Chapter 11
Rose
O ljin leaves without saying goodbye, and he’s gone for days. Saana’s vigorous reassurances that he’s coming back, communicated in a scolding tone and with a lot of fussing over the fading bite mark on my neck and extra doses of her herbal concoctions poured down my throat, don’t untangle the tight knot in my stomach.
He has a whole life I don’t know about, and I have no idea how I’m going to fit into it.
At least I’m getting stronger. I can stand on my own, although my coordination is still too poor to walk. I can stay awake longer for our language lessons. I’m able to help Saana prepare meals by peeling fruit and chopping vegetables. My vision is improving a little bit, too. I notice it when I can focus on the marks she’s making on a scroll of cream-colored paper after she brings me breakfast. I haven’t been able to see their letter shapes before, and a thrill runs through me when I see their soft, slanting forms.
“Can I have it?” I ask her, testing the limits of my language learning with the question. I point at the paper, hoping she understands me. She nods and retrieves a blank roll and a stiff feather with some kind of black mineral embedded in the shaft.
It feels like heaven being able to write again. I scratch out everything I’ve experienced since my abduction, my handwriting sloppy and out-of-practice. It’s a huge, rushing relief to put it on paper. Everything I’ve carried in my head all this time, all the new experiences and old fears. My injuries and my rescue. My newfound relationship with Oljin. The songs they’ve taught me. I write down all of it.
I fill up the scroll, front and back, and then ask Saana for another one, shaking out the cramp in my hand. She laughs and tells me to rest instead. Grudgingly, I nap, and when I wake up, she appears with a tray of food, a fresh roll of paper next to the bowl of stew.
“Thank you,” I tell her, hand on my chest. I repeat it in her language, then grab the scroll, writing the words down in English. I hand it to her, pointing, and she breaks into a smile as she jots the translation.
We eat together, passing the paper back and forth, filling it with a new dictionary, one that’s never been written before. One that will build connections and bring us closer together, even if it’s not in alphabetical order.
This is exactly how I felt collecting folk songs for my dissertation. Every new one is a little burst of happiness better than Christmas morning.
I’m too wired to sleep when Saana tries to take the scroll away from me. She sighs and complains as she lights a lantern so we can keep working, but I can tell she’s excited about the project, too.
I learn that their language is called Irran, after this place, Irra. I learn their sun is called Alioth. I learn Saana has a child named Pravil, but that her husband is dead. When I ask via hand gestures and broken Irran how Oljin is connected to her, she tries to explain, repeating the word jara over and over, mixed in with something about Pravil .
“They’re friends?” I venture. “Like Rose and Saana are jara?”
“No.” She blows out a frustrated breath, rattling off something I can’t follow. Then she enunciates slowly, “Jara Oljin. Alara Rose.”
Oljin called me “alara,” too. If Saana’s drawing the comparison between jara and alara, they must be male and female versions of the same word. It means some kind of relationship. Lovers, maybe? Boyfriend and girlfriend?
An uncomfortable prickle climbs up my spine. Are Saana’s child and Oljin a couple? That would explain why Oljin and Saana are so familiar, if they’re basically extended family. What does that mean for me, though, if he already has a partner?
Don’t be a bummer, Rose.
This is another species with different biology and culture, I remind myself, much as I reminded Gary when we were on our road trip. There might not be any such thing as monogamy here. Sex might be more friendly, and love might not be exclusive. Even on Earth, that works for lots of people, even if it doesn’t really work for me.
“Jara Oljin and Alara Pravil?” I ask, before I panic too much about whether I can handle falling in love with someone who’s in love with someone else.
Saana turns bright yellow and howls . She laughs so hard she starts coughing, pounding herself in the chest. I can’t help giggling along with her, even if I’m not sure what I said was funny. Finally, she recovers enough to choke out, “No, no, no. Jara Oljin. Alara Rose.”
I blow out a breath, relieved. I was trying to be open-minded, but I don’t want to share him. I grab one of the greenish crackers left on the dinner tray. I break it in half and hand half to Saana.
“Share.” I scribble the word on the scroll. Then I pluck the half-cracker out of her hand and eat it. “No share.”
She nods in understanding and says their word for it, writing it alongside mine.
“No share Oljin,” I say firmly, grammar be damned. “Understand?”
Saana laughs again, covering her mouth in amusement. “Yes. Oljin no share Rose. Rose no share Oljin. Understand, Jara and Alara.”
I grin, feeling giddy. Whatever those words mean, they means us, him and me and nobody else. “Yes, good, beautiful,” I tell her, pointing to the words on our makeshift dictionary in case my pronunciation is bad.
“Beautiful,” she agrees, patting my hand. Then she takes the feather pencil and paper away from me, placing them on a wicker bench just out of reach. “Rest now.”
I do my best, but my eyes pop open the second the sun rises because I’m so excited to work on our dictionary. By the time Oljin returns a few days later, tired and covered with dust from his long journey, we’ve filled a half-dozen scrolls with Irran–English translations.
I want to run to him where he’s silhouetted in the doorway and jump into his arms, but I settle for standing up from my bed to greet him. He sucks in a breath, barely greeting Saana on his way across the room to me, where he folds me in his arms, his expression disbelieving .
Saana wipes her hands and, using the excuse of braxa chores, ducks out of the house to give us a moment of privacy. We stand there a minute, grinning stupidly at each other.
“My beautiful Rose, standing on two feet,” he says, cupping my jaw with dusty fingers, tipping my face up to his.
“My beautiful Oljin, with two dirty hands,” I tease, blinking back happy tears, but inevitably a few trickle down my cheeks.
He dips his head to kiss them away, one by one. Then he brushes his lips against mine, stroking the seam with his tongue until they part for him. My knees go even weaker than they already were at the hot insistence of his mouth. I stumble forward slightly, but he catches me under the elbows, drawing back from our kiss with a crooked smile.
“You learned so many words while I was gone, your mouth tastes Irran.”
I laugh and show him the basket of scrolls we’ve accumulated so far. His jaw drops when he sees what Saana and I have done, which makes my smile stretch so wide, my cheeks ache. “I was busy.”
“I’m glad you did not spend your hours apart from me crying.” He kisses me again, swift and deep. Then he sits down on my bed and pulls me onto his lap so we can look through the scrolls at the same time.
He and I read the lists of words, correcting each other’s pronunciations and adding notes, and it makes me realize how much I’ve learned. Writing the words down really helped me retain them, and I’m starting to have an instinct for the language so I can figure meanings out from context.
He’s picking up some English words, too, although it makes more sense for me to learn his language than him to learn mine, since I’m the only one who speaks it here. Both of us are so engaged in the language exchange that we don’t notice Saana’s return until she brings us a tray of food and sits down nearby to share a meal with us.
After I crawl out of his lap and he washes the travel dust from his hands, Oljin digs into the meal she’s prepared with the ferocity of someone who’s just run a marathon. “Alioth smile on you,” he says between bites. “The food is delicious.”
“No trouble. I had to eat, too,” she shoots back.
“Thank you,” he insists. “For the food. For your home. For your help.”
“Thank you,” I echo, unable to vocalize all the reasons I appreciate her because I don’t know all the words yet. Saana flushes bright blue with happiness even as she waves our gratitude away. Someday I’ll learn the words so I can tell her. I owe them both so much.