In Latakia, the saying went that there were two days a chap would dread the most in his life.

The first was the day his wife gave birth.

The second—yet no less feared—was the day the babe opened its eyes...

...And they were glowing green.

In the town 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'd never sought an explanation as to why his seed had produced the only Greeneye in Crosset in this generation. Nor did he once voice his fears regarding 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 elder 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 started off ordinarily in mid-April, seven years after the Crosset Famine. Farmer Hild stood before the clerk's desk in Crosset Castle's Records Hall, flanked by his best friend, Draken Armorheim—also the Farmer.

They had been queuing outside the town gate 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. Castle workers passing by nudged each other and threw furtive glances at Mirram and Draken, gossiping behind their hands.

Mirram could read their lips without even 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 himself was also the butt of many a local joke.

You know what they say: Don't choose Draken Armorheim to watch your sheep. He had fat little Lord Hadrian on a leash, and he let the boy get away!

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 was lank with sweat. His grayish-green silk cloak was 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, and Mirram edged a half-step forth.

"Mirram Hild, sir. I'd like to update my family registry. My son Myron's joined a guild and he'll leave the house next week."

Mirram pulled a folded piece of parchment out of his trouser pocket and smoothed it on the clerk's wooden desk; his son's letter of apprenticeship from a master in the blacksmith guild.

The clerk perked up. He stared at Mirram as if he had 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, and yet they still wouldn't stop pointing at that one with glowing green eyes!

Mirram heaved a heavy sigh, grinning through his grimace.

"Yes, sir, unfortunately."

He offered a joke. The clerk raised his eyebrows, puckered his lips and dipped a few dramatic nods, then flourished his hand at his ledger.

"And you're here to update your family registry?"

"Yes, sir, I'd like to move out my son Myron and recalculate my taxes." 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 at him for a tantalizing moment longer, 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 doing his taxes while his daughter's on trial. You must really despise the lass."

He picked up Myron's letter and examined it for signs of tampering. Now it was Mirram's turn to freeze. He shot a quick glance at Draken—he seemed just as confused—then whirled back, grasping the table edge with both hands.

"Sir, my 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 onto polished wood as he stared, wide-eyed.

"Goodly Freda, you haven't heard?"

Suddenly, harried footsteps pounded on the flagstones towards them, overtaken by a strident scream.

"Farmer Hild! Where's Farmer Hild?"

A red-faced lass sprinted up the snaking line, black ponytail swinging, darting eyes scanning every mustached face. All the men shook their heads. At long last, her sweaty hand clasped around Mirram's hairy arm.

"The Ice! They're putting her in the Ice!" She gasped out between heaving breaths, 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.

Everything around Mirram seemed to have ceased to exist. Barely feeling his feet, he dashed back out of the castle gate, Draken and Jezia hurrying along in his wake.

⏳

The Trench was a strip of barren land beside the castle's deep water moat, its sunken pit filled by a crowd of spectators by the time Mirram, Draken and Jezia arrived.

The empty gallows towered above, like a flag marking the dip of the trench. The stench cloud 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 about on tippy-toes, craning his neck to see.

"Dad!" Jezia yelled as they hurtled in. The plump man 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 and bulled through, dragging Mirram and Draken behind him. No sooner had the three men emerged to the front than their feet skidded to a lurching halt, as if wrenched back by taut chains knotted to a stake.

Beside the gallows' base, surrounded by torture devices wooden and metal, pebbles and remnants of rotten produce, two youngsters were on their knees, one a boy and the other a girl, both not a day above seventeen.

Pebbles, oozing tomatoes and moldy potatoes pelted them as they sat slumped with their arms stretched taut, hanging by their wrists from pillories hunkering above their heads.

The girl's pillory, instead of wood, was made of a singular block of clear, bluish ice. The infamous Ice Pillory of Crosset.

"Deke! Meya!"

Draken cried. Before Mirram could even budge, he'd already sprinted towards his only son.

Deke whipped around at the sound of his father's voice. He was a stocky lad with a long, freckled face, topped with a crop of 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. Holding 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, one by one the restless villagers behaved, albeit with a lot of grumbling. Mirram turned to the lass 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 served to soak up the dripping ice in place of her threadbare woolen dress. A smatter of freckles paraded across the flat terrain where the bridge of her nose should be.

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?" Mirram asked coldly.

"There you are, Hild!"

A barking voice cut across before Meya could reply. Mirram spun around. The man's bald head glided above a sea of brown hair as he 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 my boy here!"

The man jerked a thumb towards his son with a snarl. Mirram had to crane his neck to see. Trailing a step behind, half-hidden by his father's hulking frame, was a scowling lad a couple of years older than Meya. He was the spitting image of his father—except for his split, bleeding lips and a swollen, purplish bruise covering 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 at the back of his father's shiny head, shaking with both rage and embarrassment.

"Quiet, Deke!" Draken snapped, then 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. When they got their pay in the men's rate of 10 latts per field, they'd pay her back 9 latts each, and keep 1 latt as fee. In case you can't count, that's twice the Greeneye rate."

Draken massaged his forehead. The warden indicated the still skulking Gregor with a nod.

"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 own share, he didn't."

A familiar cold voice cut through—Meya's. Mirram shot his daughter a silencing glare. She flicked him a fleeting glance, then sneered at Gregor, who was trembling in 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 gonna get the pillory anyway, might as well earn it."

Meya had barely finished when the crowd's furor swallowed her voice. There were loud cusses from women bemoaning disgrace. Pebbles and mudballs resumed sailing through the air, with some 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,

"My little boy would be here today if not for your famine, you demonspawn!"

Meya accepted their complaints in turn. Her expression remained vacant, yet her eyes were glistening. Draken cursed under his breath.

"Warden, this is preposterous—The Ice? The lass is sixteen! Fraud is hardly a heinous crime!" He yelled over the hubbub, shielding his head with both arms.

The warden grimaced—though that might have been in response to the juicy splat of the half-tomato now sliding down his cheek.

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

"What?" Draken cried, eyes bulging, then whipped back to Meya. "Are you out of your mind, lass?"

"Tis a warm day, Farmer Armorheim." Meya grinned, then winced as a gust of cool, dry wind lambasted the clearing. Growling in frustration, Draken spun back to the warden.

"What will it take to free them early?"

"Two old silvers. Each. No haggling." The warden replied without a breath's pause, a gleeful smirk creeping up on his mouth.

Grinding his teeth, Draken snatched his purse out of his pocket. 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 would find none. Not the old ones.

A roughened palm holding two old silver faces entered his sightline. Looking up, he saw Mirram's solemn brown eyes.

"Draken, take this. Free your son."

"What about Meya?"

Mirram simply 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 shouted, a trembling finger jabbing towards the hysterical crowd.

Yet, Mirram did not waver.

A dull thump sounded from behind them. 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 have been impossible, warm day or no, 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, eyes darting back and forth from the still-solid Ice Pillory and Meya's hands. Her freedom confirmed, Meya turned to Draken with a toothy grin.

"Like I said. Tis a warm day."

🐉🐉🐉