"Hmm," she says noncommittally.

After a few more seconds, she elaborates, "I don't mean to be good and I don't mean to be bad. I just mean to be me."

"Oh." That's a surprising idea to him, but it does fit her.

"So how do you decide what to do to be yourself?"

"...I don't understand the question. How could I not know who I am?"

He's not sure how to explain what he's asking either, especially not in English. But there's something there, and it's important.

"I think most people don't. Do they seem like they do, to you?"

"I suppose not," she acknowledges.

"I think I know who I am, but mostly it's that I try to do the right thing. I'm not sure how else I would do it." He's never really thought about that before. It's an odd feeling, having an eleven-year-old give you a new perspective on your entire life.

"...if the only way you know who you are is that you try to do the right thing, how do you tell yourself apart from all the other people who try to do the same?"

It's entirely fair that she's interrogating him a little, when he kept doing that to her. He's glad they're having a less one-way conversation. But most of his questions were so much easier than this.

He has to think about that for a moment, and then just give the not-very-good answer that comes to him, because he can tell he could think about it for hours if not months and not have much of a better one. "Not everyone's right thing is the same. Both what they think is right, and what they can do to make it happen."

"...hmm. Maybe." She's clearly not satisfied, but also not inclined to push.

He looks embarrassed, a little, but not defensive about it. He knows he's not the type of man who could be a philosopher. "I know that wasn't a whole answer. It's complicated, and harder in English. But when I was eleven I'm not sure I had an answer at all."

A slow, thoughtful nod.

"I've always known exactly who I am. Since before I can remember. I've never been anything but me." The distant shadow of a memory passes across her face. "Not that there haven't been some learning experiences along the way."

"I'd like to hear about those someday." He'd like to know more about her in general, but he shouldn't push. "But that is a very good way to be, I think."

"I think so too."

He smiles at her, and unless she starts another conversation, they walk the rest of the way to the house in companionable silence.

Once they're back, he finds another blank notebook in the other room and draws her a little map of the village and surroundings: his house, the river and the nearest three bridges, the train station, both schools, both graveyards, both churches, the doctor's office, the village square where most of the shops are, the library, the sports stadium, the surrounding smaller villages, and other assorted points of interest like the little forest trail with the bunker on it, some larger forests within walking distance, and the old noble manor turned museum. He labels them all in Polish (dom, rzeka, stacja, szkoła, cmentarz, kościół, bunkier, lekarz, rynek, biblioteka, stadion, las, bunkier, dwór although that one confusingly also means "outdoors") and explains what they are, which leads into an explanation of Polish pronunciation and spelling - it's mostly straightforwardly phonetic, and he writes out all the weird cases and extra letters on the next page for her, cz sz dz rz=ż drz=dż ch=h ó=u ś ć ź dź ń ł ą ę. No, he can't explain why three sounds can be spelled two different ways when everything else is a one-to-one correspondence, and there are some other sounds that he can tell apart but it may turn out that she can't. Can she roll an r?

She speaks Spanish, so yes, unless Polish rolls them differently. Telling sounds apart goes pretty smoothly; she's a little more reluctant about trying to repeat back the unfamiliar ones, but crushes her hesitation with an iron will and does it anyway.

It does roll them the same way. Spanish also has mostly the same basic vowels and some of the weird sounds (ń is ñ), and if she speaks any French that will have some more of them (ż is j, ę in un like the number, ą is like the en in trente - not that Marek knows this beyond "I think French has those"). Ł is just English w (and w is just English v, and v is missing from the Polish alphabet), cz/sz/dż are just English ch/sh/j. (Some of the more confusing sound distinctions (ś/sz, ć/cz, ź/ż) mostly appear in Chinese out of common non-Slavic languages, but Marek doesn't know this and probably Wednesday doesn't either.)

Marek flatly cannot pronounce either version of English th and gets a lot of the English vowels somewhat wrong, so if she can't get some of the sounds right she won't be alone in it. Not that he really expects her to lower her standards just because someone else is failing them.

Still, overall every letter or occasional digraph is always pronounced the same way (or, sometimes things get simplified in certain ways in common pronunciation, but if you do them exactly you'll still be fine), so once she's gotten all of them she should be able to just pronounce any written word even if she has no idea what it means. He writes her down some basic words and phrases and checks if she can pronounce them right: tak = yes, nie = no, może = maybe, dzień dobry = good morning/afternoon, do widzenia = goodbye, dobranoc = goodnight, cześć = hi/bye, przepraszam = sorry, gdzie jest = where is, potrzebuję = I need, czy mogę = can I, jedzenie = food, woda = water, telefon = telephone, pociąg = train, łazienka = bathroom, spokój = calm, nie wiem = I don't know, nie rozumiem = I don't understand, nie chcę = I don't want, nie mam = I don't have, dobrze = well / all right.

Writes down the police station's phone number for her, while he's at it, and its address, and his own full name and address ("Telefonu nie mam - did you understand that?").

Wednesday studies with more focus than most eleven-year-olds. Honestly, she studies with more focus than most adults.

"You don't have a telephone?" she says. "Well, I suppose it is the past. And Poland. I don't know which is more relevant."

Wednesday seems like she's going to have absolutely no trouble staying out of school by passing tests.

"Yes. Me neither." He still hasn't caught on to her meaning the past literally.

"When I was a child we didn't have water pipes, but now almost everyone does. But electricity still sometimes stops working. Candles are there, if that happens." He points to a drawer near the fireplace.

"Almost everyone?" she says, a little incredulously.

He looks a touch defensive at that, but only briefly. She has every right to dislike being stranded here. "We're trying. Does everyone, in America? I suppose they would."

"...I'm not sure," she says, thoughtfully. "I would've said they did, but... there's more to the world than I've seen, clearly."

"And more than I've seen, certainly." A rueful smile.

"So... do you want to tell me about witchcraft?" He's avoided that strange-sounding topic for a while, and it made sense to get to know her better so he'd know how to interpret her answers, but he really shouldn't just leave it unasked forever. Some part of him might prefer not to know, but he's learned where that sort of impulse leads.

"What do you want to know?"

"... Anything?" He gives her a helpless look.

"Why do you want to know?" she asks next.