Just as well. After a deep breath, Meya rattled off answers to their questions.

  “Mum, no sneaky tom would get his paws on a feather tonight. Mistral, here are me hands. Still intact. Maro, I’m fine, how kind of you to ask. Marin, yea, some tyke pushed me in front of a horse cart. Morel, where I keep me collar is none of your business. Marcus, no, I dinnae kick his crotch. ’Twas his arse. And Myron, this here—”

  Meya lifted the sack from her back.

  “—contains tokens of appreciation from the men of Crosset to beautiful Marin.”

  Meya set down and untied the bundle. Its corners fell away, revealing an ensemble of spring flowers, cookie pots, lurid red envelopes, and crates filled with honey pies. All her siblings scrambled in, except Morel.

  “Goodly Freda, why so many?” Marcus cried. Myron admired the artwork on the cookie pots. Mistral rubbed her cheek against an embroidered handkerchief. Meya snickered.

  “May Fest approaches! So, who will you choose for the May Dance, Lady Diamond?”

  Marin blushed deep scarlet. Meya didn’t give so loud a fart on whom Marin’s pity would fall this year, but the more gossip she could sell along with her gift-ferrying service, the more gold she could demand.

  “Why d’you ask, Lady Dung? She won’t be taking your admirers, seeing as you never had any,” said Morel.

  “Morel!” her other five siblings yelled as one.

  “Morel! Take that back.” Mum sounded as if she had permanent head cold. Meya had prepared for war, but the painful tug in her heart persuaded her to sue for peace.

  “’Tis fine, Mum, everyone calls me dung-something. ’Tisn’t gunna make Morel a bigger stinkbug than she already is,” she couldn’t resist a jab.

  “Meya!” Mum snapped. Meya eked out a sheepish grin. That backfired.

  Dad was anxious to finish his last meal of the day in peace.

  “Perish it, you two. Or I’ll take your bowl away ’til tomorrow night. Yes, Morel! Even if you did cook dinner!”

  Morel flapped her lips like a trout gasping for breath. Meya’s cheeks ballooned like a waterskin as she stifled her laughter. Dad could withhold her meals for a week. She’d survive on the money she earned ferrying gifts to Marin. The weeks leading up to May Day were the time to exploit. Not that anybody knew what she was up to.

  Marin studied the tottering pile of gifts, then pushed it to her.

  “Meya, I can’t eat all these. You all take some. You need every morsel of food you can get since you work so hard. Please, Dad? Just this once? It’s almost May Fest.”

  Marin served Dad her most pleading gaze. Dad would always have Marin donate the gifts to the church. Accepting them when you had no intention to marry the men was disgraceful, he reasoned.

  Dad could resist Marin’s googly eyes. Most times. She resembled Mum too much. Sighing, he nodded.

  “Very well, take one for each of you. Meya, you are to have none,” Dad added, freezing Marcus and Myron in mid-cheer, then shook a warning finger. “Remember their names and thank them tomorrow.”

  The five siblings mumbled their Yes, Dad, and each selected one gift from the pile, shooting Meya apologetic glances that promised they would share whatever they chose. They looked so forlorn, Meya itched to wink, but she couldn’t have Dad’s hawk-like glare spotting her secret.

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  “Take your pick. I already ate.” Meya wished her stomach would stop growling as fumes from Morel’s stew wafted over. She settled in the corner beside the door. “Jason treated me at the tavern. He knew Dad’s not gunna give me dinner.”

  Meya shone a triumphant smirk at Dad. His eyes grew icy, chilling the air in the cramped cottage.

  “You take that attitude to Hadrian Castle, you’ll have your tongue ripped out through your teeth, Meya.”

  Meya took a moment to digest his words.

  “Hadrian Castle? What d’you mean?” She glanced at the others. Everyone seemed just as confounded.

  “Lord Crosset’s daughter, Lady Arinel, is getting married to Lord Coris of Hadrian. She’ll move to Hadrian Castle. Lord Crosset’s recruiting young maidens of character to serve her there. He summoned for me.”

  “That’s what took you so long today?” Meya gawked. Young maidens of character, he said. And he chose her? Dad had never chosen Meya for anything. No-one of a sane mind would, unless she was the last resort or there was a catch. “But I’m a Greeneye. The lady won’t want me anywhere within a stone’s throw of her!”

  “That won’t be a problem. You’ll be wearing your collar.”

  There it is. The catch.

  Frustration simmered in her bowels. Meya clenched her fists. She must keep her calm, or Dad might change his mind. He had four daughters to choose from.

  Meya hated the collar. It was the one thing she would never forgive Jason for. One fine day, seven years ago, Jason had brought Dad an iridescent metal band he’d received from a dying Greeneye in Noxx.

  The band was made from Lattis, a metal discovered two hundred years ago in an iron mine in Rutgarth. A few years later, the mountain face was shattered, the mine sealed by a dragon attack from the neighboring empire, Nostra. Since then, all mining had been banned. Lattis weapons and trinkets circling in the market were all secondhand.

  The Lattis band would dim the glow from the Greeneyes’ eyes and lower their body heat, allowing them to blend, but that it looked no different from a neck manacle wasn’t the cause of Meya’s chagrin. The collar burned her with its freezing cold, breathed invisible, odorless, poisoned air that weighed on her limbs and fogged her brain.

  Meya would forget it at home whenever she could get away with it, or chuck it on the levee as soon as she reached the fields. How could she work otherwise? Besides, being the only Greeneye in Crosset, the whole manor knew her face. Not to mention that was after they’d noticed her fat red-gold head sailing towards them from a feather’s flight away. Glowing eyes or no, it didn’t help with the pranks, the name-calling, or the shunning.

  She’d tossed it in the furnace at Yorfus’s smithy, tipped cows in the pasture over it, drowned it in vitriol, nothing left the tiniest dent. Yet, there must be a way to destroy it. How else could it have been molded? The secret must’ve been burnt to a crisp along with them miners in Rutgarth.

  Meya wanted the job. With Jezia as a best friend, it was impossible to not long to see the lands outside her birth manor for once, if only she didn’t have to strap on that loathsome device. Why was Dad going to such trouble to get her the post?

  “Why not Morel, then? She’s the best at cooking and cleaning, isn’t she?” Meya narrowed her eyes.

  “What, me?” Morel almost jumped into the hearth. She scrambled to Dad, hands joined in prayer. “No, Dad! Please dun send me! Hadrian’s so far away!”

  “I’m not sending you, Morel. You’re needed here,” Dad sighed. Morel looked faint with relief, as Meya’s heart lurched.

  “And I’m not, you’re saying?”

  Dad spun around, alarmed.

  “Meya, listen—”

  “No need. I understand.”

  Meya tamped down the surge of desperation, her face empty but for a nonchalant smile.

  “’Tis the Ice Pillory, the Liar’s Bridle, the Fest Trail, the Famine, the Song of May Day. But you must know, Dad, those were all me.”

  “Meya, how many times have I told you? You have nothing to do with my Song!” Mum glared at Dad. Meya longed to see his reaction, but couldn’t bring herself to look.

  “That’s very kind of you, Mum, but what I’m saying is—all those times, I bungled up. I chose the stupid way out. Me eyes have nothing to do with anything.”

  “They have, far as Latakia’s concerned.” The furrow between Dad’s eyebrows deepened. Meya gnashed her teeth.

  “I can’t do nothing with that thing ’round me neck. You’re only making sure I’ll fail!”

  “That Greeneye in Noxx lived a perfectly normal life. You just have to get used to it.”

  “I’m telling you, Dad, I hate it!” Meya sprang to her feet. Dad also blew his long-overdue top. He slammed his bowl on the floor. Lukewarm soup and sodden vegetables splattered Mum’s dress. She gasped and scampered back. The children tensed in fearful anticipation.

  “Then maybe ’tis time you learn to do what you hate for once!” Dad snapped, his face blotchy red. Meya gaped as his voice thundered around the house.

  “You dinnae hear them folks back there in the trench? They were calling for your banishment! Crosset no longer tolerates you! Lord Crosset struck me a deal. You leave, we get your fine back. And I accepted!”

  Accepted?

  The word echoed in the deafening silence of Meya’s world. She saw Jason’s smile. His soothing voice asked her not to give up on Dad. If only he were here. If only he could see how difficult that was.

  “So, you’re selling me off for three months of wages?” Meya found her voice cowering in the void swallowing her heart. Dad’s brown eyes remained cold as they had always been. Even so, she whispered in disbelief, “is that all I’m worth to—to you, Dad?”

  Dad turned away, shunning horrified looks from around the house. Tears fell from Mum’s unblinking eyes. Mistral looked confused, for Myron had cupped his hands over her ears. Even Morel shed her aloof facade and gawked at Dad.

  Meya understood then. Dad had no choice. With Myron starting his apprenticeship and Meya paying her fine, three breadwinners would feed nine mouths.

  Meya turned to Mistral. Her tapered, beautiful fingers could weave a bobbin through hundreds of threads. What would those fingers look like after months of tilling and plowing? Could she feel the texture of silk through all the warts and weathered skin?

  Straining back tears, Meya drew a deep breath.

  “When do I leave?”

  “Day after tomorrow,” Dad grunted. Meya blanched. She didn’t expect it would be that soon. She might not have a chance to say farewell to the few people who didn’t mind having her around too much.

  What if something happened? People would fall ill and die. Run into thugs and bandits and thieves. Get stranded in the middle of nowhere and starve to death. What if she never saw Crosset again?

  “Who’ll look after Hanna?”

  Dad snorted.

  “We won’t let our winter food starve.”

  Maro glowered at Dad. Meya’s heart sank lower. She wouldn’t be there to keep Hanna company on her way to the butcher’s board.

  Meya felt as if she’d put on her collar, her head blank and sluggish, her limbs leaden. She wrung her brain dry for some golden solution, anything to lift them free of this plight of her own making. Nothing came.

  “I’d better get started on saying me farewells, then.”

  Meya pushed open the door, walking into the gathering night. The sun had slipped behind the hill where Crosset Castle stood, black spires against a brocade of star-spangled ultramarine sky. She cursed its lord, yet it had never looked more beautiful.

  Oil lamps flickered along the road. Lights shone through oil paper strung across windows. Cold winds batted her as she traipsed down the sloping dirt road.

  Meya balanced expertly on the levee, wading through seas of purple wheat swishing under the faint light of the half-moon. She ventured into the forest, past the ole oak where she’d knock down acorns for her piglet in autumn, to the hollow trunk of a perished tree.

  Meya knelt on the damp earth and caressed the ground. She raked back the loose soil with a small pointed stone, unearthing a drawstring pouch. It had once been off-white but was now brown from its time in the earth.

  Her back against the wall of the hollow, Meya loosened the drawstring and rummaged through the trinkets, until she found a wooden tub that sat snugly on her palm.

  Meya unscrewed the top and brought out the small, jagged stone by touch. She pressed it against her heart as she sang, her voice a whisper on the wind. A little song she wrote, sung in a voice that belonged to Mum.

  I’m here to sing a song I own.

  I wish to hear the world sing along.

  I’ll sing my heart for all who’ll heed.

  So lend your ears to the wind as it blows.

  Mum traveled the western duchies as a famous songstress before she married Dad. Every year, she would sing at the May Fest, and people would travel from as far as Easthaven to hear the Song of May Day.

  Then came a rainy May Day seventeen years ago. Mum was in so much pain giving birth to Meya, she screamed until her throat gave out. The Song of May Day was no more.

  Many who believed the Song lived still in Meya branded her Song Thief. Others blamed Meya’s Greeneye misfortune for ridding Latakia of the Song of May Day.

  They were right, although they’d never know. Meya had never sung before a single soul. Although it was torture strangling her Song silent, she was terrified of what people might do to her, most terrified of what Dad might think of her. None knew she could sing but robins, thrushes, and a boy she faintly remembered.

  He came from afar with his merchant father. He stumbled upon her singing in the pigsty, alone on May Day. Her family, the whole village were at the festival, cramming another May Queen crown onto Marin’s head.

  Perhaps as payment, the boy gave her the small stone encrusted with shards of raw emerald that were the color of her dimmed eyes, along with gentle words she’d repeat in her heart whenever she needed a kind voice to usher her on.

  “You’re worth more than a pig, or simply your mother’s Song, Meya. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

  I’m Meya, Meya.

  I’m born on May’s Eve.

  As my father grieves for my mother’s Song.

  Oh Meya, they say,

  What good is a lass,

  As unruly and poor as Meya Hild.

  Can you remember the M children?

  

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