The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,62
noticed, though, as we gun to grow closer to each other. One thing was that she never could get my name right. It didn’t matter how many times I told her I was Koli, she always give me that other name, Cody, that I come to mislike considerably.
Another thing was her questions, which she would ask whenever I give her a chance to. What songs did I like the best? What places had I been to? What kinds of food did I eat? What was my idea of a great party? What was the things I was cleverest at doing, and what things vexed or wildered me? What was my favourite movies, and shows, and books? I knowed what books was, or thought I did, for they was talked of in old stories from time to time, on account of them being places where magic spells was to be found. But movies and shows was a mystery to me. So I could not answer that question, or most of the others she throwed at me, but Monono could not keep from asking. In fact, she kept on asking some of the questions again and again, as if she clean forgot that we had talked of them things before.
She had meant what she said that time, about how she would try her best to get to know me. She worked hard at it, but I could not make her altogether understand what kind of person I was, or how I lived.
And it’s not like I knowed her any better than she knowed me. I seen almost from the start that she was different from other people that was in my life. I don’t just mean on account of her living in a box. I mean, in what she was and what she wasn’t. One time, we was up in the broken house with the evening slipping down into night, and I was telling her about the races I used to run with Haijon and sometimes with my other friends. I told her how we used to run all round the walls.
“The walls of your house?” Monono said.
“No,” I told her. “The walls of the village.”
“That’s cute, Cody-bou. So Middle Earth, neh. I’m imagining you like a Hobbit now, with big hairy feet. I bet you lock the gates at night to keep the orcs out.”
I did not hardly know how to answer that. “We lock the gates to keep all kinds of things out, Monono,” I said.
She got quiet for a second, then off she went again down another path, which was something she done often. “So you run races with your friend. Are you one of those kyoktana sportsu types, Cody-bou? Too bad if you are. Dancefloor’s the place for cardiac, baka-sama.”
I remembered her saying them words to me before. The exact same words, in the exact same voice. And after I seen her do it that one time, I couldn’t keep from noticing when she did it other times, which was not seldom. It made a prickle go down my back, for it made me remember my mother’s mother, Jashi. I hadn’t never met her, but Jemiu said she got forgetful before she died. You could talk with her for half an hour, then walk out of the room and right back in again, and she would greet you like you was only just come there. She would say the same things to you, again and again, and not ever remember how you answered, so it was more like the way an echo bird talks than the way a person does. It seemed Monono was afflicted in somewhat the same way, though in every other way she was not like my grandmother at all.
The other thing that made her different from everyone else was how she was always happy. She could be stern with me from time to time, or seem to get her feelings hurt, or say sad things like about how the last blossom has got to fall and such, but them things was like clouds sailing past the sun, fast as anything. It never took but a moment for her to be cheerful again and joking with me. It was like all that mattered to her was to make me smile or laugh, which she knowed a thousand ways to do it. But though I loved her, and loved her music, she could not give me the thing I thought would make me happiest.