Page 14 of Fathom

“Leija,” he said.

The seat was smaller, and I didn’t have to climb into it. There were tables and seats of different sizes all around the room, which I labeled in my head as a restaurant, including a tiny table up on the windowsill near me. I sat down at the proffered table, and Eun went through the beaded curtain, his glowing tail releasing me reluctantly. The lizard appeared and set a pile of worn books in front of me, along with something shaped like a pen.

The relief I felt at seeing books, actual books made out of paper, flooded through me.

A soft chime rang out, delicate and melodic, and the lizard disappeared back through the curtain of beads, the strands clicking together in his wake.

Eun called after him from behind the beaded curtain, his voice light, cheerful. The lizard paused, listened, and replied again, with a slightly more serious tone. I couldn’t understand the words, but the rhythm of them felt familiar. Like a call-and-response, something expected and practiced when the chime rang out.

Eun stepped up to the open window into the kitchen and pinned a slip of paper to a small board beside it. Only then did I realize he was wearing a different jacket, a crisp white one, fastened neatly down the front. It was a uniform. A logo was stitched over his chest: a steaming bowl with two chopstick spoons angled out of it.

The same symbol had been printed on the soup box he brought me the night before.

Eun came over to me and shuffled through the booksin front of me, pushing most of them to the side and putting one in front of me. He opened it up, and there were colorful cartoon pictures of different objects, with words written in the same script that was on his computer keyboard. Someone had already written on the lines under the pictures with a shaky hand.

It was a schoolbook, and from the looks of it, it was meant to help children learn to read.

“Okay, then we're doing this old school,” I said, picking up what I hoped was a pen.

I pressed it to the paper.

It was a pen.

The relief of having something practical to focus on washed through me as I worked my way through the book. Eun hovered near me, sounding out several of the words for me out loud, his finger tracing over them, before the lizard eventually called out for him, and Eun went to the back. The chiming sound would happen, and either he or the lizard would answer it, saying the same thing every time they answered in the same cheerful tone of voice. After some time, a few aliens, most around hip height to a bit taller than me, came in and picked up containers of food from Eun.

One of the feathered creatures that came in cooed softly as it passed, brushing a wing over the top of my head in a gesture so gentle it almost felt like a blessing. It did it a few more times, and I realized it was petting my hair.

Eun called out something to it, and it gave me a long look before it strolled over to him, taking the seat that he gestured to.

Eun moved between tables, and each time he passed mine, I’d point to a word or image in the book he’d left for me. He’d lean down, murmuring the name aloud in his language, and I’d try to echo it back. We fell into a rhythm. The sound of his voice, the soft noises of eating and chatter from the otherpatrons in the room kept me anchored in what I was doing. I was in an alien restaurant on an alien planet, working through used children's language books. I didn't know how I got here or how to get back home. I didn't know why those multi-eyed hyena aliens had me in that warehouse, and even though I saw the bodies, I didn't know for certain what they would have done to me, but more than anything, I didn't know why Eun hadn't taken me to some sort of authority, like the police, to help me figure it all out.

Surely there was some sort of authority to deal with lost aliens?

Then again, if I didn't know the language, or any of the languages he had me listen to, did I really want to be dropped off with strangers? Eun, at least, I knew would take care of me, feed me, and didn't seem interested in controlling what I did or where I went. He gave me a key and a code so I could get back in and left me to decide what I would do with myself. When I followed him, he accepted that easily and made a space for me.

He was helping me without trapping me.

An authority agency might lock me in a room under the guise of it being for my own good, or for the safety of the public, until they figured out what I was. For now, I wrote down the details of the warehouse and what I saw on a blank page in the book, so I would have it for later. I could go back to it when I knew how to speak and had someone to speak to.

Until then, I needed to observe, learn, and listen. I needed to figure out what I knew and didn't know.

What I did know was that the word for bowl was pronounced with a guttural roll in the back of the throat, and it was six syllables. I also knew that the language used an alphabet rather than cuneiform or logographic writing. It was somethingfamiliar, even if the letters and sounds were not, and I focused on feeling grateful for that rather than letting my fear take over.

At some point, the lizard returned and set a steaming bowl in front of me. The scent was familiar: broth, herbs, something nutty, and I ate without thinking, my body remembering hunger even as my mind focused on learning names. Later, a cup of pale green tea appeared at my elbow, its scent grassy and warm. I drank it slowly, along with the cool water from the pitcher on the table.

When I needed the bathroom, I found it in the back.

For the first time since arriving in this strange world, things felt almost normal.

I could almost believe I was just a teenager again, planning to travel to a different country to study fashion, so I needed to learn the language before I got there. Tucked in the corner of a café, hunched over a stack of workbooks, mouthing foreign words into a warm cup of tea, I was somewhere I had been before in my life. The questions still circled, always there: Where am I? Who are you? What is this place? They had to wait. I couldn’t ask them yet. Not until I learned how to hear the answers.

Everything else was beyond my reach, except this: I could choose how hard I worked.

So I worked, focusing past the tension of exhaustion that built behind my eyes.

The light outside dimmed, slipping from gold to gray. Eun had stepped out for a delivery from what I could guess when a rush of patrons spilled in, laughter and footsteps echoing off the walls as every table filled. Too many eyes. Too much noise again, dragging me out of the safe space of scholastic focus I had found. I gathered the books and slipped through the beadedcurtain, letting it fall closed behind me with a soft rattle as I tried to find some place to hide in the back.

The kitchen was busy. The lizard, faster than he looked, darted between the stove and counter, muttering the orders to himself. The sink was piled with dishes sitting in hot, soapy water. Two wooden benches sat near a row of hooks on the wall, one of them holding a white jacket.