The Language

“Careful here,” Fen’s tail pressed against the ground, her front leg wobbling as she slowly rebalanced it against the narrow ground. “It’s uneven,” she pointed down at the smooth, gray stone ledge, just wide enough for both her feet without an extra inch of space. Moxi brushed the sides of her desk. She tilted her chin up and walked onward, her shoes splashing against a thin stream of water that ran over the walks, and left them all slick. Even Moxi held her left hand against the cliff beside us, it felt more secure.

“This would be easy if you walked faster,” Moxi pressed her back completely against the rock wall behind her, “If I was to slip it’s because I’ve ought to keep waiting on you to move. Whyever did I permit you to take the lead?”

“I’ve climbed a lot before!” Fen poked the stream with her foot, flicking her ankle after to try getting the water off. Little droplets sprayed back, staining Moxi’s dress.

“Careful!”

“A-always!” Fen yelped at the thought of being scolded. Her shoulders pinched backward, and her tail flicked sideways against the wall. “I-I’m always careful, I promise!” Standing entirely in back was Mayor Glib, laughing very softly to himself. He waited until they were both on entirely solid ground before lumbering after them. His wide feet looked quite precarious, the edge of one shoe drifting over the edge, and the dampness looking like it would trip him far and over the side, plummeting down and down below. Yet, he did not, and in a moment, he was on the other side, having crossed much faster than either of my companions.

He took an overloud, mockingly deep breath as he planted his feet theatrically on the other side. The mayor took a bow and made a point of slowly clapping his hands, “Quite treacherous, this foe of terrain. You adventurers lead me to safety, and I am a gracious man.”

That was hardly this. They three stood on a craggy, semicircular ledge, thick and wide enough for the three of them to walk around, but with only another thin crack to keep walking upon. I landed at the very tip, letting my legs hang off the side of the rock. I could still easily fly up to the top and out of the mine in just a couple seconds. There was the foundation of a little house not ten yards above us. The roots of one tree cut through the edge of the mine, hanging out over our side. “Yes,” Moxi looked back at the way we’d come, “it is quite impressive that I’ve gotten all the way here. Just yesterday I’d only left Tinborough, and that took us through the Queen’s Gale, where we fended off three great monsters.”

Fen’s ears perked up proudly, “They were a flower, a bench, and a frog!”

“These ones perplex me,” said the mayor. Though his eyes were trained on me, I thought he must have been talking to himself. I’d barely heard him at all, my eyes seeming to sink in the extending hole of the quarry. Even partway down, there was still a blackness that oozed out from the very bottom, whatever was there. There were cracks in the stone far below, long and black like mold slowly climbing up the sides of the mine. I didn’t fully hear him at all as the mayor went on and on, and when again I finally turned to notice him, he had a pointed grin across his face. He leaned down to Moxi and pretended to whisper, just loud enough for us all to hear, “Best be careful around the catgirl, there’s an arrogance in them that can put any adventure at risk.”

“I’m not a catgirl!” Hissed Fen. “I’m a catfolk, just as all the Toads are!”

“My apologies!” Hummed the mayor, “I’d misspoke, and not once meant a slight against your majestic people! A people of pungent cuisine and something else in French…” He paused, “You don’t all know what French is.”

“French?” I thought out loud. I had more than heard of French in my past life, and I’d been meaning to someday visit France. I turned my head toward him, “Bonjour.”

He looked up at the sky, “W-well, I would not have thought there was an Earth-person here! And, in such… limited proportions.” Having spoken the language of the Second World before, and one I’d never stopped to think was quite different from English, the Mayor began speaking English, also, “G’day, ya little mozzie. Why d’you hang around ‘ese bludgers?” Moxi and Fen both looked at him in a funny way. Neither of them had ever heard the English language in their past life, nor this one.

“They’re accompanying me south to the capital. We’re looking to find a cure to my mother’s curse,” I responded in the language of the Second World.

“Strange stopover in Venne.”

I looked lower down into The Grandfather, “We needed a place to stop and rest. Fen said she knew some rumor about the mine. Uranium,” I mumbled, “It’s just a funny name to them, but of course it stuck out to me. Uranium, it’s an English word being used in the language of the Second World.”

The mayor tilted his head side-to-side, “In 1977, Nicaragua opened a school for deaf children. Ya know this story?” He took a deep breath, then went back to speaking in the language of the Second World. “These folks open a school for deaf kids, and these kids can’t hear, so they don’t know the language the adults are talking. Now, it doesn’t take them right long at all. The kids invent their own language, just using their hands. It’s only humans in this world, no fins, wings, tails. They’re kids, and the signs all look like things they know. Hands over their face means raccoon or something. So, what happens when you dump a bunch of people in one place, they all speak languages from other universes, and they don’t sound anything alike. They start teaching each other one word here and there from each language, and they crush it all together like clay until they have something new. That’s why there are some English words in the language of the Second World.”

“But, Uranium?” My wings spread out behind me, “Why were they talking about that when they made the language… who knows, a thousand years ago?”

“Oh, nobody was talking about it before a few decades ago,” answered Mayor Glib, “why, there have been a few Earthlings that found their way to the mining guild. These things the other worlds don’t know about yet… In the right hands, little fairy, these tools could set the Earthlings on a higher stool. Where were you from, and when? I died in Sydney, in the late eighties.”

“New York, two thousand and twenty-five.”

“It’s been that long?” He looked down at his hands, “Would you believe I’m only forty in this life?”

Fen shook her head, “It’s not possible for you both to be from this same Earth. You only had similar dreams.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase deja vu, little kitty?” The mayor asked, “Tell me, what does it mean? It’s irregular, the conjugation doesn’t make any sense in the language of the Second World.”

“It means something that you experienced before,” Fen said, “like something from a dream, but now it’s real. I don’t know where the word comes from.”

“French,” I answered, “it’s a language from Earth. France and England were two different countries that were enemies for a long time. They both conquered a whole lot of the world hundreds of years ago, so a lot of people on Earth speak English or French. Including people where I came from.”

Mayor Glib scratched his hairy chest, “Language is one way to identify people from the same world. They could’ve heard any little detail from someone. But, to have learned a whole language from another universe, it’ll weed out most liars.”

Moxi snorted, “What kind of a person would lie about what world they’re from? What’s it to them?”

Glib shrugged, “I’ve been one to tell such lies. The worlds are all opponents, different contestants in the same game. You’re not from Earth, anyway. So don’t you mind one bit.”

I fluttered up, “I know what you’re trying to make. It won’t work. The loudspeaker man said that when I first got here, futuristic weapons would explode if…”

Mayor Glib blinked, “Child, you misunderstand us. The Mining Guild tries not to create some such devastating weapon. Not without being forced of it. The former people of Earth intend to use our knowledge to assist all the peoples of the Second World.” He pointed down at one of the miners far below, dragging a cart, its worn-down wheels screeching against the slick stone. Glib smiled, “Remind me, where will you lot be going next?”

“The capital,” answered Fen.

“Then, I conclude your tour here,” replied the mayor, “and I most certainly recommend you make haste away from Venne. There is beauty here, but it will keep you here… unendingly… if you err too much around it.”