"Just a new pet, when it's tamed at least. I want to see that thing broken and kissing my feet by the end of summer. You'll be seeing to that won't you slave?" he looked at Felix and grinned. Felix bowed and backed away, careful to avoid eye contact, the last boy to make eye contact was now buried halfway down the midden heap. Not even a grave for a slave. Rounding the corner Felix turned and ran to the kitchens. Trying to get away from that awful grin, the last person to be fixed with that wished for the midden, and repeated so every night before he fell into a fitful sleep.
Reaching the kitchens Felix pushed open the gnarled wooden door that was the servants entrance. Though Felix knew of only five paid servants in the entire castle, though the pittance would not even afford them transport to another place to work so they were trapped as much as Felix, just allowed more freedom inside of the cage. The cook of course was one of them and he lorded it over the slaves. Felix moved straight to the barrels of raw salted beef. Grabbing an old cloth he wrapped several handfuls of the meat in it tied it with a cord of twine and hefted it onto his shoulder.
“Pilfering the meat again slave,” It was the cook with his ladle raised ready to bring it down onto Felix's head.
“Again? I've never stolen meat.” Felix replied.
“If all are punished for the crime of one then the crime must belong to all as well.” The cook replied making a swipe at Felix with the ladle. Felix ducked and it hit his shoulder, definitely a bruise for tomorrow.
Felix yelled back at the cook, “I'm on orders from the Lord William. Shove off and let me get it to his new pet or I'll tell him you hindered me in his task!” He then ducked under the chef's arm and ran out the door, knowing the chef wouldn't follow past there. Still the next time Felix returned to the kitchens there would be trouble. The Lord wouldn't take the word of a slave over a freeman and would probably punish them both just for disturbing him.
Felix made his way past the guards in the halls with the packet of meat on his back. The guards themselves were slaves, but all were children of former guards and none had known another life, born here like most of the other slaves, thoughts of escape were not present at all in their mind. Except to prevent others from doing so, mostly those who had known other lives. Almost sub-human in their actions, they were loyal without question and totally efficient, and also clockwork. The only negative about them was their predictability, if you had reason to avoid them and knew their schedule there was always a way around them. Not past the walls though, they guarded all ways in and out of the keep and adjoining village like hawks, without the wings of course.
Turning one last corner to the cells Felix heard a crash and immediately broke into a run, probably unwisely considering that he knew there was a monster in the next room. A guard was blundering up the hallway, running into walls, hangings ornaments and other hallway decorations that were going to either need sweeping up, rehanging, or burning. The guard turned the corner and Felix heard him call.
“Sir I've been blinded, I don't know how, the door was locked and it doesn't hurt, detail another man to guard the door.” Another guard ran around the corner, sword in hand, keys in the other and assumed a place at the door, eying Felix warily. Felix approached the guard and told him that he was here to feed the creature. The guard turned and unlocked the door without a word and then returned to his vigil.
Felix entered the room and stopped with a shock, not a monster but a girl, maybe three, maybe four years older than Felix, but not acting like it, she was rattling the chains and skipping in a circle singing in a language Felix didn't know that had the definite sound of a child's nonsense rhyme, the sort a three year old might sing or one a mother might sing to such a child. The girls voice as well was childish. As she completed a third circuit of the chains full length Felix noticed two large lumps above her shoulders. Lifting the back of her dress so that it looked as if she had a hump. On the fourth revolution she stopped and giggled and said “Tee hee, now he can't see.”
Felix halted and said “Wait, you did that, how?”
The girl turned to look at Felix, obviously unaware of his presence up until now she turned and squealed, then said “Humans bad, cut wings. Get away, mommy said stay away humans till I am bigger.” Obviously this puzzled Felix, as much as how this girl was supposed to be a fearsome monster.
Felix decided it was probably better to give her the food and get out. He took a step towards her. She squealed again and backed off “It won't last, it's not a long spell without wings, please get away.”
Felix says to her, “It's only food.” Stepping forward again the girl's demeanor changed suddenly to a snarl, “Back human!” then started to speak in that other language, again it sounded like a child's rhyme.
Felix was quite sure that the words were different this time. Suddenly Felix fell forward, a wrenching pain in his gut. The worst stomach cramp he had ever had. He curled up groaning on the floor. She darted forward so quickly that Felix barely saw it and grabbed the meat and retreated to the back of the room. Showing pointed white teeth as she began to eat. The moment she started eating and stopped singing the cramps went away and Felix fled the room.
For the rest of the day Felix was going about his duties as normal, avoiding the kitchen as much as possible, and all the while he thought of the girl in the cell. She had called him human, and those lumps and the teeth of course, maybe she was a monster after all. Still she didn't seem to be the powerful beast Lord William was touting. Still had she made that guard blind, and was it her who caused the stomach cramps?
Only at the end of the day did anything unusual happen. Felix was lying on his lone blanket in the slave quarters, ready to rest and both fearful and curious towards the day ahead. Sleep didn't come easily to Felix and he lay there for a long while watching the men and women laying down to rest, his friend Ted who lay next to him turned to him and said “What's that your muttering Felix.”
Felix was about to reply when Ted began to pull his legs up to his chest, Felix then saw that almost everyone was now on the floor, clutching at their stomachs or curled into a ball. Felix shut his mouth straight away as he saw more of his friends curled up and Lenny, another close friend who slept to his other side was clutching at her stomach and had tears rolling down her cheek. Within a few minutes most people had subsided and were lying on their beds, some still only half clothed, unable to find the strength to cover themselves. Felix knew to look away from those ones, he had seen some of the older boys hit or punished for looking, though Felix didn't know why, or even why they wanted to. After an hour or so everybody seemed to have fully recovered, Ted turned to Felix and Lenny and said “The oats must have been bad, it's funny though they didn't taste off.”
Over the next few hours Felix lay awake, finding it harder than ever to drift off to sleep. He had remembered what he had been muttering.
“Ethna Hepalu Calum”
the words the girl had been chanting
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