“We got free time,” Lee said as he led the group through the various games that had been set up, walking much too quickly for Xaxac’s liking. Xac suspected they were supposed to share the coins Agalon had given Lee, and he wanted to play some more. Agalon had specifically said he could.

“Let’s go watch the band!” Alex suggested and clapped his hands together, “We can follow the music. They’re in one of the bigger tents!”

“I ain’t never seen a band,” Xac agreed, “But I wanna play somethin else, first. Let’s play another game.”

“I was thinking we oughta see if we can’t find somebody what can read,” Lee said and stopped at a large piece of wood he had been leading them to, at the very beginning of the midway and leading back out onto the proper street, “I’d bet my soul that this tells what all’s goin on.”

The sign was actually a collection of several smaller signs, all arranged pleasantly so that they overlapped and none of the wood underneath could be seen. Some had pictures, but most only had the squiggles that Xac now knew was writing, and a great many of them had numbers arranged in a particular order; two numbers, then two dots stacked on top of each other, then two more numbers. He stared at one poster in particular, with a picture of a horse on it, and the arrangement of numbers that read 10:00.

There were several things that had the same numerical arrangement, and the more Xaxac stared, the more clear it became that they were counting up, beginning at six.

Time.

The sign was telling people what time things happened.

“The horses are at ten!” Xaxac said and pointed to the image.

“You want to watch the race?” Alex huffed, “God, I hate the animal stuff. I guarantee you the track smells like horseshit.”

“I ain’t never seen a racehorse,” Xaxac said, “I didn’t know what they was ‘til Lee told me.”

“I would watch a race,” Bobby said, “I mean, I don’t rightly care what we do. I’m up for anything. We might could even sit down for that.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Lee said, still staring at the sign as if he could somehow decipher it.

“I wanna watch the band!” Alex said again, and Xac thought his voice was bordering on a whine, “I wanna see folks dance! It’s so pretty. I love dancin…”

“We can do that right now,” Bobby said.

“And I want a corndog!” Alex continued and pointed at a vendor who had a bucket of hot oil over a grill and was selling what appeared, to Xaxac, to be cornbread on a stick.

“Does that have meat in it?” Xac asked.

“Yeah, honey, it’s a sausage,” Alex said as he began walking toward the booth, apparently with no regard for whether or not he split the group up.

“Alex!” Lee snapped.

“I”m gettin a corndog,” Alex told him.

“You ain’t got corndog money,” Lee said.

“I am supposed to get him lunch,” Bobby said, “but it’s like nine in the mornin.”

“What about a funnel cake?” Xac asked, “Can we get a funnel cake?”

An older earth elven woman had been walking past as if she was looking for someone, just one of many people in the crowd, and looking as if she belonged to the ‘dregs of society’ that Xaxac had seen his first night in Basilglen. But she paused at the sound of their conversation and stared at Alex as if she was making some kind of decision.

Then she spoke, and she sounded her age, or as if she had just finished a cigarette.

“Hey kid,” she said to Alex, “you want a corn dog?”

“Um,” Alex said because he had very clearly not expected to be addressed by a stranger.

The woman reached into a bag at her hip, and when she came up she was holding a coin. She flipped it in the air in such a way that it spun and Alex caught it with a smile.

“Thank you!” he said enthusiastically.

“Yeah,” the woman said, turned, and continued on her way.

Stolen novel; please report.

“I do have corndog money!” Alex exclaimed and held up the coin.

Xac’s eyes widened, and words came spilling from his mouth before he could catch himself.

“You gotta give that back!” he said, “Ain’t no way she meant to give that to you!”

Because it was not a copper or even a silver piece, it was a gold piece, and it looked strange. It still had a likeness of the empress’s face, but the squiggles above and below it were different from the squiggles on the coins Agalon used. But Xac knew that a gold piece was a lot of money, far more money than anyone would just give away out of the kindness of their heart.

But the woman was gone. She had been wearing a shorter cut workdress and a traveling cloak, and so was nearly every woman in the crowd. They didn’t know her name. They would never find her.

“Give me that,” Bobby demanded and snatched it from Alex’s hand, “don’t be wavin that around. Askin to get robbed.”

“Hey!” Alex stuck his own hand in Bobby’s pocket, and the two of them began to wrestle, “That’s mine!”

“Stop it!” Bobby snapped, “Quit actin a fool and shit! You’ll get us caught. Here. Put this in your boot. You can’t spend that unless we can find somebody to make change. You can’t buy a three copper corndog at nine in the mornin with a gold piece. They’ll just take it. They ain’t gonna have change.”

“How do you know so much about money?” Xaxac asked, “I ain’t never had no money before.”

“I don’t know nothin,” Bobby said, and Xaxac wondered why. “Come on, let’s go watch the band.”

Xaxac looked at Lee, but Lee was scanning the crowd, likely also looking for the mysterious woman who tossed fortunes to slaves. Xac also thought it was odd that she called Alex a ‘kid’, when he was obviously at least sixteen, maybe even seventeen. He was grown. Maybe he was just so good at makeup he had learned how to make himself look even younger.

Alex did tuck the coin into his boot, but while they followed along behind Bobby he fell into step beside Xac and took his hand. Xac wrapped their fingers together and swung.

They could hear the music before they arrived at the large, striped tent that apparently housed the band, and Xaxac took an instant liking to it. It was impossible not to move in time with the beat, and Alex apparently agreed because he was swaying too.

Inside the tent was a small stage, upon which stood a group of humans, which confused Xac, because he had expected elves, but they were giving it their all, playing some instruments he had seen before, but many that he had not. He recognized the fiddle, piano, and the banjo, but the rest were new to him. They were good at it though, and he swayed to the music.

There were also benches arranged in a circle two deep, upon which sat a few earth elves, but the largest part of the tent was taken up by a group of dancers, who moved as one, as if they had rehearsed. The sound of their boots hitting the floor echoed the percussion, and Xaxac realized that was a huge part of what he had been hearing outside. They were all earth elves, and the most beautiful part of the entire scene was the way the women moved, the way their skirts flew with the rhythm of their bodies.

This all happened behind a short gate that looked as if it could be taken apart and put together easily, and because it was made of several interlocking gates, Xaxac thought of it more as a gate, rather than a fence. They were all closed, but could be easily lifted or jumped. But no one tried to get past them. Instead, humans gathered around the gate in a crowd, watching the band and dancers, tapping their feet. The space between the gate and the tent was narrow, and Xac wished it wasn’t, or that there weren’t so many people, because there was no room in the human section to dance.

There were just too many humans. Everywhere he had gone they had outnumbered the elves. Seeing how they crowded the human section strengthened Xaxac’s resolution not to have children. There were already too many humans in the world.

Earth elves who looked as though a bath would do them a great deal of good leaned against this gate on the elven side, stationed an equal distance apart, and the way they stood made Xac think that they were there to keep anyone from going in or out anywhere except the place some elves were going in, a gate that was open beside a long table, in front of which stood an elven man guarding a small box. There was a sign on this table with numbers, but most of it was text which Xac could not read.

“Why are there so many people here so early?” Alex whined, and Xaxac wished he would stop finding something to complain about everywhere they went, so he tightened his grip on his hand until Alex let out a gasp of pain.

“Ow, what the hell?”

“Hush.” Xac instructed, and followed Bobby into the throng of people.

The song changed, and Xac was glad they would get to hear a new one from the beginning as the man on the fiddle began to sing.

“Well I wonder how the old folks are at home

I wonder if they miss me while I roam

I wonder if they pray

For the boy who went away

And left his dear old parents all alone.”

Xaxac didn’t understand the lyrics for a moment. They made no sense with the upbeat tempo, with the way the dancers moved. The band was too far away to see the man’s face very well, especially because there were people in the way; Xac and his companions were not at the front of the crowd.

“You could hear the cattle lowing in the lane

You could see the fields of blue grass where I've grown

You could almost hear them cry

As they kissed their boy goodbye

Well I wonder how the old folks are at home.”

Xac was sure that he was smiling. Because that’s what humans did. You smiled. You told them ‘alright’ and ‘ok’ and ‘yes, master’ and ‘I love you’ and you did everything that they said.

But Xaxac really, really wished he could have seen his family before he left. He wondered where they were, why they weren’t coming to work.

“Just a village and a homestead on the farm

And a mother's love to shield you from all harm

A mother's love so true,

A sweetheart that loves you

A village and a homestead on the farm.”