Read Online The Marann by Sky Warrior Book Publishing - Free Book Online Page A

become her favorite place to
spend time when she was not engaged with Kyza. The Sural had joined
her to continue a discussion begun over the morning meal.
Discussion finished, they had fallen silent, listening to the
flutters singing and chattering in the cora trees.
    The Sural lifted an eyebrow and gave
her the penetrating look she’d found so unnerving when she first
arrived. “What were you reading when I joined you?” he asked. In
English. His accent sounded like a cross between Scandinavian and
New Mandarin.
    Her eyebrows tried to meet her
hairline. “You speak English?” she exclaimed.
    One side of his mouth tilted
upward.
    “When did you learn
English?”
    “The winter after your people first
made contact with us.”
    “How did you learn
it?”
    “The Terosha were happy to teach us,”
he said. “Just as they were happy to teach our language to
humans.”
    “Well,” Marianne said. “Well.” She
blinked and opened her mouth again, but no other word came. She
closed her mouth with a huff.
    “Read to me from your tablet,” he
said. “One of your poets.”
    She spent another moment huffing at
him, then at random chose a twenty-second century English poet,
Gaidon Damerell, known for his exquisite sonnets about love and
nature. The Sural leaned back against the gazebo, eyes closed and
long legs stretched before him, listening with a small smile on his
lips.
    As she read, Marianne tried to stick
to Damerell’s poems about nature. Reading a love sonnet to the
Sural seemed inappropriate, so she skipped them. When she stumbled
into one that began on a pastoral theme but turned erotic, her
voice hitched, and he opened an eye, his face impassive.
    “What do you find disturbing?” he
asked.
    Blood rushed to her face. “It’s...
um... it’s not appropriate,” she stammered. “Not by human ethics.
To, uh, discuss intimate topics with—with an employer. Or someone
from a much different social class.”
    His eyes glinted. “Compared to my
people’s love poems, that was chaste.”
    “I would be more comfortable if you
permitted me to choose another.”
    He shrugged a shoulder. “Proceed as
you like.”
    <<>>
    In the autumn, Kyza turned into a
noisy, grabby toddler who followed Marianne around the stronghold,
chattering and babbling, switching from one language to another:
the human languages Marianne had come to teach and the Sural’s own
dialect of Tolari. Marianne wondered if the tot believed she was
her mother, but it was also obvious she adored her father. She
preferred him to anyone else present, begging to be carried,
rubbing her forehead on his cheek, crawling all over him when he
sat. He tolerated it all—more than tolerated it, seemed to revel in
it. He was gentle and patient with his active, curious
daughter.
    Winter brought treacherous
temperatures, putting an end to time in the garden and, indeed, to
any movement out of doors. Marianne’s usual haunt moved to the
guest wing common room, which contained a small library. Not all
the books on the shelves were in the Sural’s dialect, and Marianne
began to spend her free time puzzling out books written in a simple
dialect close enough to Suralian for her to understand it. When she
felt she had mastered the language, she gave it a try on the
Sural.
    He eyed her with growing amusement as
she spoke, then burst into the first honest laughter she’d heard
from him. Sporting a crooked grin, he composed himself and said,
“You sound like a Paranian. I shall have to find some books from
Detralar. Detrali is even more amusing to most Tolari.” He stifled
a chuckle, his eyes sparkling.
    “Why is that?” Marianne
asked.
    He shrugged a shoulder. “It
is.”
    “You have—biases—on Tolar?”
    “Not in the same way that you have
explained human biases,” he answered. “Racism—I do not understand
this. You are all human. Your physical variations mean nothing.
Culture, however—cultural differences can be quite
amusing.”
    It was Marianne’s