Irregular Verbs Read Free Page A

and Kesepi had shared than the other thing that was theirs alone? Excited, he raised his arms to stretch his back, dipped the quill in the ink bowl, and began writing along the edge of the wall. He worked his way inward as dawn came, and the daylight hours passed; he worked in silence as Teman once again came up the ladder, called his name, called again, and finally left. His quill scratched against the floorboards as he followed an inward spiral towards the centre of the room, always trying to increase his pace, to write words down faster than they could be washed away by his mind’s tide.
    Thunder made him look up. It was dark again: lightning flashed through the holes in the thatch, illuminating the room for a moment. Focused on his work, he had not noticed the smell of rain in the air, the sound as it fell on the roof. Now, in the lightning’s flare, he could see puddles sitting on the floor, smudging and washing away most of what he had written. He froze for a moment, rigid with anger; then, too tired even to rage, Sendiri fell to the floor and let himself sleep.
    Asleep, he saw himself sitting with Kesepi in their boat, leaning against the palm-stem gunwales on a calm sea. She was speaking, but the words made no sense, and he knew that he had at last forgotten their language entirely. He opened his mouth to speak, then felt something resting in his hand: looking down, he saw that it was the book he had been writing, containing every word the two of them had ever spoken. Flipping through the book, he tried to speak, to say one of the things he wished he had said, but all he could do was string words together. Kesepi, now in a boat of her own, began to drift away. Sendiri called to her, but the words he read from the dictionary had no emotion, and no reaction registered on her face. Even in its perfect state, he realized, the book was just a record, a dead thing without the soul of the language.
    He woke from fevered dreams to see Teman sitting on the mat nearby, a bowl of water at his side. His friend rose to his knees and held out the bowl. “Have some of this,” Teman said. “I think you’ve had a fever.”
    “Thank you,” Sendiri croaked, then took a drink. He felt a sharp pain as he sat up; the hook he had been using as a quill had stuck in his side, leaving a black ink spot when he plucked it out. “Why are you—”
    “You’ve missed two conversations,” Teman said, “and you were moaning last night, loud enough your neighbours could hear. The talk is . . .”
    Sendiri nodded. He knew what the talk would be. Sometimes when a person dies, they take the souls of those they love with them to the sea floor; what’s left is just a hantu, a dead, empty shell. To see or even talk to a
hantu
is dangerous, itself an omen of death.
    “Maybe I’m not alive,” Sendiri said. “All that’s worth saving is fading away.”
    Teman frowned, gestured around at the smudged marks on the floor. “Is that what this was all about?”
    “It’s useless, I realize that now,” Sendiri said. “Even if I had all the words, it would be no more alive than a dried fish.” He rubbed the spot where the hook had jabbed him with his thumb. The ink mark was still there, just under his skin. “It needs to live. . . .”
    Teman waited for his friend to continue, rose to his feet when he did not. “Well—I shouldn’t even be up here. I hope you’ll forgive me.” He moved to the top step of the ladder, began climbing down.
    “No—wait,” Sendiri said. “You have to help me. Help me keep her alive.”
    “But you said—”
    “No, please. I have an idea. Help me.”
    Teman paused at the top of the ladder. “Sendiri—you have to let go. I know how you feel, but you have to let go.”
    Sendiri picked up the hook he had been using as a quill, held it up to show to Teman. “Please. Just stay—help me.”
    “You have to come out for the conversation. Today.”
    “One day. That’s all.”
    Teman took a breath,