 |
|
| |
|
The sun was shining again, and the ceiling was still made of wood and stone. The room I was in still looked much too fancy to be my own. Dlarka, my servant, or was that my lady-in-waiting? had been the one to wake me. I felt well-rested, even though the sun was just starting to rise--probably because I had gone to bed so early, or maybe their nights were longer than ours.
Dlarka washed my face and hands, then dressed me in an outfit which looked just like the blue dress I had worn the day before, but smelled clean, and a bit like flowers. Then she escorted me back to Chran's room.
As soon as Dlarka was gone, my tutor handed me a pad of paper and pen (well, it looked like a pen, but was squarer, with a wood barrel and a metal tip--it needed to be dipped in ink). Did he want me to write something?
Chran frowned, then took the pen and paper, and wrote slowly--two characters (like Chinese or something, although they looked like funny designs--nothing like any language I'd ever seen). The symbols were too complicated to be letters.
"Slu Chran." My tutor wrote from the top left of the page and downward. He handed me the pen and paper. I dipped the pen again, then started copying Chran's characters. He shook his head. "Tu, tu," he said, and then some words I didn't understand. I tried again.
"Your name is Chran," I wrote, speaking and writing in English. Chran's face lit up like a herd of lightning bugs. "Bo, bo!" he exclaimed. I gave him a funny look. "Ger, ger." His hand motions made me suspect he wanted me to write more, so I obliged.
"My name is Bonnie," I spoke and wrote. "I'm from the planet Earth. I wish I was there right now. Everyone here is very friendly, but I'm kind of scared--I don't know anyone here, and I can't even talk to anyone!" Tears started to come to my eyes.
Chran calmly handed me a pink cloth handkerchief--half the size of a cloth one on Earth. "Clah, clah," he praised me. Well, I'm pretty sure he was praising the writing; I can't imagine why he would be pleased by my tears.
That day, he taught me a few characters, the ones which corresponded to the utensil words I had forgotten overnight. It seemed a little weird, that I hardly knew thirty words of the language, but he was teaching me to write--I had a friend who took Japanese for two years, and they never even taught him to write in characters. Chran made sure to talk a lot to me, speaking clearly, and making as many motions as possible. I still couldn't understand many words, exactly, but he overacted so much, I was able to decipher a lot of things he meant just out of context.
That night, we had dinner with Kelar and Leander again. The food was different, but other than that, the meal seemed the same. Kelar tried to say some words to me, but I didn't understand him. I didn't speak once during the meal.
Afterwards, Chran took me back to my room. I went inside, but Dlarka just took me by the wrist again, down a few flights of stairs, and into a huge, clean, bare room made of white marble, and lit with what looked like hundreds of candles in chandeliers, and on shelves high up on the walls. Set halfway into the floor was a large square basin about ten feet by ten feet, and four feet deep, with a seat running all the way around. It was filled with steaming water. There was a bucket full of something slimy--I hoped it was soap--next to the basin, along with what I took to be a washcloth. Dlarka took my clothes off before I could stop her--I was embarrassed, but since it was obvious that this woman was in charge of dressing me anyway, I didn't blush too badly. Dlarka nudged me into the basin, then picked up the bucket and the washcloth.
"Tu!" I shouted, shaking my head--I wouldn't let a stranger wash me. Dlarka looked insistent, but I just waded to the other side of the pool. She went around and followed me, but I retreated again, all the while wishing I had a swimsuit or something to wear. It took a whole ten minutes of this before Dlarka finally (and grudgingly) handed me the bucket and washcloth and left the room, taking my clothes with her.
As soon as she was gone, I felt relief and sadness, all at once. I was glad to be able to wash alone, but now that I was by myself, I had little to think about but how alone I was--in every sense of the word--and how much I missed home. Yet, somewhere inside, past the uneasiness of my stomach, I was almost excited. They treated me very well here--almost like a princess--and I would learn the language, right? Their words were all completely unfamiliar to me,, but, surely in a couple weeks, I'd have some grasp of conversations? Maybe in a few months I'd be fluent? And then they'd have to treat me like a person, and not like a pet, when I could clearly make my wishes known? Well...I hoped so.
By now the water was getting cold--mostly due to the ten-minute long chase I had subjected Dlarka to. I quickly scrubbed, using the slimy stuff (it felt like soap, at least) on my hair, as well as my body, then rinsed and got out of the tub. I noticed a furry piece of cloth (much bigger than even a beach towel, and the fluffiest towel I'd ever seen) and I dried myself with it. About then, Dlarka came in. She gasped, then gave me a stern talking-to, which I still couldn't understand. She made sure to put me in my white nightgown herself, admonishing me the whole time. I gathered that I could bathe myself, but it would always be her job to dry and dress me, so I'd better let just her do it. Dlarka put a pair of slippers (made out of the same fabric as the towel, I was sure, although the soles were stiff like wood) on my feet and led me back to my bedroom, then took my slippers off and tucked me into bed. She blew out two of the candles, just like the day before, then took the third and left. I've always been able to sleep better when I'm clean and my hair is wet, so I actually managed to drift off without thinking too much about how alone I was.
Over the next few weeks, I learned more of their language, 'Shesha,' than I had thought myself capable of, especially since they could only communicate ideas to me by pointing at objects and hoping I understood conversations by context. But their language was simple--it had no pronouns, for one thing. This was difficult for me at first; to say I was happy, I had to say "Bonnie leela," the same sentence Chran would use to say I was happy. And their verbs were never conjugated; you just tacked on a word after the verb if you needed to indicate a past or future tense--there were no irregulars. Anyone who's taken a foreign language knows how great that was, even though it made their language sound simplistic. Other parts of the language moer complicated--the possessives were especially confusing to a native English speaker. To say "Bonnie's world," I had to say "Nebu Bonnie ra,"--'world Bonnie of,' with 'ra' being the possessive word. But it wasn't too hard to remember proper grammar in their language, and, in a little over 30 days (by then, I had started to keep 'score' of how many sunsets had passed on a piece of paper) I had learned enough of the language to keep up a coherent conversation. People still used simple words around me, but if they used a word I didn't understand, I could simply ask them to explain it for me, and, using their words, they got the idea across! Everyone was careful not to laugh at my many mistakes in the language as I learned. Well, once (about two weeks into my training), Kelar did giggle at something I said. Chran explained later that, while I had meant to say I liked the vegetable Kelar had picked out, I had managed to tell Kelar his toes were very beautiful. Even worse, in that world, toes are thought to be ugly; a useless part of the body. So of course the king had had to laugh at that. (Leander and Chran hadn't even smiled at the remark, but they didn't have as good a sense of humor.)
By the time I had learned the language of Sheshack (as I discovered the country was called), I had pretty much given up on ever returning to my home. A small part of me still hoped to be brought back, but once you spend a month anywhere, you get used to it, whether you like it or not. And everyone was so kind to me (even if they STILL treated me like a puppy), I almost liked the place. I could finally understand what was going on in the castle, and Chran had explained most of the things I hadn't been able to observe on my own. He told me Kelar was the king (Frun) of the whole land of Sheshack, and Leander was his brother, the prince. Neither of them was married, and their parents were dead. The castle was to be my home, as it was theirs. Whenever I asked why I had been taken in, they just said I had been sent by Eku, their god--I had just appeared on their floor, so I had to have been sent by Someone's magic. I was afraid they planned to sacrifice me or something. But I never saw any sort of formal ceremony for Eku take place, and they swore they didn't practice human sacrifice, so I mostly convinced myself that they meant me no harm.
Chran also told me I was very special, to have been sent to them. Though women in Sheshack (and, for that matter, most men) never learned to read, he said he would teach me to read and write as well as the king did. He never explained why I should become literate while no other woman of the land was (aside from being sent by Eku), but I looked forward to being able to read their books. I was getting tired of just having the Bible to read, especially since they had no television in Sheshack. It was a very hard writing system to learn (maybe to make up for their simple language); you couldn't 'sound' anything out, since everything was characters or pictographs or something like that. (They did come up with a way to write my name in characters--they put 'Bon'--the character for woman--and 'nee,' a verb meaning 'to arrive'--together, one after the other. Leander loved the pun.)
Once I had the spoken language down, Chran tutored me in his tower room during almost all the daylight hours, every day. We sat huddled over his desk, his countless books I couldn't read on shelves all around me, for hours at a time. Chran almost desperately drilled me on characters and what they meant, trying to teach me to write, to read, and to comprehend. But I was a slow learner, I thought.
"This is stupid," I told Chran one day, very frustrated. "I'll never learn this stuff! Why don't you guys learn to write in my language? It'd be a lot easier!"
Chran frowned at me. "We cannot do that." After a moment, he added, "But you're learning a good deal faster than many of the men I have taught in the past."
This encouraged me a bit, as all flattery does. "But then why don't you let your women read?" I asked.
Chran frowned. "The same reason we don't 'let' the lurnay read. They could never understand."
I resented the way he compared the women of his land to the green furry animals which looked like a cross of a dog, cat, and mouse. They were cute, loyal creatures, but almost impossible to train, and not really that bright, either. "But I'm a woman, and you said I was doing as well as a lot of the men you taught!"
"You are from another world. Earth."
"Earth women look a lot like women on Nebu."
"Only a special woman would dare to talk back to a teacher," Chran noted. "That is why you can be taught."
I sighed. "It's not the women's fault you won't teach them. I'm sure they're all just as smart as I am, or they could be."
"It is best for all concerned if women know their place. You are from a different world, where women are made differently. In Nebu, the first woman was formed of man."
"The Bible says that's how women were made on Earth, too," I said. "From the first man's rib."
Chran frowned. "The Bible?"
"The word of God." I said 'God' in English.
"'God?'"
"*My* god," I said, using their word for god. "I call him 'God.'"
Chran frowned again, then stood up. "Either way, you must learn to read." He got a book down from one of his many shelves, and handed it to me. It had lots of ugly pictures; it must have been a children's book. "Read this." He walked to the doorway. "I shall fetch a servant to bring us lunch."
Lunch. More of a snack than anything else; in Sheshack's castle, people ate big breakfasts and dinners, and then two small meals during the day, one in mid-morning, and one a bit past noon (if they *had* a noon--well, at least, a bit past the time the sun was directly overhead). Unless they were very busy; then they'd skip midday meals altogether. I looked after Chran as he left, suddenly feeling a bit uneasy, though I couldn't figure out why.
