A Pet For Lord Darin

by Hollie Hutchins

  “There were twelve of us, Jonathan. Twelve people isn’t the whole world.”

  “No, but they’re trading with us now instead of, you know. In us. Like cattle and coffee and whatever. That’s pretty big.”

  It was, but I’d hardly had time to think about it. “Did you hear about Naomi?”

  “No. What happened? Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “She’s just…”

  “Hi!”

  We turned as one and found Naomi standing in the open orange doors on our end of the hall, waving and scampering towards us. She threw her arms around Jonathan, babbling something excited and totally incoherent.

  “Um, hi Naomi,” said Jonathan. “It’s…”

  A shadow fell over him, tall and grey and smiling.

  “Oh,” he said. “Uh. Hi.”

  “Greetings,” the shadow said, in Sarchan.

  I replied in Sarchan too. “Hi. You must be Naomi’s friend.”

  “Friend.” He laughed. “You could say that.”

  “Oh!” Naomi sprang away from Jonathan to stand by the Sarchan’s side. “This is Farlan,” she said. He draped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

  “Hi, Farlan,” I said, and he bowed to me.

  “Bir-ee-tany, I assume,” he said.

  “Tany is fine. Do you, ah, speak Sarchan, Naomi?” I said.

  “Not a goddamn word,” she said giddily.

  “Then how…what’s going on between…?” I looked between them, and they both grinned. Jonathan and I exchanged horrified looks. “Oh Jesus Christ, never mind.”

  Naomi giggled. “He speaks a little English now, though. It’s not great, but, you know, I don’t speak Sarchy or whatever.”

  “Sarchan,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  Farlan touched her on the arm and whispered something, jerking his head to the left. Naomi blushed fiercely and quickly excused herself, and they disappeared around a corner, both of them giggling maniacally.

  “That…” Jonathan said, blinking after them.

  “Was weird, yeah,” I finished. Least weird thing I’d seen this year, but it still qualified.

  “We just survived a year on an alien planet and she talked to us for, what, two minutes?” He shook his head and stuffed his hands in the pockets of the loose black pants we’d all been given for the voyage home: black pants, loose black shirt with long sleeves, and black boots. Silver belts, too, with a red and gold one for me, denoting my “station”, whatever that meant. Identifying me as “the human from tv” I guess.

  “Do you think they’re—” I started.

  “Fucking? Hundred percent.”

  I nodded contemplatively. “You seen Katy yet?” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s in the bunks upstairs,” he said. “Few others, too. Only saw her for a second, though, she was super tired.”

  Damn. I’d have to track her down in the morning – ship’s time morning, that is, in about twelve hours. “Well, she was on the far side of the planet.”

  “Jet lag?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Cool. So you speak Sarchan?”

  “I do.”

  “Huh,” he said. “How’d you manage that?”

  “I was taught. Found a doctor who knew I was self-aware,” I said. “You made friends too, though, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t speak Sarchan.”

  “Okay, first of all, not all of us can be magic linguists,” he said. “Second, I did learn part of a language, just not Sarchan. Quellish, I think, something these bipedal lizard aliens speak. Lots of sibilance I couldn’t get the hang of.”

  “And you were gonna start a revolution?”

  “We were gonna bust out of the cages, kill our zookeeper or whatever, and raid his fridge. After that, I don’t know what we were gonna do.”

  “Eat till you die?”

  “Probably. God, Sarchan food is weird.”

  “Great wine, though,” I said.

  “We can’t drink.”

  “Buuut I did.” I grinned. “Pretty sure Sarchans don’t even have the concept of a legal drinking age. You should snag some before we get home, it’s good stuff.”

  “And it won’t kill us?”

  “I drank myself stupid a couple of times,” I said. “You’ll be fine. Probably.”

  “How very reassuring.”

  “I try.”

  A low gurgling rolled through the air between us.

  “Dude,” I said, “was that your stomach?”

  “Fuck, I think so.”

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  “’Twas many moons ago…” he said wistfully, looking dramatically off into the middle distance.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh my God, go get some food.”

  “Where?”

  “Out that door and to your left,” I said, pointing.

  “Uh, cool. You’ll wait here for me?” He sounded a little nervous. Big ship, I guess, and all his interactions with Sarchans had been markedly unpleasant.

  I nodded. “Totally.” I sat back in my swiveling orange chair and gestured at him. “Go forth and feast, my child.”

  “Back in a bit,” he said, and rushed off.

  I closed my eyes and sighed, smiling. Home. The conversation felt so natural, like no time had passed. Like we hadn’t just spent a year on a politely hostile alien planet. This was going to make one hell of a college essay.

  “Bir-ee-tany Lu?” someone said.

  Can’t catch ten seconds alone, I thought. “Yes.” I said, opening my eyes. Before me stood a small, slight, breathless Sarchan in the dark blue of a misra.

  “Misra Valan,” he said, extending a hand. I shook it and he offered me a tremulous smile. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “Ditto.” I dropped my hand. “Did you need something or is this just a social visit?” God, I sounded so formal.

  “Forgive me, I will not take much of your time. I would like to offer you a formal invitation,” he said.

  Hmm. I sat up a little straighter. “An invitation to what?”

  “To the Grand Council,” he said. “A council that, thanks to your enlightening presence, will soon consist of anywhere from three to four hundred sentient species.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “We have, ah, been operating under some rather bigoted assumptions, I believe is the word you’d use.” He said bigoted in English and, like everyone, couldn’t seem to get his teeth around the b. It kept derailing itself into something like an f.

  “Arrogant works just as well,” I said in Sarchan, and he looked relieved.

  “Arrogant, then,” he amended. “I hope you can forgive us for your unruly treatment.”

  I snorted.

  “Forgive me if I have offended by minimizing your ordeal,” he said hastily, and I waved him off, now full-out laughing.

  “No, no, you’re fine, just…unruly is a weird word for it? I guess? I don’t know,” I said. “I’m all frazzled.”

  “Frazzled,” he said, in Sarchan – which translated most closely to dirisa, meaning very, very, very confused. He was frowning deeply. “Are you well? Shall I call a doctor?”

  “I’m alright. I’m not frazzled, I’m, um, tired. Dizzy? Yeah. I’m very mentally dizzy.”

  “Ah,” he said, clapping his hands together once he understood. “Understandable, of course. But I forget my purpose here.” He opened his coat and pulled a letter out of his pocket, thrice-folded yellowish paper with the strange bird sigil of the Sarchan government stamped into the outside. I took it.

  “You have displayed a remarkable talent for learning languages, and we would love to have you on hand as a translator.”

  I smiled, laughing a little at the absurdity of the offer. It was a nice one, a fascinating one, but thinking back on the initial yoinking of our shuttle from Triton made me laugh. Oh, how far we’ve come.

  “Don’t
misunderstand me, I’m honored, but humans have machines that can translate things perfectly well,” I said.

  “Ah, yes, we’ve been told,” Valan said, straightening his jacket. “But it is much more, erm, humanizing to have someone actually speaking your language rather than having a computer tell you what they’re saying. Language barriers are about more than just language, you know. The way we communicate is everything. Would it not feel more impersonal if I had a robotic voice translating my words to you right now? Am I not more myself, more human, as you would say, by sharing my voice with you?”

  I nodded, thinking. “That’s…very diplomatic,” I said, and it surprised me. For a race that not a month ago thought they were the only intelligent species in the cosmos, they were pleasantly quick on the uptake.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I know it is rather sudden, and a lot to ask of you after all you’ve been through, but I do hope you will consider.”

  “I will,” I said, gesturing with the letter. The ink shone in the light of the big orange sun hovering outside. Suddenly I felt like a character from Star Trek. Accepting this job would make me kind of an intergalactic emissary. I’d be speaking, literally, on behalf of the Sarchans and at least some of the human population. English was almost universally understood, but I thought I should definitely get some French, Spanish, and Cantonese under my belt, if I accepted. After parsing out the Sarchan language through sheer force of will, it didn’t feel like that much of a hurdle.

  “Thank you, thank you!” he said, and he shook my hand vigorously. “I will catch you on the dismount, yes?”

  “Yes.” I laughed. Catch you on the dismount was Sarchan slang for final arrival, the way humans say, “see you on the flip side” or even “later skater”. It lost a little something in translation, the way damn near everything does, but not so much that it was totally unintelligible. It made me giggle more than anything. Slang is always the cutest part of a language.

  Valan left me alone in the massive metal hall, staring at the letter. It was pretty, and the Sarchan script was hand-written. Twelve people had signed their names in Sarchan cursive at the bottom, the letters all blurring together into a bunch of totally illegible squiggles. I’d have to work on that. Dignitaries loved their cursive.

  There were a few letters I could pick out of the lineup, at the start of every name. The sharp V for Valan, the looping H and Q of Hadik and Qellis, the two officials who had greeted me coming off the shuttle.

  And a D, for Darin. The crime-lord-turned-councilman.

  You’re welcome, I thought, mostly kidding. His association with me was definitely what got him the position, but if Darin had decided to be a raging ass instead of a loveable little salamander willing to see the goddess in me, none of us would have gotten this far. So, you’re welcome and thank you.

  I folded the latter back up and tucked it in my pocket, turning my eyes back to the endless cosmos. Sarchaia gleamed beneath us, blue and green and swirling with clouds.

  Thank you. And…goodbye.

  ***

  I accepted the job. Of course I did, who wouldn’t? The chance to see the universe in all its colorful glory and meet new sentient species? Sign me the fuck up.

  I’d receive a small percentage of any profits any Sarchan ever made trading with humans, since I was the reason it was happening at all, but all of that was going to my grandpa and my dad. I’d come back to see them, of course, but once I set off I’d be gone for a while, and the Sarchans would take care of my food and clothing and all the other boring necessities of life from there forward.

  For now, though, I was here. Here and learning and frantically sifting through acceptance letters to colleges I had never even heard of. They all wanted us, me and Jonathan and Katy and Naomi and everyone who had been on that unfortunate fieldtrip. All we had to do was graduate and take our pick of the litter.

  Silver linings, I thought. But now I was having trouble even finding clouds.

  I pushed the letters to the side of my desk and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Toro, my big fat orange cat, leapt into my lap, yowling for scratches. I scratched his fluffy little forehead and he purred, curling up into a ball.

  My bedroom was entirely unchanged: pale orange bedsheets, blue pillows, fairy lights strung up around the door, glow-stars stuck to the ceiling. A single flower, a fresh rose, sat in a thin vase of water at the corner of my desk, basking in the light. The window was open, looking out on the small colorful gardens of our front lawn, where my grandpa was weeding and cursing in the late October sun. My dad stood beside him, handing him tools and holding the tiny shovel he used to dig up the more troublesome plants.

  My phone buzzed: an alarm, a reminder. A meeting with one of a hundred news stations begging for our attention.

  “I gotta go, Toro,” I said. I picked him up and set him on the bed, loudly mewling his protest. “I’ll be back.”

  I threw open the door and found a silhouette leaning over me – grandpa or dad coming back inside. “Hey, I’ve gotta go to the…”

  I looked up and froze solid.

  “…news…thing…” I finished.

  “Hi,” he said, and he waved.

  “I…you…” I swallowed. The sun was rising right behind him, so he was barley more than a shadow. I blinked, sleep surging forward from the back of my brain. “What…”

  He stepped forward into my house, moving me backwards with him. He had to duck to get in.

  The setting sun fell away, and then I could see: flowery wallpaper and cracking grout and popcorn ceilings and clicking branches.

  And him.

  “Darin,” I said. It was less of a word and more of a sigh, a sound with little more form than a gasp or a cough.

  “Bir-ittany,” he said. He’d gotten better at saying it.

  “What…what are you doing here?” I thought I knew, but I had to be sure.

  Darin took my face in his hands, running his thumb slowly across my cheek. He spent a moment there, lost in my skin, staring at my hair. Behind him, my dad and grandpa stared from the grass, eyes wide and confused.

  “I do not want this to be over,” he said. “I do not ever want it to be over.” And he took a deep breath and, more uncertain than I’d ever seen him, spoke three words in perfect English:

  “I love you.”

  And we went from there.

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  © Copyright 2017 by Hollie Hutchins - All rights reserved.

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