Tabor continued to talk and I underwent the hardest effort of my new young life to ignore the girl.

“This is where we store the finished ceramics. Some of the dishes that I make are in high demand many kingdoms away and traders come here every spring when the snows in the mountains clear to take my work to sell to the rich and powerful all over this continent.”

“Would you like to try making a pot, young Elm.” Tabor the potter handed me some clay and I distractedly made something vaguely with cup-shaped and wrinkly, before handing it back to him.

He looked it over. “This young man, what we in the business call an ashtray. Come over here and apply some color to it. You will notice that the glaze is mostly clear when it is wet. The color only comes when it is fired.”

Again I splashed some random colors on the ashtray. I could have done a much better job. Honestly most of the time I would have. But I needed to think. If I talked to the girl, and let her know I knew what she was, she might blab and then two of us would die. But what if she didn’t know what they did to Twice Lived’s in this culture? What if she didn’t know how careful she had to be? What if she didn’t know she had to get out of here?

“So now, once the entire ashtray has been covered with glaze, we put it into the kiln and wait until the heat hardens it. This will take hours. If you would like, young Elm, I will have a servant bring it to you when you are finished.”

“I would like that,” I said.

“It is time to go,” said Crestor my father’s advisor who had stayed quiet up until now. “Say thank you to Mr. Tabor, for taking time out of his busy schedule to show you around, Elm.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tabor.” I said.

Crestor opened the door and held it open for me to leave, and just as I was about to make my way onto the street, I looked at him with a face as full of childlike curiosity and innocence as I could make it and said, “Crestor, do they tell stories in the city like Daddy does about what happens to Twice-Lived when they find them. Daddy tells about them almost every day, he told me a story about the inquisitors killing people who had once lived some place called Dirt or Amurika and had to be killed when they turned 16, but do the common people know?”

Crestor was silent. Everyone inside the pottery merchant’s house was silent. I took special care only to look at my Father’s advisor, and for a long moment, he didn’t say anything.

“Elm, there hasn’t been a Twice-Lived found among these common folk for a very long time. You don’t need to scare people. Your father and you are a special case. Come along. We must go back to the manor.”

Normally Crestor would have talked about the importance of Pottery in the city’s economy. He would have bragged about certain prestigious customers who owned full dining sets of the products of Mr. Tabor's kilns. He would have explained how much a plate or a cup or a vase sold for and how much that was taxed and how big of a percentage of that tax went back to the city for public works, feeding the hungry or hiring various mages to help in emergencies.

Instead, he said nothing. The walk back to the manor was in silence. The two guards who accompanied us and usually tried to tease me were silenced with a look by Crestor.

I went back to my room as I normally did. This was my only free time, and I was expected to practice my letters on my own. Flopping down on my bed I opened a book and started to read. It was still difficult. The language had close to 43 letters and seven accents that changed the sound or meaning at different times. But I was getting better. The book itself was simply a history of Magrithiam the country we lived in. Get it, the written language was Magrith, the country was Magrithiam.

After a period my Father came into my room. He looked at me and simply said, “Strip.” He looked angry.

I didn’t say anything. I took off my clothes. He gestured to some guards outside the door. These were my friends. People who pooped for me. I tried to smile at them, but they looked away.

Instead, the guards tied me faced down naked to the bed. My arms and legs bound by rope to the bedposts. Then one of the guards took out a whip.

“The more you whimper and cry out, the longer this will last.” Said, my father.

I bit down on the pillow and clenched. I was too afraid to look that behind me I could hear the whistle of the wind as the whip flew backward through the air and the snap as it suddenly sprung forward. Then I felt a lash across my back that broke the skin. I could feel the blood welling up in the wound.

And I bit down harder on the pillow and refused to cry out.

Four more times, the whip struck, I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell out “You’re not my Father, my father was a gentleman who was born in Lima Ohio who would never hurt me and who I loved.” But I said nothing. Not a whimper, not a tear not a peep. Just accepted a burning festering anger at myself for getting into this situation, at my father for doing this to me, and at this system for encouraging this. An anger that burnt inside my stomach and would not go out.

Finally, with the fifth stroke, my father said, “Good. You acted like a man, not a brat. You know why this happened. See that it doesn’t happen again.”

I turned my head and looked at him in anger, but my father wasn’t looking at me any longer. Instead, he had turned to the guards. “Unbind my son. And burn ropes and the bedding. If his wounds haven’t festered and killed him by the morning, make sure a healing mage takes a look. He can sleep naked in the cold air tonight.”

I lay on the floor curled into the fetal position, shivering, blood from my back dripping onto the floor. At around three in the morning, I had recovered enough energy to pull myself up, and carefully make my way to my clothing closet, where I found my least favorite shirt to tie around my back and work as a makeshift band-aid.

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I looked out the window and contemplated running away. Only to realize that I knew virtually nothing about the area outside of the city and that it was almost certain that, that was what my father expected me to do. He no doubt had placed guards.

And even if I could get out of the manor, and out of the city, I had no supplies. I was just a plain stage boy, who happened to be a Twice-Lived. The world was against me.

Instead, I lit the mage lamp on the table and found a chair and continued to read the book that I had been reading before my Father had come into the room. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. At least this way, I could show them that they wouldn’t break me.

When the morning came, the guards came with a healing mage to make sure that I wasn’t dead, and to fix my wounds if I was still alive. They were a bit shocked that I was sitting at my desk reading.

The mage looked me over and said “I would heal these completely, but your father wanted you to remember this. I am only allowed to clear out any infection and make sure you don’t die. Your mother told me to tell you that the servants will be by later to clean up the room and that you are off your schedule for the next four days. Food will be provided. My advice, if you want my advice, is to stay in bed and rest, but if you want to read, that’s fine, just don’t exert yourself too much.”

I didn’t listen, I was too busy watching what the healing mage did with my mage sight. I could almost see what it was he was doing. The mage stopped and turned to leave.

“Could you heal me some more?” I said

“Your father left instructions.” The mage started to walk towards the door again.

“Wait.” I got up. Every step was excruciating agony. The mage had done nothing for the pain. In my closet was a dagger that I had taken from the practice field to work with. It was no big deal. I unsheathed it, and sliced open my arm. New gouts of blood started to spurt, and I realized that I might have cut my Radial artery by mistake.

“Did my father say you couldn’t heal this? Hurry, before I bleed out and die.” I said to the healing mage. But I needn’t have said it, he was already rushing over to me and with my mage sight, I could see bright violet and yellow glowing around his hands and around his head.

“Crazy child, what have you done.”

I wasn’t listening, instead, I watched every step that he did as he healed me. His aura, the different sigils that formed under his careful and quick handling. Some of the sigils I recognized from my lessons learning the written language of magic. Some of them I did not. It was like he was composing a letter or writing a paragraph in colors and runes that only I and he could see floating in the air and disappearing into my arm.

And then it was done, and the cut in my arm was healed as if it had never been cut, and even some of the whip marks had suffered some residual healing and they were healed somewhat too, or at least they didn’t hurt as much.

The medical mage pushed himself to his feet clearly exhausted. “I will have to tell your father about this.”

“Yes. You do.” I said, exhausted too. “I think I will sleep.” I said and then passed out on the floor.

When I woke up I found myself in my bed again. The blankets and bed sheets had been replaced. It was night, and only a single dimmed mage light was on in the room. I looked over and saw my mother. It was only maybe the 10th time I had seen her since I had been born.

“You are a brave boy.” She said.

“Mom.”

“You are a brave boy. Not very smart. But brave.” She got up. “Rest. Regain your strength. You have one more trial to endure in two days and then this will be over.” She left the room.

I didn’t know what she meant, but the bed was comfortable and I drifted back into a dreamless sleep that came and went.

Sometimes I woke up and it was light outside. Sometimes I woke and it was darkness. I did not even have the strength to pull myself out of bed to find my book. And occasionally servants came into the room to try and feed me, but I rejected the food or vomited it up almost as soon as I swallowed it. They had even wrapped me in a diaper which some unlucky idiot had to come in three or four times a day to change.

I assume two days passed, though it could have been more for all I knew, but I knew from a distant and fuzzy memory of meeting my mother again that it must have been two days, because once again my Father stepped into the room.

“Get up.” He said.

I tried to move, even managed to slide one leg out from under the bedsheet.

My father sighed, and called for servants to help hold me up and some more to dress me. My body throughout the whole ordeal was like a certain kind of wet noodle popular in the southern baronies, and not noodles from Earth which I had no knowledge of whatsoever. Seeing that I was no use, he sent once again for the medical mage.

“Do you have anything to give him some energy?”

“The effect of first touching magic can be profound, he should stay in bed.”

“I didn’t ask if he should stay in bed. I asked if you had something to make him presentable in public for an hour.”

“I don’t know a spell, that would have that effect…”

“What about a drug.” Said my father. “What about Thunder’s Tongue.”

“That’s an incredibly dangerous narcotic. Probably the most addictive substance in the kingdom. I don’t know what it would do to a eight year old.”

“Would it keep him awake and paying attention and give him energy?”

“It would, keep a year old corpse awake, paying attention, and full of energy.”

“Then give him some. He needs to see this.” Said my Father. It was a command.

“And if I refuse.” Said the mage who had helped me heal.

“There will be six corpses in the courtyard today.”

There was a short delay, because the healing mage didn’t keep a supply on hand. He was sent back to his storefront with three guards to pick up supplies. And the Mage had to listen as the guards were given orders to cut the friendly healing magic user down if he tried to escape or tried to deviate from his route.

My father and I sat in silence. Him simply watching me, I looking at him with defiance. We sat like that, two people glaring at one another for nearly a half an hour while people ran to fetch things and preparations were made for who knew what.

At last the Healing mage came back, his guards trailing behind him. He was panting, clearly having rushed most of the way, or maybe the guards had driven him fast thinking that they were rushing for medicine for me. I don’t know but I did have some friendships among the guards and they clearly didn’t know what was going on between me, my father, and the magi.

My father said, “Do you have everything you need?”

“The medicine is water soluble. I will not give him a full dose. That much will surely kill him. Just a couple grains will be enough to get him through the day.”

My father picked up a pottery jug that somehow I hadn’t noticed was on the table and a potter mug. The jug was full of water, and he filled the cup, and handed the cup to the mage. “Here”

With a shaking hand, the mage sprinkled several grains of a white crystal powder that looked like sugar into the clay cup. He took out a wooden stick and stirred the liquid. Then carefully put the wooden rod in another part of his bag that was separate from all of his other tools.

“I will burn the rod, and I recommend you destroy the cup after you drink from it.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody will ever drink from this cup again.” My father picked up the clay mug and handed it to me. “Drink,” he said.

I picked up the mug and glaring at him in the kind of rebellion that knew that if it manifested in anything other than a look would result in my sudden death, poured the entire contents of the cup down my throat.

The liquid at first tasted like water, and then it tasted a bit like Orange Tang, and then it went back to the flavor of water. Nothing really happened, except that the edges of my vision started to get a bit fuzzy and then I could stand.

My father said, “Let’s go, this debacle has gone on long enough.”