The time came to pass when the sun was set in the sky, and men and gods lived in a world without constant fear. The dark things were driven into the ocean by the sun’s light, which was terrible for them to behold and was a sword stroke wherever it fell on their bodies. But the sun could not shine over the whole of the world at all times. Men would hide where they could in the earth, and gods would flee to the sky and, under the cloak of the lady Night, the dark things would come forth from the ocean’s depths. Their breathing, like running water, and their voices, like northern winds, would echo across the empty midnight lands, and families would hold each another close in hopes the dark things would not find them.

One such family was a man with eyes like the evening sky at the violet edge of sunset, and a woman with the sort of clear brown eyes all men find themselves falling into once in their lives. Between them they held a daughter with eyes as blue as her father’s and as warm as her mother’s. When she was born, her father and mother took her to the old witch who lived in a tree at the edge of the ocean. It was said the witch derived her prophecies from the dark things themselves and she had lived by the ocean since before the sun. “Such eyes as these,” said the witch of their child, “will see clear only on cloudy days, and best of all in the rain.” And that was all she spoke.

The witch’s prophecy left the parents bewildered and unhappy. There had never been a cloudy day in those ancient times and rain did not yet exist. Yet it seemed to them that clarity of sight was no small thing in the world. They cared well for their child, and all of them hid as deep as could be in the rocky crevasses of the earth when the dark things came forth in the night.

One long night, hidden away in the caves, they heard the dark things’ voices howl more terribly than they ever had before. Both mother and father squeezed their eyes shut, blinding themselves to the darkness, but the young girl’s eyes stayed open. It was she who saw the night itself cloud over, and felt the blasting gust of icy breath as the dark thing entered the small cave. Her mother and her father kept their eyes tightly shut, and they shrank back against the wall of the cave, and pressed both their arms still more tightly around their daughter. All around them raged the howling anger of the dark thing, and they felt the walls of the cave shudder as its claws struck sparks. The screeching rose in pitch until they thought they could bear it no longer, that their ears might burst. Then, with as swift as it was ferocious, the dark thing was gone. The man and the woman opened their eyes to the first gray light of dawn and discovered it was one another they held, and their daughter was nowhere to be found.

They ran out from the cavern and called high and low. They followed the great furrows dug in the stone and the earth by the dark thing, all the way to the ocean. Even had they known one dark thing from another (for no two were alike), they would not have known the form of the one who had taken their daughter. In a state of abjection, they went to the old witch by the ocean and begged of her any help she could give.

“These dark things can be bargained with,” said the witch, “but such prices men pay for what bargains they make. Perhaps if you had entrapped it in your home, then you might eke out some favor from the creature, but now it shall be costly.”

“We will pay any price for our daughter,” said her mother, and her father nodded his assent.

The witch told them they were to sleep on her floor by the hearth fire in her small home. Every night for three nights she sat up and, though the howling and scraping of the dark things woke them, the mother and father feigned sleep. They pretended they did not hear the old witch speaking to the dark things in their own tongues and they pretended not to wonder what transpired between them. On the fourth night, as they lay with eyes closed against the dark, they heard the old witch speak and the dark thing howl so loudly it seemed the tree with her little house must fly to kindling. Moments later, the witch roused them to a darkness even more total than that of lady Night and her cloak.

“Here is the one you seek,” she said, and though they could see no shape there was (perhaps) a hint of something barely reflected in the nearly invisible glittering of the witch’s eyes, something like a mass of animate hooks, long as a snake and larger than a horse. They could all of them hear it scraping gouges in the wood floor over the sound of its rushed breathing.

“What must we do,” asked the father, his voice quavering only a little, “for our daughter?” Something like a sigh, if such a sound as shale falling over itself could be a sigh, emerged from the blackness and the dark thing screeched in such a way as would not be heard again until metal was rent from metal.

“All it asks for is your sight,” said the old witch.

The mother and the father allowed as this was a small price to pay, but the witch placed a hand before them, a hand on each of their shoulders. “Know all that it asks. It asks for all your vision entire. All you have seen, all you might ever see, all that is sight and all you know of sight will be taken from you.”

“We will pay any price,” said the father. And with those words, the old witch dropped her hands from their shoulders and they heard the scrape of the dark thing draw close. They felt tremendous pain, and then blessed sleep.

The mother and the father awoke to the gentle sadness of the witch’s voice and each soon discovered they had no memories of anything they had ever seen, not even their daughter’s face. “Oh, your eyes,” murmured the witch. “Your poor eyes.” Even so, all they could think was to ask for their daughter, careless of the dried blood upon their cheeks.

No sooner had her mother and father spoken, than they heard their daughter’s voice. “Mother? Father? Is that you? Where are you? It is so dark… I cannot see.”

They asked the witch if it was still night, though they knew the truth by the warmth on their faces. Mother, father, and daughter were reunited, but the child’s eyes, once so clear, had become a dark and troubled blue, shot through with veins of amber. She could see no more than her parents.

The witch felt pity for them, and let them live by her tree, and they did what they could for her. Mother, father, and daughter learned the land well enough that they could wander freely, though the girl’s parents could never again see in their mind’s eye where they wandered. One bright day the old witch saw the young girl sitting far away on jutting spur of rock over the waves. She went over to the girl, and found her quite distressed.

“What troubles you, child? How may I ease your distress?”

“I do not think you can,” said the girl. “I have known ever since the dark thing brought me up from the depths that my parents were blinded for my return. I am thankful, yet it fills me with sadness, and I cannot cry.”

“Ah,” said the witch. “Sadness I can do nothing about, but take my hand and perhaps you may shed a few tears.”

The girl took the witch’s hand, and the witch carefully led the girl down to the ocean. She placed a few bitter grains of sand on the girl’s tongue and scooped up the salty water in her hands. “Now, child,” she commanded, “tilt up your head, for though you cannot see it, you must look to the sky.” The girl did as she was told and the witch let drop after drop of ocean water fall onto the girl’s cheeks.

Gradually the girl’s brows came together, and her eyes squeezed shut tightly, and ever so slowly her lips screwed up until a great sob wracked her body. The girl fell to her knees, her mouth open in shock and sorrow, as another sob tore from her throat. Her eyes sprang open and her tears flowed down her cheeks.

First she sobbed, and struck her fists against the sand and rocks of the ocean, and then she laughed - still sobbing and still crying - and then she gasped. For as the tears rolled down her cheeks, the darkness in her eyes came rolling out of her head and into the sky. The white clouds turned gray, then almost black. They spread across the sky. The amber flecks of her eyes struck from the clouds into the ocean and a sound like a landslide echoed across the water. The clouds blocked out the sun itself and began to cry.

“It’s so beautiful,” said the girl. “I can see the sun again!”

With her words, the great thunderstorm struck at the coast, lashing it with winds and rain for hours on end. The old witch and the girl, and her father and mother, huddled inside the witch’s tree. All the while the girl smiled as the witch had never seen before, always repeating, “I can see the sun.” In the darkness of the thunder and lightning, they also heard the dark things howling, and they knew what had been done with the girl’s sight.

When the storm had ended, the girl found she was blind again, but she was no longer sad, for she could weep again, whether in sorrow or joy, and whenever she shed tears she would see the sun.