Xaxac handed his bag to his father, and at his request put his shirt and hat back on. He had to hold the hat on his head as he ran, tearing through the fields with the wheat whipping at his face. He didn’t often move in a dead sprint, and didn’t know that his speed would be considered remarkable. He had no idea that he had beat the horse to the house.

The door to the kitchen was wide open, and much bigger than Xac had imagined, and the inside was bustling with activity. Among the many people there, he saw his sister, Alice, standing before a large sink full of water and glassware, with her sleeves rolled up and a bonnet covering her hair. Still, she was covered in sweat, and Xac thought he may have been wrong about his assumption that it was cooler inside the house than it had been outdoors.

“Alley!” He said as he shoved his way through the crowd, and when she looked up at him, her eyes widened in fear.

“What the hell are you doin here, XacXac?” She asked without pausing in her work, scrubbing the dishes in the soapy sink, rinsing them in the slightly clearer water, and laying them out on a rack to dry. “You know you can’t be in here. You’re gonna get in heaps of trouble. Have you lost your damn mind?”

“I’m supposed to be in here!” Xac argued, “Agalon told me to come in here. He said the housekeeper would be expecting me.”

“The housekeeper would whoop your ass,” Alley argued, “She makes us call her ‘Mrs OfAgalon’ like anybody with a man ain’t ‘Mrs OfAgalon’. She’s scary. She catches you droppin a plate and she’ll beat you so bad you can’t stand. One of the serving boys, Lame Jim? The reason he’s got that limp is when he was a youngun he dropped a tray of glasses and she beat his ass so bad he never could walk right again.”

“How hard is it to hold a glass?” Xac asked, “Let him spend a day in the fields and maybe he won’t drop shit.”

“Get your ass out of here before she catches you!” Alley snarled as if she’d been insulted.

“I’m supposed to be here!” Xac argued, “Agalon said-”

“Don’t say ‘Agalon’,” Alley warned, growing more and more annoyed, “I know you ain’t used to being around respectable folks, but you say ‘master’, ‘sir’, and ‘mam’. You don’t call elves by their names. You ain’t got no goddamn sense and you’re gonna get hurt.”

“Xac?” Abby asked, and came walking up with a rag on her arm, and a dishpan full of more dirty dishes. Xac didn’t understand how there were so many of them. As far as he had ever heard, only two people lived at the house.

“Why you got so many of them, mama?” he asked.

“Honey we gotta do cleanup for the whole house staff,” She said and stepped past him to unload the dishpan into the soapy water, “You can’t be in here, baby. You need to get back to where you’re supposed to be before somebody catches you. Don’t let ‘Mrs OfAgalon’ catch you in here. There might be a fight. She tries to touch one of my younguns she might be surprised to find some folks are as strong as she is.”

“Nobody’s gonna whoop me!” Xac was beginning to grow annoyed again, “I work here now! Aga- I mean, Master came riding through the fields, picked me out, and told me to come to the house, on account of I was a shifter. Daddy says he’s gonna make me a butler!”

“Ain’t nobody gonna make you a butler,” Alley said, “You’re too big for that. They start training them when they’re little. You gotta move up to butler. You start out as serving boy, and you’re too big for it.”

“Master Agalon told you to come to the house?” Abby said as if she didn’t believe him, “You sure about that, baby?”

“Mommy, I swear to god!” Xac implored her to believe him, “Why would I lie about that? I don’t lie! I know better!”

“You’re usually a good boy,” She said in thought, “But I don’t know that… Alley’s right, you’re awful old for it. Tell you what, baby, you go out there in the yard, where the laundry’s done, fill up a washtub and scrub your face. I’m gonna go get Mrs OfAgalon and see if I can find out what’s goin on. You stay right here by the back door, but don’t bother nobody.”

“Master said she’d be expecting me,” Xac said.

“Well, then she probably is,” Abby agreed, looking more confused than concerned, “And Alley, honey, try and move a little quicker. We got a lot more to do before we start dinner prep.”

“I’d go a lot faster without XacXac in here tellin tales,” Alice mumbled and went back to scrubbing.

Once his mother had left to go fetch the housekeeper, Xac looked at the full dishpan and asked, “Want me to help you with that?”

“Mama said to go wash your face,” Alice told him.

“Allie look at me,” Xac motioned to himself, “Short of bath day ain’t nothin can be done for it. I’m a mess.”

“Take your hat off in the house,” Alice said, “Men ain’t supposed to wear hats in the house.”

“Thank the lord cause I can’t keep this on.”

“If you want,” Alice said, “you can dump them from the tray into the soap to soak while I dry these and put them up.” She began to unload the dishes from the disrack onto a dishtowel she laid out on the surface, “You gotta dry glass a certain way or it gets spots.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Xac said, and began to unload the dishes from the pan into the sink, one by one, out of fear that he may accidentally drop something and be crippled for life. He watched Alice work, and noticed that the hearth in the middle of the room was blazing away, and it was miserably hot. A young boy stood beside it next to a metal contraption larger than he was, slowly turning a crank.

“The hell do they have a fire goin for?” Xac asked, “It’s hot as hell already.”

“They’re roasting a pig,” Alice told him, “You gotta roast it all day.”

“Thesis above,” Xac said as he began to scrub the dishes, “I don’t know how y’all stand it.”

“Feels good in the winter,” Alice shrugged, “Just try not to think about it. It can’t be helped. We can’t take our clothes off like you do. It’s hot as hell and they want you to keep your knees and elbows covered for modesty. I don’t think Thesis cares what your elbows look like.”

“The hell is modesty?” Xac asked, “That’s like… not being proud of shit that ain’t worth being proud of. That ain’t got nothing to do with clothes. I mean, I guess unless there was a lot of finery or something. Agalon, I mean, the Master was out there with gold in his ears. I don’t know how he’s got anything to say about how a body dresses.”

“It ain’t him,” Alice said, “We actually don’t hardly ever see him. It’s Mrs OfAgalon. She tears her ass if her staff ain’t ‘presentable’.”

“She’s gonna lose her shit when she sees me,” Xac snickered.

“Yeah she don’t want the men what’s gonna be seen to be dressed like that,” Alice said, “You gotta wear a coat.”

“It’s the middle of summer!” Xac almost dropped the bowl he was washing in alarm, “That’s crazy as hell! She’s lost her damn mind!”

“Yeah, and you can’t have no beard,” Alice said, “There’s a lot of stupid rules, but everybody is scared of her.”

“I ain’t got a beard,” Xac shrugged, “I’m too little. I don’t know what she’d do about it though. What’s she do, rip it out by the handful?”

“You don’t know nothing,” Alice said, “You shave it off. Lord.”

“How the hell would I know that?” Xac asked, “I ain’t never around fancy house people, except you and mommy, and neither of you have to fool with beards.”

“Don’t let her catch you cussing, neither,” Alice said, “She’ll whoop you for that. She’s one of those people who is just lookin for an excuse to tan somebody. She’s got a big head is what’s wrong with her.”

“I’m done,” Xac said, because he was.

“Lord,” Alice said, rummaged through a drawer and handed him a dishcloth, “Well, help me dry then.”

Xaxac was helping her dry the dishes when his mother came in, followed by a tall, statuesque human woman who looked as if she was perhaps getting better food than most of the people in her employee. She also looked, just like Alice had said, as if she had a rather high opinion of herself and a rather low opinion of everyone else. She was, like most people, taller than Xaxac, and she stared down her nose at him. He suspected she was judging him from under her lilly white bonnet.

“Xaxac OfAgalon?” She asked.

“Yes, mam,” Xaxac said, and glanced at his sister in an attempt to let her know that he also thought this woman was not really worth knowing, and that he also thought her insistence on last names made no sense when they all shared one.

“I am Mrs OfAgalon,” the housekeeper said, “I am the housekeeper here in Agalon Manor. The master has explained to me that you’re going to be under my employ.”

“Yes, mam.” Xac said again, quickly took off his hat and held it in his hands.

“You’re not coming into my house looking so filthy,” Mrs OfAgalon said, “Certainly not someone in your position.”

“My daddy said I might be a butler,” Xac said, “But I don’t know nothing about no positions. I don’t know what I’m gonna be doin.”

“You don’t know anything about any positions,” The housekeeper corrected him, “Go out to the laundry station and take a bath, while I arrange some proper clothes for you.”

“What am I gonna be doin, though?” Xac asked.

“Thesis above give me patience,” Mrs OfAgalon said, and put one hand over her heart. “Boy, let’s lay down some ground rules. You do not ask questions. When you are told to do something, you do it. I run a tight household, and I will not have it upset by some fieldhand who found himself a run of good fortune. Your duties will be explained to you when you are in a proper state to address a lady.”

If I meet any ladies, I’ll be sure to get myself into a proper state. Xaxac thought to himself, but did not say aloud. Instead, he said, “Yes, mam, absolutely. I don’t know what’s wrong with the way I talk, but I reckon I’m a fast learner.”

“You suppose that you learn quickly?” Mrs OfAgalon asked, “Yet you’re still standing here chattering away? Go take a bath, and meet me by the back door once you’re properly dressed.”

“Yes mam,” Xac began to tip his hat to her, then remembered that it was still in his hand. Instead he crossed one ankle behind the other and curtsied, as he had seen his mother teach Alice to do when she was training to work in the house.

Alice rolled her eyes and mouthed the word ‘dumbass’ but did not dare speak it aloud.

“What are you doing?” Mrs OfAgalon asked him.

“I thought that was… ain’t that polite?” Xac asked.

“Go take a bath!” The housekeeper was obviously going to lose her patience, and Xaxac was beginning to see why people were afraid of her.

“Yes, mam,” he said again and rushed out the door.