Agalon did not return the next day, or the day after.

Sometimes Lorsan would try to talk to him, in the tray of dirt, but their conversations never amounted to much.

But Xaxac was shocked by how much time Lorsan seemed to want to spend with him. Maybe he didn’t have much else to do. But it was odd. During the day he would be gone for long stretches of time, while Xaxac cleaned, or tried on his new clothes, or sat in the sitting room, knitting away at the baby blanket that he had nearly finished, but every evening he returned.

If Agalon hadn’t taken everyone with him, Xaxac thought that he would have, perhaps, ventured out of the sitting room, would have gone downstairs, to the kitchen, to see his family. That much time alone was… not good for his tendency to overthink things.

Xaxac wondered what would happen if he left the house entirely.

He wondered what would happen if he went out, after sundown, wearing the clothes that looked like the uniform of a houseslave, and went back to the little wooden house, nestled amongst all the other little wooden houses, the one that his parents had built before he had arrived. He wondered if his father would be there. He wondered if his father would be happy to see him.

He wondered this so much and so often that he actually put on the outfit, though it was so cool now that he didn’t see a reason to roll up the sleeves.

There was no one there to catch him.

There was no reason not to go.

Xaxac walked to the door, leading into the sitting room, and turned the knob.

It opened.

He walked quickly through the sitting room, to the door that would open into the hallway, and turned the knob.

It opened.

He stepped out into the hallway and paused.

If he went down the servant’s staircase, Mrs OfAgalon might catch him. It eventually terminated in a room beside the storeroom, between the kitchen and the dining room. She had said she was acting as the cook in his mother’s absence.

But if he went down the main staircase, there were two men who guarded the front door. He didn’t know them, and didn’t know what sort of reaction they would have.

He lingered there, in that hall, and began to feel that he was making a mistake.

Agalon trusted him. Agalon did things for him, got things for him, maybe even loved him, and he trusted him.

Agalon wanted him to stay in his room.

Xaxac did not realize he had taken the step backwards until his back hit the door.

Was he crying? Why was he crying?

He took a deep breath, shoved himself forward, and took off at a sprint in the direction of the main staircase. He bolted down the hall, then down the stairs, moving so quickly he skipped steps, though he could not have said how often or how many.

At the second landing he turned on a whim as a thought struck him- Mrs OfAgalon was old, she may not be able to catch him, and she may not even see him to tell on him. It was possible she wasn’t even in the kitchen. She had other things to do. So he moved down a hall on the second story, a place in the house where he had never been, but he thought he knew the layout of the house well enough that he knew what it would look like, and he was right. Doorways, paintings, and little tables full of plants flew by in a blur as he raced down the hall that looked almost identical to the one upstairs until he reached the door at the end of it, threw it open, and came into the second landing of the servant’s staircase, just as he had predicted.

He raced down the narrow steps, twisting and turning, until he came to the small room at the bottom. Then he stopped, pressed his ear to the door, and listened.

There was no one in the storeroom, but there were people beyond. He heard the sounds of a kitchen staff at work, likely cleaning up the dinner they would have served the house staff. The kitchen was probably full.

He wasn’t going to sneak out that way.

He had to make a decision, and the most intelligent thing to do would be to turn around, go back upstairs, and head back to his room.

But that isn’t what he did.

He opened the door, stepped into the storeroom, saw that the door to the kitchen was open, and beyond it, the door leading outside.

And he ran, as fast as he could. He moved past everyone in the kitchen without looking at them, without seeing them, without taking the time to dawdle long enough to see them, and though he did not know it, they did not really see him. He moved so quickly that the staff knew something had passed, but could not say, with any certainty, what it was.

Xaxac burst into the cool autumn night and did not slow down.

The wind whipped at his face as he sped past the fields under the light of the waning moons and watched the world fly past him. He saw the houses come into view, but he did not feel fear until he saw the bonfire. It was then that a terrifying realization hit him.

He didn’t know who he could trust.

He was breaking rules by being out here, and now everyone knew he was a monster. It was no longer just a rumor. They had seen him shift. He had no idea what sort of reaction he could expect.

So he changed direction and darted behind the line of houses instead. He crept as silently as he could, until he came to the little house with the patched walls that his father had repaired after he had tried to chew through them, when he had shifted, so long ago, as a child. He peeled back the curtain his mother had made and peered inside.

The house was empty.

But it was not the normal sort of empty.

Something heavy fell over Xaxac as he pulled himself off his feet and through the window.

Something was wrong.

Xaxac did not think that Abe was outside, eating and playing cards around the bonfire with his friends.

The house was the kind of empty he could feel in his soul.

The little wooden stools had been pulled away from the table and not scooted back in. The cauldron hung over ashes that were not only cold, but had not been scraped away to be replaced with a new fire. The bed lay half folded on itself, with the blanket all askew.

Xaxac walked to the bed and rolled it out properly, then picked up the knitted blanket, fluffed it out, and replaced it properly.

Had this house always smelled this bad? As if the bedding needed washing and the straw needed replacing? Had it always smelled like this?

His father wasn’t here, and Xaxac began to pace as he weighed the idea that he wasn’t outside, either. The idea was overpowering. It made no sense. No matter where Agalon went, there was no reason for him to take a field hand. No reason. It wouldn’t happen.

Unless he meant to sell him.

But surely not. Abe wasn’t a shifter. He was a hard worker, but he was old. There was no reason to sell him. There was no reason to do anything with him. He had to be here. He had to be outside, playing cards around the bonfire after supper. He had, after all, no reason to come home with half his family gone.

And why was the bonfire so quiet? Why wasn’t the place alive with the sounds of voices? Why was everything so strange?

Xaxac walked to the front door and pressed himself against it to listen.

The only voices he heard were hushed, and they came from children.

What was going on?

He peered out through a slit in the curtain of the front window, and saw that there were adults, as there should be, but they had fallen silent. Why? Maybe it was just a momentary lull in conversation. That happened sometimes. Sometimes entire groups of people fell silent all at once, it was just a strange quirk of conversation. Maybe it would all start up again, and everything would be fine.

But it didn’t.

Because Xaxac heard why they had all fallen silent.

He heard the whinney of a horse.

He dropped to the ground and crawled to the other side of the window.

Lorsan sat on horseback, looking as tall and intimidating as his father had, the first time Xaxac had seen him, on the fields. The flickering firelight did something to him, changed him. He looked less like the boy from the house who had taken care of him when he had fallen ill, and more like an elf.

“Don’t put yourselves out on my account,” Lorsan said, “I’m just checkin up on everybody. Had me a scare a couple days back. Y’all know anybody by the name’a Hattie May?”