Chapter 3 The fox prince

JOJO

Gods shouldn't be seen but we regularly see one here.

The fox Prince Vaughn himself.

I don't like him yet people treat him like a rare piece of art. Ever since the wall construction started a year ago he's been coming around to grace us with his presence, to remind us of why the wall must go up asap. Our enemies, the werewolves, are encroaching. They are coming.

But I'm a werewolf, and it feels funny being used to build something against my own people. Yet when I think of it, about the fact that my kindred especially my parents sold me to slav.ery, I realize the foxes are right. Werewolves are vile and deserve a wall separating here from there.

The Prince's presence on the field gets me startled every bloody time. I never get used to it, especially after what happened last week.

Back in the palace Hall, a mistress accosted me without warning and pulled me aside. I honestly thought I was in trouble, not until she ordered me to follow her to the washing room for a thorough bath, "on the Prince's order," she had added.

"On the prince order?" I asked, a bit flummoxed. "Like, the prince Vaughn?"

"Yes, the prince Vaughn," she said. "I was surprised myself. A lowlife getting his attention? But then I reconsidered that it's for the wrong reason. You stink!"

"Oh," I had said, immediately looking down at my brown dress and muddy feet. They were actually dirty. "I'll go wash them up myself then," I said to the mistress and wanted to turn around.

"You follow me," she retorted. "You're wasting time and it's absolutely insulting being found speaking with a slave werewolf like you in public. I would have spat if these weren't tiles we're standing on."

She turned and left, and I scuttled behind her.

The washing room is for lower-ranked foxes. They aren't slaves, but perform the palace's menial jobs. I walk in there to see a large hall with something like a swimming pool at the centre. This was the female section with lots of naked foxes.

The foxes were stunned beyond words when I walked in behind the mistress. Their initial background hum of discussion and smiles and washing up all died down as soon as they saw me.

The mistress clapped three times. "Out everyone," she said. "Give us thirty minutes. The prince commanded it."

"Why's she here?" a fat fox asked. She looked irritated, refusing to follow the other foxes who were on their way out.

"Out now, Bafe," the mistress said gently. "I won't repeat that the third time."

Bafe tightened her towel around herself and flounced out, giving me a deathly stare as she approached the exit.

"Pull off your rags," said the mistress. "Step into the pool."

"I should go naked?" I asked, a bit puzzled. I shouldn't really be puzzled, though. Nakedness is as normal as day and night here in the palace. It is said that seven fox females have been designated to bathe the fox prince. All seven of them go into his pool naked and sponge his entire body with the calmness and deftness of a masseuse. I used to wonder how the Prince's girlfriend coped with it, seeing your boyfriend being washed up by females with bu.tts and breasts bigger than yours.

On the field, the sun scorches our backs as if someone has grabbed it from space and pulled it down a little closer to us.

Today's task is back-breaking. We break up rocks into tinier pieces, work like camels, until either the sun sets or we die from exhaustion. I am given a sack of boulders to break.

Of course, it's of no relevance if you're a witch or an ogre or pixie. You'll be handed your own hammer or digger or axe, and off you go to your portion of the field, working continously without rest.

While leaving the palace underground this morning, I strapped a tiny water pouch to my waist, covering it up well with oversized clothes. And by the time we've laboured hours on the field, I often stop to steal sips.

So now, I see the old witch, a witch as familiar as myself, breaking her portion of a rock in front of me. With each stroke she takes, she gets weaker and weaker, until she runs out of strenght and simply drops to the grass like a puppet whose strings have been cut into two

As a rule, no matter what happens to another slave, you mustn't abandon your own work. The taskmasters will decide what best to do with your fallen colleague. To put a sword to their neck? To just rest them momentarily, giving them double workload when they're resuscitated?

You have no say. Just pretend you aren't there and let the taskmasters decide.

But this particular witch? She isn't just a random slave to me.

She's my mother. Even if not by birth, but by chance. She raised me. I grew up in the palace's underground in her impossibly fair and caring arms. She's a white witch, the best living person in the entire fox realm and I daresay in the entire universe. It's utterly ridiculous she has been reduced to the level of a slave by the foxes.

I gained consciousness early in life as a slave. I was born a slave-according to what the folklore will have me believe. It is rumored that a certain fox lord found me in the middle of the night seventeen years ago in a forest at the boundary between this realm and the werewolves'. I'd been abandoned there to die. The giant fox lord, according to these stories, had brought me to the palace wrapped in leaves. Instead of presenting me to the royal fox family, he took me directly to the underground to be with the slaves, where I reportedly got handed over to a random person, which luckily happened be this witch.

We call her Madam Mia. She's old and stressed, but you'll still want to make her your mum. She fed me with ogre's milk from a nursing ogre mum and gave me the name Jojo.

"You were this little cutie," she used to say over my little bed. "Even though you were brought in here in human form, I knew instantly you were a werewolf."

"So," I would often ask in whispers as she carressed my hair during bedtime, usually half awake half asleep from the sound of her soothing voice. "Why didn't the fox lord just kill me? He should've straight up eaten me in the forest or something."

"A werewolf pup?" the Madam Mia would say. "What in the world is more satisfying than seeing a werewolf pup as their slave? You're the current manifestation of things to come. They hope to someday conquer your entire realm and make your kindreds slaves."

"I hope they do," I'd say, often snorting under my breath. "I wish my parents were captured too so they'll feel a the pain I have so far felt. Do you know who they are? My parents?"

"Unfortunately," Madam Mia would reply, "I don't."

"I thought you are a witch?" I'd say. "Why don't you engage your powers to see my past? There're probably few hundreds of you captured witches here. Why don't you all gather around someday, you know, to use your magic to conquer the foxes?"

"Their queen is a spirit fox," Madam Mia replied. "Having lived for over a thousand years, she's extremely powerful. The Fox Queen Saar's presence casts an unbreakable stronghold throughout the fox realm. It's like a protective dome. When you're in it, you lose your power. No witch, pixie or whatnot can practice their magic in her presence. And it's how we even get captured. Whenever their queen stands before their army to lead wars against other realms, they get their victory on a platter of gold."

By this time, most times, I might have slept off listening to Madam Mia talk.

I always wanted to tell her. You may have lost your magic, but your soothing voice remains magical, Madam Mia, and no fox (no matter how powerful they are) can steal that away.

No matter how stressful my day has been, Madam Mia, just being at the basement listening to you makes the stress gather like candle smoke and vaporize into thin air.

So, it's an absolute no-brainer that I'd give my life for you.

This is the same Madam Mia that falls on the ground from work exhaustion. And the taskmaster in charge of our section sees me going to help her up, and also offer her water from my water pouch.

He approaches and pushes me away, bringing out his whip to first beat Madam Mia into rising up to work, and then to whip me for stopping my own work.

But I had to stand in the way to receive Madam Mia's lash, the singular deathly whip that I'm certain may've instantly zapped life off her.

Yet when the whip lands on me, it doesn't consider that I'm playing hero. It sends a searing pain across the whole of my back, as if the sun has collected its heat together and focused it on me. The pain shoots along my spine. Like a projectile vomit, the scream escapes from deep within my belly to my mouth. I let it out like it's the last thing I'll ever do. It is a maddening pain I must say.

The taskmaster almost gives me a second lash when the fox prince, who I hadn't even noticed was watching, instructs him to stop it.

The prince comes close and asks me to look up. After a couple of refusals from me, I eventually do look up.

Something is off with me.

Particularly with my inner wolf, Gratsia.

I'm seventeen years old. Will be eighteen in a month's time. My inner wolf tells me she craves the prince.

I find it laughable and plain stupid.

Gratsia is ridiculously ambitious. "Gratsia," I say to my inner wolf. "You have a crush on the prince? I don't like him. I generally don't like foxes. But even if I have to grant your request, where do I begin telling a prince I like him? It's even a rare chance to currently be at his feet, to have him look at us in pity."

I stare back at him from my position on the ground, arching my body over Madam Mia so no one touches her. As I look into his brown eyes, I really need to ask the prince this question: Why did you ask for me to get bathed the other day?

You want to sleep with me? You catching feelings? But I'm a slave. You have a girlfriend, don't you? Or perhaps, you simply dislike seeing dirty slaves walking around the palace, so I'm probably overthinking this. I believe my eyes are starting to water up from staring too much at the prince, or perhaps from the pain I still feel from the lash.

Out of the blue, just at the nick of time, his girlfriend appears from no where and stands behind him on the field.

"Vaughn?" she says over his shoulder.

The prince himself gets shocked, because he practically spins on his feet to face her.

"Ah," he struggles to speak, clearing his throat. "When did you get here, Bigail? I was just about asking the guards to lead these two weaklings away." He point at Madam Mia and me. "And then I'd have started heading home to you.."

"I've been waiting at the palace," the girlfriend says. "You promised thirty minutes."

"Yes, I know," replies the Prince. "I'm done now."

I watch him walk away hand-in-hand with the girlfriend until they both disappear into the working crowd.

I'd have been angry he called my mother and I weaklings, but my back hurts, and now I feel like faint headed.

A royal guard in green approaches to whisk Madam Mia and I away, leading us back to the palace underground on a chariot.

This is the second time the prince is coming through for me.

And I'm counting.

Seriously counting.