Joan felt strangely disappointed.

She wasn't sure what she had expected from her first Gondwanan. Someone alien yes, but arrogant and powerful, too. Instead, the atheist girl just seemed confused and uncomfortable. She squirmed in her chair, poking ineffectually at her mashed potatoes with her knife and, for some reason, the handle of her spoon.

The baby whooped and Aunt Agatha turned to fuss with it. The Gondwanan winced. Her gray eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, still holding Grandma Mary's shawl closed with one pudgy hand.

"Is that why your chairs are constructed that way? So you can nurse infants while you eat? Or is it the other way around?"

"Excuse me?" Aunt Agatha asked, but the Gondwanan was looking at Joan.

Joan blinked, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass. "Aunt Agatha isn't nursing the baby. She's taking care of it because its mother was transported."

"Transported? Aha, you mean to the North American penal colonies in the Yukon." The girl spoke aloud the family's recurring nightmare as if discussing the behavior of fish. "Is the infant's mother a relative of yours? Sister or cousin?"

"No, she's a neighbor."

Dark spots drew together as the pagan wrinkled her brow. "So no kin selection is involved?"

"I don't know what that means."

"What are you people saying?" Grandpa John struck the arms of his chair, "Speak English! Show some respect! Who raised you?"

"She's talking about the baby, grandpa. She says it's lovely," Joan invented.

"What baby?" Grandpa John stared at her. He was getting confused again.

"Never mind, John." Grandma Mary reached out and stroked her husband's hand.

He smiled at her. "You've gotten fat."

Grandma Mary gave Grandpa John's hand a pat and nodded at Joan. "See to it that we all introduce ourselves."

So, Joan undertook the task of teaching the Gondwanan all the names of everyone at the table. Names the girl insisted on mispronouncing. Grandma Mary and Grandpa John became "Kramma Mari" and "Kramba Chon." Aunt Agatha and Tommy became "And Akatha" and "Tami." George became "Chorch" and Joan herself was "Chone."

"Joan," Joan corrected, "juh juh juh Joan."

"Chone," the Gondwanan said, "chuh chuh chuh Chone."

"The sound is vocalized." George was still staring at their guest, and frowning furiously. No wonder he was still a bachelor.

The Gondwanan girl smiled, perfect teeth bright in a wide, expressive mouth. "Aha!" She grabbed her throat and hummed, "mmmm, Jmum, mmmGeorge."

Aunt Agatha clapped, which seemed to scare the girl. "Now," she said, in English, enunciating every word, "what, is, your, name?"

Joan translated, and gave the Gondwanan the English answer.

"Muh," their guest stammered, "mai...neim iis..." then an incomprehensible clutch of syllables that must be a word in Gondwanan. "In Ilinwa, that would be Aapweepihseewa."

"She riccochets?" George translated. "What the devil is that supposed to mean?"

"What did she say?" asked Grandma Mary.

"Bounce," said Joan in English, "she says her name is Bounce."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Bounce," the girl repeated, hands up, stubby fingers wriggling, "That's my received name. My nickname. Bounce Nakmara Oh-Three-Five-Four."

"Why?" said little Tommy. Joan wondered the same thing. Nakmara was prettier than "bounce," in whatever language.

"Why what? Nakmara is my skin name and the other is my Band Identification Number." The Gondwanan made another odd movement with her fingers. "A skin name tells people my moiety. My received name tells them my personal identity. Don't you do that? Isn't it the same system everywhere?"

The Ilinwa did the same thing, Joan knew, and for that matter, so did Christians. George Boatman. Grandpa John Miller. And Joan Stay-at-home.

"Where did you get the nickname Bounce?"

Tommy giggled and George growled.

"Because I hit the ground, then come back up again." The Gondwanan bounced in her chair, to demonstrate.

"Oh. Bounce. Cute."

"Also 'cause of my boobs," she pointed, "I'm big on top for a Gondwanan, but I guess these aren't so unusual with your people, huh?" She smiled at Joan.

The sound of George's grinding teeth was audible from across the table. "We will call you Miss Nakmara," he pronounced.

Joan couldn't help but agree.

***

"Well, that was educational."

It was later, long after sunset, and George lay on his bed, smoking a cheap cigarette.

"Be kind, George," came Joan's voice from the other side of the curtain that separated them.

George softened the harsh retort that came first to his lips. Anger was ever his temptation, but Joan deserved guidance. She had been younger when the pagans took their father away. Their mother too, come to think of it. "I would be happier if you didn't speak to me so disrespectfully."

A sigh from his sister. "Don't you have reading to go to?"

"We don't have the money for candles." He paused, listening to little Tommy snore in the trundle bed. "And my reading days are over. My days are over for everything but the Cause."

"You sound like your life is over. What about your family? What about a wife?"

A wife needed a husband, alive and un-exiled. But what George said was, "Who would want his granddaughter to marry a boatman with three quarters of a priest's education? With no savings and no prospects of getting any? His family so poor they have to rent out their bedroom to a greased-up, spotted harlot." George kept his voice low with effort.

"Nakmara traveled here from the other side of the world. Of course she'll be...well. At least we got some decent clothes on her."

The Gondwanan's speckled hourglass figure bloomed in his mind like a succubus. "I wouldn't go so far as 'decent.'"

"So is that why you were staring at her all during dinner?"

George had to stifle his cough in his mattress. He'd sucked in too deep a breath.

"I was not," he finally managed, "staring."

"Why wouldn't you? She is very," Joan snickered, "bouncy."

George glared at the curtain, "What sort of conversation is this for us to be having? You need a husband more urgently than I need a wife, clearly, if this is the sort of thing you're thinking about."

"In other words, I win."

"I do not recognize that we were competing." George sucked murky air through his cigarette. "All right. For the sake of your dowry, if not my advancement, I will treat our cuckoo's egg with all the respect due to a Christian woman."

Joan yawned. "Maybe you'll convert her. Haven't you studied missionizing?"

George rolled over and stubbed out his cigarette against the plate on the floor. "Only as history." The last Christian missions had probably been to far-eastern Khitania, before that great civilization fell as well to the Gondwanan conquerors. The days of an expanding Christendom were long over.

And yet if George could convert Miss Nakmara, what a coup that would be. How fine, to return to his original calling, to make Father Barnabas proud of him again, to walk in the footsteps of Augustine of Canterbury, Wulfia the Arian.

Knock knock.

George started up from his half-sleep, heart pounding.

Knock knock.

Someone outside was rapping on the wall. Not another visitor, this one. Not a guest, but work. The Cause.

"Oh no," Joan groaned. "Oh, George, not again."

But George had already swung his legs out of bed. "Go to sleep, Joan, I'll be back before dawn."

"Ugh." Joan's bed creaked. "You really need a wife."

George had something better, or at least more necessary. He left his family and the interloper to their sleep.