“Get up,” Lee instructed, “You gotta shave.  Let’s see if you can do it by yourself today.”

    Xaxac stared out the window, watching the humans in the field.  They were sitting down, eating their scant lunch, but that wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.  After that it would be right back to the harvest.

    Then it would snow.

    “He wasn’t there,” Xac said.

    “Xaxac,” Lee warned, “Get up.  I can’t stand here and babysit ya, I got a whole house to run.”

    “I had a bad dream,” Xac explained, “I drempt that we was… running…  there was wolves, big ‘uns, and we was tryin… tryin to kill a dragon…  an…  there was a stampede an’...  my whole body was sore, but…  usually, usually Lapus…  he wouldn’t there…”

    “Are you crying again?” Lee asked, and Xaxac expected a slap, or a snarl, but instead Lee put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed, “You been havin a lot of bad dreams, boy.  I…  can’t imagine what it’s like.  In that cage.”

    “They’re dead,” Xac said, “My whole family…  and I…  I couldn’t…  I couldn’t do anything.  I tried.  I moved as quick as I could but I couldn’t…  keep um from gettin run over.  I tried to tell um but they couldn’t hear me…”

    “Let me go get a bottle of wine,” Lee suggested, picked up the glass sitting on Xac’s breakfast tray, and handed it to him, “Drink this.”

    “Thanks,” Xac said as he watched the humans in the field stand, then bend as they resumed their work.  They were so far away he couldn’t make out individual features, but he knew Abe was not among them.

    He heard the door close, and knew he was alone.

    Lapus had said he would give him anything.

    But Lapus wasn’t real.

    The cage was real.  The viper was real.  His parents, his sister, Jimmy, Alex, Lee, even Mrs OfAgalon were all real.  He had to stop getting confused.  He had to live in the real world.

    He wasn’t tired from shifting.  He had slept the whole day through yesterday.  He had no reason to be tired, but he could feel it, deep in his bones.  He was worn thin.  He looked back to the breakfast tray and stared at the coffee.

    It wouldn’t be enough.

    So he took a deep breath, stood, and walked around the bed to Agalon’s side.  He pulled open the drawer on his nightstand and looked inside.  He recognized almost everything in there; the bottle of lube, the little book Agalon sometimes wrote in along with a pencil, another book with the same symbol he had seen on the one Lorsan had thrown into the fire, and something wrapped in a green handkerchief.  

    Xac picked up the handkerchief and untied it.

    Then he carried it back to his breakfast tray and began to scrape the snowball, sprinkling the dust into his coffee.

    He watched the liquid rise.

    He waited until the cup threatened to overflow before he wrapped up the ball and replaced it.  He had taken whiskey before, why not this?  Agalon never got angry when he took things.  Agalon loved him.  

    The frost would wake him up.  He didn’t want to go back to sleep.

    He was slowly stirring his coffee when Lee returned with the wine.  Xac glanced up at him, pulled the silver spoon from the cup and stuck it into his mouth.

    “Thanks,” he said as he set it back on the tray, “But I…  I don’t reckon I want that.  It makes me sleepy.”

    Lee stared at him as if he didn’t believe him, but all he said was, “Alright.  Then get up and let’s get you presentable.”

    Xaxac did have one of the same beautiful, flowing robes he had once seen on Alex, except his was green, like everything else in his home.  He liked the way it swished when he moved, and he found himself moving a lot.  He sat on the sofa in the sitting room and cast on a new hat in his green yarn, humming happily to himself until he was sure he heard Lee’s footsteps fade away completely, until he heard a door at the end of the hall open and close, until he was sure Lee was moving down a long and winding staircase.

    Then he shoved his needles back into the basket he had gotten from Crazy Harry and stood.  He made his way quickly to the bookshelf next to the curio cabinet then stood as tall as he could and reached up until he was able to pull down the first book from the shelf.  It had no symbols or pictures on the cover, only the strange squiggles the elves used to convey information that he could not understand.  Still, he opened it, but each page contained only more squiggles, which, though pleasantly arranged, meant nothing.

    Those books meant things.  Those squiggles somehow contained information, depending on what order they were written in.  If he could only break the code, he thought he would be able to learn something.  

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    Xaxac sometimes had a difficult time telling what was and was not real.  He sometimes got so bored, and so lonely, he began to believe things that could not possibly be true.  He got ideas into his head that didn’t need to be there, when he thought too much.  Some of them were bad, like the idea that something had happened to his entire family and that was why he couldn’t see his father on the fields or taste his mother’s love in the food he was brought anymore.  But sometimes they were…  dreamy.  Like the idea that Lapus may be a real person who was showing him things for a real reason, because he had some sort of magic that Xaxac was unfamiliar with.  Maybe Lapus really was trying to give him something, and he only had to find it.

    He closed the book that could be of no help, replaced it, and pulled down the next one.  It was the same; nothing but useless, meaningless squiggles.  The entire top row was the same!  There was nothing there for him.

    But halfway through the second row he opened a book and found it to be full of flowers; drawings of flowers and real flowers that had been dried and pressed between pages so that the colors bled and left after images.  He had always liked plants, or…  he didn’t exactly like them, but he knew about them, because he had spent his youth working with them.  The humans were the ones who got in trouble if plants didn’t grow, the ones who starved if everything didn’t go right with them, so he had learned about all there was to know, like anyone in his position would.  But they could not help him now, so he closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

    Xaxac was sitting on the floor smoking a cigarette he had taken from a drawer on Agalon’s desk when he finally found something interesting on the bottom row of the shelf.  The book was thick, and most of it was the squiggles, but it also held many illustrations in the style Xaxac could not identify as a woodcut.

    The first one had been of an open, blooming rose in a circle that he recognized as the same symbol on Agalon’s medals, but as they went on they became more interesting.  It was on the second image that he paused, because he saw many things there he recognized, and seeing them together did not make sense to him.

    The girl Agalon had identified as the empress Xandra stood at the bottom of the frame, much younger, a true child, wearing a beautiful nightdress with her hair undone, long, and flowing out behind her.  She was still not much to look at by Xaxac’s estimation, despite the fact that he considered all children cute.  She somehow did not have the baby fat in her cheeks that would have made them pinchable; she resembled her gaunt adult self so severely he had difficulty believing she was royalty.  Surely she could have all she wanted to eat.  

    But his focus was not on the empress.

    It was on the figure behind her, and the thing he held.

    A man towered over the empress wearing a suit of armor Xaxac knew should be green.  The artist had elected not to present the suits of armor normally worn by great Urillian warriors; this armor looked as if it were made of a living forest, composed of vines, stones, branches, brambles, thorns, and a variety of other plants.

    The Emerald Knight.

    He was standing in such a way that his right hand was thrown behind him, out of sight, and a glowing light emanating from his chest, shown by a series of radiant lines.  In his left hand, he held a sword, outstretched over the child empress’s head, as if he was protecting her.  Xaxac knew nothing about swords, but he suspected they did not all look the same.  He suspected it was important that he recognized this sword, because he did recognize it; he had seen it in his dreams.

    It was the sword Morgani Magnus had pulled out of his magical bag when Quizlivan had asked him what he had done to the bad people who had tried to hurt him.  Morgani had said he had trapped them.

    “Whatcha lookin at, darlin?” Agalon asked, and Xaxac jumped.

    He wasn’t stupid.  He should have heard him come into the room.  He should have heard the door open and close.  He should have known how much time had passed.

    But everything was fine, because he was cute, and he would smile, and Agalon loved him.

    “I’m lookin at pictures!” he said with great enthusiasm, “I like um!  Alex paints!  While you was gone Lorry took to readin to me an I really liked it!”

    “That so?” Agalon asked as he took off his cape and threw it over the back of his chair, “You look adorable.  You feelin better?”

    Xaxac snuffed his cigarette out in the ashtray he had kept on the floor next to him, stood and carried it back to the coffee table, swishing the robe as he walked.

    “I’m feelin a lot better!” he proclaimed, “Did you have a good day?”

    “Had a day…” Agalon huffed, “What’s that new kid’s name?  Where’s my food?  I’m starvin.”

    He walked out into the hall and Xac heard the ringing of the bell.  He waited for Agalon to return before he spoke again.

    “Are you real wore out?” He asked as Agalon moved to sit at the table where they normally ate.

    “You feelin neglected, Honey Bunny?” Agalon asked with a smirk, “Come here and sit on my lap.”

    Xaxac raced to his position and snuggled into Agalon’s chest as the boy who never spoke to them arrived with a tray and began setting up their supper.

    “I ain’t neglected,” he pouted, “I know you’re real busy.  Besides, travilin wears me out.  I woke up tired.”

    “Me too,” Agalon agreed, “But you look adorable.  The kimono’s cute.”  He ran a hand through Xac’s hair like he often did, and Xac leaned into the touch.

    “I’m glad I got one!” Xaxac proclaimed, “Alex has one and it’s real cute!”

    “That’ll be all,” Agalon said to the boy, and as he took his leave Agalon poured them both a glass of wine.

    “Aggie,” Xaxac said, choosing his words carefully, “I really liked it when Lorry read to me.  Do you reckon after supper you could read to me from this book?  I really like this sword.”

    Agalon glanced down at the book Xaxac was still holding and read aloud, “History of the Urillian Empire, Reign of The Great Empress Xandra Uril, Year Ought of Her Reign to Present.  Darlin, that’ll be real dry.  It’ll bore you to tears.  I got a much better idea a’ how to spend our time tonight.  Have a drink.”

    “Ok!” Xac said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

    He slid out of Agalon’s lap with a gentle push and went to take his seat to eat.

    There would be other nights.  The primary job of a pleasure slave was to keep the master happy.  Just smile, tell him ‘alright’, tell him ‘ok’, and do everything he says.

    Don’t think too much.