Greystone's summer fields breathed green and gold, rows of barley rolling like water beneath the wind. Shithead spent most mornings chasing chickens from the garden or lugging wood too heavy for his age, but afternoons sometimes belonged to him. Children gathered by the stream that wound its silver thread along the village's edge, its surface alive with minnows darting in the sun.
At first, he stood apart. His broad frame and sharp little tusks drew stares sharper than stones. The boys clumped together in their games of stick-swords and races, while the girls whispered over dolls carved from scraps of cloth. Shithead's place was at the margin, watching with the hunger of someone who did not know how to ask.
It was Alan who broke the wall. A year older, with hair like sunlit straw and eyes steady as a smith's fire, he tossed a flat stone across the stream. It skipped once, twice, then sank. Alan grinned at Shithead, bold as only a boy could be. "Bet you can't do better."
Shithead picked a stone, awkward in his large hands. He flung it with all the force he had, and it sank without so much as a bounce. The boys on the bank laughed, but Alan only shrugged. "Try again. Not about strength. It's about angle." He showed him with a slower, smoother flick of the wrist.
The second stone skipped once before sinking. Shithead's grin lit his whole face, and Alan's laughter rang true. Something invisible shifted — a bridge laid, fragile but real.
Mira arrived not long after, hair in two braids, a sly smile already in place. "Skipping rocks? Boring. Climb the willow instead." She pointed to the great tree leaning over the stream, its branches trailing low like curtains. Alan hesitated, but Mira was already halfway up, nimble as a squirrel.
Shithead looked at the trunk, thick but sturdy. His hands itched. He wrapped his fingers around the bark and hauled himself upward, his weight making the tree creak. Mira laughed down at him. "You're heavier than you look."
"I'm stronger than I look too," he puffed, hauling himself to a branch just beneath hers. His legs trembled, but the thrill of it rushed like fire through his chest.
"Not bad," Mira allowed. "Maybe you're worth playing with after all."
Lysa and Tomas came later — Lysa with her quiet voice and gentle steadiness, Tomas with his booming laugh and scraped knees. They found their places naturally: Lysa bringing calm when Alan and Mira bickered, Tomas daring everyone into foolishness. By summer's end, the five of them were inseparable, a knot of children who spent their hours weaving dares and dreams.
Shithead carried the weight of difference always — the stares, the whispers, the name stitched to his birth-cloth. But beside Alan's ready grin, Mira's clever challenges, Lysa's steady patience, and Tomas's laughter, he felt for the first time like part of something whole.
One evening, as the sun sank low and painted the stream with fire, the five sat shoulder to shoulder on the willow's roots. Mira tossed a pebble into the water. "We should make a pact," she said. "We'll always stick together. No matter what."
Alan rolled his eyes, but his grin betrayed him. "Fine. A pact."
Lysa nodded solemnly. Tomas shouted, "A pact!" like it was a war cry.
Shithead said nothing at first. The word pressed heavy on him, the way names and promises always did. Then he laid his broad hand in the middle, and the others stacked theirs atop it. Five hands, five children, one promise whispered in the summer dusk.
For the first time, Shithead went to sleep not only a son, not only a boy with tusks and whispers at his back, but a friend — and perhaps, in some small way, a brother.