Click click click click.

Xaxac moved the soft red yarn expertly through his fingers; he didn’t really register he was doing it. After two knit stitches he passed the yarn to the front, purled twice, and passed it back.

Click click click click.

One two three four.

“Get the fuck away from me!” Lorsan screamed from across the hall. Xaxac couldn’t hear what Agalon said in response, but he was sure he said something.

Knit knit purl purl.

Click click click click.

“I don’t even want to be here anymore!” Lorsan shrieked.

Xaxac had memorized the numbers on the clock, and the wooden straight needles in his hand had a number eight carved into the end near the stoppers. That likely meant something. At the shop he had noticed that bigger needles had bigger numbers. He thought Agalon would probably get him a different size when they went back to town.

He sat on the couch with the skien in his lap, pulled from the middle as the string moved through his fingers and onto the needles, looping and looping until it transformed, as if by magic, into fabric.

“I can’t fucking wait!” Lorsan yelled as if it was a response, “I’d rather be there! How’s that feel? I would rather be at military school!”

Xaxac’s mother had taught him the pattern for the hat. Cast on fifty, leave a long tail, that’s what you’re going to use to connect the sides later.

He missed her. He wanted to give her this hat. It got really cold in the winter. You can never have too many hats. She could wear it as she walked to the kitchen from the house. And it would be red. Any yarn they normally got was green, and any she spun would have been brown, like Xac’s hair.

“Get out!” Lorsan shouted, “Get out of my room! Just leave me here like you did for the past week!”

There was a loud crash from the hall.

Click click click click.

Tick tick tick tick.

Knit knit purl purl.

Xaxac ran out of stitches and shoved them back so they wouldn’t drop when he switched hands. The next row would be a pattern in reverse.

Click click click click.

Purl purl knit knit.

Fifty stitches over and over would make a rectangle, which was fine if you were a beginner and didn’t know how decreases or increases worked. But Xaxac was not a beginner. But he did have a long way to go. He hadn’t even gotten past the band yet.

It had been so late when they got home that Xaxac expected everyone would be in bed, but they weren’t, because Agalon hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Xaxac wondered if they were going to eat at all. Agalon seemed to be under the impression that Lorsan would want to eat with them in the dining room, but Xaxac had his doubts.

He thought his mother would really like the hat. It would be bright. It would be different. It would be something no one else had. He wanted to get a bunch of them finished before the solstice, so that he would have presents to give out. Presents were pretty rare. His parents had made sure they always got a piece of candy, but it was so hard to get the materials to make presents. Still, he had gotten more than most children. He thought about the stuffed bunny his mother had made him, that he had slept with as a child.

“You’ve lost your goddamn mind!” Agalon shouted, much too close for comfort, almost outside the sitting room door. “Are you possessed!? Do I need to scry a priest?”

“Do what you want,” Lorsan shrieked, and Xaxac believed that the slamming noise he heard was Lorsan accentuating his point.

“You can’t stay in there all summer!” Agalon shouted, but if Lorsan made any reply, Xaxac didn’t hear it.

Xaxac heard the ringing of a bell and thought of how tired Lee must be after having driven all day.

This hat was going to be really pretty.

Agalon threw open the door and stalked into the room. His boots pounded heavily against the hardwood, and Xaxac changed a string into a hat.

“Boy’s lost his goddamn mind,” Agalon shouted, and despite his best efforts Xaxac flinched and drew into himself.

“Master?” Xaxac asked softly and Agalon stopped pacing to look at him.

“I don’t like how he makes you feel,” Xaxac said, “is he going to leave again?”

“He’s my son,” Agalon said as if that statement meant everything Xaxac had said was stupid.

Feeling very stupid for not understanding what he meant, Xaxac meekly replied, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Agalon said, “I don’t know where else to send him. Maybe I really should get a priest. A priest or a doctor. I can’t… I can’t just leave him like this.”

“Master?” Lee stood in the doorway, looking as if he had hastily dressed. Xaxac guessed that he had gone to bed and had been forced to redress and rush upstairs when he heard the bell.

“Bring me some whiskey,” Agalon said.

Lee, who had apparently been standing with his hands folded behind his back, brought them forward to reveal a tall bottle and two short, thick glasses.

“I sure don’t know what I’d do without you,” Agalon said as he took them, “That’ll be all. Go on to bed.”

“Gladly, master,” Lee turned on his heel, closed the door, and the sound of his footfalls moving away gave Xaxac a sense of relief. He deserved to rest. He worked so hard.

Xaxac turned his row and could see the knitting bunch up in the rib pattern. Once the hat was done that part would be stretchy.

Agalon sat heavily next to him on the couch, popped open the bottle, and poured two glasses of alcohol so strong Xaxac could smell it on the table. Xac knew that if he drank that he wouldn’t be able to keep up even a simple pattern, so he shoved the stitches as far back onto the needles as they would go, then dropped the skein into the shopping bag with the rest of his yarn before he stabbed the needles into the pile as deeply as he could to prevent the stitches from coming off.

“Why’d you do that?” Agalon asked, “That was cute. Domestic.”

“I wanna focus on you,” Xaxac said as he cuddled into his side, “I hate seein you like this.”

Agalon drank the whiskey as if it was water and refilled his glass.

“I’m worried about my boy, darlin’,” Agalon said.

Xaxac nodded. He couldn’t really do anything about Lorsan, couldn’t be particularly helpful.

“He’s kinda scary,” Xaxac said at length, “He’s magic too, right? Like you? I remember… when that fighter, Billy, was mean to me… that looked like it hurt. I don’t think Lorry likes me very much.”

“He ain’t gonna hurt you,” Agalon said, “Believe me. He ain’t gonna hurt you.”

Xaxac could never really remember the time he spent as a rabbit, so he had no way of knowing that Lorsan had begged Agalon to get rid of him, that he had said he was dangerous and been right about it. But he wasn’t stupid. He remembered that Lorsan had gone to the capital to tell someone something about Agalon, and Xaxac was almost positive that what he had tried to tell was that Agalon had a dangerous monster and it bit people.

The moons would get full again soon. What would happen then?

Hopefully nothing. Agalon had been pretty confident when he said he could handle it, and Xaxac believed him because the sitting room hadn’t been destroyed like the house he had shared with his parents when he had been little.

He couldn’t believe he had only shifted once.

Had he only lived with Agalon for less than two months? Why did it feel like a lifetime? Why did he feel like a completely different person?

Xaxac cuddled into his side while Agalon drank and asked, “Are we goin to see the fighters tomorrow?”

“Yeah, lord knows how bad they been slackin while I been gone,” Agalon said, “Billy’s supposed to run that place but I don’t know if he actually does or not, way he’s been actin lately.”

“Oh,” Xaxac said softly.

“You’re tired,ain’t you, Honey Bunny?” Agalon asked. “That trip took a lot outta you.”

“I’m tired and I’m kinda scared,” Xaxac admited, “Aggie… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m scared almost all the time. And I have real bad dreams. And… I know it’s aggravatin and… I’m scared I ain’t… I ain’t good enough for you, on account of it and I want to… not to feel that way. I wanna be happy. But everything’s so much all the time… and he’s so loud and I… I’m scared of him.”

“I know, darlin,” Agalon said, “You’re tremblin. I know he scares you. And it’s probably worse ‘cause you’re wore plum out. Listen. You sleep in tomorrow. You just relax. You know you’re safe here.”

Xaxac crawled into Agalon’s lap and buried his face in the soft fabric of his tunic. Agalon wrapped his arms around him and held him there in his strong, comforting embrace.

“I love this,” Xaxac whispered, “I love when you hold me real tight like this.”

“It’s late,” Agalon said and Xaxac nodded.

“You wanna head to bed?” Agalon asked, and though he was slurring his words, Xaxac was amazed that he wasn’t full blown drunk. The whiskey he had consumed was so strong that the smell had seeped into his very being and now he excreted it. Xaxac pondered this question for a moment because he wished he was drunk, but he hadn’t touched the glass Agalon had poured him.

But he did want to go to bed. He wanted to go to sleep cuddled up in Agalon’s arms, wanted to feel his form around him, wanted to lose all the tension in his body. He wrapped his arms around Agalon’s neck and held on as tightly as he could.

“Will you carry me?” he asked.

“Of course, darlin,” Agalon kissed his forehead, and Xaxac reached up for his face to pull him into a real kiss.

He had expected Agalon to be in a bad mood after the night he had had, but the way he returned the kiss told Xac he wasn’t going to sleep, not yet.