"Hmm." She takes some time to absorb that.

"Well." He shrugs, after a moment. "I don't think it was wrong, and it did work. But I felt like I was two people, and I'd rather figure out how to be one."

"Well. I admire your effectiveness," she says, dryly amused. "But—I won't tell you not to be you."

"Thank you," he smiles with genuine warmth, "for both of those." Even dryly amused admiration from her means rather a lot to him.

"I don't think being me should mean being less effective. Less... pretending I'm a harmless sort of person, maybe."

A thoughtful nod.

He will have to think about it, but he's rarely fast at his thinking, when there isn't a situation demanding immediate action.

In another few minutes' walk down the main street he turns to point out a door. "Here's the public library. I don't think they'll have anything in English, but we should check. And do you have books you like that might have Polish translations?"

"Il Principe?" she says, a little hopefully.

He looks blank, his foreign languages being limited to Russian and English, but faithfully repeats the title to the librarian, who gives Wednesday a very strange look. "Nie, nie mamy Machiavelliego. Ale wiem że jest polskie tłumaczenie, myślę że pan je znajdzie w którejś miejskiej bibliotece..."*

Marek recognizes the name where he didn't recognize the title, but it's not particularly surprising, at this point. "Dziękuję, poszukam. W takim razie czy ma pani jakieś sugestie dla dziecka które lubi czytać takie rzeczy ale dopiero uczy się polskiego?"

She looks doubtful of the wisdom of those particular criteria, but... it's an unusual and interesting problem for a librarian, she's not going to resist it very hard. "Hmm... Stare baśnie i legendy? Bracia Grimm, o tym jak Popiela zjadły myszy - wszędzie jest pełno makabrycznych historii jak się nad nimi zastanowić, często razem z historią. Jakieś książki historyczne napisane w miarę prostym językiem też powinny się znaleźć. Ale tak naprawdę to zależy co to znaczy 'takie rzeczy' - chodzi bardziej o ciężki nastrój, czy o cyniczne podejście do świata, czy o strategię polityczną?" Her first guess was that the eleven-year-old girl just wanted to read, well, creepy things, rather than being invested in Machiavelli specifically, but on second thought who knows.

He translates the question and hopes Wednesday can get some books she'll like out of this. He was not a big reader as a child, so he can't be much help - he mostly just has fond memories of Dzieci z Bullerbyn, as un-Wednesday a book as one can possibly imagine.

*"No, we don't have Machiavelli. But I know there's a Polish translation, I expect you'll find it in one of the city libraries..."

"Thank you, I'll check. In that case do you have any suggestions for a child who likes to read those kinds of things but is only starting to learn Polish?"

"Hmm... Old fairy tales and legends? The brothers Grimm, about how king Popiel was eaten by mice - there are macabre stories all over the place when you think about it, often together with history. There should be reasonably simply written historical books somewhere, too. But really it depends on what "those things" mean - is it more about a dark mood, or a cynical approach to the world, or political strategy?"

"Oh, I think I would love old fairy tales," she says. "A dark mood and a cynical approach to the world are both fine ways to get my attention. I do enjoy Machiavelli's thoughts on political strategy but I don't expect most political strategy handbooks to be nearly so riveting. Though, while I'm thinking about strategy, I don't suppose they have Sun Tzu's Art of War?"

Oh, the librarian likes this girl. She has real book opinions! Interesting ones, even!

"Nie, Sun Tzu w ogóle nie ma polskiego tłumaczenia, właściwie to dobre pytanie dlaczego... Ale mrocznych starych baśni znajdzie się sporo." She walks around looking for them, and other potentially interesting things while she's at it, occasionally consulting Wednesday or Marek for approval. "Hmm... procesy czarownic? Czy palenie na stosie to jednak przesada w jej wieku?" (Of course it's too much, by any reasonable person's standards, but she's not a reasonable person, she's an enthusiastic librarian.)

Marek barely manages not to laugh. "Myślę że może być." It is theoretically possible that Wednesday, who says she's a witch, would rather not read about people like her being killed in horrible ways - but really, who is he kidding? He does turn to ask her, but less for confirmation and more to see what exactly she'll say. "Thoughts on books about witch trials?"

*"No, Sun Tzu doesn't have a Polish translation at all - it's a good question why, really... But dark old fairytales I can find plenty of."

"Hmm... witch trials? Or is burning at the stake too much at her age?"

"I think it'll be all right."

"Oh, I love those."

Wednesday Points for both him and the librarian!

He's content to keep translating the conversation for a long while - it's great to see them getting along, and probably good language practice as well. They end up with a big stack of variously creepy books (a set of less known Brothers Grimm fairytales [example], some rather bloody Polish legends [example], the Kalevala which is somewhat less bloody but still seems like it might be in the right mood [wikipedia], an old history of witch trials in Poland [example], a particularly cynically written nonfiction book about the unpleasant lives of late feudal peasants), plus an English dictionary, that being the only book they had with significant English in it.

"Zobaczę czy znajdę coś ciekawego następnym razem kiedy będę kupować książki..." It's always so much nicer to buy books when you know what people want. "Zakładając że ona nadal tu będzie za parę miesięcy?" She looks at Marek questioningly, and he smiles. "Myślę że tak."

He looks quite happy by the time they leave. "Looks like you two will get along great. And this was the public library, not the school one, so it shouldn't have too many children in it." It'll have some, when they're out of school, but only the more bookish ones, and she probably won't mind those.

"I'll see if I can find something interesting next time I'm buying books... Assuming she'll still be here in a couple of months?" "I think she will."

"Yes, she was very helpful and not at all annoying," she says, so levelly that it's almost hard to tell if she's sincere—but given how well she took to that conversation, it would be bizarre for her to be sarcastically complaining about it now.

He thinks he knows her well enough by now that he can assume she means it. "I think she liked having someone to talk about interesting books with. It probably doesn't happen very often. Maybe by the time you've read them you can come back and have a conversation with her by yourself."

"I might do that."

It would be nice if she made a friend. Not that he's going to try to insist on anything like that, but he's pretty sure it's generally good for people, even very serious disquieting ones.

They get home close to 2 and hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, so he reheats something quick for lunch (fried potatoes with random leftover meat/vegetables thrown in, which isn't bad really, frying improves nearly everything) and makes tea in the meantime. And once they've eaten and cleaned up, they can read books!  Unless Wednesday would rather do something else - he does ask, just doesn't really expect a different answer.

Wednesday is happy to settle in with her books. Getting through the language she barely speaks is going to be a slog, but she can always ask Marek about words she doesn't know, and then make notes to refer to for next time. A reverse lookup in the wrong-ended dictionary also seems not out of the question, if she has a good guess about what something means. And it's nice to have a project.

He thinks it would make sense to start with an easier version - he can read a chapter of something out loud and translate/explain whatever she doesn't understand, then she can take a turn reading out loud and get her (presumably rare) pronunciation mistakes corrected and get more explanations. Unless that's too much interaction for her and she prefers to do more of the work quietly on her own. He'd enjoy it, though.

She acquiesces to this plan after some consideration.

Oh good! He briefly worries that maybe she's just agreeing to it to make him happy and would prefer to read on her own, but then remembers everything he knows about Wednesday, which pretty clearly indicates she would never do such a thing.

Which book does she want to start with?

How about good old Grimm.

That works! Marek attempts to just read and translate as needed without inserting too much commentary, but he does make faces: the wicked queen being a witch makes him wonder how Wednesday feels about that, the witch turning her eleven stepsons into swans seems bizarre and impractical, making her stepdaughter unrecognizable by dirtying her face makes everyone sound deeply incompetent. Overall he's entertained but unconvinced that any of this makes sense, although he does realize making sense isn't really the point.

The concept of gathering stinging nettles in graveyards to knit into shirts makes him look at Wednesday with amused curiosity, wondering if she'd find it a correct activity.

Wednesday does learn quite a lot of new words! Both wiedźma and czarownica mean witch and he's not sure what the difference is; swan is łabędź which is a kind of excessive number of tricky letters; stinging nettles are pokrzywy, do they even have those in America?

It's a surprisingly good way to experience a book. Wednesday looks just the tiniest bit cheerful about it, which is more cheer than you usually get out of Wednesday.

"I think we do, though I've heard it's often the case that the same name belongs to one plant in America and a different one in Europe, so they might be completely different stinging nettles."

Wednesday looking a tiny bit cheerful makes Marek visibly happy. That, and he's enjoying this entire book-reading interaction. The book itself isn't really something he'd want to read on his own - back when he was Wednesday's age he's pretty sure he'd have found it bizarre and a bit depressing and honestly much too girly, and now he's grown out of some of these complaints, but it's still not his sort of thing even to the extent that books ever are - but reading a book together, instead of on his own for no clear benefit, is really quite nice.

"Is that true? I had no idea. Well, now I'm curious." He gets up with a stay-here-ish wave of his hand, goes out the front door, and takes about twenty seconds to come back with a decent-sized stinging nettle held unconcernedly in his ungloved hand. He holds it out for her inspection, taking care not to let it touch her unless she wants to do that. "Are they like this?"

She studies it thoughtfully, and touches it exactly once with a careful fingertip. "Hmm. I'm no expert, but I do think this looks like the same plant."