Luminous

1 - The Ice Pillory

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!