Xaxac clung to Agalon as they rode past the fields and thought of how his robe did absolutely nothing against the autumn chill. He had thrown his traveling cloak over it, but it whipped in the wind as they rode, so he was forced to cuddle into Agalon’s back until they came to a stop at the place where he kept his fighters.
He leaned heavily into the touch as Agalon helped him down. The frost in his coffee had made him jittery and he appreciated it. He wished he could have more and more, so that he never had to sleep again. But he smiled up at Agalon, took his arm, and cuddled into his side.
The other fighters were not afraid of the cold; they were milling about half-naked, as they always were, and Xaxac didn’t understand how they did it.
“Stay right here, Honey Bunny,” Agalon instructed as he led Xac to the table where they often sat, “I gotta go check on Billy.”
“Yes, master,” Xac said and pulled his arms inside the cloak to wrap around his legs.
Agalon kissed him on the forehead, turned on his heel, and walked to one of the many shanty houses that lined the fence of the enclosure.
Wyatt watched Agalon as well, and only once he was inside did he and the other fighters approach Xaxac.
Xac was not in the mood to be as pleasant and charming as he needed to be, not with all the questions, not with all the nightmares.
“How’d you do it?” One of the fighters asked, “The moons wouldn’t full.”
“You tore him apart,” Another said, though Xaxac didn’t understand why he was being told this as if he had not been there.
“Did you tear that little pleasure slave up, too?” Another asked, “That’s what folks are sayin. Is that why he kept passin out? Was he all bandages under that cloak?”
“How’d you do it?” Another asked, and the repetitiveness grated on Xac’s nerves.
“Because I’m a goddamn monster!” he snapped.
“Leave him alone!” Wyatt stepped between them, in front of Xac, and asked a question himself, “How you holdin up, boy? You ok?”
Before Xac had a chance to answer, another of the fighters spoke up.
“Agalon ought not bring you out here. Billy’s got beef with you.”
“I bet his patchwork ass does!” Xac snapped, “Lookin like the first quilt a youngun tries to make!”
“How’d you do it, Xac?” Wyatt asked again, and coming from him it didn’t rile up his blood, because he asked with such sincerity, as if he had a point.
“I don’t know,” Xac admitted, cuddling into himself. “I don’t know nothin.”
“Well, you best be figurin it out, ‘cause he’s comin for you. He’s gonna catch you out and rip you to pieces.”
“He ain’t gonna do shit!” Xac snapped as all the emotions he could not process wore away at the barrier between the act and the boy, “the Viper was gonna tear my ass up too, and now he ain’t even a person, he’s a stain on a sheet! Billy thought he was gonna tear my ass up and they had to sew him back together!”
He stood and felt the rage flowing through him as he turned to Wyatt and spoke.
“You tell Billy he just tried to bring beef to a vegetarian!” He said, annunciating the word clearly, “And I ain’t fuckin scared a’ him! Tell him if he hits me again Ima hit him back, and his ass’ll lose more’n a tooth! Remind him that I am a goddamn monster! And by the way? That tooth grew back!”
He reached behind him to the bag of carrots Agalon had brought to keep his teeth worn down, selected one at random, and bit into it, satisfied by the loudness of the crunch.
“And,” he added, though it was not relevant to the conversation, “How the hell are all y’all pretendin it ain’t cold as a witch’s tit out here?”
“When’d this youngun grow a backbone?” One of the fighters asked.
“Probably when he realized how easy it was for him to bash somebody’s skull in,” Wyatt said with what could have possibly been interpreted as pride, “That rabbit’s dynamite in the cage. He’s got a lot bottled up and it just explodes.”
“Wyatt, you don’t know what happened to the cook, do you?” Xac asked.
“Your mama?” Wyatt asked, “the rumor is-”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Alright gentlemen!” Agalon proclaimed as he came striding out of the shanty, “I am real disappointed in all y’all! I only get four qualifiers out of the bunch and one of um’s a scared little rabbit? Y’all know better! Start runnin!”
Xaxac stood in place and watched the fighters move around the fence, unsure of what he should be doing.
“Do… do I run, Aggie?” he asked.
“You can ifin you want to, darlin,” Agalon shrugged, “But I actually got somethin for you. Won’t be here for a little bit.”
Xaxac backed up until his knees hit the bench, then sat heavily upon it. Agalon joined him and threw an arm around his shoulders, so Xaxac snuggled into his side.
“I been readin up on… a lotta stuff,” Agalon said conversationally, “Now, I ain’t no vet, but I know a vet. And he’s been tellin me all about how different emotional states affect animal behavior. Did you know that there are some critters who will… change? When they’re scared for their life? When they’re hurt? Somethin changes in their brains. It’s why herd animals stampede.”
“That makes sense,” Xaxac said, “That’s why you can’t rile bulls up. They’ll turn on ya.”
“Right, good boy,” Agalon praised, “Well… Nelly says it’s on account of somethin’ called hormones. And some critters have hormones what go in a cycle. Like fertility cycles. That’s why some critters go into heat.”
“Like bunnies!” Xac said, “Mad as a spring hare.”
“Right,” Agalon praised, “You’re so smart, darlin. Well, we’re gonna figure out what happened back in Basilglen, what caused you to shift.”
“Is Billy ok?” Xac asked, “I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him that bad- well… no… I guess I did. But I was scared of him. I was so scared, Aggie. I thought he was gonna kill me.”
“I reckon you’re pretty hard to kill,” Agalon said, “You heal.”
“Yeah,” Xac agreed and took another bite of his carrot, “I heal from just about anything, I reckon.”
“I think… I’ve decided to let you take the rest a’ Billy’s matches,” Agalon said, “I don’t know when he’ll be in fightin shape again. And you seemed to like it.”
“They loved me,” Xac said, “They wanted me to win! They was chantin for me! The whole stadium loved me!”
“They sure did, darlin,” Agalon said, “I done told you a million times, everybody loves you.”
Xaxac did not tell Agalon about Billy.
The peace and tranquility of the routine that returned frightened Xaxac. He didn’t get a chance to do anything, because he was always with Agalon. There were questions he needed answered; there was something he needed to find. He had a new idea now, because he had started to believe things that made no sense on the prospect that life was better believing them than disbelieving them, and he had gotten so used to doing that it had began to occur naturally. He no longer had to work on it. It was better to believe the things one wanted to over the things that one didn’t.
He loved Agalon.
Agalon loved him.
He didn’t have a sister.
It was possible for beautiful men to communicate through dreams, because Xaxac knew nothing about magic, so that may as well be a thing that happened.
So now he wasn’t just looking for pictures of a cup. Now he was looking for squiggles in the book that matched the squiggles he had seen on the wall of the cave in the dream.
So he waited for Agalon to fall asleep; waited for the rise and fall of his chest to slow, waited for the crash that came from the frost, and he slowly slid from the bed.
He silently made his way to Agalon’s side, and slowly, cautiously, slid the drawer of his nightstand open. The little notebook Agalon always wrote away at was inside, amongst other things, and tucked inside that was what Xaxac was looking for: his pencil. Xaxac took it and wondered whether it would be better to leave the drawer open so that he would not have to silently open and close it again, or to close it so that if Agalon woke up it would be closed. He elected to close it and stepped back.
Agalon was out hard and Xac understood. His own eyelids were drooping. The frost left a great fatigue once its effects wore off, and the alcohol did nothing to help it. But he wasn’t drunk anymore; tipsy maybe, but no longer full blown drunk. His metabolism was so much faster than Agalon’s.
So he made his way to his wardrobe and softly pulled it open. He climbed inside, nestling himself under the clothes, and slid the door shut. Then he pressed the pencil to the wood at the back, at the very bottom, the darkest place where he thought a person would be the least likely to find it, even if someone other than him had to move clothes, like if Lee had to pack for him, if they left to go somewhere else. This needed to be hidden, but it could not be forgotten.
Then carefully, with all his concentration, Xac drew the shapes from his dream, in the hopes that one day he could find them, among all the scribbles in all the books on Agalon’s shelves. It was some kind of code. It had to mean something. Some of the symbols were closer together than others, some repeated while others were unique, and he could not say with any certainty that he was recreating them perfectly. But he had to at least have an idea, something to go on. He had always thought that if he had the key, he could break the code.
So Xaxac drew the symbols from his dreams, but he did not know the common syllabary, and he did not know what they meant. He did, however, make an almost perfect, though scraggly, replica of what had been written on the wall. He tried to push as hard as he could, hoping that maybe it would work itself into the wood of the wardrobe. He could not forget. This meant something.
Xaxac stared at the squiggles he had copied and wondered what they meant.
They would be hidden. And he would, eventually, find out.
But not tonight.
Tonight he climbed silently out of the wardrobe, replaced the pencil, and climbed back into bed beside Agalon.
He let the fatigue carry him off to sleep.