Universal Grammar

The next morning came. The light started its day with hostility towards all that it oversaw. I covered my eyes with my arms. The boar carcass could only block some of the sharp rays… but there was another shape. A figure of a woman. She had a bow drawn, pointing directly at me.

The unexpected scene left me blinking, and it took me a few seconds to react. I raised my arms immediately, but as gradually as possible so as not to startle her.

“I mean no harm.” I enunciated each word clearly.

She replied in a language I didn’t understand. I waited for a whisper to reveal her inner thoughts to me, but nothing of the sort happened. I shook my head with fervor, since I remembered Darwin said that this gesture should be universal across cultures, at least back on Earth. It was not like I had a better choice.

The gesture seemed to get through to her. She took a step back and lowered her bow a little. A brief gesture of her arms instructed me to leave the cave. She stepped aside to make way for me, all the while ready to shoot me dead if I gave her a reason to.

I stood up slowly and dragged myself towards the exit, back against the cave wall, maximizing my distance from her. Now that the Sun was no longer behind her, I was able to get a better look at her.

What stood out the most were her pointy ears, clearly part of the elf race from fictional media. She looked conventionally attractive, which seemed oddly par for the course for an elf. Her brown hair swayed in the morning breeze; her emerald eyes fixed on me. Meanwhile, her fashion sense ruined all that beauty. Silky light green shirt and pants with metal plates attached to her chest and shoulder, with tiny gaps between plates so as not to sacrifice flexibility. I didn’t know the value of armor that left her lower body exposed. A worn-out quiver sat on her back, containing only a few arrows.

The true deal breaker for her beauty was still her willingness to point a bow at a ten-year-old kid.

The boar smelled a lot worse than before, amazing how I could sleep through it. Parts of its torso were missing, too. Must have been a scavenger. I also noticed two arrows stuck in two spots on the boar, the very same arrows that the elf was using. That immediately reminded me of the phrase “beating a dead horse.”

I stopped right outside the cave, still some distance away from the corpse. The elf passed by me and went straight to the boar. She returned the drawn arrow to her quiver. She freed a dagger from her belt and swung it at the boar. I nodded, making the same stabbing motion at the boar. She regarded me with suspicious eyes. Then she signaled me to sit down by pointing at me and squatting. It was difficult to follow her gestures, as I had to hold back my laughter at how ridiculous her motions were. The tension in my muscles had mostly faded, but I still took care not to aggravate her.

She carved out chunks of meat from the boar and started a fire effortlessly, using nothing more than a sharpened stick on a log, which irritated me more than anything else she did. The more rotted parts were picked out, and the acceptable parts were skewered on tree branches. She cooked the meat, occasionally glancing my way. There was really nothing for her to worry about, since I couldn’t take her in a fight in this state. I could only smile and wave every time she looked my way, and I got glares in return, but those glares got less hostile over time and more annoyed.

She gave me a skewer of meat after eating some herself. I gladly chowed down on the first meal I had since coming to this imagined world. My child body desperately sought the nutrients, and maybe this was why people usually let the children eat first, just saying. She sneakily let a smile surface, and it quickly disappeared the moment I set eyes on her. Back to the serious expression she wore to hammer it home that she didn’t trust me at all.

I needed her survival skills, so establishing a trust relationship was crucial. Self-introductions should be in order, so I pointed at myself. “Thomas.” She was too preoccupied with maintaining her threatening look that she didn’t even react to what I said at first. It took a while for her to return the gesture.

Lyla, that was the name the elf attributed to herself. We traveled together for a few days, during which she eventually gave me more to carry, mostly clothes, since my strength was limited. I believed it would still be useful, as even the slight drop in weight should allow her to jump into battle quicker.

She slept in treetops at night. The dangers of falling off while rolling over didn’t seem to bother her, but my worried gaze must have conveyed my concerns about dying in my sleep, because she ended up tying me to the top of branches at night. That certainly solved the problem, because I couldn’t sleep at all. Well, at least at first, I got used to it after a few hours of insomniac torture.

Two revelations had come to me so far. First, I was completely useless in battle. I didn’t know the conditions for my earlier strength and toughness increases. They never came up after I killed the boar, and there wasn’t a way for me to test my theories on dangerous boars, not before I could better communicate with Lyla and ask for her advice.

This came to the second revelation: Lyla wasn’t too great with her archery. From the influence of pop culture, I assumed elves would be extremely precise with their bow hits, but Lyla missed half of her shots, and at least the sheer quantity of arrows could overwhelm the giant spider and the giant bear that we came across. Luckily, her quiver regenerated arrows out of thin air, or she would have run out of projectiles at her first match against a rabbit (a normal-sized one). It was weird that she would bother to pick up the used arrows, though I did not condone littering.

Our journey of a few days finally brought us to some signs of civilization. Albeit it was only a decrepit shack on top of a clear hill. The circular area around it was devoid of trees; its outer stone walls lined with a black substance, too dark to be mold. Lyla apparently sensed the same uncanniness as I did; her footsteps sounded heavier. She signaled me to wait a few steps away from the door (at this point, we could communicate quite well), and knocked.

A human voice answered in an unknown language. I had no idea if that was the same as what Lyla had spoken back then. Lyla conversed with it without a hint of confusion, so it might have been. Then she gestured for me to get closer. With every step, I felt a stronger sense of emptiness, like I had missed something crucial, but between this sketchy place and being tied up on another branch, it was clear which one I would choose.

She nudged the door open, revealing quite a bland interior. Everything in the same brown color, even the outer walls, which were lined with a veil of wood. I couldn’t help but let out a quiet sigh. Lyla must have felt the same, as she showed no courtesy in hiding the obvious disappointment on her face.

The arrangement of the furniture told me that this place was an inn. A few public tables and chairs, a small pathway leading to the doors of two guest rooms, and a counter with a friendly-looking innkeeper behind it, completed with the standard white beard and big belly. A little too friendly, his smile looked so fake that I deduced it might fall off any second; perhaps he was sick of dealing with customers.

Lyla strode to the innkeeper, still wearing a displeased expression. I would rather she not keep that, as who knows what the innkeeper would add to our food, but I had no way to tell her that. She would probably threaten me again if I did anything weird. Lyla entered a light argument with the innkeeper, but I only gauged this by judging their tone; they could be insulting each other’s mothers, and I would be none the wiser.

An “argument” might not be the best way of describing their conversation, as it was mostly Lyla complaining, or at least she seemed like she was complaining. The innkeeper remained calm, replying in a monotone voice. If we were on Earth, I would have chalked this up to another victim of the service industry, but in this world where boars the size of minivans dwelled, I shouldn’t jump to a conclusion so quickly.

A chill crept up and clutched my heart, and with this feeling, it clicked for me what made this situation so unsettling. A single building in the middle of nowhere, lacking paths that linked it to any settlements, surrounded by a forest with dangerous creatures. No guards or any sign of a single weapon. This inn reminded me of the candy house in the tale of Hansel and Gretel. That meant the innkeeper was a cannibal who planned to eat us in our sleep.

The whisper returned, this time in a distinct voice: that of the innkeeper. Unlike the inner world of the boar, this time, I could understand each word from the innkeeper that leaked into my mind. The content of the speech was much more disturbing than it was for the boar, because the innkeeper kept forming internal comments on how delicious and tender my youthful body looked, with little concern with Lyla at all. The attention on me had never felt so repulsive. I quickly distracted myself with more thoughts before the build-up of disgust showed on my face. I sincerely doubted this creature was human; at least, I would wholeheartedly pretend it wasn’t, regardless of the truth. My eyes flitted to the exit, but I stopped myself and took a deep breath. It had not attacked yet, and it mentioned attacking us in our sleep, so maybe it had no confidence in overpowering us… This was when something interrupted my thought.

“This is an insult to me. Which part do you not get?” said Lyla. Comprehension. I could understand her. This simple sentence of whining that would be pointlessly mundane in other contexts instantly closed the gaping chasm between the two of us. We could finally understand the same language.

“SORRY. CUSTOMER. SORRY. CUSTOMER. PLEASE ENJOY.” The innkeeper said.

Understanding his words made him sound so much more robotic. It was beyond me how this creature could trick anyone. No one would be dumb enough to stay a night here. That-

“Fine. We will stay here. You'd better be grateful.”

Lyla’s words forced my jaw to open and my eyes to go wide. She slammed a few coins on the counter and dragged me towards the guest. I could ask her to leave, but how could I explain my sudden fluency in her language?

As I was still deep in thought, we arrived in a simple bedroom with nothing but one bed. A barred skylight let the moonlight in, not that there was much to illuminate. Everything was wooden, including the bedsheets. Was the monster stupid? How could anyone fall asleep on that?

“This is better than I thought.”

Really? Better? Who is this woman? Lyla hogged the entire bed at lightning speed; she didn’t forget to tell me that the corner of the room was mine. I started to consider that Lyla treated me more like a pet than a child, though it was not like the bed would be any more comfortable than the floor, as they were made of the same cold, stiff wood.

The next moment, Lyla dropped asleep on the bed, so abruptly that I needed to check her pulse to confirm she was alive. She had never fallen into slumber this quickly in the past few days, and this wooden board couldn’t be that much more comfortable than a tree branch. I suspected the involvement of sleeping gas, but this theory quickly dissipated once I heard the innkeeper’s thoughts. It was still planning to attack us later at night.

That was why I could not afford to fall asleep; instead, I spent what must have been close to an hour listening to the innkeeper’s thoughts. I couldn’t confirm what kind of creature he would be, but I got more confident in my speculation that he wasn’t human. His thoughts were simple, with his most complicated plan being to wait until the dead of night to eat us. Patience is a quality that could be seen in dogs, birds, and other primates, so this creature should have similar intelligence to them.

His strategy of trapping us didn’t give me much information about his strength, as predators might only employ this strategy to prevent their prey from escaping. I punched the floor, but nothing happened besides my knuckles swelling. This should show that the creature was not strong enough to destroy wood, assuming that my strength truly corresponded to the creature whose mind I was reading. At least, that was what happened when I was linked to the boar.

I came up with a plan to survive, but I absolutely hated it. It began with waking up Lyla. Hopefully, she wouldn’t kill me for that. Steeling my resolve, I shook Lyla by the shoulder, my head leaning back in case she swung her dagger at me.

Good news, she didn’t. But the bad news was that instead, she got me in a headlock before I could realize what was going on. I could only hope that the creature had awful reflexes, too.

“I was finally getting some good sleep. And you had to ruin it.” She said. Her glare was so sharp that I would rather face the emotionless innkeeper.

“I’m sorry…” I blurted out.