The Quantity of Desire

Life

Life“I do not condone him calling you a monster,” Jon said, his voice quiet but unyielding. “He was cruel.” He crouched down and stared into my eyes. “I am sorry you must endure this, but endure this you must. You have a job to do. And you will carry it out.”

Over the months I had lived with Jon, he had made sure I knew how to do my job—and that I would carry it out. So, I sniffled, rubbed my muzzle, and tried to suppress my tears. But I could still hear the dignitary’s voice, wondering how Jon could bear to live in the same house as a monster. Only the polished stone and carved oak door of this hallway separated us as he waited in Jon’s study.

“Here,” Jon said, and handed me a handkerchief.

As I blew my nose, I wondered if Jon had ever been a child. I could not imagine him any way but as he was.

“Now I must go back and discuss business with this man. I trust you to know what to do.”

I nodded. This man had been cruel, but I bore indignities from even the most innocent of visitors. I endured their curious pokes and prods, touching my fur and grabbing my horns. I stood impassively while they asked Jon questions about me as though I were a statue. And, when asked, I said whatever they wished to hear in perfect formal speech.

“Good,” Jon said. He turned and walked into his study.

I wiped the snot from my muzzle and took another breath to steady myself. As Jon had taught me, I told myself that I just had to fetch wine and food and I would be free. I could not master my emotions as he did, but the thought did calm me.

I went down to the kitchen and asked the chef what was being prepared.

“Deer,” he told me.

I nodded and remembered what Jon had told me about deer. It’s like beef, but finer and leaner, he had said. An elegant red pairs nicely.

I climbed down to the cellar, grateful my fur kept me warm. I looked through the reds, past Tecks, Oseras, and Aomes before settling on an Usulo. I took it and grabbed two glasses to go with it. On the way back up, I grabbed a plate of delicate pastries, steam still rising off them.

When I arrived at Jon’s door, I put down the plate, and knocked.

“Come in, Chase,” Jon said.

I opened the door, picked up the plate, and walked into the study. Jon sat behind his desk, facing the door, and the man sat across from him. A few books lay open on the table; judging from the empty spaces on the Grenadil bookshelf, this meeting had something to do with mining.

I put down the plate on the ornate ebony desk, then poured two glasses of wine. I handed one to Jon, and then, with a steadying breath, handed the other to the man across from him.

He glared at me through bushy brows before slowly reaching out. Then he snatched it. His hand darted back with the wine, and some spilled onto the desk. I grabbed a cloth from my waistband and wiped it up before it stained.

“Thank you, Chase,” Jon said. “That will be all.”

I forced myself to walk slowly out of the room, then gently closed the door behind me.

Then I ran.

I ran all the way back to my room. I leapt into bed and buried my face in my pillow. I remembered the time that, over the screams of defiance and the sobs of obedience, over the cracks of whips and canes, and over the laugh of men who revelled in my tears, I could hear the clank of my mother’s manacles against my collar, I could feel the wetness of her breath against my ear, and I didn’t have a hole in my heart.

* * *

I suppose I could’ve been treated worse. Many others were—and still are.

Jon Galat was emotionally obtuse, but he hired the best priests and doctors when I was sick, instructed the chef to cook food I enjoyed, and provided time to play and rest.

He was the closest thing to a parent I had.

I knew that, by buying me, he financed the slavers who ripped me from my mother. But, in my lonely, child’s mind, I also knew he freed me from the horror of the pens and whips and tried to treat me well. He cared for me—in his strange, self-absorbed way.

And, at his manor, I found what I truly needed: a friend.

* * *

“What are you?” the boy asked the first time I met him.

I stood silently, enduring his stare as I did those of the dignitaries. I was used to their manner of questioning. But his next words surprised me.

“You have horns! That’s so amazing! Could you stab someone with them?” He skipped around me, examining me from every angle. His feet barely touched the grass. “Do you speak?”

I nodded.

“My name’s Bri,” he said, holding out his hand.

I took it. “Chase,” I said. He looked at me as though he wanted more, so I finally added, “I’m a minotaur.”

“That’s amazing!” Bri shouted. “My mom and dad are Jon’s bodyguards. They’re amazing,” he said, gazing through the forest that surrounded Jon’s manor. “They were real heroes in their time and have medals from hundreds of villages they saved from orcs and goblins and trolls.”

He puffed out his chest. “I’m gonna be an archer like my father. He can drive an arrow straight through a breastplate at a hundred paces!

“But no one can beat my mom with a sword and shield. Once, she was ambushed by twenty orcs while her party slept. And then do you know what she did?” He looked into my eyes, giggling. “She said she was sorry the orcs’ dying screams had woken up the rest of the party.”

I couldn’t help but smile as he laughed.

“Wanna be my sidekick, Chase? I need someone to watch my back while I save people with my arrows.”

I nodded.

He grabbed my hand. “Then come on!”

He pulled me along a little path through the forest and into a clearing. He picked up a toy bow with cork-tipped arrows from a pile of wooden weapons and turned to me. “There are a whole bunch of monsters coming at us,” he said. “You protect me from them until I can kill their general with my arrows. He’s a demon-god from deep in hell, with horns, fire, pitchfork, and, well”—Bri waved his arms as he tried to think of the things a demon-god would have—“everything!”

“I will protect you,” I said. It reverberated through my core.

“Amazing,” he said, then he smiled at me. It looked like the widest, most pure smile that would ever be.

I would do anything to see that smile.

“Let’s get you a shield,” Bri said. He picked up a wooden shield from a pile of weapons and gave it to me.

I took it and held it against my chest. “I will protect you,” I said again.

Bri smiled, but not as wide as before. Had I said it wrong?

“If you’re gonna hold it against your chest, you gotta grip the far handle,” he said, pointing to the edge of the shield. “That way your elbow isn’t so exposed.”

I gripped the far handle and said it again: “I will protect you.”

“Yes,” he cried. “Amazing!”

My heart fluttered.

He went back to the pile of weapons and pulled out a wooden sword. “Now try this,” he said, thrusting it into my hand.

My shoulder almost popped out of its socket as I swung the sword with a dramatic war squeak that would strike concern into the most timid of mice.

“No, no, no,” he muttered. He put his hand on his chin and paced back and forth. “The sword looks all wrong on you.” He scuffed the dirt with his foot. “You’re a minotaur. You’re big and hairy and horny and scary. But swords aren’t scary.”

What could I do if my body were wrong?

“I know what you need!” he shouted, already running across the clearing. He grabbed a wooden axe then bounded back across the grass to me.

He threw away the sword, then thrust the axe into my open hand. My fingers closed around the shaft, their keratinous tips digging into the wood.

“Amazing!” he shouted. Then he spoke so fast he tripped over his words. “A minotaur’s got to have an axe. Sword’s a weapon of grace, yeah, but look! With that massive axe any demon would be terrified to come near you! And those who do, you’ll block with your shield while I destroy them with my arrows.”

A minotaur’s got to have an axe. I rested the axe on my shoulder, trying to look big and tough. “No one will get through me,” I declared in the meanest voice I could.

I have never meant anything as much as I meant those words.

“Now, you stand there,” he said, pointing to a spot about ten paces away, “and get ready.” He laid out his cork-tipped arrows in front of him. “Here come the demons!”

He fired an arrow over my shoulder, and it landed in the grass at my feet. “That demon-god is tough! He swatted my arrow aside!”

Bri looked at me. “They’re right on top of you Chase! Block them with your shield and I’ll take them out!”

I lifted my shield and let out a squeak of war.

Bri shot another arrow, and it hit me in the back. “My arrow tears through their ranks!” he shouted.

I swung my axe a few times, earning cheers from Bri.

“The demon-god is right on top of you, Chase! He’s beating you to the ground!”

I fell to the ground, holding my shield up to defend myself. An arrow sailed over my head.

“I got him! You distracted him while my arrow went right through his eye!” Bri ran around the clearing, his bow lifted in the air. He whooped at the top of his lungs, and the trees carried the sound back to us as a chorus.

I followed him around the clearing, as I would follow him wherever he led.

* * *

When I wasn’t bowing before dignitaries or playing with Bri, my time was spent with Jon, in his study. He would talk, and I would listen.

“People assume that general intelligence and knowledge are enough to tackle any problem,” he told me after one particularly frustrating conversation with a mine foreman. “But they aren’t.”

He sighed and sat down heavily. “You spend months working on your perfect plan, and something so small it has no name throws off all your calculations. The rock you dig through experiences the slightest shift—and your mine collapses on itself.

“Some learned fools look down at those they see as their inferiors, swinging their pickaxes in the dark every day. Sometimes, those learned fools are more intelligent, but intelligence means nothing if you have not felt your pickaxe shiver as it strikes the rock.

“Every system is a dense web of delicate feedback mechanisms. Every day, billions of decisions ripple out unto eternity. By buying an axe, I raise the demand for iron, smithing, logging, and woodworking. People who already consider those jobs see an opportunity and take it. This raises the demand for textiles, engineers, tanners . . .

“No matter how brilliant, no one can understand the whole web; no one can see how a smith in Castulo connects to a teacher in Narasi. But they do. That’s the beauty of the web.

“Our world is shaped by every single person who lives in it.”

* * *

And so, the days, months, and years dragged on. I performed my duties and learned of economics and business. I loved Bri with the ferocity that only a lonely child can have. When Bri was busy and Jon had no need of me, I would lie in the grass, look into the sky, and tell myself, “It’s the same sun.” I would imagine a life with Bri, setting off on adventures and protecting him until he could save the day. My life was not happy, but it had its pleasures, and I endured it.

In my childish naivety, I thought that it would go on that way forever.