A young man stands before a sheet of polished silver, lifts the little glowing tile in his hand, and steals his own likeness from the glass.
I have seen a looking-glass but once, in the manor house, and my lord kept it covered, for vanity is a snare. This one is taller than a door. And the man is not sick, not dying, not even at his prayers. He has come to this room full of iron only to lift the iron and set it down again, lift it and set it down, moving nothing, plowing nothing, and now he pauses to gaze upon himself.
He is strong. I will grant the poor fool that. Arms like a smith's. But a smith's arms come from shoeing horses and mending plows, and a village is warmer for them. What has this strength done? It has moved iron that stayed where it began. His sweat waters no field.
And then the theft. He holds up the tile and takes his own face into it, as a man might trap a soul, and I think, surely this is witchery, to make a second self of glass. He studies it. He is not pleased. He does it again.
We had a lad, Wat, broad as a barn, and in the hunger year he was the first of us in the ground, for strength eats more than it earns when there is naught to eat. This one need not fear the hunger year. That is the whole of it. He is strong for no reason, and admires himself for no reason, because the good Lord has spared him every reason a man ever had.
I would trade my aching back for his troubles.
God forgive me the wanting.