36 - A Tale of Two Sisters

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Meya Hild may be unique in various ways, but like most folks, in her formative years she had also been at the mercy of the whims of love.

A year before she landed herself a sickly young nobleman, she caught the eye of a handsome, kindhearted merchant from Meriton. In the days leading up to the Fest of Freda, they enjoyed many a game of chess in the local alehouse, as outside the snow wind howled and screeched to be let in, raring to gnaw on some digits.

Things took a turn for the unexpected when Meya didn't come home one night. Farmer Armorheim and Farmer Hild mounted a search party of yeomen and fellow farmers. They found Meya stowed away in the merchant's caravan as he prepared to leave town, knocked unconscious and trussed up along with a couple of Greeneye girls and boys from nearby manors.

The man was part of a band of Greeneye traffickers. He'd been tipped off by a debt-ridden Crossetian peasant hoping for temporary relief. Once the Greeneye children had been drugged out of their minds by Rose Crystal, he'd sell them to noblemen with unusual tastes.

Prostitution wasn't illegal in Crosset, but selling children into prostitution was. Even Greeneye children. Both trafficker and informant were hanged in the Trench the very next day.

Meya had been warned from childhood of the ordeal that befell careless Greeneyes. Sold into prostitution or dissected, their eyes slung onto amulets of luck, their blood cast upon altars in Chione's name were but the signature few among many.

Being the only Greeneye in her town, Meya felt it was simply a matter of time. But she survived, didn't remember a thing, and learned an awful yet necessary lesson. Though it gave her nightmares for the good part of a year, she didn't take it personally.

Back in her fourteenth autumn, however, it was a different matter. That one was personal. Meya was teetering on the cusp of womanhood, and she found herself with something in common to Crosset's young maidens for once:

Terron Neale. First of his name. Seventeen. Son of a bard. Slayer of flutes and shawms.

As the sound of his flute reverberated through the desolate Crosset dawn, young maidens of all value from pebble to gold would burst out their windows, a floppy hand to their feverish foreheads, before being dragged back inside by their weary mothers. Although, the fortunate few might find their mothers swooning by their side. Meanwhile, paranoid fathers and desperate local suitors would whet their sickles to a sparkle and mount them on broom handles.

Mirram Hild was no exception, perhaps the most demented of them all, even. He imprisoned Marin in Hild Cottage, kept two beady eyes on Morel and even little Mistral.

Being a breadwinner, Meya wasn't included in the house arrest, as obviously she must go out and toil in the fields. On her way to the communal pasture with her chicken one day, she caught a whiff of Terron's whistling nightingale flute. She followed the song to find the finest young lad in the three lands, perched on a rock on a grassy hillock looking out over swishing golden wheat fields.

As was the case with the fake merchant (and Coris Hadrian), all it took was one gentle smile, and the spell upon Meya was complete.

A week later, once Mirram and the boys had left for the fields, Meya to the pasture, Alanna and Morel to the market, and Mistral to Old Silmaryl's house, Marin would open the door of Hild Cottage to one Terron Neale, carrying an armful of sunflowers. He handed them to her with a flourish, then regaled her with a resplendent flute rendition of Tricia of Haventoth, as she clapped along in pleasant surprise.

Of course, he wouldn't have found Marin on her own and picked the perfect bouquet and tune without the information he'd gleaned from Meya.

Meanwhile, in the woods beyond the wheat fields, Meya crouched in her hollow hole, rubbing earth into her watering eyes, vowing never, ever to forgive Marin.

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