The Book of Water Read online

  CHAPTER TEN

  Erde dreamed that the dragon was nudging her shoulder. When she stirred, she saw him crouched beside Water across the room. The floor beneath her was still shuddering gently. Ah, she thought. One of his baby-quakes.

  She allowed herself a proud smile. He was using his gifts without having to be endlessly petted and encouraged beforehand, which meant he was finally gaining some self-confidence. Despite the mob outside and the peril of their situation, she decided she could tease him a little.

  —I am awake, O Great One, and at your service.

  Earth turned from his huddle and stared at her. He blinked slowly, twice. In her head, Erde saw only an embarrassed blank. She giggled, and for a moment, the dragon let his big tongue loll from the corner of his mouth, as he used to in comic puzzlement. But Erde sensed it was self-parody this time, Earth recalling his former self for her amusement as well as his own, and sharing a bit of pride in his maturing. But not too much pride.

  —I am not great yet, not until I have learned what Purpose I am to be great for.

  Erde thought his logic a trifle circuitous and literal-minded, but she knew what he meant.

  —Will you still talk to me, then, and wake me with earthquakes?

  She had meant it fondly and in jest, but he blinked again, regarding her gravely.

  —I will, for you will be great with me.

  —I am already great. I am a baron’s daughter.

  It was lovely to be able to joust with him verbally. His grasp of language had grown dizzyingly. Erde mused that if human children learned so fast, there’d be no keeping up with them.

  Then Water was there, flowing into Earth’s consciousness, eddying busily in his mind, diverting both their thoughts like a guild master calling a meeting to order, reminding them both that they had a crisis to deal with by pelting them with images of a howling armed mob tearing an unseen something limb from limb. Earth returned his attention to her so obediently that Erde found herself wondering if the sea dragon was perhaps his older sister, since he deferred to her so readily. Or was it that, despite her having waked more recently into the world, she had more confidence than he did? She was graceful and she was beautiful, and Erde knew Earth thought himself dull, brown, and clumsy. But the sea dragon was also turning out to be a little bit bossy. Now that she’d gotten their attention, she was flooding them with images of Endoch.

  Erde tried stopping up her mental ears.

  —Shouldn’t you ask her about the Caller, who she thinks it is?

  —Her first concern is the boy, to wake him to his duty, Earth relayed. And she needs your help. She wants you to explain things to him. She says you must use your words to help him understand.

  —My words? I don’t do words very well. I only just got them back.

  —You must try. Please, you must. He knows how to hear the meaning in words.

  —But, Dragon, he doesn’t speak my language, and I don’t speak his.

  She could feel his puzzlement, like an itch inside her brain. A hurried conference with the sea dragon eventually produced the understanding that the sounds Erde heard Earth speak in her head were an illusion of words he had learned to create in order to accommodate her human habits of communication. Earth was surprised (and interested) to learn that the sounds Erde made when she spoke did not convey meaning to the boy, and vice versa.

  —My sister hears what he means. You must teach him to listen to her.

  —How will she know what I mean?

  —I will tell her.

  —Who will tell him?

  * * *

  N’Doch senses the shifting of attention away from him. Then, suddenly, the girl gets up from her mat in the corner, out of what he’d thought was a dead sleep. She comes straight for him, padding on bare feet, her face purposeful. She takes his hand awkwardly—he can tell she’s not too keen on the idea—and leads him to the silvery dragon’s side, pressing him to sit there on the floor. The girl sits down opposite, cross-legged. He worries she’s going to make him play one of those girly hand-clapping games he thinks are so dumb. Instead, she lays a feather touch on both his eyelids, closing them, holding them shut very gently. N’Doch gets the idea. He keeps them shut when she takes her hands away, figuring he can’t see much in the dark anyway.

  “Sehr gut,” she says. Next she lightly pinches his earlobes and pulls them outward. “Horen sie.”

  “I got it,” nods N’Doch. “You want me to listen.”

  She speaks slowly and carefully, as if she thinks that’ll make him understand German all of a sudden, which he doesn’t and won’t, but he goes along with it anyway. He’s glad she doesn’t shout, like some people do when they don’t speak your language. She keeps her voice quiet, intense.

  After a while, he can tell she’s repeating the same sets of words over and over. He’s getting a little bored, so he shakes his head, but she reaches out again and presses rough palms flat against his temples to hold him still, then talks at him some more. When the music video starts in his head again, N’Doch realizes she’s not doing this on her own. He’s in for another dose of force-fed information and credibility testing.

  But when he gives in and pays attention, just for the hell of it, he notices that the video and the music are repeating themselves just like the girl, at pretty much the same rhythm. An image of himself and the silver-blue dragon comes with a certain musical phrase and a certain string of the girl’s now familiar but incomprehensible syllables. An image of her and the big dragon brings up different words, different music.

  N’Doch has always liked the cartoon of the lightbulb clicking on in someone’s head. It’s exactly what happens to him now, as he puts two and two together: Brilliant light floods his brain. It’s the light off the vast glowing landscape of understanding that opens up as comprehension dawns: the girl is not the only one talking to him.

  “Wow,” he breathes.

  His eyes pop open from the shock. The girl is smiling at him in the moonlight. He hasn’t seen her smile before. He’s momentarily charmed by the warmth of it softening her delicate somber face. But she makes him shut his eyes again, and continues talking. N’Doch tries putting words to the images visiting his brain and as he does, he hears the girl’s spoken German echoed by his own French, English or Wolof, like she’s being overdubbed, with a slight delay. It’s a messy, echoing effect but the delay keeps shrinking, until the overlap is a match, not perfect, but if he manages to shut out the sounds she’s actually speaking, what he hears in his head are words he can mostly understand, though in no way fathom the source of.

  “Sei ist your dragon,” says the girl. “Du ist hers. You hear her when she sings?”

  He nods. He’s reluctant to admit it.

  “You must listen to her in your head. Then you will understand everything.”

  That music has meaning is no mystery to N’Doch. He’s just never thought of it as literal language before, and suddenly, the possibilities seem endless.

  “Too cool,” he tells the girl. He stops worrying about what’s real and what isn’t. Now all he wants to do is sit here in the dark with this blue dragon she calls his, and learn how to talk in music.

  But first he has to ask: “What’s her name?”

  “Water,” says the girl, as clear as daylight.

  His eyes pop open again. He looks at her. “But that’s my name.”

  She smiles knowingly. “Of course it is.”

  * * *

  Erde recalled so well the thrill that had shot through her when the dragon informed her that its name was the same as her own. She had not for an instant considered it a matter of mere coincidence and neither, she could see, did Endoch. But instead of looking thrilled, he looked trapped and wary.

  “Why do we have the same name?” he demanded, and a few echoes and relays and image-layers later, Erde understood his words, though not how to answer them. A proper metaphysical answer required someone like Sir Hal, a lifelong scholar of dragon lore. Erde thought she�
��d best limit herself to the practical aspects.

  “You are her Guide. There are matters in the world of men that a dragon will not know about. Therefore we are here to help them.”

  Endoch eyed her skeptically. “Help them do what?”

  He’s so suspicious, Erde noted. Probably he’d been taught bad things about dragons, like the people at home. She would have been, too, but for her grandmother and her nursemaid, Alla. She felt both worldly-wise and totally inadequate to this task the dragons had laid on her. If Endoch had grown up without anyone to prepare him for his destiny, she would have to fill him in on the crucial details. It would not be easy. She was sure it was going to be a bit of a shock.

  “We must help them carry out their Purpose,” she replied.

  He frowned. “What purpose?”

  “Well, the Thing they’re supposed to do.”

  “What are they supposed to do?”

  Erde licked her lips, suddenly aware of a vast, not entirely physical thirst. Because, of course, this was the hardest part of the explanation. “They don’t know yet.”

  “They don’t . . .” Endoch rolled his eyes. “Are you for real? Is this thing some kind of gimmick after all?”

  “Gi-mic?”

  Neither dragon could translate these syllables. Earth couldn’t recognize the image, Water couldn’t put a sound to it.

  “Yeah, you know, a stunt of some kind? If so, what’s in it for me? Why should I go ’round risking my life for you guys? I don’t even know you!”

  Erde was momentarily stymied. Earth interposed his analysis.

  —He does not yet wish to accept his destiny.

  Erde sighed, sucked in a deep breath and prepared to settle in for the long haul. “Is there a well in this stronghold?”

  “A well? This is a boat, girl. There’s no well in here. Don’t you have boats where you come from?”

  A boat? Erde glanced at Earth. Had one of them misunderstood? No, insisted the dragon. Scanning the darkness around her, Erde tried matching the bright-hulled craft on the beach with this cavernous square-walled room.

  “Then it is a very big boat,” she marveled. “Your liege lord must be very rich and powerful. Is he a king?”

  Endoch furrowed his brow, then shook his head. “Man, I guess you’re from Mars after all. But you know what? You’re in luck.” He stood up, stretching, checking his arm again as if to make sure it really was healed. “I got some okay water stashed away here.”

  He strode off into the darkness. Both dragons watched him go somewhat anxiously. But Erde saw in the young man’s doubt and resistance something that dragons, who always knew what was real and what wasn’t, never could.

  —He won’t leave. But he can’t let himself value a thing he fears will be taken away from him.

  —What thing?

  —His dragon. If she is not real, he will lose her.

  —Of course she is real.

  —He doesn’t know that yet. I think he has led a very hard life.

  Endoch came back with a squarish, white jug hooked onto one thumb. He twisted its neck to remove some kind of stopper, then set it to his mouth and drank deeply. Then he placed it on the floor and slid it toward her. “Help yourself.”

  Erde grasped the milk-white handle. The jug wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected. Its sides gave easily as she pressed her palms against them, but did not break. She lifted it gingerly and took a cautious sip, followed by a long grateful series of gulps when she found the water to be warm, brackish but potable. She set the jug down and tapped the side of it with her fingernail. It was hard like clayware, pliant like oiled leather and, now that she studied it in the moonlight, translucent like glass. But glass could never be so sturdy or so flexible.

  “What ware is this?” she asked.

  “What what?”

  “What is it fashioned from?”

  Endoch snorted. “You sure do talk funny. I hope you sound better in German—I mean, to someone really hearing German. ‘What ware’ . . . well, I guess it’s Tupperware.”

  He seemed to think he’d said something clever. Erde looked blank.

  “Plastic, girl. What’d you think it was?”

  She fingered the parchment-thin edge of the jug’s mouth. “We do not have this at Tor Alte.”

  “Come on! You’re from Germany, right? They make all kinds of plastic in Germany. Mostly the expensive kinds.”

  Erde did not wish to argue with him and further expose her ignorance. Perhaps her father’s provincial mountain domain was more backward than she’d realized. “I have some bread and some cheese,” she offered instead.

  Endoch’s eyes lit up. “You do? Outstanding!”

  She took that as approval and went to retrieve her pack from the cloth pallet she’d been resting on in the corner. The small loaf was nearly stale—it was hard to imagine, after all that had happened, that it had come from Deep Moor’s bake ovens only a day ago. But the pungent scent of the cheese, as she unwrapped the stained oilskin, made her mouth water. She split both neatly in half and handed Endoch his portion.

  He took it quickly and wolfed down half his chunk of bread before sniffing more carefully at the cheese. “You make this stuff yourself?”

  Her mouth full, Erde shook her head.

  “But you know it’s safe?”

  She returned him a puzzled frown. Did he think she would poison him?

  “You know, all the hormones and drugs, and the stuff the animals pick up in their feed . . . ?”

  She hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant, and neither did the dragons.

  Endoch looked at her, back at the cheese, and shrugged. “Well, what the hell. You’re eating it. I’m too hungry not to.” And he did, slowly this time and with great deliberation. “Not bad,” he concluded. “Tasty.” He let his gaze swing about casually, then settle finally on her pack. Before she could stop him, he’d reached, grabbed it into his lap. “What else you got in here?”

  * * *

  The taste of the cheese is what gets his mind working. It’s like nothing he’s ever eaten before, a deep sharp rich taste that lingers on his tongue like a fading chord in his ears. He thinks, This cheese came from somewhere else. Fancy imported stuff. Just enough to get him really hungry. He wishes he had more.

  It’s habit that makes him snatch her pack. Normally he’d be on his feet and out of there, with the pack his spoils of the day. But he’s not going to steal from this girl. He can’t even seem to consider it. It would be like stealing from the dragons. But he’ll take food if she’s got it, and he does want some answers, better than the ones she’s been giving him. Maybe the pack has some of them inside.

  He dumps it out on the floor, waiting for the girl to squeal and pummel him, like the girl this morning—was it this morning?—with the tomatoes. But this one just watches. Her silence chastises but she makes no move to stop him. N’Doch unfolds the inner bundle and lays out the contents. The wrapping is a thick blanket of some kind. He shakes it out. It’s a cloak, dense and gray. He holds it up to his nose. The smell is strong but indefinable, until he decides it’s what he imagines sheep would smell like. Real wool, then. Amazing. There’s more real wool in the bundle: a knitted cap that looks homemade. It also looks small. He does not try it on. He picks up the leather vest she’d been wearing, now neatly folded. He thinks that might actually fit him, but he lays it aside with the cloak and the cap. Next, a small metal rectangle with a lid. He opens it. Inside, a couple of flat rocks and a bunch of crackly wood shavings. N’Doch holds it up and cocks his head.

  “To make fire,” the girl says, as if it should be obvious.

  “Why not just carry matches?” Even more obvious. “Or a lighter. Take up less room.” He fingers the flinty rock restlessly. The taste of the cheese is still in his mouth, and the musky smell of the wool. Some things about this girl are beginning to fall into a pattern. He puts the tinderbox down. “Hey, look—are you from one of those nature-freak communes where they don’t allow technol
ogy? Where they, like, you know, live in the past?”

  He can see she’s thinking it over, which probably means he’s got that one wrong. Finally, she says, “Why would one wish to live in the past?”

  “Well, yeah, good question.” In fact, he wonders if he can answer it. “A lotta people think it was better then.”

  This time she nods. “When I was little, I always wanted to live back when my ancestors fought with dragons.”

  She says it with such conviction, he has to grin and shake his head. “Mars,” he murmurs. “For sure.”

  “Then I met Earth.”

  “That’s his name, the big guy? Earth?”

  She nods.

  “Tell me yours again?”

  “Earth.”

  He remembers he’s hearing it in translation. “Right. Gotcha. Like you said, of course it is.”

  He picks up the final object in the pile, a dark box of carved wood. The girls’ eyes flick down at it and away, too quickly, and he thinks, Okay, the prize is in here, maybe her money or her credit cards. He studies it at eye level. He’d say the style is old, but the box itself seems pretty new. It looks like a prop from the costume vids his mama watches, but he knows what vid props are like and this box is too well made. The carving is skilled and elaborate, leaves and flowers and the faces of men and women, and on the top—somehow, he is not surprised—is a small figure of a dragon.

  N’Doch shakes the box gently. It rattles. “Whadja do, rob a museum?”

  When she just keeps watching, he twists the little latch, raises the lid, and pokes at the contents, an old scrap of paper wrapped around something round and hard. He takes it out and the paper unravels neatly on his palm, offering up its contents as if to say, voila! N’Doch is taken aback, both by the uncanny presentation and by the beauty of the object exposed. It’s a big red stone, set in silver. Even in the cool flat light of the moon, the stone looks like a drop of blood with a flame shining through it. On top it has, sure enough, another tiny dragon cut into the curving surface. N’Doch stares, astonished by the fineness of the detail. It’s not a sparkling sort of jewel like he’s used to. He can tell it’s old. The weight and warmth of it are heavy on his palm. “Man,” he breathes, with newfound respect. “This is some heist you pulled off, girl.”