CHAPTER 20

 

TARA

 

This place is huge.  Right now, I’m on what I refer to as the third deck.  I’ve no idea what one really calls the different levels of a spaceship, but since I’m the only one that understands me anyhow, I say I get to make up my own terms.

I drag the heavy bucket, then gratefully drop it to the floor.  It’s not heavy with water—actually, it’s got very little water in it: it’s just a heavy dang bucket.  I guess if you’re a giant space alien, these sorts of materials make sense.  It doesn’t bother them to lift them, after all.  They make it look easy.

This last I know for a fact, because the one with horns actually hauls this thing around, which is what clued me in to the fact that it even was a bucket.  It doesn’t look like any bucket I know: it looks like a round top, stainless steel garbage can, but I saw him using it: it holds mop water!

And he mops the floors every day.  Which I wouldn’t have expected.  You’d think the big boss—which, he sure acts like, which everyone else treats him like—you wouldn’t think he’d be the one to do the heavy mopping.

It seems like a job I can do though.

I just wish ‘heavy mopping’ wasn’t so literal.

Heaving the freakishly cumbersome mop out by its giant-sized handle, I manage to squeegee the end.

That done, I let it bang to the floor and I do a mini victory whoop, complete with raised “Eye of the Tiger” fist pumps.  For the first time in a while, I feel my heart lift a little.  I’ve been holding on to the bravest face I can, but I’m not exactly a poker player, and I’m freaking out: inside and out.  I could tell that the Kentaur didn’t want to leave me alone because he kept making worried cackling noises in his throat. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I tried to reassure him.  My plan is unfortunately going to take some time, plus it was obvious he had things to do, and somewhere to be.  Finally, he’d given me a scalp-massage and one last concerned look before he’d rushed off like he was late.

So I’ll admit that I’d been sad, and worried, and once I was alone, those feelings didn’t exactly improve by a whole lot.

But right here, for right now, something’s going good.  Something is happening. “Wooo!  Squeegeed this sucker, finally!”

Technically, this is my second time doing this.  The first time I was unprepared for wielding something that feels as heavy as a Shetland pony, so you could say I wasn’t feeling like I’d managed a brag-worthy level of achievement.  I’m not even going to count that sad excuse for a test drive I did back on deck one.  But now?  Look at me!  I’m DOING something here, being helpful—useful!

But before I can send this thing on its first (official) slide along the floor, a scaly hand clamps down on the handle.

I shriek in surprise.

The big horned alien turns sunset red, and shakes his head hard, sending his ears flapping against his neck—and one of his horns scores a deep scratch in the wall.

He shoots me a look of extreme dislike.  Harumph—he can just take that look right to the mirror!

“You scared me!”  I explain.

You know, I’m convinced that this one can almost understand me.  Right now, I’m nearly totally convinced he’s at least got a seriously decent grasp because his lip quirks for just the briefest second.

Right before he’s glowering at me again.

“What?”  I yank up my shoulders and spread my hands.  “What is your deal?”  Then I motion to the mop.  “You can see I’m working here.  Go do… bossy things.”

He yanks the mop out of my hands.

“Hey—!” I gasp.  “I didn’t mean bossy things to me.  No!  No, go away.  Go intimidate the other three.  You seem to like that a lot,” and I shoo him away from the bucket.

Except... he does not shoo.

He does not shoo at all.

Instead, he sloshes what little water there is inside the bucket to the floor when he carelessly tosses the mop back inside.

“You didn’t just do that!  Do you know how long it took me to squeegee that!  You—Y-ou!”  I’m so incensed my hands are shaking.  “You jerk!”

I’m trying to do a good thing here.  The honorable thing:  I’m getting free room and board, and I don’t exactly have any useful skills for running a spaceship but if I can handle this, at least I’m contributing something.  As callous as the thought makes me feel, I want these aliens to like me enough to help me.  I need them to like me enough to help me.  But this… this jerk is going to screw it all up!

I lunge for the mop—and feel a tickle at my neck.  I move to slap it away… and my hand brushes against something fuzzy.  Like moth-antennae fuzzy.  A giant moth antennae.

I leap back, sucking in air, preparing to scream.

He wiggles the thing he’s holding in his hand.  The thing that touched me.  He touched me.  With the moth antennae.

I take a deep breath, and work super hard to modulate my voice.  “I don’t like you,” I tell him as calmly as I can.

He makes a weird cough noise in response—it’s so much like a laugh that, again, I swear he almost knows what I’m saying.  I squint at him.

He pokes me with the antennae.

I snatch the end of it, ripping it out of his hand.

His big brows go up like I’m full of all sorts of riveting surprises.  I stab the feathery point against his nose.  “You’re lucky this is as soft as it is.  Otherwise, I’d use it to shove it up your—”

He starts miming something.  I narrow my eyes.  He’s miming the act of dusting.

I throw the antenna, sending it bouncing with a quiet clatter to the tile.  There’s a stick in the base of it, much like a feather duster.  I’m going to go out on a limb and connect the dots.  “I know what to do with a feather duster, okay?  But there is nothing to dust. Plus I’m too short to sweep the ceilings in this ship but I can reach the freaking floor so I’m here to mop!”

When the sound of my own voice stops ringing in my ears, I realize that I’ve never heard myself yell like this before.  I’ve got two kids and I’ve never yelled like this or this much in my life.  I’ve never lost control like this before.  “You’re a bad influence on me,” I accuse him, glaring.  Because we both know he’s no stranger to loud temperamental fits.  That seems to be his only other setting.

Strangely, he seems amused at the fact that I’m fighting him for the privilege to mop his stupid floors, and that I’m refusing to follow his overly bossy orders.  He bends to retrieve the feather duster, shakes it out, and then reaches for me with it.

All of my muscles lock as I glare him down.  “Don’t do it.”

He does.  He pets me.  He pets me with a feather duster.

I’m.  Seething.

He reaches his free hand into his pocket, and pulls out a fizzle bar.  I saw him use this: I didn’t know where he kept them, so I wasn’t able to add any to the mop water, but this seems to be floor soap.

Positioning it with a mincing clasp between a claw and his thumb, he holds it out to me.  Like we have to be very careful not to make any skin to skin contact.

I grab it and start snapping it in little pieces, just like I saw him do.  It’s brittle enough to easily break, and you know?  Sort of therapeutic.  “Arrrgh!”  I snarl as I crumble the last of it, whipping it into the bucket.  Silently, he hands me another.

And another.

When he runs out of them, I’m panting hard, and blinking, and shaking a little.  But… I think I feel better. I’ve been trying to keep a smile pasted on my face while I try to focus on one step at a time: because breaking down will do me no good here.  But it’s exhausting, fighting fear.  Worry.  Panic.  In addition to the overwhelming, gnawing sense of helplessness.

Right now though, for just a second, it’s like background noise.  I can breathe again.  Think a little clearer.

I’m so used to the absence of anyone’s voice but mine, suddenly hearing the deep rumble of his startles me when he starts to speak.  I hear a lot of clicks with it, and I don’t understand a word, which he knows.  But he keeps talking.  And petting me.  With a household cleaning product.

And then… realization dawns.  He’s not talking to me: he’s repeating the same series of sounds.

He’s trying to teach me something.

And… the feather duster?

He goes still, his eyes scanning me forehead-to-foot.  He sees that I’m getting where he’s going with this; I’m sure of it.  He repeats his word one more time, and reaches the duster out to pat me.

Positive reinforcement.

Without my filter of frustration and worry, I can now discern that both the sound and the gesture are… reassuring.  It’s crazy, but I swear he’s repeating the alien equivalent of ‘CALM down,’ pat, pat.

He’s trying to communicate with me.

Yes!  YES!!!

“GOOD!”  I shout, and I jump in place—which makes him jerk back a step, but I don’t care: I’m clapping my hands in excitement.  “This is good!  We need to keep doing this!  I have to tell you—”

An alarm blares.

They do this a lot.  I don’t know what it means but hopefully it’s nothing more important than this right here.

“Noooo,” I quickly say and rush toward him when he tries to leave.  “Wait!”

I wasn’t going to touch him.  I learned my lesson back in the kitchen: this alien = no touchie.  All I wanted to do was communicate that I need to communicate.

I don’t mean to make him upset.

It becomes very clear, very fast that I am never, ever to even get close to touching this alien.

In reaction to my fast approach, he throws himself backward, leaping to the other side of the hallway—he actually dents the wall!  His horns sink right into the metal; where the points didn’t pierce, the raised areas of his horns mold the surface, leaving ribbed impressions that show off a horn span so wide it would make a Texas Longhorn bull feel inadequate.

Dumbly, I stare.

With a mean sounding—not to mention scary—hiss, he illustrates for me that he isn’t amused with me anymore, in any way.

I wince.  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s your turn to…”  I mimic his ‘calm down’ word.

His body jolts, his mask of outrage disappearing for just the teeniest, tiniest second before he makes a noise of disbelief like ‘Puny human, I can bite you in two.’

And he’s back to glowering, but even more sternly.  I cannot make this one happy!

“I promise I had no intention of touching you this time.  I’d also like to remind you that last time, it was only your suit.  You’re blowing this all out of proportion.  I mean, come on; if I was harboring anything communicable that would kill you, surely you’d be dead by now, right?  Right!  So if you could stop glaring at me like that, that’d be great.  Any time.”

I wait.

But he doesn’t relax.  Instead, I watch all of his visible muscles tense (along with some of the muscles covered by fabric but are so buff they strain against it like he’s about to hulk out of his clothes) and with a mighty heave, he’s free of the wall.  He snatches the bucket and mop with all the effort of ripping a tissue out of a Kleenex box, and stalks away.

The stupid alarm is still blaring, and to my ears, sounding unhappy and accusing.