The Book of Water Read online

  A dragon?

  No.

  The silvery-blue critter nudges him, showing just the faintest trace of irritation. N’Doch backs away in horror.

  A dragon?

  He blinks, he coughs, he shakes his head. He does all the requisite things, even pinches himself, but he’s been looking at this critter for over an hour and he knows she’s not going away that easy. He’s not dreaming, he’s wide awake, his arm hurts like hell and there’s a dragon in his hidey-hole.

  Two dragons. And a weird white girl who acts like she’s dropped in from some other planet. Who knows? Maybe she has. Why should things start getting any saner? Meanwhile, he’s flat on his ass and elbows, and bleeding all over his beautiful wooden floor, the only thing in his life that’s whole and perfect. N’Doch grasps at logic again: what do you do when something you can’t believe is happening, actually is? Hey, you go with it. Like the first bars of a new melody, you just follow it out, see where it leads you.

  So he tries to get up, but his legs won’t work. And it’s hot in the gym, so much hotter than usual. He’s bathed in sweat and slipping in his own blood as he struggles to rise. The blue critter puts her forehead to his chest and presses him back to the floor. He’s surprised how gentle she is, since she’s looking so irascible. There’s music in his head again, and N’Doch decides to lie there and listen, while the blue critter noses at his arm. Her inspection hurts despite her gentleness, but the pain is somehow past the edge of his current awareness, which is filled with the music. He understands now that the bugs are in his wound, the worst bugs, the really fast-acting kind, and that means he’s got to act even faster. He’s got to get serious about moving to his stash of antibiotics, though who knows if he’s got anything here that’s recent enough to kill this bug—they all mutate so fast and his pill source is not exactly over-the-counter yesterday’s formula.

  His breath is getting short, a bad sign. He draws his knees up to his chest and turns over onto his side. Again, the blue critter stops him. N’Doch is amazed by the strength in that seemingly delicate neck. He struggles a bit, but the music swells in his head and then he can’t recall why he’s resisting so hard. Her voice is so soothing, her warm breath on his cheek so familiar, his mama’s of course, why didn’t he see that? She’ll take him into her arms and make his hurt go away. His grip on consciousness is tenuous. N’Doch forgets why he’s holding on at all, and lets go.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  His fever had risen so suddenly, she hadn’t seen it for what it was. He’d seemed so hale while leading them to safety, as if his wound didn’t bother him at all.

  Cautiously, Erde joined Water at the dark boy’s side. She shouldn’t think of him as a boy, he was clearly several years older than she was. But on his back and so feverish, he looked young and vulnerable. She wondered suddenly if his fever was contagious. The only sickness she knew that rose so fast was the plague. Chilled, she retreated a few steps. She saw no rashes or boils, the outward signs of plague, but she did not want to have come all this way simply to be felled by disease.

  Earth lumbered up beside her. She wrapped a hand around his nearest horn for comfort as he lowered his big head thoughtfully over the stricken youth. Then she recalled how the dragon had healed the old man in the barn at Erfurt. He’d been beaten senseless and was bleeding to death from a sword cut to his side, but when Earth was through with him, he got up and walked away. And the she-goat. Earth had healed her, too, by washing her awful wounds with his big cowlike tongue.

  Erde wasn’t sure she should remind Earth of the she-goat, whom he’d been later forced to devour to keep himself from starving. The noble goat, of course, had given her permission. Instead, Erde imaged the old man, though he’d proved far less noble, an ungrateful coward who’d revealed their hiding place to Brother Guillemo himself.

  —Dragon! Do you remember? Can you help this one too?

  There was doubt and diffidence in the dragon’s reply.

  —The wound I can close and make well, but he already burns from within. . . .

  —The fever? You can’t heal the fever?

  An immense sigh, like the ground shifting, then sadness, failure, a sense of inadequacy.

  Water raised her head from her scrutiny of Endoch’s condition. She fixed Erde with her demanding stare, and an image formed in Erde’s head, which she saw exactly mirrored in the broad expanse of Earth’s mind. She knew immediately that the thought came from the she-dragon. The quality of the communication differed so from Earth’s blunt, honest imaging. It slid into her consciousness—not surprisingly—like water, rushing here, a trickle there, not to be denied. Insistently flowing into cracks, following the contours of her thoughts, shimmering like the ruffled surface of a lake. At times two images, or three or several, layered one over another, adding depth and richness.

  Erde was delighted. With Earth as a conduit, she could speak with Water almost directly, if she could but learn to read her imaging coherently. Right now, the layering and shimmering obscured the meaning of the image. There seemed to be several narratives playing at once: one of Earth washing the dark youth’s wound, one of the four of them huddling together in an earnest, conversing fashion. But surely Water did not intend the topmost layer the way it seemed, for it showed Erde with her dagger in hand, stabbing into the soft fur of the sea dragon’s neck, then catching the flowing blood in cupped palms.

  —Dragon! What is she saying?

  Earth’s horror was as profound as her own. But after consultation with the sea dragon, it faded to wonder and admiration.

  —Her blood will heal the fire inside. You must give it to him.

  —I? Me?

  Vigorous assent.

  She has shown you how. Quickly, she says. You must do it now!

  Dragon’s blood. The most magical substance of all, according to the lore.

  Erde gripped her dagger dutifully but was stopped by the sinuous beauty of Water’s beckoning head and neck. Earth shoved at her with his snout.

  —Quickly!

  —Oh, Dragon, I can’t!

  —She says you must, or he will die.

  Erde forced herself the few steps to Water’s side and slid her dagger from its sheath. Alla’s dagger. The old woman’s parting gift. Lying on Erde’s palm, the fine tapered blade seemed to drink in the broken sunlight and return a steadier glow of its own. Water arched her neck to expose the most delicate underside. Clenching her jaw, Erde laid the razor edge against fine silver fur. The dragon drew away sharply, startling her. She shot a doubting glance back at Earth.

  —The point. You must use the dagger’s point.

  “Ohh,” replied Erde faintly. She could not imagine. Sir Hal would be better at this. He would know the appropriate ceremony. But at Earth’s insistent urging, she gathered herself again and set the dagger point-first. This time, when she applied a bit of pressure, Water did not recoil. Rather, she leaned into the blade, and Erde took a breath and drove it in, then jerked it right out again with a cry of remorse.

  The blood did not spurt from the wound. It pooled at the opening, glistening, waiting. Water curled her slim head around to regard Erde expectantly. Erde stared, then quickly sheathed her blade and offered cupped and shaking hands to the wound. Like water from a mountain spring, the blood flowed neatly into her palms. It ceased flowing when the hand-made basin was full. Light-headed with wonder, Erde carried the precious liquid to the unconscious youth.

  But he couldn’t have been entirely unconscious, for when she let a few red drops leak into his half-open mouth, he roused himself enough to drink in the entire handful, swallowing as greedily as if he sucked in life itself. The blood ran out of Erde’s hands as cleanly as water, leaving no stain behind. With the last drop, Endoch lay back again, smiling, and fell into a deep calm sleep.

  Dragon’s blood.

  Erde had always wondered how one acquired dragon’s blood to do magic with, without hurting the dragon. Oh, if only Hal were here to see this. She stared at her pri
stine hands, still cupped and shaking, then back at Water.

  Earth was washing the sea dragon’s neck, gently closing the wound.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When he wakes up, N’Doch feels better than he has in a very long time. He knows right off that something amazing has happened.

  He’s got no idea how long he’s been out. He’s lying on one of the exercise mats—he can tell from the unexpected comfort beneath him and the slightly musty smell. He inventories his body parts carefully. There is no pain anywhere, not even in his left arm, which he recalls was slashed wide open last time he checked.

  Shouldn’t move, he decides, better not reveal his return to the living before he’s cased the situation. He listens to the ship, the way he’s learned to, for any noise he doesn’t recognize that might be the mob banging about inside, searching. He hears nothing, only the gulls outside and the slap of the sea against the hull, removed by the distance of six decks between. A cautiously raised eyelid reveals even less. At first he’s sure he’s gone blind. Then he realizes it’s night, and he’s facing a wall. He has to turn somehow, at least his head. He rolls it back soundlessly and sees, in the broad, bright squares of moonlight falling from the windows, the two cybercritters crouched head to head.

  Not cybercritters, he reminds himself.

  Dragons.

  He’s still having trouble taking that one in. But he’s decided it is the only explanation left, if you can call magic an explanation. He wonders what they’re up to out there in the middle of the basketball court, so still and silent but looking so at ease with each other. Having some sort of dragon confab, he’s pretty sure, whatever dragons confab about.

  He twists his head a centimeter farther and, past them, he can make out a flat darkness in the opposite corner: the girl, asleep on another gym mat. N’Doch almost laughs out loud. She couldn’t have gotten farther away from him unless she’d left the room. But then he thinks, Well, that’s good. She’s safer that way. She looks innocent, but she isn’t.

  He realizes that accepting the notion of dragons still doesn’t give him a clue about what to do next. He’s pretty sure the fishermen won’t venture into this “haunted” boat at night when the dead might walk, so he’s got till dawn to decide. If he got up real quick and quiet and just slid out through the locker room just to his right, he could slip past the mob alone and be away, free of all this crazy business in a flash. He wouldn’t have to worry about how there could be dragons and girls from Mars. Or wherever. But then he’d never have the whole story. And think of the songs in it. It might just be his big chance in a whole other way. He’s got to play it out for a little while, or he’ll wonder about it for the rest of his life.

  But he can’t just lie there waiting for whatever’s due to happen next. He’s never been much for lying in bed, which is what’s got him in this trouble in the first place—like, if he’d plopped down for the midday snooze with everyone else instead of going out prospecting for supper, he’d be the same old N’Doch he was this morning. But now—and this is what really concerns him, ’cause he knows it like he always knew when the first winter rains would come: inexplicably, in his gut—he knows that since the silver dragon swam into his life, his life’s never gonna be the same.

  N’Doch contemplates that one for a while. He’s always thought he wanted his life to change. Now he finds himself hoping the longer he lies there, the longer he can keep this new life from starting. It was okay when he thought he was acting. Eventually everyone’d pack up the cameras and go home, and his life would be still his life, only better. But now that it seems that he really does have a dragon on his hands, it’s another thing altogether. Because, hey, what do you do with a dragon? You don’t exactly take it home with you like a stray dog. Feeding a dog is hard enough, or keeping it from being someone else’s dinner . . . but a dragon?

  On the other hand, who’s to say his old life was anything worth holding on to?

  This thought makes him roll over in involuntary revolt. He’s surprised by the depths of rage he suddenly feels about his lot in life. He’s not sure where it’s come from. He thought he was getting along okay these days, apart from wanting so bad to be famous and not be hungry so much of the time.

  But the rage is real, and so strong that it propels him to his feet before he can stop himself, and across the floor to glare belligerently at the communing dragons, without a clue why he feels he should challenge them with it. The abrupt motion reminds him of his arm. While he stares at the dragons, he sneaks his right hand around to check out the gash.

  It’s gone. He looks, steps sideways into a patch of moon, and looks again. His skin is smooth. No blood, no scab, not even a scratch.

  N’Doch clenches his eyes shut, raking his memory. Did the short brother miss after all? Was he so scared, he just thought he’d been hit? No, no. He remembers the hot sear of pain, his panic about infection and the bright blood messing up his precious gym floor. He remembers this.

  When N’Doch looks up again, the dragons are staring at him, taking no notice of his rage and confusion. The big one is a horned tower of shadow with a luminous glance. The little one is silver with moonlight and her eyes are dark. N’Doch hears a note start—long, soft, an oboe, he’d say, if he was hearing it outright instead of in his head. But it’s impossibly sustained, which is why it holds him. He’s waiting for the next one, for the pattern to develop, for the melody to show itself.

  Instead he gets pictures, and this is where he decides he must be still asleep or maybe delirious. Either way, he’s dreaming. No wonder his arm is healed and he feels so good. Well, it’s been a nice dream so far, why not go with it? The pictures are like his own private video, playing in his head.

  It starts with a landscape of cold, fog-shrouded mountains. N’Doch likes how the chill of it actually seems to penetrate the sodden heat of the gymnasium, cooling the sweat on his brow and the small of his back. Next he sees a big old castle, perched on a high rocky spur of these mountains, gray and forbidding, with little slit windows and lots of towers like in one of those King Arthur vids. N’Doch has no interest in white guys wearing tin suits—though his mama tunes them in whenever they’re on—so he can’t imagine why he’d be dreaming castles. But then this long-shot p.o.v. changes, zooming in fast on the tall front gate. He’s expecting a moat and piranhas, crocodiles at least, but there’s only dry rock, falling away sheer from the base of the walls and crossed by a built-up stone causeway. A stout iron grille stands between two round towers of stone. There’s carving over the gate, animals of some sort fighting, but he doesn’t spend time on the details because now he sees the girl, the Mars girl. She’s there in his dream, on her belly in the icy mud, squeezing through a narrow slot between the iron gate and the ground. The oboe note slips behind a muffled wash of percussion, and a solo cello appears, low, grinding, urgent. When the girl struggles to her feet, N’Doch can see she is half-frozen, terrified . . . and running away.

  Next thing he knows, he’s in a big dark space, like a cave. He’s never been in a real cave, but he’s seen the pix. This dream is like some virtual reality tour where it’s not his hand on the controls. The girl is there again, still terrified, and this time there’s something sneaking up on her, something really huge and nasty. Only it turns out to be the big brown dragon, and N’Doch thinks he’s looking kind of scared and lost himself. The cello accompaniment turns decidedly plaintive. In the way of dreams, N’Doch understands that the big guy has lost something, and the girl’s supposed to help him find it. He can see how she takes to the critter right off, despite his being a dragon. He sees the awe and dedication in her eyes, as if a dragon is what she’s been waiting for all her life. Like he felt about the blue critter’s music, first time he heard it.

  Then, in a moment of dizzying coincident vision, N’Doch sees himself at the same time he’s seeing the girl. He is the girl, and yet he’s himself, staring at the little silver dragon with the same awe and dedication. The vision is too much. T
he sweetness of it pierces him. It catches in his throat and he has to look away. He’s not used to sweetness, or beauty that shortens his breath. He stands there, shaking in the moonlight, staring at the patterns of bright and dark cutting in such sharp angles across the floor.

  He understands that he has not been dreaming.

  Suddenly there’s an entire story in his head: the girl’s escape from her drunken father’s boondocks castle, the perils of her flight into the countryside with the dragon, the hot pursuit by priests and armies, like something out of a costume drama. Is it true? Has he made it up? He doesn’t know where it came from or what to do with it.

  And still, there’s more. The images keep unraveling. He sees the brown dragon waking to his magic gifts and understands he’s being told it was magic that sealed up his wound as if it had never been. But it’s too devastating to believe such things, or to believe anything with the kind of conviction N’Doch senses is lying in wait inside the silver dragon’s dark stare. In his world, people die when they believe in things. People who might be related to you. They’re gunned down on their doorsteps, or they vanish into prisons and are never heard from again. N’Doch has spent his nearly twenty years learning to stay fast and loose, with ties to nothing and no one. He’ll do what he can to help his mama, but she pretty much takes care of herself. The only thing he believes in, really, is his music, and that he carries safely inside him. It’s sustained him through the hard times like no person ever could or would.

  Of course, a dragon is not exactly a person.

  The images stop, leaving him bathed in a waiting silence. N’Doch looks up finally, meeting the silver dragon’s gaze.

  All right, he concedes. This is really happening.

  Her music, their music, swells in his head, and the next thing he asks himself is Why me?