In honor of the approaching date, here's the first chapter of the book. I pray that you find it an attraction as opposed to a deterrent.
Chapter One
Eiland had lived in Summerton all his life. His father was a healer and his mother had borne five children; they were well respected in the village, if not wealthy, and though their bellies did not hang over their belts they never went empty either.
Being the youngest of three brothers, Eiland was not his father’s successor; Granpapa had always said Eiland possessed a rare gift for healing, but tradition bestowed the family trade on Marcus, his oldest brother, and Eiland had yet to find anything else that interested him. Neither was he a particularly eligible match for any of the young women of the village; he was handsome enough, with a small but wiry frame and a shock of dark hair, yet the dowries of his two older sisters had sapped the family’s wealth enough that the mothers of the village politely looked elsewhere to send their own daughters.
Thus he had reached the unusual age of ten-and-seven summers without either taking up a trade or a wife. It was the cause of some embarrassment in his parents’ minds. Two years ago Eiland’s father had even tried to send him to the village temple, but the priests had sent him back with the complaint that neither his feet nor his mouth would stay still long enough to learn the Writings.
His mother had been happy to have him returned. Of all her children Eiland had shown the most skill at gathering herbs, roots, and flowers in the woods that surrounded Summerton. It had never been entirely appropriate for a woman, even a healer’s wife, to assist in her husband’s work, and she was only too happy to pass on the task to Eiland.
For Eiland, that simply meant more time spent in the woods, wandering its paths with a stick swinging back and forth in his hands. Eiland loved the woods, had always delighted in following animal trails and making a few of his own. He spoke the tongues of every bird and knew the branches of every tree.
Such adventuring made him an oddity in Summerton, whose residents shunned the woods and clung to the light of the temple fires. Yet his family’s reputation and his own open smile made him a harmless oddity, and despite his advancing age he was still the baby of his siblings. So his parents indulged his wild, trampling ways and did not press him too hard about finding a proper trade.
Afterward, the priests would say that was his downfall.
One day, in the green, princely days of summer, Eiland was cutting through the apple orchard on his way home when movement caught his eye. Two rows over, the top branches of a small tree shook violently back and forth, yet Eiland felt no breeze.
Walking in that direction, he ducked around one of the burn piles that peppered the orchard to find a strange boy who he did not know.
The boy gripped the lowest boughs of the tree, shaking them hard. Apples, mostly the half-withered, worm-riddled survivors of the harvest, rained down around him. A small pile already sat beside a battered travel pack on the ground.
“Hello,” Eiland said.
The boy let go of the branches and whirled around. He was younger than Eiland, with a lean face and longer-than-fashionable hair. His skin looked surprisingly dark, darker even than Eiland’s shoulders at the end of summertime.
“Are you stealing apples?” Eiland asked.
The boy scowled. “No. So what if I am?”
Eiland considered it then shrugged. “We’ve already picked most of the harvest. You’re welcome to anything that’s left, I suppose, it’s all just worm food anyway. Yuck.” He made a face and kicked one of the fallen apples, sending it rolling into the tall grass.
The boy still looked suspicious, which piqued Eiland’s curiosity. Everyone in Summerton liked him—well, anyone who wasn’t trying to teach him holy verses—and he was accustomed to being met with smiles, not nervous fidgeting and glares.
He sat in the grass and took out the small meal his mother had given him this morning. The boy eyed him suspiciously at first but he did eventually accept some of Eiland’s bread and peaches and milk, and sat nearby listening to Eiland prattle about the many crops and orchards around Summerton. There was a great deal to tell. Something always needed to be gathered up and sold in town or put in carts to be exchanged for goods at one of the king’s trading posts. As the youngest son of a healer Eiland had been exempt from much of the harvesting duties, for which he felt thankful. He found such work deadly dull.
Which could really be said about the rest of Summerton as well.
“Then why don’t you leave?” the boy interrupted to ask.
“Oh, don’t be silly. Where would I go?”
The boy only shrugged and took another bite of bread. His fingers were deft and strong if rather dirty, and he tore off bits of food like a squirrel rather than shoving it all in his mouth at once. When he bit into the peach he gave a surprised groan of pleasure, his eyes closing.
“Do they not have peaches where you come from?” Eiland asked, though he couldn’t imagine such a thing.
The boy’s eyes snapped back open. “I’m not from anywhere.”
A beggar boy, then. He did look underfed and for all his fastidiousness, he finished his portion of the food in record time. Eiland felt a pang of sympathy; Papa always said that his heart was too soft. Too often his meals found their way into the bellies of the village’s stray dogs.
“Want my bread?” he offered, waggling the remains of his bread crust in the air.
“No.” The boy looked away, his mouth pressed in a line.
“Oh well, I’ll just throw it away, then.”
“What? Don’t do that!”
“But I’m so full,” Eiland said, letting the bit of bread dangle from his fingertips. “And it’ll just go stale and moldy if I save it for later. Better let the birds have it.”
The boy narrowed his eyes at Eiland. “You’re just trying to get me to take it.”
“Well, yes.” Eiland cocked his head to one side and offered up his best smile, the one that Mama said could charm an egg out from under a hawk. “Is it working?”
The boy eyed him for another moment before extending his hand. Eiland tossed the crust to him and watched one corner of the boy’s mouth tick up into the tiniest smile.
“It’s good bread,” the beggar boy said softly after taking a bite. “Thank you.”
“We’ve all the best food,” Eiland responded around a mouthful of peach. “The best bread, the best peaches...and there’ll be strawberries in springtime. That’s why I can’t leave, you see, I’d hate to not be here for the strawberries.”
“So long as you don’t have to pick them,” the boy amended in an undertone. He shot Eiland a sidelong look
Eiland pretended to be affronted. “I do my part! I fetch Mama everything she needs to make the draughts and salves for Papa. He’s the town healer, but Mama makes a lot of his medicines, even if she doesn’t like me to say so. Mama says that I’ve a keener eye for roots than anyone she’s ever met.”
The boy appeared unimpressed. “Are there many healing roots in an apple orchard?”
Eiland stuck his tongue out. “I’m taking a rest.”
“Because looking for roots is such hard work?” the boy shot back.
“It’s skilled work,” Eiland insisted, and the boy rolled his eyes. “And you shouldn’t poke fun, you were in the orchard stealing apples.”
The beggar boy’s little smile dropped away. He rocked forward as if about to climb to his feet, like a wild animal ready to bolt. Perhaps Eiland really had spent too much time in the woods, because he immediately wanted to make him stay.
“Have you hurt yourself?” he asked quickly, pointing to the boy’s hands. His knuckles were wrapped in thin, dirty bandages.
The beggar boy froze in place, halfway onto his knees. “No.”
“Yes, you have. I have something that can help with that.” Eiland slung his herb bag around into his lap and dug through it, coming up with a handful of numeria stems. “Here it is! Now come on, give me your hands.”
The boy didn’t move, so Eiland got up on his own knees and shuffled closer. Reaching out, he took the boy by the wrist, clucking his tongue at the grubby bandages. “See, now, it’s a good thing I’m here. You’re just bound to get the pus if you don’t change these.”
“What’s the pus?”
“I’m not really sure. But whatever it is, it smells terrible. Here now, hold still.”
Unwrapping the bandages, Eiland went still. Underneath, the boy’s knuckles had gaping splits, just like the ones the farmers got in wintertime...and the ends of the last two fingers on his left hand were missing. The skin at the tips of the shortened fingers was smooth and pink with healed scars.
The boy crouched on his tense legs, ready to spring away at one wrong word. So Eiland bit his lip and said nothing.
Squeezing the numeria stems, Eiland let a few drops of their juice drip into the cuts. He expected the boy to hiss and pull away but he stayed completely still.
“If you come to my father’s house tonight, he’ll re-bandage that for you,” Eiland said. “He’s the best healer in the world.”
“In the whole world?” the boy asked softly. When Eiland looked up those blue eyes met his, and the expression in them only heightened Eiland’s impression of a creature peering out of the brush, anxious and ready to bolt, yet filled with longing. His eyes were bright blue, brighter than a newborn’s. Eiland didn’t think he’d ever seen eyes so blue.
“Well,” Eiland amended just as quietly. “The best one in this part of the world.”
He smiled again. The boy pressed his lips together but relaxed slightly, watching as Eiland tended to his cuts. Over their heads, the leaves of the apple tree fluttered in an actual breeze.
Finishing, Eiland cast aside the crumpled numeria and climbed to his feet, dusting off his backside. The boy stood too and blurted out, “You won’t tell anyone I was out here?”
Eiland hadn’t planned to, but he was the youngest of five children; he never passed up an opportunity to tease. “What will you give me if I don’t?”
The boy’s cheeks flushed hot. “I haven’t got anything.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Do you see that apple?” Eiland pointed to one above their heads that looked perfectly round and red and not at all like the worm-picked, overripe ones that had fallen off the tree.
“If you climb up and get me that apple, I’ll promise not to tell anyone,” he said then hesitated before impulsively adding, “and I’ll give you a kiss.”
The boy looked at him sharply. Eiland didn’t know how to decipher his expression. It didn’t have the suspicion that signaled Eiland to quickly turn the whole thing into a joke, nor the nervous excitement that would hang heavy between them until it drew them together like rocks sinking into a pond.
Eiland knew that some boys would let him lead them behind the mill, or would lead him instead. Both were lovely and strange and strictly forbidden by the names of every god—but they didn’t lie down with one another, they only ever kissed.
In the autumn or maybe the winter of this year, Eiland would finally be matched with a wife just like all the others boys in town, so he didn’t really see the harm in a little kissing.
This boy didn’t act like the others, though, no suspicious frowns or shy smiles. He just stared at Eiland. “Would—would you really?” he stammered. “You’d kiss me?”
Eiland considered it. The boy’s hair needed washing and so did his clothes, but his eyes were really quite blue and his face, if brown and thin, had a strange handsomeness to it. And besides, he was a beggar boy. Who would he tell?
“Yes. I’ll kiss you if you fetch me that apple.”
The boy stared at him for another moment then transferred his gaze to the apple. It wasn’t that high in the tree, yet the boy looked as though it sat at the top of a mountain. When he finally grasped the lower limbs of the tree and hauled himself upward, Eiland was disappointed to see him moving clumsily, his limbs stiff.
He clambered up the tree and back down with all the grace of an old man. Eiland thought it a rather poor performance. Still, a promise was a promise and the boy presented the apple to him with an expression of such nervous hope that Eiland let his satchel fall to the ground, took the fruit, and dropped it on top.
The boy watched with wide eyes as Eiland stepped forward, smiling coyly through his eyelashes before tipping his head back—and oh, that was a lovely feeling. Eiland wanted for size but he was still taller than most of the girls in town, and it had always given him a strange thrill to lift his chin, arch his neck, and stretch his shoulders upward for a kiss.
At first it was just a dry brush of skin, almost invisible in the darkness underneath the apple tree, surrounded by the drone of insects. Such a small thing, just their lips pressed together dry and close-mouthed, yet the boy held as still as if he’d just seen a bear.
Then Eiland started to move away and the boy’s hands shot out, stuttered, and tentatively settled on Eiland’s shoulders.
“Is that it?” he asked plaintively, his eyes fluttering open and Eiland laughed, surprised and happy, before stepping back in and catching the boy’s face between his hands.
“Well, if you insist,” he whispered.
The boy caught his breath and held it. Eiland drew out the moment of contact, leaning in slowly, slowly, so slowly that it was almost a shock when their lips touched again.
The beggar boy did not kiss very well. He pressed too hard at first, he didn’t tilt his head quite right, and he didn’t open his mouth until long after Eiland had. Normally this would have been an additional disappointment, but somehow Eiland could tell this was his first kiss and thus felt inclined to be generous.
He put his hand over the boy’s jaw and guided him until their mouths met at a better angle. After that the beggar boy seemed to pick up quicker, letting his lips part and even scraping his teeth over Eiland’s chin in a way that made Eiland’s scalp shiver.
The boy ran his hands over Eiland’s shoulders as they kissed, rising to touch the back of his neck then running down his spine. Eiland shuddered like a cat shaking off the dew. The fabric of the boy’s threadbare shirt caught on the calluses of Eiland’s fingertips. He could feel how the skin underneath was a little damp with sweat.
Eiland cupped the sharp jut of the boy’s shoulder blades and vaguely wondered, as their mouths turned and met again and again, what it would be like if he were not wearing a shirt. He’d never done that before, never dared, but something about how the beggar boy pressed against him told Eiland that he wouldn’t say no if Eiland asked.
For the first time ever, this didn’t feel like just a little kissing.
Eiland tucked in closer, greedy for contact. The boy was only a little taller than him but his arms reached all the way around Eiland, enfolding him completely. Eiland had missed being touched. Ever since his sister Imra had left for her betrothal he’d had to survive on his mother’s too-brief hugs and his father’s distance.
Now, pressed together from shoulders to knees, he felt drunk with physical contact and still he wanted more.
He pushed up onto his tiptoes, not knowing what he meant to do except that he needed to get closer. Their bodies rocked together. The boy tore his lips away and gasped. They stood with their arms locked around each other, breathing into each other’s mouths.
From the other side of the orchard, Eiland’s mother called his name.
It felt as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over Eiland’s head. He blinked and stepped back, struggling out of the muzzy-headed haze that he’d sunk into. “Crickets,” he gasped, scooping up his herb satchel and the apple. “I have to go.”
“Wait.” The boy grabbed Eiland’s sleeve, “wait, please—what’s your name?”
Eiland hesitated, a trifle alarmed at the gleam in the boy’s eye, but then his mother called again, “Eiland!” and he could only roll his eyes and shrug awkwardly.
“I’m Charon,” the boy said.
“Eiiilaaand,” his mother called from much closer this time. Eiland rocked up onto his tiptoes again to press a quick kiss against Charon’s mouth before twisting away and hurrying out into the bright sun. His mouth felt heavy, obvious, and he took a large bite of the apple to hide how his lips were slick and swollen.
His mother stood where the paths of the orchard forked. When she saw him hurrying towards her she put her hands on her hips. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for that gyman root, young man.”
“I’ve got it here, Mama.” Eiland pulled a long, gnarled brown root out of his satchel.
Her frown remained in place. “I know you can’t have spent half the day looking. You’ve a sharper eye than that.”
Eiland pressed his lips together. He’d always been a bad liar. “I wanted an apple,” he said finally, holding up the fruit in his hand.
“Eiland, the miller’s son has been ill for two days! They came to your father for help, it is unkind of you to keep them waiting while you go climbing about—oh, good day, I did not see—”
She broke off, staring past Eiland with wide eyes. Turning, he winced when he saw that Charon had followed him out of the apple grove and stood in the middle of the trail.
He didn’t look at Eiland, though. His gaze was fixed on Eiland’s mother. All warmth had fled from his blue eyes.
Fingers closed tight around Eiland’s upper arm and his mother jerked him away so sharply that he stumbled. The apple slipped from his hand.
“Mama,” Eiland protested, struggling to keep his feet as she pulled him down the path toward the village.
“Hush,” she said without turning. Her face looked deathly pale.
When they reached the fence between the orchard and the wheat fields, she darted a quick glance back over her shoulder. “Every name of the gods. Did he try to talk to you?”
“What—he just—asked me my name.”
“You didn’t tell him. Eiland!”
“He heard you calling me!”
They drew up short and she grasped his shoulders with both hands, her expression wild. “Did he touch you? Did he hurt you? All the gods, did he Curse you?”
All the blood in Eiland’s body went still at once. The Cursed ones. He’d heard about them all his life. Every child had heard the story of the first sons and how the elder had killed the younger for jealousy. As punishment the gods had laid a mark upon his brow.
A mark that became the Curse, the great sickness that had darkened the land since the beginning of time itself.
Yet unlike any of the illnesses his father treated in the village, this Curse did not pass by touch or chill or poison.
It was given.
The Cursed ones had the power to wish their misery upon others. All it took was three words: I Curse you.
Eiland had never met a Cursed one before. They were wanderers, traveling the land, stealing what they could and threatening for what they could not. It had been years since one had come to Summerton, though the children kept the memory alive in their own games, pointing fingers at one another and shouting, “I Curse you!” then falling to the ground, their legs kicking in imitation of the terrible Agonies.
It had never occurred to Eiland that a Cursed one could be young, or handsome. In his mind they were always old crones, twisted with age and disease, glaring out at the world with hateful eyes.
There had been nothing hateful or cruel about Charon—yet suddenly Eiland remembered the bits of cloth wrapped around his fingers and how slowly he had clambered up the tree, as if his clothes hid some terrible wound.
A wound that maybe Eiland had pressed against. Crickets, he’d kissed a Cursed one! He felt sick.
“No,” he said finally. “He didn’t Curse me.”
Relieved, his mother put a firm arm around his shoulder and rushed homeward, chiding him all the while. Despite everything, Eiland couldn’t stop himself from looking over his shoulder, back through the low boughs stripped of fruit.
If Charon was still watching them from among the apple trees, Eiland could not see him anymore.
