We decided to head back home and get Alexia settled before we did anything else. We walked mostly in silence, but Rani and Belle clung to my arms happily and Aeyli walked behind and talked quietly with Alexia and I didn’t hear what they said.
The village was fairly small and it took only about 20 minutes to walk from the house to the center where the market was. Nothing was more than a 40 minute walk. It was pleasant and we arrived in about 15 minutes, the wood shop being closer than the market.
I say about 20 minutes, but I realized that I didn’t have any way to know and should probably stop guessing. The days on Barsoom were different than on Earth and without a watch, I really had no idea how long things took. And it didn’t matter at all. We walked for a little while and before we got tired or bored, we got where we were going. That was really all that I knew. I could tell if the sun had moved, and it gave some indication of the time of day, but not in 20 minute increments.
When we arrived at the house, we went in and Alexia stood near the door waiting. Aeyli came and whispered, “Mark, she waits for you. Give her instructions.”
I looked at Alexia and smiled as warmly as I could and said, “Alexia, welcome to our home, I’m glad that you have chosen… to come. I would like you to make yourself at home here. Aeyli, Rani, and Belle, all speak very highly of you.” Then I added, “They have convinced me that they love you. We just have some small projects that we thought that it would be nice to have done to make the house more comfortable. I have a few in mind, but I don’t even know what all we’ll ask you to do.”
She said, “I will do what you ask of me. May I call you Mark?”
She spoke in almost a monotone. Not quite, but almost. The weirdest thing was that even her telepathic communication was almost devoid of emotional content. It was disconcerting enough for me, but to people who were used to always knowing exactly what other people meant when they spoke, it must have been really unnerving. Yes, they would think that this girl was very odd. But I found it weirdly exciting. I was falling in love by the second. Aeyli was right. And that she wanted to be more familiar and call me Mark thrilled me for some reason. Actually, I knew the reason. I just didn’t think that I could admit it. The fact was that I really wanted her to like me.
I smiled and said, “Yes, please do! That will be very nice. Alexia, I can’t tell you how happy that will make me.”
She looked at me and said, “Mark, do you want me to stay here? While I work for you? Do you want me to sleep and eat with you?”
I thought, sleep with me? Oh do I ever. Wait, slow down. What’s wrong with me. We haven’t even hardly been introduced. What was I thinking?
I said, “Alexia, that’s up to you. If you’d like that, I’d be very happy to have you stay.”
I want to add, ‘and sleep with us’, but if I did, she’d know exactly what I meant and there’d be no way to claim a misunderstanding. Wait, when she said ‘sleep with you’, what did she mean? Because she was devoid of emotional content, there was no way for me, or anyone else, to know! But if I said it, she’d know exactly what was on my mind. I wasn’t myself right now. Aeyli had warned me about taking things in steps. I thought that the proper step was probably to ask her to marry me and run outside the gate or whatever and make it happen.
Instead, I tried to stay more calm and said, “Alexia, I feel like I want to get to know you. If you’d rather not, um sleep here, you’re free do as you like. So yes, I do want you to stay here, but only because I think that it would be very nice to have you live with us. I mean, um, get to know you better. I want you to feel at home here. I mean while you are here, if you want to stay. If you will eat and sleep here, please feel free to treat this as your home and sleep anywhere you want to. Um, from now on.”
I was flustered. She made my heart race. I was making a fool of myself. I really hoped that she didn’t get offended. Damn, I may have just blown it badly.
She said simply, “I will stay with you.”
I said quickly, “I’m so happy to hear that. We have plenty of rooms. You can have a room and stay wherever you want to and we’ll make you as comfortable as we can. There’s um, something else. Oshen told us that you could work for me for 40 days.”
She corrected me saying, “At least 40.”
I continued, “Yes, but I don’t know if the work will take you all day long, every day. If it would be OK with you, I’d be really pleased if you would spend days when I have no work for you, doing other things that we’ll be doing. If you’d like to.”
She said, “If I have no other work, I will do what you want. I understand that you would not want to send me back to Oshen before the time he has given has ended. There’s no reason to risk hard feelings. I can do other tasks if you like. I can clean.”
I said, “Well, I was wondering about other things. You heard that I’m teaching Aeyli to use weapons? I’ll be teaching Rani and Belle as well. I wonder if you’d like me to teach you.”
Alexia brightened just a tiny bit and smiled somewhat slyly and said, “I would like to learn anything that I can from you. If you will teach me, I will… enjoy it.”
And, there was the first hint of meaning in her telepathy that I had been able to detect. She meant that she was open to having me teach her whatever I would, because she wanted to have the time and intimacy that would be involved in the learning.
I smiled and said, “Then, I’ll teach you. And, if we go for a short journey, outside the village gates, even over night?”
She said, “Then I’ll go with you unless you tell me to stay here.”
I said, “Good. Oh good. Then if we go, we can all go together. And we’ll eat together and train together and sleep um, in the same place whether we’re here or away. And I want you to help us decide what we need in order to make our new home the way that it should be. I value our time together.”
She said, “Mark, you asked for me specifically.”
I said, “Yes. You want to know the reason. I asked for you because these girls say that they love you and they say that of all the people in the village, you are the one person that they think that I should to get to know first. For some reason, they believe that you and I should be friends more than any others. Does that change your decision to stay with us?”
She looked at me for a long time. I remained silent and let her consider what she would say.
Finally she said, “It does. My decision is clear now. I will stay. Mark, you’re a strange man. You try to hide your meaning; and that can’t be done. You know that I hide my meaning, and yet you don’t press me. You invite me to make my choice. You say that the choice is shall I stay here or eat here or travel with you outside the gates or take part in your weapon training. And yet, that isn’t what you ask. It was Rani who said that I was the one to work for you. I heard it from the other room. But you say that you asked for me. I know that you aren’t lying. You asked for me even though you never said a word.”
She stood silent for a while longer and looked into my eyes giving nothing away.
Again, she decided to speak. “Mark, you and I are similar. We make men uncomfortable. In the council, they say that you spoke truth that other men would not say, and now you hold back what other men would say. That makes them uncomfortable. I don’t say what other women would say, but now I won’t hold back. It makes them uncomfortable. I look in your eyes and see what you are saying. I heard you when you first saw me. But you haven’t believed what you hear from me because I haven’t told you.”
She went silent again. I knew that she was processing and that I should keep quiet as well.
After a long pause, she said, “You knew the outcome, but you thought that I wouldn’t know it. I knew the outcome, but thought that you wouldn’t know it. Mark, do you want my answer? Or do you want to pretend? We both know what my answer and yours will be. Shall we say it now? I swear that it won’t change in 40 days. And I know that yours will never change either.”