Page 2 of Taken to Kor
“Water.” My voice breaks. I clear my throat.
“Water,” he repeats, just as rough, just as smooth. I didn’t know a voice could be both. “Interesting. Is this water for drinking or water for swimming?”
“There’s water for swimming?”
Again, he hesitates. “There is. Vast quantities of it.”
Incredible. I don’t even know how to picture it. “Really? Where? Is it in big tanks?”
“Many different places. Not in tanks, at least, not the kind I’m speaking of. This kind appears in nature, but not on little moons like yours.”
I swallow. So he knows where I am, but not who I am. That computes. “You…have you…um…”
“I’ve decided I don’t like thisumword. Use another.”
My lips quirk. I’m smiling. Wow. When was the last time I smiled? I frown then, unable to remember it. “Well, mister, I’m not the best conversationalist. I don’t exactly get a lot of practice.”
“Is that so?” He grumbles, voice sounding a lot like a growl.There’s that word again. Starts with an S and sounds an awful lot like specks.
I reach for my water bottle. It’s empty, flecks of water clinging to the inside of it but refusing to pool. Dang it. I don’t know when I’ll get another. I glance at the bucket in the corner. The two buckets. One for pee one for…everything else. If Mathilda doesn’t come back soon, I guess I’ll have to go with bucket number one.Pee rhymes with yipee!
“No. I don’t talk to many people.”
“Humans,” he answers. “You don’t talk to many humans.”
“Right.”
“But you are human.”
“And you’re not.”
“Centare,” he answers. “I’m not.”
“Centare,” I repeat. “What language is that?”
“Meero. The language of the Niahhorru.”
I swallow hard, thoughts firing too fast to capture them all. I blurt out the most random one. “Will you teach me?”
He laughs.Laughs. It sounds strange because it isn’t translated, so it’s just his raw voice. It sounds like overlapping notes, all tangled together but easy to listen to. It’s soothing. My shoulders relax down my back. I close my eyes, just listening to his laugh repeat itself, like he’s speaking through a tunnel and I’m the only one at the other end. It’s nice. Even if he is the enemy. Because everyone is an enemy. I don’t know one person that’s actually good. Maybe my mom. She was good, at least from what I can remember. But maybe I’m remembering wrong. I was just a kid when she was taken from me. My dad, even though he had the same dark skin most colony people do, succumbed to the sun plague just after I was born. I never knew him.
“I only have a mutinous planet of pirates to manage, but of course, I have no problem taking time out of my busy solars to teach you Meero.”
“Okay, good,” I say, refusing to rise to his sarcasm.
He doesn’t speak for a while and I fully expect him to recant his obviously fake offer, but so far he hasn’t done anything expected.I don’t know what I expected.He laughs that laugh that’s so beautiful it hurts. I’m still coming down from the high and I miss whatever he says next.
“What?”
“I said, you will have to give me something to call you by.”
I chew on my bottom lip, gnawing it to shreds. “Deena,” I finally answer.
“Deena,” he repeats in his strange brogue. I like the way it sounds when he speaks it. Like he’s savoring it.
“And…what’s your name?” I stutter.
“Deena, you already know my name. I suspect, you already know quite a bit about me.”
