Literature
The Crystal Serpent
Chapter One: The Kitchen Boy
It was the seventh day of winter, and fear was in the air.
Robin could feel it, thicker than the steam from the kettles simmering in the row of hearths which spanned half the kitchen’s length. Just an hour ago he’d heard two people speak in hushed tones about a rider–one that had arrived at the gates of Kalmar Castle before break of dawn. What his errand was remained unknown save to the Lord and his nobles, but it must be urgent. Even desperate.
Near one end of the kitchen Robin stood before a fire-pit, turning a boar’s carcass on an iron spit. Slender and pale, with tousled hair the color of maple, he stood just slightly taller than most boys his age. He was not yet thirteen. Three years he had lived at the castle, working for the support of his weak, sick mother.
The wild boar had been taken yesterday morning by bowmen in my Lord Olav’s hunting party, dragged to the castle on a massive sled with much gaiety and laughter. Its flesh crackled over the
