Comply
“You realize he’s cursed,” you said, straightening up. “That’s why he doesn’t come into town.”
“I simply want to see, for myself, if he’s alive and well.”
“Obviously, you care deeply for him,” you said sarcastically. “Of course, I’ll bring you to your beloved nephew, but our home is only accessible by foot.”
“Stay here and guard the carriage,” he told the man who refrained from hitting you. “You, with me,” he told the other one.
The men complied.
“Follow me,” you said and started walking down the main road.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Mister Gannon said once you were far enough out of town to be out of earshot of the locals.
“Get away with what?” you asked without looked back.
“Stealing from our family.”
“I’ve done no such thing.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No, but do you want to know the truth? Do you want to know how your brother, his wife, their children, and the staff died?”
“A fire. A fire that, for all I know, you started.”
“An attack by insurrectionists,” you explained flatly. “Locals angry at the central government for what they did to us.”
“Nonsense.”
“They slaughtered your family and the entire staff.”
“So, that’s how you survived, because you were a local.”
“No, I survived because I quit.”
“How did the cursed boy survive then?”
“He burned all the insurrectionists alive.”
“Do you…You expect me to believe that?” he said with an odd timbre to his voice, as if he were trying to sound confident, but failing.
“No, I don’t expect you to believe anything I say, but you are family. You deserve to know the truth. I suspect you’ll leave us alone after today.”
“I’ll leave you alone when I’m given what’s mine.”
“You’re here for the money. I know that, but I don’t actually care about that. It was the young master’s idea for me to procure the estate. If it were up to me, I’d give it to you.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not motivated by those things. I’m not like you.”
“That’s the truth.”
You started up the stone stairs and called out the young master’s name. “Forban! We have visitors. Your uncle has come to see you.”
“The cursed don’t have names. Quit playing games!”
“He gave himself a name and he shared it with me,” you explained.
When you reached the plateau, Forban came bounding toward you on all fours with a huge smile on his face. Then, he sat down a safe distance away from where you were standing.
“My uncle?” he asked, his voice impossibly low due to his long neck. He smiled again, showing off his fangs and pointed teeth.
You looked back at Mister Gannon who was walking very slowly. His face was pale and he was speechless. The only word he managed to eek out was, “Demon.”
“Forban. My name is Forban. Lafe is my parent now. Did you know that it’s a local custom to adopt the children of your opponents instead of kill them?”
The bodyguard arrived on the top of the stairs shortly after Mister Gannon, but he quickly turned and ran away.
“You must not be paying your body guard enough,” you joked.
“Uncle, do you know what’s happening to me? It would seem that I’m not completely human. How is this possible? Do you know anything, Uncle? Lafe thinks that I’m like a butterfly or a tadpole. Am I going to continue to change?”
“Yes,” Mister Gannon answered.
“Wait! You know! Tell us everything,” you demanded.
“Fine, just don’t let it near me.”
“Do not disrespect my son,” you said, staring Master Gannon down. “Forban is a person, not a thing.”
“Your son? Fine. Don’t let him near me,” he said, rephrasing his statement as he sat down on the grass, shaking his head. “If the demon touches you, you’ll die horribly. If he gets angry, entire cities will burn. Why did you allow this to happen?”
“Allow?” Forban asked. “It just happened. There was fire all around me and that’s when I began to change. Was there a way of stopping this?”
“Drowning you at the first sign.”
“Drowning? Why didn’t they drown me when I was born then?” Forban asked accusingly. His booming voicing was uncomfortably loud.
“Because you could have been a water-demon not a fire-demon, so trying to drown you would have started the change. We couldn’t bury you because you could have been an earth-demon. We couldn’t stab you because you could have been an iron-demon. We couldn’t starve you or leave you to die in the elements because if you started to change as a baby, you would barely have enough sense not to destroy the world.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Forban asked, now whimpering.
“Because we no longer believed those stories. We only believed them enough to be cautious. We know that some of the cursed carry illness. So, we avoid touching them and being around them. The stories of them changing seemed too strange to be true, but those stories were frightening enough that we avoided tempting fate by trying to kill them.”
“Why didn’t my mother die?”
“The mothers must develop some sort of immunity,” you suggested.
“But my twin brother, why wasn’t he immune?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry,” you responded, trying to sound comforting.
“Understand, most of the cursed simply live their lives in isolation until they die,” Forban’s uncle continued. “Your father wanted you to learn so that you could do some sort of work, so that you wouldn’t simply waste away like the cursed usually do.”
“The nanny I had when I was little, she tried to run away with me. She said my parents were cruel. She held my hand and she hugged me. They told me she died of an illness in prison. Was that really because of me? Uncle! The locals don’t believe in curses. That’s why all my nannies and tutors were locals. My parents didn’t care if they died. I do! What if Lafe touches me? One is here with me all day. Will one die? Am I slowly killing Lafe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lafe! Lafe, you have to leave. Let me live up here all by myself. I can catch rabbits with my bare hands now. I’ll be fine. Uncle! Uncle, make sure Lafe is taken care of…with food and books and all the things one likes and I’ll release the estate to you. Can you do that? Is it a deal?”
Stay with Forban
Agree to the deal
