I emerged from the vision, and another wave of homesickness hit me.
No, a different kind of sickness.
Abdo, I called with my mind, come back. Quickly. Bring a bucket.
He arrived in time, but only just.
For two ceaseless, churning days, my stomach tried to turn itself inside out. It raged and tempested. I couldn’t stand up. Abdo and Ingar took shifts dabbing my head with a sponge and feeding me spoonfuls of honeyed water, half of which came back up.
You’re green, Abdo informed me one night, his eyes wide. Green as a lizard.
On the third day, I slept at last and dreamed that I was alphabetizing an infinite library that turned out to be myself. When I awoke, I staggered up on deck, blinking in the wind and sunshine, and found that life had gone on without me. The sailors were allowing Abdo to climb the rigging, bandaged hand and all, and Ingar not only spoke better Porphyrian than me but had taken to the sailors’ impenetrable patois like a second mother tongue.
“Nautical Porphyrian wasn’t difficult to pick up,” Ingar explained over dinner in the crowded sailors’ mess. He, Abdo, and I were crammed together at a side table, eating salt cod and mushy lentils off square plates. “Once I realized they said braixai where standard Porphyrian has brachas, it was a matter of substituting diphthongs and—”
“You have a facility with languages,” I said, impressed in spite of myself. His Goreddi had improved, his Samsamese accent melting away before my ears, even during our first conversation.
He turned pink to his scalp. “I’ve read a lot, in many languages. That gives me a basis for speaking, but I didn’t have the phonemes until I heard them.”
“But how did you learn to read so many languages?”
I pressed. He looked up from his lentils, his spectacles reflecting the lantern light. “I examined the words from all angles until they made sense. Isn’t that the usual way?”
For the first time in days, I cracked a grin; my face felt like it had forgotten how. The usual way? It was the daft, steep, unscalable way, and yet I felt like I was glimpsing the real Ingar, not Jannoula’s stooge. “Maybe you can help me with Porphyrian grammar,” I said. “I’m hopeless at—”
Abdo kicked me under the table. I’m teaching you Porphyrian!
Of course you are, I said, but I need all the help I can get.
Abdo crossed his arms and glared at me. Ingar, oblivious to the tension between his tablemates, said: “Let me guess: you gender only the most obvious nouns correctly, you confuse the dative with the ablative, and you are completely thrown by the optative.”
Abdo’s mouth fell open. It’s like he knows you! he cried, and then he was speaking in Ingar’s head, where I couldn’t hear. Ingar smiled benignly, occasionally answering aloud in Porphyrian. I could follow much of what he said; I was a good listener, if nothing else, and my vivid imagination helped fill the gaps in my comprehension.
Ingar’s enthusiasm began to curdle, however. His eyes dulled and his speech slowed and slurred. Alarmed, I glanced at Abdo, only to see him staring in rapt fascination at a spot just above Ingar’s head.
Ye gods, said Abdo. She’s pouring into his mind right now, filling him up like a jug. A big, empty jug.
I pushed back from the table reflexively. Ingar’s eyes unfocused and a docile smile rippled across his fleshy lips. I waited, tensed like a hare, but Ingar only blinked vaguely. What’s she doing? I asked Abdo. Is she not here to speak to me?
Abdo frowned. Not everything she does is about you. She’s been visiting Ingar for years. They must have their own things to talk about.
Ingar’s head drifted a little to one side, like butter melting in a pan. He sighed.
Abdo and I helped Ingar to his feet, draping his heavy arms across our shoulders. Our mismatched heights meant we propped Ingar at an angle; his head lolled downhill, toward Abdo. The sailors grinned knowingly as we passed, as if we were helping our drunken comrade to bed.