School by Nathaniel Hardman

Author:Nathaniel Hardman [Hardman, Nathaniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-18T22:00:00+00:00

Suzy concentrated on Shovuy’s words as they walked, Jeff and Ushegg trailing behind. The girl talked so fast it was hard to get much, but here and there, Suzy filled in the words she understood. “And noxz Qush Yuz jiazu. He’s ggshomth. One xequ he zeggus his sic ir az fazx tuggoazu iash ball burx itush jez kurggu.”

Suzy shook her head and made a sympathetic “mmm.”

As they walked down the cobbled street of the town, she saw various aliens about their work, carrying water in buckets, chatting with friends on doorsteps, or preparing food inside their homes at the hearth. There was jade everywhere in the homes, particularly around the fireplaces. The chimneys were pale green straws poking out of the brown juice-box houses.

A man with a cart of fish shouted, “Kew, kew, kew!” and held up a fish to Shovuy, who ignored him. On a doorstep, two toddlers were trying to climb onto the back of a tired-looking two-headed dog.

It wasn’t a large city, and soon, they had reached the edge on the north side where the road continued out onto a broad plain dotted with houses and grazing orange spiders.

The smells of wood smoke and the ever-present curry were joined by something more offensive as they approached a wooden fence surrounding a low open building like a barn or stable. In it, Suzy could see a half dozen of the furry orange spiders milling about.

Shovuy unlatched a gate in the enclosure and ushered them in.

“This stinks so bad,” Jeff muttered.

“So bad that what?” Suzy asked, then laughed. She was as surprised as Jeff at the question – she had said it by reflex, mimicking their mother’s most annoying habit. Their mother’s pet peeve, heightened from years of work as a newspaper editor, was people using “so” to mean “very.” So with Jeff and Suzy, she always insisted they complete the phrase[7].

“So bad that,” Jeff, recovering from his surprise, racked his brain, “Even my armpits are plugging their noses?”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense.” said Suzy.

“You mean it doesn’t make SCENTS?!” exclaimed Jeff, delighted.

Suzy rolled her eyes and turned to Shovuy who was watching the humans curiously. Suzy smiled and made a lead-the-way kind of gesture to her friend.

The alien girl led them to a trough on the side of the building, shooing away a couple of the riding spiders. Suzy gagged. This was where the stink was coming from.

The rotten sea smell and the odd bits of skeleton suggested the spiders were regularly fed on fish guts, and they didn’t always finish their food.

From a hook on the wall, Shovuy grabbed a wood-and-reed flyswatter, and as Suzy noticed the dragon flies swarming the trough, things finally clicked into place. “Oh, I get it,” she said.

“‘Cause SCENTS!” said Jeff.

“No, not your stupid joke. I got that. Qush Yurwush said we couldn’t use the school supplies unless we brought some to share, so Shovuy brought us here where there are like a million flies.”

“I like the way that dead flies are school supplies here,” said Jeff.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.