Xaxac, like most people, did not remember his birth, and because he had been separated from his biological parents shortly thereafter, he also didn’t remember them. But he did consider himself fairly lucky, because the man who had bought him also had in his possession several families, so he had not been left to his own devices to bring himself up, as many children were.
Commander Agalon owned a large plantation in the agricultural district of the Urillian empire. The fields behind the house stretched on for acres, and held all manner of crops, both the food that they needed to sustain such a large place, but also cash crops like cotton and tobacco. The manor house was huge and beautiful, home to Commander Agalon and his son, but Xaxac knew that he was never to go near the place, and certainly never inside of it.
He had been taken in by a couple named Abraham and Abigail, who had a biological daughter, Alice, around the same age as Xac himself. They were both kind people who could not stand to see a child alone and frightened, as Xac had been when he had first came to the slave quarters. He didn’t remember meeting them, as he had been so young. As far as Xac was concerned he had always lived in the little wooden home that Abe and Abby had built with their own hands. Family was not something that one was born into, after all, it was something that one built, like the house.
At first, it seemed that there was nothing of note about the child, who had been brought in to work the fields like many other children. It was expected that he would grow into a strong field hand, eventually take a wife from one of the women in his position, build his own house near his parents, raise his own children, who would themselves grow into strong field hands, take lovers, build homes, and raise families.
To Agalon, Xac was an investment. A healthy child and a few drops of new blood to avoid inbreeding in his stock. And for the first few weeks, that assumption proved to be true. He was really too small to be of much help, but he was well behaved and played well with Alice, which is all one could really ask of a child so young.
The trouble came a few weeks after Xac arrived, when the twin moons that drifted through the night sky were big, bright, and round.
Xac did not remember the trouble, but it is difficult, even for a young child, to forget hearing the only people who had ever been kind to him call him a monster.
Xac did not exactly awaken. He was in a stupor, that half-awake, half-dream state that is only known by those who have been overcome by the kind of exhaustion that is bone deep. He couldn’t move because his muscles were too heavy, could barely will his little chest to rise and fall to get the air into and out of his lungs, and certainly could not open his eyes to let anyone know that he was awake.
But he could hear.
“I heard tell,” Abe said, “But I never, in my wildest dreams, thought they could be real.”
“They say at the temple that them shifters made a deal with the devil,” Abby said, with fear in her voice, “That youngun is cursed.”
“I don’t know what’s to be done about it,” Abe said, “We can’t let him just destroy the house. The monster chewed through the walls, ate half the bed, knocked the furniture over… We can’t have that.”
“That can be fixed,” Abby said stubbornly, “All that can be fixed. Far as that goes we can make new furniture and patch the walls. The real problem, as I see it, is we can’t let nobody know. Agalon finds out he’ll have him killed! Look at him. Ain’t nothing but a baby. We can’t let them hurt that baby.”
There was a long pause, and though Xac could not see what was going on, he knew that something was wrong. He didn’t know what he had done, but he knew that he was in the kind of trouble that set a stone on his chest and put gravel in his stomach. He was weighed down by it, and he was already so bone-tired he could barely move.
“Of course we ain’t gonna let nobody hurt that baby,” Abe said as if he had been insulted, then Xac felt someone shaking him and calling his name, “Xac! Xac! Boy? Boy are you alive? Abby, he looks like he ain’t breathing! All this damn hair everywhere…”
Xaxac felt Abe brushing something soft and fluffy off his face.
“Xac breath!” Abe demanded.
“I’m gonna run and get Hattie May!” Abby said in a panic, “She delivers babies; she’ll know right what to do!”
“Run!” Abe shouted at her, and Xac heard the sound of her heavy footfalls. He wanted to tell them that he was alive, that he was ok, but he was just so tired, more tired than he had ever been, and he was absolutely starving.
Xaxac wanted to drift back to sleep, but every time he felt himself drifting off, Abe would shake him, and he would dart back to attention. It was starting to get on his nerves, but as he was so young and so weak, he had no ability to make that known.
“He’s crying!” Abe told someone, “He’s crying and that means he’s alive. Xac, boy, you stay here with me. Don’t go towards the light.”
There was no light, and had there been a light, Xac would have gone in the opposite direction because he was trying to sleep and light would wake him up.
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“Xac, youngun you listen to me,” The voice was old, and Xaxac didn’t recognize it, “The devil’s got his claws in you, boy, but we’re gonna cast him out.”
Whatever the devil was, if that was the person weighing him down, Xac would be glad to be rid of him.
“Be gone!” She called, and smack Xac in the forehead. It didn’t seem to do anything about the devil, but it did make him angry enough that he finally had the energy to open his eyes.
“Oh thank Thesis above!” Abe pulled him into a hug so tight, and Xac was so weak, that it knocked the air out of him, and for a moment he thought he may pass out.
“There he is,” The old woman, who Xac thought might be Hattie May, smiled down at him. She didn’t look any different, really, from the other humans on the plantation, but in his young mind, Xac knew instantly that there was something special about her. He connected it in some way to the ring with the green crystal set into it that she was desperately clutching in the hand she hadn’t pressed to his forehead, because she was focused on it in a way that made it seem important, made it seem secret and mysterious.
“Alright now you give that youngun a cup of that tea every hour,” She said as she stood. “I ain’t never seen a shifter- but I’ve heard tales. We gotta drive that devil out of him or it’ll come out even more as he grows.”
Xaxac followed her eyeline to Abigail, who was sitting in the small hearth brewing a pot of tea over the open fire, and finally took in his surroundings. The entire place had been upturned as if a tornado had gone through it. The wooden walls were covered in claw marks, as if a wild animal had gotten inside. Half the straw bed he was lying on was completely missing; the bed itself had been torn completely open, and what straw was left had been scattered around the room. Abe had built a table and chairs using wood that he had gathered, and the beast had gotten to them too- they looked as if they had been gnawed on, chewed through, and were lying in pieces, splintered around the place. Whatever had clawed at the walls had rattled them so badly that the skillet and baking pan had been knocked down and dented, and the walls themselves were completely missing in some places.
The only home he had ever known, of the only people who had ever shown him kindness, was completely destroyed.
“Mama?” Came a voice from the doorway, “What’s going on?”
“Allie, now I done told you to get out there and stay out there! Just because your brother is tearing his rear end don’t mean you can! You go on now! You come back for lunch! I better not see you back in here before then!” Abigail warned, and her daughter headed that warning.
“What kind of devil spirit possessed him?” Hattie May asked Abigail.
“I shoulda come and got you last night,” Abigail told her, “I shoulda done something, anything. But we was so scared; Abe sent me and Allie out of the house. He stayed in here, the whole time, watching the boy.”
“He didn’t never try to hurt me,” Abe said quietly, “Didn’t raise a claw at me. I reckon… I reckon he acted like a scared youngun. He ain’t evil, Miss Hattie. He’s just a baby. He don’t know no better. He can’t help it that he’s cursed. We gotta help him.”
Hattie May pulled a clump of the fur that was still sticking to Xac in places from one of the ripped seams of his tattered nightshirt and rubbed it between her fingers.
“What was he?” She asked.
“Looked like a jackrabbit, but not like any kind I ever saw,” Abe said, holding Xac close and running his fingers over the boy’s scalp, through his soft brown hair in an attempt to keep him calm, and Xac leaned into the fatherly affection. “Didn’t look like the ones that get into the fields sometimes; it was way too big for that. Ran like a rabbit, too; fastest thing I ever did see. I knew if he got outside that’d be the end of it. Wouldn’t be no coming back if he got out. So I kept him in here.”
“A rabbit,” Hattie May said slowly, as if processing this information. “I don’t know about no wererabbits. I heard tale of a werewolf one time, up by the Sage Lake, but I ain’t never heard tale of no wererabbits. Don’t shock me though.”
“What do we do?” Abby asked as she shoved past them to hand Abe a cup of tea, which he pressed to Xac’s lips. Xac drank it greedily, even though it was bitter, because he was starving, and if he hadn’t been so weak he would have said as much. But he had never been this tired, this frightened.
“Now I reckon the best thing to do is to watch him,” Hattie May said and shoved herself to her feet. It seemed to take a great effort, and Xac felt bad for her. He was so young, and had met so few people, that he didn’t connect her pain with her age, and thought that he had probably caused it the same way he had caused the destruction. He didn’t remember any of it.
“I’m sorry,” He said. He had meant to scream it, to wail, to give it the power of the emotion he felt with it, but he didn’t have the strength, and it came out a whisper.
“Don’t talk, Xac, just drink this,” Abe told him and squeezed him tighter.
“I know that boy John Paul over in the stables,” Abe said to the women, “I bet he could sneak us out some of the ropes or chains or whatever they use to hold horses. Xac looks about three or four; ain’t no way he’s stronger than a horse. We’ll just tie him down when the moons are full. That’s about all anybody can do that I can think.”
“I hate to tie a youngun down,” Abby said.
“When he’s the beast, he ain’t the youngun,” Hattie May told her, “He’s possessed. The legend is that them sacred texts say that them people was cursed because they made a deal with the devil and Thesis found out about it. The boy is cursed.”
“Ms Hattie,” Abe said seriously, “You ain’t gonna tell nobody about this, are you? They find out my boy is cursed folks might get… froggy.”
“You ain’t gonna be able to hide this forever, Abe,” Hattie May warned him, “One of these days that boy is gonna get loose.”
“Well then ‘one of these days’,” Abe said with an emotion in his voice that Xaxac did not understand, “We’ll deal with that. But right now I need to know that you ain’t gonna tell nobody.”
Xaxac didn’t understand what the tone Abe had used meant, but he felt how heavily it hung in the air, knew that it was important.
“I ain’t gonna tell nobody,” Hattie May said after the silence became too much to bare, “But y’all gonna have to do something about this. It’s just gonna get worse as he gets older. He’s just gonna get stronger as he grows. I don’t know how you expect me to find anything out about it if you don’t want me telling nobody.”
“Don’t you worry, Xac,” Abe cuddled the boy into his side and handed the empty tea cup to Abby, “Ain’t nobody gonna find out. Daddy,” he paused, nodded at Abigail and continued, “And mommy, ain’t gonna let nobody find out. You gonna be safe here.”