5

"The holy garb suits you, priestess."

Lyra plucked at the hem of her tunic. "Should I pick a different color? I don't know if they mean something special."

"This is suitable to mark your position. None will harm you, priestess. Not in this village."

"Will you... come with me?"

She wasn't sure how she felt about the grey woman. God or ghost, she shouldn't exist. The fact that she did was terrifying. But she was also the only person Lyra had been able to speak to in this new world. She had been kind. Lyra needed someone on her side right now.

"My presence is irrelevant, priestess. You will be safe."

Lyra sighed and gave the temple door a reluctant look. She was still stalling, even though it was pointless. The only alternative was going to bed in the dim chamber beneath the temple, but then she would just have to do this tomorrow, and she would spend all night dreading it.

No. It was time to go.

When she left the temple for the first time since taking refuge in it earlier that day, the sky was painted with the faint pinks and purples of sunset, and the twilight air was cool on her skin.

Her heart galloped in her chest. She was certain someone would be waiting to jump her, but the street was quiet. Empty. Almost disconcertingly so — the sun was going down, but it wasn’t dark yet. Surely some people had last minute errands to run, or kids would want to play in the streets before bedtime, but even the food-cart guy with the horse had packed up and left.

Even though she was terrified of running into the wrong person, she wanted to find someone to talk to. She needed to test the grey woman’s claim that the outfit she was wearing would keep her safe. She needed the hope that she would be able to find someone to help her here. Someone real. Someone human.

She didn’t want to go to sleep tonight knowing she wasn’t any closer to finding a way home than she had been when she first got here.

Lyra took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to ease the tight feeling in her chest. She needed to take this one step at a time. And she could start by, well, taking a step.

Leaving the temple door open wide enough that she could run back inside if she needed to, she inched outside under the overhang. At some point during the day, someone had left a new offering on the little table; a freshly picked, bright pink flower. The sight of it reminded her that someone had been maintaining the temple, which meant even if she gave in to the near-crippling terror and stayed hidden in the chambers underground until she ran out of food, she couldn’t expect to avoid people entirely.

“Right, I can do this,” she muttered under her breath. “Trying to talk to people earlier didn’t go too badly until that guy with the sword showed up.”

Maybe she could find that woman again. She had seemed nice, and now that Lyra was thinking more clearly and wasn’t quite so shocked, she could probably figure out a way to communicate with her, at least well enough to explain that she needed help and wasn't crazy.

And then… she had no idea. She couldn’t spend months here learning the language. She needed to find a way home before she lost her job, missed her rent payments, and got evicted from her apartment.

Lyra looked up and down the street again, but nothing had changed. At this point, she knew she was just stalling, so she set off in the opposite direction of the one she had come from earlier that day. She didn't know where the swordsman was now, but going back to the last spot she had seen him didn't seem like the best way to avoid him. She felt jumpy and tense, ready to race back to the relative safety of the temple at the first sign of trouble, but nothing happened. The only sound was the droning of insects, which rose and fell in waves.

Some of the buildings lining the street were clearly shops, though she couldn’t read the signs. The architecture seemed to favor small windows set deep into the stone walls, so she couldn’t see what was inside. Other buildings looked more like homes. Some windows glowed with light, but it was always the flickering glow of candles or fireplaces. She didn’t see any sign that this world had developed electricity yet.

The further she walked, the more eerie the stillness became. Twice, she saw someone looking at her through a window, only to duck out of sight when she glanced their way. The first time, she nearly turned back toward the temple, but no one came out to confront her.

The village was small enough that it didn’t take her long to near the edge of it. As she moved further away from the temple, which seemed to be at or near the village's center, the buildings grew further apart, giving each shop or home its own small yard. The grass, where it grew, was a drab, dusty green, and the weeds and flowers that sprouted here and there were all wilted. A calico cat watched her from its perch on top of a fencepost, but ignored her when she paused to try to lure it over with a quiet pspspsps.

With a sigh, she put her hands on her hips and gazed further down the road. It led past the edge of the village, past a couple of small farmsteads, and eventually, maybe half a mile down, vanished into a dark forest.

And it was dark under those trees. There was no way she was going anywhere near that forest tonight. As much as she was dreading her next confrontation with one of the locals, she desperately wanted the reassurance that she could communicate with them, that they were reasonable, and that once she had picked up a few phrases of the local language, someone might be willing to help her.

But it looked like that wasn’t going to happen tonight. Either the people here went to bed way earlier than was normal, or there was some other reason for them to spend the evening hiding in their houses. If it was the latter, she didn’t want to get caught outside when that reason made itself apparent.

She was about to turn around and head back to the temple when the front door of the house behind the fence the calico cat was sitting on slammed open and a middle-aged woman came out, her face red with exertion as she heaved a heavy basin of water into the yard.

As the water soaked into the red earth, the woman tilted and shook the basin to get the last few drops out, then glanced up and locked eyes with Lyra.

They both froze. The woman wasn’t one of the people Lyra had seen earlier, but it seemed like someone had told her about the strange girl who popped into existence in the middle of the road, because after a second in which neither of them moved, she straightened up and took an alarmed step back toward the door.

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“Wait,” Lyra said, raising her hands in what she hoped was the universal gesture for I mean no harm. “I know you can’t understand me, but I need to figure out a way to change that.” Slowly, she touched her hand to her chest. “I’m Lyra. My name’s Lyra.”

The woman hesitated, her eyes darting between Lyra’s green tunic and her face. Slowly, she lowered the basin of water to the ground and, to Lyra’s great relief, approached the fence. The cat jumped down from its perch on the fence post and gave her an irritated look before stalking away.

She said something unintelligible, then said it more slowly so it was still unintelligible but Lyra could start to make out the shape of the words. Finally, she said something that ended with the lilt of a question and pointed at Lyra.

“Lyra,” she repeated, mirroring the woman’s gesture and pointing at herself.

“Lyra.” The woman said her name oddly, drawing the ‘y’ out, but it didn’t matter. She was so relieved to have gotten a friendly, reasonable reaction that she nodded and beamed.

“Yes! That’s my name. What’s yours?”

She pointed at the woman who copied the gesture and said something that sounded like “Marid.” It took her a couple of tries to get the name right — the woman was not at all shy about correcting Lyra's pronunciation of her name — but when she did, she was left with a warm feeling of accomplishment.

Which faded rather quickly when she realized how much further she had to go. She had learned a single name, which wasn’t even really a word, just a way to get Marid’s attention. It had taken her weeks to be able to hold an extremely basic conversation in German and Spanish back when she was learning those languages in school, and that was with teachers who spoke English, textbooks, and video lessons to guide her pronunciation.

How long was this going to take?

“Marid." She pointed at the cat, who had jumped up on the corner fence post a few feet down and was studiously ignoring them. “How do you say 'cat'?”

Marid said something that, once again, Lyra had a hard time pronouncing. It sounded like a cross between the words ‘don’ and ‘done’ with an oddly nasal vowel sound that, try as she might, she just couldn’t figure out. Frustration made her give up the fifth time Marid corrected her.

It wasn’t like she wanted to talk about cats anyway.

“Fine, never mind,” she said. “There’s got to be a better way to do this.”

The woman frowned at her and crossed her arms. After a second, she looked over her shoulder at her house, then back at Lyra and said something.

Lyra had no idea if she was inviting her in or telling her to go away because she had to get back to her chores. She had to swallow against a lump in her throat. This wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t even pronounce this language; how could she learn to speak it well enough to explain what had happened to her and figure out where to go to get the help she needed? She didn’t have the months it would take to get to the point where she could hold a conversation. She had a life to get back to. A job. Friends. A father who was going to be worried sick about her in a couple of days. An older brother who… well, he probably wouldn’t care.

She sniffed and Marid sighed, reaching for the latch on the gate as if she had come to the decision to let her in. Two houses down, a door slammed open, making them both jump, and Marid took a step back, her expression oddly guilty.

When a little girl — the same one who had stolen her orange earlier, Lyra was pretty sure — ran out into the yard, they both relaxed. The girl spotted Marid and waved, shouting something that sounded friendly. Then she saw Lyra and her eyes widened before she dashed back into the house, still shouting.

Marid turned back to Lyra and made shooing motions, speaking urgently. Lyra backed away.

“What did that little girl say? Why do I have to leave?”

The woman reached over the fence to tug at the sleeve of her tunic, then pointed toward the temple. Her voice was clipped and even though Lyra couldn’t understand her, she sounded worried.

“All right, I’ll go. Can I come back tomorrow?” She pointed up at the sky, then at Marid, hoping to get her point across, but the woman’s face paled and she shook her head as she backed away.

Lyra had obviously done something wrong, but she didn’t know what and she didn’t have time to figure it out. The door to the house the little girl had come from opened again, and this time a man came out. The man. He wasn’t in his armor anymore, and was wearing a loose cotton shirt and trousers not too dissimilar to her own, but Lyra recognized him anyway. He was carrying his sword — still in its sheathe, but she had no doubt that could change in an instant — and his face hardened when he saw her.

Lyra felt pinned in place like a rabbit that had found itself face-to-face with a wolf. But then Marid turned to face the man and raised her voice to shout something at him. Lyra thought she heard her own name in there somewhere, but it didn’t matter.

As soon as his attention shifted from her to the older woman, she turned tail and raced back to the temple.

The temple seemed much darker when she returned. Far from being eerie, the darkness was comforting. She felt like she could hide in these shadows and disappear — and that was exactly what she did. She sat on the floor next to the bookshelf the cat’s bed was on and hugged her knees to her chest, watching the entrance and waiting for the man with the sword to drag her out, screaming.

He never came. Or if he did, he didn’t enter the temple. She had left the door open just enough for the tabby cat to fit through when she returned from wherever she had gone, and spent far too long waiting for the swordsman's shadow to fall across the faint light that spilled in through the gap.

Finally, when it was well and truly dark outside and the temple remained as quiet and lonely as it had been all day, she let her forehead fall against her knees and closed her eyes.

“You seem grieved, priestess.”

Lyra twitched and looked up. The grey woman hadn’t been in the temple when she got back — or at least, she hadn’t been visible — but now she was standing just in front of the basin of clear water. She didn't glow, exactly, but Lyra could see her perfectly fine despite the darkness. She licked her dry lips. She was thirsty. She wondered if the water was safe to drink.

“I’m never going to get out of here,” she whispered. “I’m never going to learn to speak this language. I can’t even say the word for cat. I’m going to spend the rest of my life as some weird homeless lady who lives in this temple and who has to beg for scraps while she dodges the law.”

“Allow me to help you, priestess. I have never enjoyed seeing souls so wounded and frightened as yours is. It cries out to me.”

“You said you couldn’t send me home.”

“No.” The grey woman floated closer, so Lyra’s neck was craned as she looked up at her. “I cannot return you to the place you came from, priestess. But learning and teaching is part of my lιən. With my blessing, you will learn the local tongue in moments.”

A vicious sort of hope flashed through her, only to be immediately overcome by wariness.

“You’re going to magically teach me another language? Just like that? For nothing?”

“Nothing is free, priestess. You must sacrifice to obtain a blessing. That is the way.”

“What would I have to sacrifice?” The word left a bad taste in her mouth. Every instinct she had was screaming that this was a bad idea.

And yet… did she have any other options?

“I ask only what is fair, priestess. Knowledge for knowledge. Words for words. I have never seen nor heard a language like your English before, and I hunger to know it completely. For that offering, I will teach you the language of this land.”

“You want to… learn English?” Lyra asked, confused. “Aren’t you already speaking it?”

“I speak to your soul, priestess. You hear my words in a way that makes sense to you, but I have no true knowledge of your language. When you speak to me, it is your soul that tells me the true meaning of your words.”

She decided she was past the point where she could afford to care about the details of the metaphysical stuff, or contemplate the existence of souls. She didn’t see what harm could come from teaching this grey woman English. Ghost or god, she didn’t seem evil, and besides, it wasn’t like there was anything she could do with the language. If the library temple was any indication, the grey woman just liked collecting knowledge.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. Give me the ability to speak the local language fluently, and you can do whatever it is you need to learn English from me.”