Xaxac followed Lee and Bobby, who had fallen into conversation with each other on the subject of music and how Lee apparently preferred older songs which told full stories to this new music, which seemed to him like whining, like nothing more than an outpouring of emotion. Lee believed that young people complained and cried too much, and Xaxac had nothing to say to him, because he was right. Xac had felt like crying several times during their time listening to the band play. Maybe young people were just too emotional. But he was trying, and he suspected everyone else his age was too.
They walked through the midway again, and Xaxac longed to eat something from the many booths now that he could smell everything frying, though he wasn’t hungry at all, and it felt as if they were walking much farther than he had anticipated. They walked down the entire length of the midway, then past even the stables where the fighters were kept, and walked further still, beyond the backs of the tents, until Xac was sure they had gone completely out of town.
“Where are we goin?” He asked and realized he had been paying so much attention to his surroundings and so little to the conversation that it had made Lee justifiably angry because he had spoken over him.
“Did the middle a’ my sentence interrupt the start of yours?” Lee asked him and Xac hung his head.
“Sorry,” he said.
“We’re going to the track,” Lee said, “You said you wanted to watch the race. It’s about time for it.”
“Sorry,” Xac said again.
“The problem with these youngun’s today,” Lee said to Bobby, “Is that they don’t respect nothin’. They get real self-absorbed.”
“The problem with old folks,” Alex said, “Is that they think they deserve to be respected even when they ain’t done nothin’.”
Bobby giggled at this assertion, but Xaxac slumped and begged, “Don’t start a fight.”
“I ain’t, I’m just tellin him that,” Alex defended.
They rounded the last tent and came out onto a large field. Xac could see the woods beyond it, but the field itself contained many wonders- Another ‘fence’ made of gates had been set up along the perimeter, then there was another round of benches, each higher than the one before it so that the elven spectators who sat there could see over the heads of those below them. Some humans even sat with their masters, most clinging to them or smiling in a specific way that allowed Xaxac to identify their profession because he had seen it, and felt it, often, on himself. Another series of booths were set up on one side, though there were no barkers this time, and there were long lines at each of them.
Humans walked among the spectators shouting, “Popcorn! Get your popcorn! Beer!”
But this didn’t particularly interest Xac, because he suspected it would have nothing to do with him. He would be relegated to the outside of the outer fence, because the only humans who got past it, at another checkpoint guarded by another earth elf who reminded him very much of the ones in the tent with the band, were clinging to or following their masters.
There was, once again, a huge crowd of humans around the perimeter of the outer gate, and because this spectacle was outdoors, they were not concentrated so closely together. Many had brought blankets or spread their traveling cloaks out on the grass, and were sitting there in comfort to watch the race. But, because they had come so close to the start of the race, space was still almost nonexistent near the front, and the few people who were standing close to the gate seemed rude to Xaxac, because they were obviously blocking someone’s view.
“What are the booths for?” Xac asked.
“Gambling,” Lee explained, “You can bet on which horse you think will win.”
“Oh!” Xac smiled, “Let’s do that! I’ll bet we’ll win! I always been lucky! I got two lucky rabbit feet!”
Alex giggled, but Lee rolled his eyes.
“We can’t bet, Xac,” Lee said, “that’s too complicated. You can’t just guess, you gotta be able to work out odds, do your figurin and readin and whatnot. That’s for elves.”
“But there’s humans in line!” Xac pointed.
“Yeah, they’re placeholders,” Lee said as if Xaxac should have already known it, “Remember how I stood in line for our master at the courthouse?”
“Oh,” Xac pouted. That made sense, and he probably should have been able to figure it out on his own.
“Shoulda come sooner,” Bobby said as he sat down on the grass, “No good spots left. Can’t see nothin out here.”
“At least we ain’t gotta smell it,” Alex said as he sat and dragged Xac with him, then made a face and added, “Some folk in the crowd could sure use a bath, though. Some ‘a these younguns look like they don’t know what a cake a’ soap is.”
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“You gotta be so mean all the time?” Xac asked him.
“Look at ‘um,” Alex argued, “them kids is filthy! Half of um ain’t wearin shoes- it’s fall. It’s all gonna be mud an… if your master can afford to bring you out to town you get a shoe ration. Wash your children. That’s all I’m sayin. You knew you was goin somewhere.”
“Some folks is from Basilglen,” Bobby said, “they didn’t go nowhere. They live here.”
“Still,” Alex argued, and sounded as if he meant to go on, but a man’s voice rang out so loudly it overpowered him. It was much louder than it should have been, than it could have been, and it came from many places at once. The unexpectedness of it made Xaxac jump, but when he actually looked he realized what had happened.
The man stood in the middle of the field with a strange, cylindrical contraption, which he spoke into, and he held a stick that glowed green like Agalon’s earrings. The earth elves Xaxac had thought were security glowed as well, from different places like rings, earrings, or necklaces, and the man’s voice spoke from the ground in front of them the same way Agalon spoke from the box of dirt when he talked to Lorsan and Xaxac. The overall effect, all speaking at once, was almost unbearably loud.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he proclaimed, “The district qualifiers for the Urillian Derby will begin in five minutes, so place your bets now! Horses and jockeys are approaching the starting line!”
A cloud of confetti erupted, and Xaxac saw two elves open a gate for a crowd of humans on horseback. This shocked him as well; he had been shocked many times today. He had expected the riders to be elven, and seeing so many humans do so many things was opening his eyes a little. He had always had a narrow view of humanity: there were field slaves and there were house slaves, and that was it. He had never thought a human could play music or ride horses professionally. But they could. Like the fighters, it seemed that humans could do a great many things, for crowds, things he had never dreamed of.
And the crowd seemed to love them.
The announcer introduced each horse and rider by name, and one rider, in particular, seemed to be the favorite of the humans. She stood in her stirrups when the announcer called, “Jessica OfVenris and Thunderbolt!”
She waved out to the crowd, and a section began to chant:
“Jess is the best
Jess is the best!”
Their enthusiasm was so contagious that Xaxac nearly joined them. He knew nothing about racing, but he wanted desperately for her to win! The crowd loved her, and she seemed to love them, and the energy was palpable and nourishing; he could feel it inside him, in his bones, in his soul.
“You reckon she’ll make it next year?” Bobby asked Lee.
“Gettin too old for it,” Lee said, “Gonna weigh down the horse.”
“Ladies and gentlemen!” The loud man declared, “The race will begin in three! Two! One! And they’re off!”
The horses moved as one, and their hooves beat at the ground in a rhythm so fierce Xac thought he could feel it, rumbling underneath him. Many of the people who had been sitting jumped to their feet, so he hopped up with them to be able to see. He wanted Jess to win so badly. He wanted her to prove that she wasn’t too old for it, that no human was too old for anything, that it was impossible to age out of a job one was good at.
The track was long, but they moved too quickly to catch most of the action. To understand anything at all, one had to focus on a single steed and rider, so Xac focused on Jess. She didn’t ride as one normally did, with her back straight and her head high, as Xac and the other children had been trained to do on the plantation, she rode so that she was almost lying down, holding the saddle with her thighs so that her behind was not even touching it, leaning over Thunderbolt’s head and perhaps even talking to him.
They moved like a lightning bolt, but so did everyone else.
The track curved, and Jess leaned into it, and it seemed as if she tried to veer in the direction of the curve as the herd began to move back in the direction of the starting line. Xaxac couldn’t have said who was going to win- it was all one crowd, almost a single body, a single organism.
On this second round, going back in the opposite direction, things began to get even more competitive. For the first time, riders began to fall behind as fatigue set in on their steeds, but not Thunderbolt. Jess still leaned in, her grip on the reigns was relaxed, but still, the lead was too close to call, it still looked like a group to Xac.
Even as they sprinted past the starting line and began to slow, eventually coming to a complete stop, Xaxac could not say who had won.
Jess was smiling, though, and the loud man was absolutely glowing. Xaxac watched a group of earth elves who had been standing at the line talking amongst themselves, then one of them broke off from the group and ran to the loud man, then handed him a piece of paper.
“And the qualifiers are: Silas OfElmaris and Rockey! Betsy OfPerhana and Beauty! And Jessica OfVenris and Thunderbolt! Join us tomorrow for another exciting day of racing as we continue the district qualifiers for the Urillian Derby!”
“That was so fast!” Xac said and wondered how he had gotten out of breath.
“Predictable,” Lee said as he stood and dusted himself off.
The riders had dismounted and were leading their horses off the track, and the humans gathered around the gate where they had entered, and where they would be leaving. The energy of the crowd was intoxicating, so Xac began to beg.
“Let’s go over there and meet them!” he said.
“No, Xac,” Lee said, “Let’s go get a bite to eat. Alex was beggin for a corn dog.”
“Won’t actually meet nobody noways,” Bobby explained, “Too many folks in the crowd.”
“I think Xac’s got a crush on Jess,” Alex said in a teasing sing-song voice, “he had his eyes glued right to her.”
“No I don’t,” Xac said, because he didn’t. He knew what arousal was, and he knew that Alex had to know it as well as he did. What an odd thing to say.