“Oh now, I hate to see him in chains,” Abigale lamented as Abe wrapped the metal through Xac’s arms, pinning them behind his back.

“It ain’t that tight, mama,” Xaxac promised her, and rattled them for good measure, “I can get out ifin I want to.”

“It’ll tighten up once ya shift,” Abe said, “And I don’t like it either, I just don’t know what else to do for him. He chewed right through the ropes.”

“I’m sorry,” Xac said.

“It ain’t your fault you’re cursed,” Abe promised and kissed him on the forehead. “We’ll just keep ya in here tonight and it’ll pass by morning. Hell, it ain’t as bad as it could be. Every youngun has problems. Jimmy Ray’s boy got kicked in the head by that mule and he ain’t been right since. Xac can walk without fallin over.”

“I wish you wouldn’t cursed, Xac,” Alice said, and hugged him. He couldn’t hug her back or he’d squirm out of the chains, so he just leaned into the touch.

“I oughta stay with you,” Abby said.

“You women folk go on over to Hatti May’s,” Abe told them, and turned to Xac with a smile, “We got a real men’s night planned before Xac turns. I’m gonna teach him all the words he can’t say in front of respectable women folk.”

“Abraham, you better not!” Abby snapped.

“I’m kiddin, kiddin,” Abe assured her, then turned to Xac, winked, and whispered, “I ain’t kiddin.”

Xac laughed, and his father turned back to the women folk.

“Now go on, sun’s already down and the moons’ll be out any minute.”

“Bye, XacXac!” Alice waved from the doorway, “I’ll see you in the morning! I love you!”

“Bye!” Xac called, “Love you too!”

“Abe, you come and get me, should anything happen,” Abby ordered.

“He’s alright. He’s just cursed; he ain’t sick.” Abe said, sounding a bit insulted, “I got him. You think I can’t handle a little boy?”

“Mamma loves you, Xacy,” Abby said, as she fell to her knees, cupped his face, and kissed him on the forehead, “Everything’s gonna be alright, alright?”

“I love you too, mama,” Xac sighed, as exasperated as a worried child could be, “I’m fine.”

“Go on,” Abe helped her to her feet, “Get!”

“Try and get some sleep, baby,” Abigale called as her husband rushed her out of the house, “Try and sleep through it! And Abe, save that fur! I can spin it! Rabbit fur is real fancy, real pricy!”

“I know, go on, get!” Abe said, “We love ya. We’ll see ya in the morning!”

He shoved the door closed, and began to pile the furniture in front of it.

“Daddy, I’m sorry I’m a monster,” Xac said as he watched his father work.

“Ain’t nothin to be sorry for,” Abe shrugged, “Folks can’t help what they are. Don’t never make somebody feel bad for what they are. You wanna make somebody feel bad, pick somethin they done.”

He seemed content with his barricade and moved to the fireplace. He added another log, then set the teapot on to boil.

“Gonna make you some a that tea Hatti May left here last time,” he explained, “supposed to calm ya down. Maybe ya really will sleep through it. That’d be nice.”

“Are you really gonna teach me bad words?” Xac asked.

“You got the sense not to say um around the women folk or the elves?” Abe asked, “Rough language ain’t meant to be said around certain folks.”

“I promise!” Xac swore.

“I probably shouldn’t,” Abe decided, “Your mama would tan my hide.”

“But you said you would!” Xac whinned.

“Lord above younguns ought not be allowed to have eyes that dark. Them younguns with brown eyes like that can make the biggest, saddest eyes. That ain’t right. Ain’t nobody oughta be expected to stand against that,” Abe said as he looked into Xac’s little face. “I’ll teach you one cuss word, but you can’t say it to nobody but me.”

“Ok!” Xac agreed eagerly.

“Alright, but you gotta swear you won’t say it to nobody but me,” Abe repeated.

“I already said-” Xac began, but he cut himself off with a scream, and doubled over in pain.

If a person has never heard a rabbit scream, it is a sound that is almost indescribable. Those who study animals say that the shriek is meant to warn the rest of the warren of a terrible danger, that it is a death howl that portends the kind of doom that cannot be conveyed in language.

It is not a sound that any parent should ever have to hear coming from their child.

“Goddamn it,” Abe cursed and ran to his child, holding him by the shoulders, “Come on, Xacy-Boy, you’re strong. You’ll get through this. It went real quick last time. You can do this!”

He was right, of course, about the speed of the transformation. He had already seen it once, and been shocked. Whenever people told horror stories, gathered around a campfire in the late fall when the nights were long but not yet freezing, and the subject of shifters came up, the storyteller would linger on the transformation. They would go into detail about the sound of bones popping, rearranging themselves in their sockets, of the face morphing into a completely new shape, of the hair growing and spreading, of the posture shifting.

But now that he had seen it, Abe knew that all that happened faster than it took to tell it, even if one was not drawing it out to create tension for a story, even if they were speaking quickly, in a panic, the way one would really talk about a curse.

Xac’s head had fallen, after he had screamed, and he went down a boy- but came up a monster.

It was not exactly a rabbit. And the rabbit it may have favored was not the type of rabbit that Abe was familiar with. Xaxac did not look like the creatures that one had to keep out of the gardens, that would dig up and steal food or create elaborate tunnels underneath that made the soil less stable, not exactly. His fur was too long, and his body wasn’t angled correctly. He was not exactly a rabbit, but he was certainly not a human boy.

He was much bigger, much bulkier than he had been a moment ago, and it was not all fur. Rabbits were not a good source of food, not a preferred source, because the meat was gamey- that is, it was all dark meat, all coiled muscled and gristle with no marbling. Those muscled curled under Xac’s flesh, and Able felt them moving from where he still held the boy’s shoulders. He had never heard the phrase “strong as a rabbit” but he thought he may start using it.

He had heard the phrase, “fast as a rabbit”, and the first time Xac had shifted, when they hadn’t tied him down, he had proved that phrase to be true. He moved faster than the eye could track- rabbits were, after all, prey animals, with strong back legs meant to outrun predators like cats and dogs. A human wouldn’t stand a chance trying to catch him if he got outside, so Abe looked to the door again, to the barricade, and told himself that Xac was safe. He would not get out. He would not run off. No one would know this had happened to him.

The shape of his head was unnerving in his new form. Some people thought rabbits were cute, but the difference was more frightening than adorable when you knew it was supposed to be human. His head had completely changed form, spiraled out a little and narrowed to his tiny twitching nose and big buck teeth, but the position of his eyes was the most offputting. They had moved up and a little to the side, so that Abe had difficulty looking into both his big, brown eyes at once. The only thing that Abe may have considered cute were the long ears, which had also moved to the top of his head and spread in a way that was painful to watch.

But those eyes. Those eyes hurt his very soul, because they were too big, too wide, too far apart- but he could still see Xaxac in them.

Xac screamed again and tried to kick out, but his legs had been bound by the chains and he could not free himself. This knowledge seemed to send him into a panic, and he began to kick and thrash, so Abe took a step back. Rabbits, if pursued by a predator, would flip onto their backs and kick up with their powerful back legs, using their claws to disembowel whatever had tried to kill them. Xac hadn’t done that to him yet, but he had seen rabbits do it to dogs when they were cornered and didn’t want to risk it. Rabbits were designed to dig through rocks and soil, and could chew through even the metal wire fences that some folk had. And those things were small. As he watched Xac writhe and struggle on the floor, he hated to think of the damage he could do when he was grown. Xac was a human; he could be more than six feet tall if he was a big one, and that would make this form even bigger. He could destroy the whole plantation as an adult.

Abe couldn’t let that happen, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

He refused to think too much on the future, and instead crossed the room to the table he had pushed against the door, and took a head of lettuce from the bowl there.

“Xac,” he said gently, “Xac, it’s daddy. Look at me. You ain’t alone. You’re safe. Quit rollin around like that. Everything’s gonna be alright. We just gotta get through the night. Here, try and eat somethin. That shiftin seems to make you hungry as a horse.”

He pulled a leaf from the head and held it toward the squirming, thrashing monster on his floor. Xaxac tensed up, even at the slow movement, but his little nose began to twitch. He hobbled forward as best as he could, opened his little mouth, and closed it around the leaf. The action looked like nibbling but moved so quickly that the leaf was gone in a few seconds, and Abe held out another.

“There you go, Xacy-Boy,” he said softly, “Everything is safe. Everything is fine. We just gotta get through the night, ok?”

He wasn’t sure if Xaxac understood him or not. He never spoke when he was transformed, and he never remembered anything he had done the next morning. But he was there. Abe knew that his son was there, under that soft brown fur the color of his hair, behind those big brown eyes. He was in there, somewhere, and it wasn’t his fault he had been cursed. The legends said that the curse was hereditary.

A long time ago, during the time when ice and snow covered the planet, the demon Morgani Magnus walked Xren. He was trying to hide from the great god, Thesis, and a group of foolish, evil humans took him in, helped him. Of course, they were found out. It is impossible to hide anything from an all-seeing, all-knowing god. And they were punished for their deal with the devil, given the affliction of the shifters. Their bodies and minds changed with the form of the twin moons that circled Xren. On the night when the moons were full, the shifters would lose their humanity and become monsters.

But little Xac had never been involved in any devilry.

And as Abe watched the scared creature dart its eyes around the cabin, while he poured the tea that should sedate him, he had a blasphemous thought.

It was not fair to punish innocent children for the sins of their ancestors.

Xaxac did not deserve this.