In the agriculture business, life is based on predictability. A developed routine is the most important aspect of existence. On the Agalon plantation, as on any plantation, it is the cyclical nature of the environment that controls everything, from the major life events, to the minute, day to day inner workings of the minds of the people who dwell there.
This was even more important to Xaxac than it was for others.
For everyone, the planet Xren circled around a star, spinning along its own axis. It was predictable that each day would turn to night, and each night would turn to day. It was predictable that spring would turn to summer, then to autumn, then to winter. It was predictable that people would be born, grow into toddlers, children, and adults, then enter old age and pass away. It was predictable that in the earliest part of that adult stage, they would become parents themselves, and create a new predictable pattern, for a new, predictable person.
Each of these stages required predictable tasks to sustain the predictable cycle of life. In the spring, fields were sewn, animals were grazed, and people discarded their coats and shoes for warmer attire. Days would grow longer, and the work for those in fields grew longer with them. In the summer, the heat was oppressive, and clothing was discarded almost entirely as the days grew impossibly long, and one had to keep reminding themselves that, eventually, there would be an end, there would, once again, be snow. It seemed impossible, but it was true. In the autumn, that dream became a reality as a biting chill came in on the winds, and warm food was a comfort rather than a pain. In the winter, the days were so short that it gave an illusion of free time, if one did not have a mother and sister with schedules that did not depend on the sunshine.
Most people did not pay particular attention to the moons, at least not the people Xaxac knew. It was true that there were books filled with information on the pattern created by the moons as they drifted across the night sky, but those books, written by scholars in towers with telescopes, meant nothing to a slave boy who could not read and had no idea that telescopes existed. But the moons mattered.
Because Xaxac was predictable, in a way that most people were not.
Because he was a monster.
But monsters are only frightening because they are unpredictable. It had been said, by people who were not human and could only observe them from the outside looking in, that it was a remarkable aspect of the human condition that humans could get used to anything. They were amazingly adaptable animals.
It was true, at the very least, that familiarity robed the unknown of the existential fear associated with it, and Xaxac’s predictability made his monstrous transformation a matter of routine.
Abe did not think it odd or frightening at all that he was in the sort of position where he could say, with complete sincerity and no fear, “Them chains is gettin pretty old and that boy is gettin pretty big, reckon we oughta get some new ones? I can trade work for um, over in the stables.”
Abby did not find it odd when she said things like, “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. We can’t keep imposing on Miss Hattie like that, every month. Ain’t no reason we can’t stay here. You know we can’t keep imposing on an old woman.”
Alice could not remember a time when her brother was not ‘cursed’, and therefore grew up in a world where it was a perfectly normal thing that sometimes happened to people’s perfectly normal brothers. She did not realize how odd it was to make jokes as they grew, such as, “My time of the month is awful, but it’s not as bad as XacXac’s.”
Normalcy is subjective. Because of that subjectivity, all things considered, Xaxac was a perfectly normal boy. Every child has unique challenges, but parents will tell you that all children have a great deal in common.
They all lost their teeth at about the same time, but Xaxac’s seemed to grow in a little faster. They all grew at the same rate, but Xaxac was a little shorter. He made up for what he lacked in height though, because though all the children worked the same hours, Xaxac was a little faster, a little stronger, and he never seemed to get sick unless he ate the wrong thing.
To his father’s credit, he was a hard worker, a trait that some children had to have beaten into them. One could argue that watching those beating take place was the reason Xaxac decided to cultivate it himself. He had always frightened easily, always been skittish.
Some would say that there is immense value in an unremarkable life, and they would not be wrong. But there is also something to be argued about choice, about fate, about how some people just seem to be born lucky, and others seem to be born unlucky, about how the type of life one leads has value not because of what it is, objectively, but because of what it is, subjectively.
It is difficult for a child to be subjectively unhappy, even when they should be. The mind of a child clings to an illusion of happiness even in the worst of times, in a way that can be annoyingly optimistic to adults. But as a child ages, that veil begins to lift, through no fault of their own, and they come to understand that there are many things in the world that are terrible, and gain a brand new emotion used to process that information.
Hate.
This is true of any child, but Xaxac found himself full of hate.
He hated the moons. He hated the weeds he was bent over, yanking out of the ground, for growing there and being the cause of the constant motion he had to make in the heat. He hated his own inability to keep the straw hat his mother had made on his head, but every time he bent over the damn thing would fall off and he would have to pick it back up, which was more work and more bending over, so he began to direct his hatred toward the hat rather than himself. He hated his father for making him do this, hated the field hand who outranked his father for making Abe do this. He hated that some people got to work in the house, which was apparently much less hot and much more respected, while he was out here, getting sweaty and filthy. For a brief moment, he hated his sister, and how clean and crisp her dresses were when she came home, because there was nothing clean or crisp about him, but he quickly identified that jealousy for what it was and went right back to hating himself.
He actually kind of hated that he had to wear real clothes at all now. He missed the gowns that babies wore, and wondered why, when he had actually been a baby, he had insisted that he wanted to be a big boy. Because he hated being a big boy. The suspenders dug into his shoulders, and the worshirt was made of what was apparently the heaviest, itchiest, least breathable fabric in existence. It wasn’t soaking up the sweat, and he was boiling in it.
He hated the sun most of all. He tried to do what his father had told him; tried to remember what it was like under feet of snow, to be thankful for the heat. But he wasn't. He hated the heat, and he hated the cold, simultaneously. One did not make him thankful for the other.
He stood, tried to wipe the sweat out of his eyes with what he suspected was the burlap fabric of his sleeve, and snarled.
“Put your hat back on,” Abe ordered, “That’s why you’re sweating into your eyes.”
“That don’t make no sense!” Xac snapped.
“Watch your tone,” Abe said, accompanied by a look that made Xac instantly obey him.
“Sorry,” he said as he knelt again to go back to work, “I hate this. It’s hot as hell.”
“It is hot,” Abe said, “that’s what happens in the summer. You shocked by that? You didn’t know that was gonna happen?”
Xaxac very much wanted to tell his father to shut up, but he had a great deal more sense than that. Instead, he looked down the line at the other slaves, and realized that a good few of the men had their shirts off. He thought that, perhaps, he wouldn’t sweat so much, wouldn’t be in such hell, if he followed their example. So when the group finished their row and moved onto the next one, he unbuttoned it enough to get it over his head, slid his suspenders down, and tied it around his waist.
It didn’t help as much as he had thought it would.
“You gonna get burned like that if you don’t wear your hat,” Abe said.
“I ain’t gonna burn,” Xac said flippantly, “Only light skinned folks burn.”
“You gonna burn,” Abe said again, “But it’s on you.”
“I hate this,” Xac said.
“Folks your age hate everything,” Abe said, dismissing Xac the way he had been dismissed, “That’s all young folks do is bitch. At least you don’t start fights over it.”
Xac huffed, and looked through the wheat plant in front of him at the rows that seemed to stretch on forever and wanted to find a way to burn the entire thing down and be done with it. In a few weeks, they would have to harvest it, and he would almost rather kill himself.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Maybe he did hate everything.
There was, however, more than wheat in the field, and that piqued his curiosity. Not, as his father would suggest, because he was looking for something new to hate, but because he liked anything new, in general. Routine was important, but it was also boring. There was absolutely no reason for someone to be out in the fields on horseback. It just wasn’t done. Whoever had brought a horse out here would be in big trouble.
“Somebody messed up,” Xac said to Abe, and nodded in the direction he was looking.
“Aw hell,” Abe said, “You need to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life for the next ten minutes. Get your shit together. Quit lollygagging. Pull!”
“What’s going on?” Xac asked.
“That’s Master Agalon,” Abe said in a whisper. “Don’t talk. Don’t sing. Work. Go faster.”
“I’m going faster than anybody else!” Xac snapped, and to his credit, he was. When he wanted to, he often outpaced others at whatever task he had been assigned, “I’m done. I’m waitin on y’all!”
“You ain’t done, you missed,” Abe said, but upon inspection he had to admit, “Damn, Xac, you are done. Fast as hell. You’re gonna move up in the world, boy. You’re gonna be the one standin over us, one day.”
“If everybody would move their ass,” Xac snarled, “We wouldn’t be out here all goddamn day.”
“We’d still be out here,” Abe said, “They’d find somethin for us to do. There’s always somethin needs doin round this place. Now hush. Don’t make me tell you again.”
They all stood and moved on to the next row, and Xaxac heard the hoofbeats as the man on horseback rode closer. It was taking him a long time, because he stopped and closely observed a group of people before be moved on. But Xaxac worked even more quickly, because he didn’t want to get reprimanded by his father, but he wanted to be able to stare at the man.
He had never seen an elf before.
He didn’t know how beautiful they were.
Agalon looked like no person he had ever seen. He was out in the summer heat in what Xaxac would have identified as a winter outfit, because Xaxac did not know what a military uniform was, did not know what nobles commonly wore. Agalon was all greens and gold, knee high boots with no snow to warrant them, and the softest looking fabric Xaxac had ever seen covering his legs until they met the hemline of his tunic.
His long blond hair was yardstick straight, and pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, where it would do nothing for the heat. Xac rubbed the back of his own neck and felt the scar there, the brand that identified him as part of the plantation. He didn’t remember getting it, didn’t remember ever not having it.
Long ears stretched from under Agalon’s military cap, as pale as the rest of his skin, and Xac didn’t know how they weren’t bright red with sunburn. He must spend most of his time indoors. They were ornamented with small gold hoops, and gold studs with green stones set into them that reminded Xac of Miss Hattie May’s ring. Was he magic? Elves were often magic.
Agalon paused often in his inspection to speak to certain people, but Xac couldn’t find a rhyme or reason for any of the people he picked. None of them were exceptional. They were all about his age, people he had grown up with, and none of them were particularly remarkable.
They moved onto the next row, and Agalon watched them.
The horse moved through the wheat without trampling it, which Xac thought may be difficult to do. He was upon them now, and he stretched out a gloved hand, and pointed at Xaxac.
“You,” he said in a voice that reminded Xac of his father when he was being particularly authoritarian, “stand up.”
Xaxac stared up at him and looked into his glass green eyes, the color of healthy, vibrant grass, the color of the stones in his ears, and completely forgot how to do that.
“Stand up,” Agalon repeated.
“Stand up!” Abe hissed, and reality came crashing back to Xaxac with the anger in his father’s voice.
No.
Not anger.
Fear.
Xac stood on shaky legs and had to will himself to hold his ground. Every fiber of his being told him to turn, to run back to their little wooden house where people didn’t tower over him, overdressed and maybe full of unpredictable magic. He had to tell himself not to scream. He had to fight every instinct as he stood, clutching the bag full of weeds on his bare torso, thinking of how beautiful this man was, regal and gorgeous, while he, himself, stood there covered in sweat and filth, half naked and in no way presentable. Should he put his shirt back on? His hat? Was he in trouble? Other people had done it too. No, you know what? This was bullshit? Why was he being singled out? Was he in trouble? Did Agalon know he was cursed? He hadn’t done anything! There was no reason for him to be in trouble!
“What’s your name?” Agalon asked.
“I didn’t do anything!” Xaxac said, because it was only thing his brain could summon, on repeat, in an infinite loop.
“Not…” Agalon smirked, “Not a great thing to hear unprompted.”
“Xaxac!” Abe snapped, sat up on his knees, and spoke much more respectfully, “I’m so sorry, master. This is my son, Xaxac. Apparently he ain’t got the sense god give a mule, but he’s a hard worked.”
“Xaxac,” Agalon stared hard at Xac, who fought the urge to run. “I remember you. He’s not your son. I bought him. Myself.”
“They took me in,” Xac said defensively.
“You’re supposed to be a shifter,” Agalon said, “Is that right?”
Xaxac’s eyes widened in fear, and he turned to look at the group of people beside him, staring up at him, trying to process this proclamation, then at his father, who was staring up at Agalon with the kind of fear Xaxac had never seen on a person before.
Could he run?
If he just took off, would anyone come after him? How far could he get? Where would he go? He had never been off the plantation. There was nowhere to go. If anyone found him, they would bring him back.
When he made no reply, Agalon spoke again.
“Are you a shifter? You would know if you were.” He leaned forward, leisurely, as if he was not deciding Xac’s fate, as if this was not a life or death question. “When I bought you, I was told you were a shifter, but I didn’t believe it. That sort of thing is a legend. I don’t know that they actually exist.”
“I can’t control it,” Xac didn’t realize he was begging, didn’t know how desperate he sounded, “It’s not my fault! They said I was cursed! But I ain’t never done no devilry! I swear! I… It’s the moons! I don’t do it! Not on purpose like that! I didn’t do nothing!”
“You’re not lying,” Agalon said, as if it was a fact, and it was.
Xac risked a glance at his fellow slaves, who were, for the moment, staring at him and dead silent, but he knew that would change as soon as Agalon rode away.
“Come here,” Agalon demanded, and Xaxac stiffened.
He couldn’t run away. Nothing good would happen if he ran. His legs wanted to carry him back to the house, back home, but nothing good would come of that. So he took a deep breath, steeled his courage, and took a step forward.
Agalon peeled off a glove, reached down, and tugged out a strand of Xaxac’s hair.
“A shifter,” he said, as if in thought, as if he was making a decision.
After an incomprehensibly long time of sitting there, playing with Xac’s hair, he broke the silence.
“What are you?”
“What?” Xac asked.
“Why you shift, what are you?” Agalon asked.
“I’m a,” Xaxac shifted through his entire vocabulary, trying to find the least threatening, least dangerous way to describe the monster. The first thing that came to mind was ‘Jackrabbit’, but he dismissed it outright, and instead went with, “a bunny. I’m a bunny.”
“A fuzzy little bunny,” Agalon smiled, “That isn’t what I expected. I didn’t know shifters could do that. The legends talk about wampus cats or werewolves.”
“I’m a bunny,” Xac said again, with more conviction, and Agalon tightened his hold on his hair, tilted his head upward, to get a better look at him.
Agalon chuckled and said, “Smile.”
Xac smiled.
“Oh my god,” Agalon laughed, “He’s got buck teeth. That’s so cute! And his hair is so soft!”
Xaxac didn’t know who he was talking to, but it seemed to be going much better than it could have.
“Do you like it out here, little bunny?” Agalon asked.
“Yes,” Xaxac lied, “I love it here. Everybody’s been real good to me, master.”
“You’re not supposed to keep rabbits in a field,” Agalon said, “They dig it up. They destroy things. They can uproot an entire plantation if they get bad enough. And they don’t like being out in the open. Open fields are better for wild animals. Pet rabbits are kept in hutches.”
He looked at Xaxac as if he expected him to agree with him, but Xac didn’t actually know very much about rabbits, and had never known anyone to keep one as a pet. Objectively, Agalon was wrong. Rabbits were at their happiest underground, in their own burrow. They were kept in hutches only because they were often raised for meat, and in a hutch they would grow fat for slaughter. But Xaxac didn’t eat meat, and certainly didn’t raise rabbits for meat, so he had no way of knowing that, so he stayed silent, staring up at the beautiful man with power over his life.
“You’re an indoor pet,” Agalon said as if that settled the matter, but Xac stared up at him in confusion, because he didn’t know what he meant.
Agalon giggled and said, “Well, I suppose cute little bunnies aren’t known for their intelligence. Do you see that house? By the road?”
“I ain’t ever been to no road,” Xac said, “I don’t really go visiting.”
“You can’t miss it,” Agalon said cheerfully, and pointed at the manor. “Go there, by the back entrance. The housekeeper will be expecting you.”
“In the big house?” Xac had forgotten to contain his excitement, “Really? I’m gonna work in the house?”
“Work is a strong word,” Agalon said with a shrug. “Go right now. You don’t need to bring anything.”
“Thank you!” Xaxac smiled up at him, with his big brown eyes and cute buck teeth, “Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome, Little Bunny,” Agalon chuckled, “I think you’ll be very happy there.”
He withdrew his hand from Xac’s hair, turned, and rode away in the direction of the house.
As soon as he was out of sight, Abe stood, grabbed Xac by the hand and pulled him into a hug.
“You got lucky, boy. You got so lucky. That scared the shit outta me. I thought he was gonna kill ya or sell ya. Scared the shit outta me! He wants a shifter! Y’all are rare! I’d bet money he wants one just to say he has one. You’re gonna be a butler or someshit, get you some fancy clothes. You better go. Better move. Make a good first impression. Your mama’s gonna flat die! This never happens!”