Sunlight in Greystone never arrived all at once. It came in pieces — a spill of gold across a roof, a silver thread along the stream, the slow wash of warmth that made the bakery's door steamed and fragrant. To Shithead, who was small and wide-eyed and learning the world, the morning arrived as a hundred small wonders.
Maren carried him on one broad shoulder while Elira tied a basket to the cart. Their cottage sat close to the lane, with a lean little garden Elira kept full of cabbages and herbs. Smoke threaded from the chimney in soft spirals. Maren moved with the easy patience of someone who had worked the land a long time; Elira hummed under her breath, a lullaby that Shithead already knew by heart.
"Stay close," she told him as they walked the lane to the market. Her hand rested on the nape of his neck, fingers brushing the coarse hair that would someday curl into a mop. "Watch where you step, Shi-theed."
He said the name out loud now, enjoying how it felt — the hard start and the gentle finish — and Elira's smile made room for him. People had a way of saying it too fast or too soft; she taught him to hear it steady.
Greystone's market was small: a square of packed earth, two stalls with cloth, a barrel of honey that glittered like captured sun, the smith's bell that called men by the rhythm of the hammer. For Shithead it was theatre. He reached tiny hands toward the baker's counter when a warm roll slid into his fingers, and the baker gave him a wink that said, not all strangers were to be feared.
They moved through the stalls in a slow parade of greetings. Elira exchanged a few coins for flour; Maren laughed with a neighbor about the stubborn mule that had refused to cross the ford. But Shithead watched everything else — the tinsmith shaping a kettle, a child with a rubbed wooden horse, a cart piled with winter cabbages. His eyes lingered on the painted toys at the woodcutter's stall, and he pressed his small palm against the wood like he could climb inside it and become something new.
Not everyone looked with kindness. Some faces turned away the moment they saw him: a quick shift of eyes, a hush in conversation. The whispers were never loud, but they braided through the market like threads you could sense if you listened. Shithead felt them as a pressure at his back, an odd, sour taste on the sweetness of his roll. He was too young to name that fact as pain; he named it by gripping his roll tighter and scuttling nearer to Maren's side.
"Don't mind them," Maren murmured, seeing the small furrow between Shithead's brows. "They see what they fear. We'll be home before the sun climbs high."
A voice cut through the market's bustle — high and bright. Widow Tamsin sat on a low stool beside her stall of herbs and candied roots, and she waved a gnarled hand when she saw them. Even from a distance she looked like an island of softness: flour-dusted apron, a broom leaned against the stall, eyes like warm tea.
"There's my storm child," she called, and the nickname made Elira's cheeks soften. Widow Tamsin liked grand names for the small, and she always carried a little paper cone of candied ginger for the children who passed her stall. She held one out to Shithead with a grin that broke the whispering like sun through fog.
Shithead took it with both hands, marveling at how spiciness could be sweet. He stuck the end between his small teeth and closed his eyes, the candy a small treasure. "Thank you, Granny Tamsin," he said, for what else do you call kindness but a new name?
She patted his cheek with the back of her floury hand. "Storm and sun," she said. "You'll do well, little one. Pay no mind to long tongues."
Their walk back took them past the mill where the wheel slowed and creaked, and past the smithy where the apprentice's laugh rose between hammer blows. Men exchanged news in low voices — a barrel of ale lost on the road, a calf that wouldn't sleep. Shithead listened, storing each sound like a small stone in his pockets. Home felt like a harbor no matter how loud the world beyond it tried to be.
At the edge of the square children clustered by the lane, a bright knot of shrieks and sticks. They were older than Shithead, their knees dimpling with bruises and their laughter sharp-edged. Mira — quick and bright, with braids that would become familiar in most of Shithead's stories — was there, turning over a stick with the air of someone bored of play that was too easy.
"Keep out," one of the boys said, casual but not unseen.
Shithead's small shoulders hunched. He wanted, as all children do, to be in the center of those circles: to be the one who climbed highest, who found the secret stash, who earned the cheer. He stepped forward, holding his candied ginger like a token. "Can I—?"
Mira looked him over the way a sparrow might eye a stranger's nest. Then she laughed, but not unkindly. "You'd make a good bridge," she said, and the others tittered. The word slid sharper than their laughter. For a beat, his smile trembled.
Maren moved close, an arm steady on his shoulder that was as solid as the cart's wood. "You'll be whatever you choose, lad. Come on. Help me fetch the sacks."
Shithead tried to play it off, to let the teasing roll over him like summer rain. He lifted a sack of grain between both hands and felt the weight come to him the way the world would come to him — not as an imposition but as something he could turn and hold. He shouldered it like a grown helper and felt, for a breath, pride as bright as the market's banners.
At home, there were chores that fitted him better. Maren taught him how to lift without shouting, how to set wood so it would not split in the wrong place, how to make room at the table for more than bread. Elira showed him the magic of small things: how yeast worked like a slow miracle, how a stitch could mend more than cloth. In the evenings, they'd sit by the hearth and Elira would tell the old stories — a knight who followed a fallen star, a ploughman who found a sword in the earth. Shithead would press his face to the flames and imagine himself in every impossible role. Knights felt like a faraway song then, something edged in steel and distance. He liked to imagine the ache he felt sometimes was the same thing as longing — a small pull toward something larger than a cottage and a field.
One afternoon, when he was not yet five, the air changed. The market's bustle was interrupted by a clatter — hooves, urgent and sharp. Heads turned. Dust rose along the main road and a small band of soldiers rode through, mail flashing like broken sunlight. At their head rode a man in polished helm, his banner catching the wind in the king's colors. People drew breath in little surprised intakes; children squealed. Even the smith's hammer paused.
Shithead forgot to chew. He stood on tiptoe, candied ginger forgotten on his palm, his small body pulled forward as if by a thread. The knight looked as if he belonged to a story Elira had told: broad-shouldered, poised, the sort of person who seemed both a promise and a command. The soldiers offered curt nods and short words of warning about bandits to those who wanted to hear. The crowd murmured and then dispersed, but the glimpse remained in Shithead's mind — the glitter of mail, the bright certainty in the knight's walk. Something slid and settled in his chest, a small key turned.
That night, the house smelled like stew and wet earth. Elira sat at the table, darning, and Maren mended a cart wheel by the hearth's edge. Shithead lay with his head pillowed on his folded arms, the candied ginger long since devoured. "Was the knight a hero?" he asked into the dim.
Elira looked over, a thread of candlelight catching the shape of her cheek. "Heroes come in many shapes," she said. "Sometimes they ride with banners. Sometimes they feed the hungry. Sometimes they mend what's broken." She caught his small hand in both of hers. "You can be all of those, if you like."
He let that sit with him. The whispers were not gone — he had felt them press like cold hands — but the warmth of his parents was a fiercer thing. Widow Tamsin's kindness had been a brighter proof. The knight's passing had given him a new picture to keep, not a full map but a star he could glance toward.
Before he slept, Maren bent and ruffled his hair, making a small nest with his shirt for a pillow. "Eat your rest well," he said softly, the same words he used when the nights were storm-heavy and the wind had teeth. "Tomorrow we'll mend the fence, and on Sunday we'll take the cart to the market again." His voice was ordinary and whole and oddly brave.
Shithead curled under his blanket, the room a close mottle of shadow and hearth-glow. Outside, a dog barked and then the world quieted. He kept his eyes open for a long time, thinking of banners and bread, of heavy stones and small sweets, of hands that would and would not reach for him. Then the eyelids sifted down, and dreams unfurled where the knight rode on a road of ribboned gold and his little feet ran beside the horse, a child who could be many things.
In the hush, the name — Shithead — seemed to settle into itself, less a jape and more a shape he could carry. Elira's lullaby washed over him. Widow Tamsin's piping laugh still echoed in his ears like sugar. The world felt, in that small moment between dark and sleep, both large and nearly kind.
Tomorrow, the village would rise and the market bell would ring and children would tease and play. But tonight, for one small boy with small tusks and a wide heart, home was enough.