Chapter 7
Rose
I should probably apologize to Saana for snarling at her, but it felt like she was trying to take away my first glimpse at freedom. I don’t want Oljin to stop teaching me. I can’t learn if he doesn’t correct me, and the thought of being unable to communicate forever makes my mouth dry and my heart ache. I need this to survive.
From what I could tell, she didn’t seem offended by my outburst. She brings over a basin of warm water and a cloth, carefully sponging my face and arms. Her touch is so kind and motherly, it makes me cry.
“Rose no,” Oljin says, using the hem of his shirt to wipe away my tears. He adds something in his language that I’m sure means don’t be sad .
“Rose yes,” I insist in his language, afraid he’s going to call off the lesson like she wanted him to. “Oljin yes.”
“ Watha yes,” Saana says, chuckling as she lifts what’s left of my hair to rub the cloth on the back of my neck, clearly making fun of me.
“Watha,” I repeat, not sure whether she means cleaning or cloth or dirty skin or what. Making a guess, I take the cloth and rub it inside the bowl. “Watha bowl?”
“Yes!” Oljin’s huge body gives an excited bounce like an overgrown puppy. It’s how I feel inside even though I don’t have the energy to move like that. He’s as invested in this as I am and just as happy that my guess was right .
“Clean bowl yes. Lanbe yes,” Saana says firmly, collecting the cloth from me and gently pushing me back on the bed. She repeats the new word, adding for clarification, “Eyes closed.”
She thinks I should sleep. She’s probably right. Just eating and our little language lesson has worn me out. “Sleep yes,” I agree. “Oljin yes?”
Maybe it’s weird to ask him to stay with me. Maybe it’s expecting too much of this alien good Samaritan to cuddle me all night. But after years of isolation in a cold, metal cage, I am desperate for warmth. For touch. And Oljin has been so careful with me. Even when I could feel his body reacting to me, he was gentle and undemanding. I’m not afraid of him.
“Yes, Alara. ” He rasps the alien word in a voice heavy with meaning that I don’t understand.
Saana insists I drink some water, then disappears into another room with the lantern. Oljin curls his massive body around mine so we can both fit in the narrow space, his strong arms a cage I welcome.
He smells like sweet hay, the kind that makes you understand why an animal might be eager to eat it. It makes my mouth water, and that swift bolt of hunger makes my eyes prickle again. I’m crying for the second time today.
It’s a strange sensation. I haven’t had an appetite in a year or more. Haven’t had enough energy to want anything. Haven’t been hydrated enough to make tears. And here I am, safe and warm and fed and crying .
I guess sometimes you don’t fully understand what’s been taken from you until you get it back.
“Don’t be sad,” Oljin murmurs in his language. He tentatively strokes my back, his fingertips bumping over my spine. I wish I didn’t hurt so much. I wish it didn’t feel like my bones were going to poke through my skin. I wish I could express the gratitude that’s filling my veins in a thundering crescendo. As I fall asleep, I wish, absurdly, that I could kiss him.
I wake up to a cool morning breeze and the smell of unfamiliar food cooking. My stomach twists and bites at me. I’m hungry . Oljin isn’t there, though, and I don’t see the silhouette of his broad shoulders anywhere nearby. Granted, anything more than a few yards away turns into a complete blur.
“Oljin?” I call. He immediately appears, Saana beside him with a tray of bowls and cups, their contents just smudges in my ruined vision.
Oljin says the word for each of them as he hands them to me one at a time. Since I can’t tell what’s in them by sight, I touch and smell each one before tossing it back. An herbal oil, sweet jelly cubes, shreds of roasted meat. Bitter berries that make my tongue cool and tingly, leaves that taste like lemons, chewy steamed grains with a texture somewhere between rice and oatmeal. Everything is good. Just a bite or two of each, sips of hot tea in between.
This is probably not a normal breakfast. It’s likely sick-person food, a broad assortment because they don’t know what I’ll like. But it's the best meal of my life.
“I feel so spoiled, like a princess. Thank you.” I put a hand to my heart.
“Zaahnk yuu,” Saana repeats, a smile in her voice as she places her hand over mine.
She takes the food away when I can’t eat any more, chattering back and forth with Oljin too fast for me to pick up on anything, even though I’m desperate for more words. I strain to understand them, repeating back any scrap I can tease out.
I wonder what the relationship is between them. They clearly aren’t a couple, but they’re bickering like they’re close. Mother-son, maybe?
As fast as she left, Saana returns. Another exchange, and Oljin puts a hand on my arm, asks a question, then says, “Yes?”
I shake my head, and it sloshes into a swamp of dizziness. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.”
Saana sighs, clearly disappointed in my answer. Oljin says something sharp in my defense. They argue. My head throbs. I hate that they’re fighting over me. They’re both clearly trying really hard to help me, so I should trust them.
“Yes,” I blurt out. “Oljin yes.”
Oljin lets out a relieved breath, hesitates, then scoops me up in his arms. My stomach bottoms out in exhilaration like I’m on a rollercoaster, and I give a giddy squeal. Saana laughs and say something that I’m positive is “ I told you so ,” and Oljin’s shoulders shake as he laughs.
He carries me outside briefly, where the bright sun and green glow of the landscape around us makes me squint, then into another structure. Inside, the air is warm and steamy, letting me know it’s probably some kind of bathing area.
He sets me down on the edge of a rocky, heated pool, letting my feet slide into the warm water. It feels incredible. I haven’t had a bath in water since I left Earth. The aliens who kept me would occasionally put me inside a humming box, and I’d come out clean, but I never felt clean.
I reach down and swish my fingers through it, relishing the sensation of the water moving around my head, the gentle steam kissing at my skin. There’s a soft noise behind me of fabric hitting the floor, and then a muted splash as Oljin enters the water.
He wades toward me, gesturing. He wants me to get into the pool with him. Then he turns his back. Oh. He wants me to get undressed and then get in the water.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before this exact second, but of course he has to bathe with me. I can’t support my own weight. I can’t get in and out of the water without someone lifting me. I doubt I have the energy to wash my own hair. And that means... he’s going to do it.
This must have been what he and Saana were arguing about, who was going to take a bath with me, and I picked him . I should ask him to get her instead. But...I don’t want to.
My fingers feel numb as I fumble my way out of my clothes. My cheeks heat up, thinking of what he’ll see when he turns around. Ribs you can count, deflated breasts, matted hair. Something not me at all. Normally, I have broad hips and a riot of curls on my head. Normally, I have a sunburn peeling on my nose and pale lines where the strings of my bikini bottoms cut across my hips.
I want him to like what he sees. I want him to like me , not this bony shadow of me.
“Yes?” he asks.
I cover my breasts with my arm and sigh. There’s nothing I can do about it. “Yes.”
He turns around. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions or act weird. He just lifts me very tenderly from the edge of the pool and places me in the water against the side where some rocks in the bottom form a seat .
He can probably still see my body in the water, but at least it feels covered while it’s immersed in the bath, so my self-consciousness soon dissolves. My bones ache less now that my limbs are supported by the water. The soreness I’ve been feeling is probably the effect of gravity after so long in space. While there was some kind of gravity on the ship, I don’t think it was the same as this. It was more like the film footage of the men on the moon, bounding around in their padded suits.
I needed this. Needed someone to carry me for a minute.
“Thank you,” I say, and Oljin says it back. Someday I’ll figure out how to make him understand what it means. Gratitude postponed, I give in to enjoyment, tipping my head back and letting my lids fall shut since I can’t see much with them open, anyway.
Shemí lal, eyes closed. Shemí vasa , eyes open. It’s all the same. It works better to feel, to smell. To listen.
A scrape against the stone. A sweet, honeylike scent suffusing the steamy air. The sound of skin slicking against skin. He’s washing himself, and I have to push my thoughts away from what that must look like. I know how big his hands are. How huge and hard his shoulders are, how huge and hard his...
Never mind. I feel my way along the edge of the pool and locate the dish of sticky soap he used. I wash whatever I can, self-conscious about how close we are, only a couple of feet apart. He’s trustworthy, I remind myself. He’ll keep me safe. I hate that I’m trembling.
Like he knows I need something to distract me, Oljin taps the dish. “Naffa,” he says. Soap .
I repeat it, and then he makes an approving sound. With slow-moving hands, he tugs a lock of my hair that’s swirling in the water. “Til.”
I file that word away, too, just in time to understand when he asks, “Soap hair cleaning Oljin yes?” There are other words in there, too, but those are the ones I can catch with my limited vocabulary.
Oh. He wants to wash my hair.
It’s somehow more intimate than being naked in the bath together, but when he holds out his hand...I take it. Let him pull me into his lap where he cradles me in in one arm and uses the other to cup water over my hair.
It feels incredible. Not just the warm trickle over my scalp, but the kindness .
“Eyes closed,” he murmurs, and I shut them obediently, desperate for it not to end. He shampoos my matted curls with the same patience, working the soap down to my scalp, squeezing the suds through to the ends.
The methodical, predictable, gentle progress is so soothing. It’s salve for my shriveled little soul. I turn my head slightly to press my cheek against his bicep. “No matter what happens later, I’ll be grateful for this.”
“Yes,” he murmurs without understanding. He pours fresh water on my forehead, baptizing me with his care. In this moment, I would do anything for him, this person so alien to me. My purchaser. My owner . I’d crawl for him.
Free love isn’t free, I remind myself. It always comes at a cost. So I know I’ll pay for this at some point. But right now, I don’t care. I just enjoy the feel of his hands, the scent of the soap, the soft rise and fall of his chest, the embrace of warm water all over my skin.
I’m sorry when it ends and he props me upright on his broad thigh to blot my hair with some kind of towel. I try not to think about the fact that I’m completely naked. That he’s completely naked, too, and he can feel every clench of my thighs.
He runs his hand over my head and asks a question I don’t understand but ends in “hair.”
“Yes.” Anything he wants.
He carefully adjusts my head and begins combing through the disaster with his fingers. It’s painstaking and slow, but he occasionally adds sweet-smelling oil to ease the tangles, so it doesn’t pull hard and hurt.
At one point, his fingers bump up against my ear, but they feel strange, more like a comb than flesh and bone.
I grab his hand, feeling to the end of his fingers. He doesn’t have fingernails...he has curved, sharp claws, not too different than a cat’s! “What are these?!”