The Book of Water

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Are you nuts? You’ll burn yourself!”

  She stares at him, then sit back on her haunches with a puzzled, considering scowl. She twists her head slightly, as if listening, toward the dragons in the corner. “Hot,” she says distinctly, in French.

  N’Doch blinks. “Well, yeah. Hot.” Then he says, “You gotta understand, the worst thing is not having the choice.”

  He’s got to give her one thing, she’s not stupid. She makes the leap. “Yes, N’Doch, I do understand. But you see, that’s exactly what I like about it.”

  “Hunh,” he says. “Well, different strokes . . .”

  He turns away and settles the pan on the burner.

  * * *

  Erde watched the dark-skinned youth lay two large fillets in the flat metal dish. She knew now that she had misjudged him. Why had the dragons not mentioned, when she’d questioned his qualifications as a Dragon Guide, that this Endoch was a magician?

  N’Doch, she corrected, rehearsing his name silently. She rolled the foreign sounds along her tongue and thought of the mage she’d promised to find for Earth those two long months ago, the one who’d help him remember his Quest. Maybe she’d found him after all. She knew N’Doch was a mage because he’d just exhibited a mage’s most basic skill: he’d conjured fire in his bare hands, and had not been burned by it. Plus the flame burned blue, the color of magic. Now he was preparing his pots and potions. Erde settled down to observe what further alchemy this unlikely mage might produce. Soon the crispy scent of frying fish informed her that this particularly alchemy was going to be culinary, that N’Doch was cooking in that odd metal dish with the handle. Erde was not disappointed. She was hungry enough right then to prefer food to any kind of magic.

  * * *

  N’Doch climbs the tall fire ladder to the high windows, laying the uneaten fish out on the wide sills to dry in the sun. When he climbs down again, the girl and the dragons are gathered in the center of the gym, facing him with identical expectant stares. He’s amazed that a dragon can make the same expression as a human, that look the girl has that says, “Well, now that we’ve all eaten, it’s time for you to get on with solving the rest of our problems.”

  Or that’s the way N’Doch reads it, and rebellion rises within him, swift and hot as lava, mostly for being caught up in inescapable forces that he doesn’t understand—except for knowing there’s something he’s supposed to do. But accepting the reality of this so-called destiny doesn’t mean he has to like it. He’ll go along, for a while at least, but it’s gotta be on his terms.

  From the bottom of the ladder, he glares back at the dragon huddle, then slouches over and hunkers down. He is careful not to look directly at the dragon Water. He can feel her anyway, hear her inquisitive background music invading his head, but if he doesn’t meet her glance, at least he can avoid losing himself once more in her scary blue stare. He doesn’t worry about what language he’s speaking. He knows now that somehow his meaning will get through to all parties. He says, “I think . . .” then stops himself. He traces obscure patterns on the gleaming floor and starts again. “My mother says hide out at my grandfather’s. I think maybe we all could.”

  Silence settles into the room along with the pale dust motes falling through the sunlight from the clerestory, and N’Doch hears sounds he shouldn’t be hearing yet.

  “Someone’s in the corridor!” he hisses.

  The dragons understand right off, and the girl gets it a second later. N’Doch leaps up and sprints for the door to make sure the lock is still in place. He puts his ear to the surface and listens for a moment, then pads deliberately back to the huddle.

  “We are in deep shit,” he says quietly. “There’s at least ten, maybe fifteen guys on the other side of that door. It’ll take ’em a while to get through, unless they send for a cutting torch, but we can’t go anywhere either. Sooner or later, they’ll get smart and start climbing in the windows. So we’re trapped, unless . . .” He pauses, then guesses wildly, glancing up at the dragon Earth. “Unless you can get us out of here.”

  More silence, and the banging and clanking out in the corridor gets a lot more aggressive. Then the girl says, “Ja. Sei kann.”

  N’Doch shakes his head, but this is no time to argue the terms of the agreement. He shuts his eyes with a grimace and wills himself to allow the dragon music into his head.

  “He can,” the girl repeats, “but he needs to be able to see where he’s going.”

  “What?”

  “Just listen! He will explain.”

  N’Doch is amazed how simple and instantaneous comprehension can be when you have the right interpreter.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Even so, when they actually make the move, N’Doch is not really prepared.

  They have to move quickly, so they agree that Water should image an interim destination. N’Doch’s first experience traveling with Earth should not be from the driver’s seat. He pouts, thinking they don’t trust him, but he’s glad enough when the time comes. Any lingering doubts he’s allowed himself about the reality of dragon magic are blown to bits when he shakes the dizzying tingle out of his limbs and looks around.

  He’s back on the beach. But not the port beach, where the broken supertanker lay, where he’d been a split fraction of a moment ago. This is a different beach, and N’Doch knows it well, recognizes its diamond-bright sand and the smooth blue water of its protected inlet even though he’s never seen it like this, in broad daylight. He doesn’t take the time to wonder how he’s ended up there. That could be a fatal luxury. Instinctively, he ducks, then glancing up and seeing the girl just standing there, snatches her down beside him.

  “Why’d he bring us here?”

  They’re out of sync again. The girl frowns. N’Doch grits his teeth, looks to Water and repeats himself.

  The girl is puzzled. “She showed him and he went there.”

  “Then she’s gotta show him somewhere else! Fast!” He’s whispering, though he knows it’s pointless. The spy ears are sensitive enough to hear an ant walking. “Back to the boat! Anywhere! Just get us outta here!” Better a mob of irate drunken fishermen than Baraga’s bionic dogs and the men they’ll bring with them. The girl wouldn’t stand a chance. And the dragons . . .

  N’Doch sees it, a horrifying flash. His beautiful silver-blue monster boxed up in a high-tech cage for Baraga’s video zoo. Just the sort of prize the Big Man would pay top bucks for. In his former life, mere hours ago, N’Doch would’ve already opened negotiations, might still if his life depends on it, which it might, he recalls, if he doesn’t quick-wise explain to the dragons why this apparently deserted, picturesque, and pristine beach is the worst possible place to drop in on. He grasps the girl by both shoulders, like his brother Sedou used to do when he was supposed to really pay attention. He guesses this means he’s the big brother now. He only hopes he lasts longer.

  “There’s this rich guy lives here, you got me? I mean, really rich. You can’t imagine how rich.” He circles his arms, encompassing the miles of unbroken white curling to the north and south—not even a footprint—and the manicured grove of royal crown palms embracing the curve of the beach like a green-armed lover. He wishes he could point out something obvious, like razor wire or guard towers, or mega laser emplacements, but that’s not the Big Man’s style. “And this is his private beach estate, that he doesn’t like just anybody wandering around on.”

  If the girl weren’t from Mars or wherever, the sheer un-touched beauty of the place would ring her alarm bells immediately. But N’Doch sees she has no problem understanding the perils of trespassing at least, so that anti-tech commune of hers must have taught her something about the standard division of wealth out in the world. He’s wondering if they impressed upon her just how far some folks will go to preserve that division, when he hears the dogs. The girl’s eyes widen.

  “Knew it,” N’Doch groans. For a wildly optimistic moment, he’d hoped dragons and girls from Mars are invisible to
Baraga’s blanket of sensors.

  The sound is literally bloodcurdling. He could explain to the girl how the dogs have been genetically engineered to produce the loudest, scariest howl a mammalian throat can produce, so that their victims will have plenty of time, while the dogs approach, to regret their trespass. But explanations wouldn’t be too reassuring, since their bodies have been engineered as well. At least she’s listening, and the buzz of image and music in his head says the dragons are, too. In fact, the images are getting kind of frantic. N’Doch clenches his eyes and shakes his head uselessly against the surge of mental static.

  “He doesn’t like dogs,” the girl says apologetically.

  “These aren’t your normal dogs.”

  “This was her fishing place . . .”

  He’s just figured that out. Where else could you come up with a pile of hundred percent healthy fish? Baraga stocks the bay from his own hatcheries. “‘Fine, fine. Now tell them to get us out of here.”

  The girl smiles at him. Does he detect condescension? She’s not as worried about this as she should be. “She hears you, N’Doch. That’s why you hear me.”

  “I know that,” he growls. “We got no time for lessons now.”

  “We have to have time.” Her smile hardly wavers. “Here’s what you must do: recall a place that you know in every detail.”

  He’s looking over his shoulder, monitoring the dogs’ approach. “Most of those kind of places are right here in town.”

  “A safe place. You spoke of your grandfather’s . . . ?”

  He shouldn’t have said anything. What if he can’t remember well enough? “I don’t know . . . it’s been a while.”

  “Think, N’Doch! If you can really see it in your mind, Earth can take us there.”

  She’d said this back on the tanker, but he didn’t truly absorb it until the reality of instantaneous transport was finally incontestable, when he found himself on Baraga’s beach. He gets it now: kind of like the old Star Trek vids without all the fuzzy lights and music. The blue dragon aimed them at the one deserted spot she could image, and there they went. Pretty neat. Not her fault it wasn’t a real smart choice, but he’s got to do better.

  He bears down on his brain, digging after old memories of the bush. Concentrating is hard, with that uncanny howling tearing at his ears. And now, behind the dogs, he hears the resonant hum of the sleek sand sleds that give Baraga’s patrols their own kind of instant transport. N’Doch tastes a bitter surge of envy, like he always does when he’s reminded of the Big Man, the so-called Media King, and of what a man can buy with all that money. There’s no one he hates with such purity, such simple fervor. But it’s not so simple, really. He hates Baraga because the man’s got everything and can do what he likes. But N’Doch knows that if the Media King chose to smile on him, say, sign him to even a minor recording contract, he knows he’d be bought as fast as the next poor kid with a keyboard. And this makes him hate Baraga even more.

  But this is an old old rage and he hasn’t got time for it now. The primal yowl of the dogs is maybe five hundred yards away. The girl looks nervous. The blue dragon is pinning him to the sand with her gimlet glare.

  “Someplace safe . . .” he mutters. “Don’t you know what you’re asking?” Things will have changed in the bush, though maybe not so much, that far out. He can recall well enough the endless miles of scorched peanut fields, and the scattered, hard-baked villages. Familiar, yes, but in his mind, there’s a sameness to all those miles. Can he remember one specific field or place along the road? If they could wait until dark, it’d be a lot easier to avoid detection.

  But no such luck. He can make out the individual drones of the sleds now. There are four of them coming, and these are the two-man sleds. Probably Baraga’s spy-eyes have them on visual, so they already know what a prize awaits them. N’Doch doesn’t want to stick around to find out, though it would be fun and a rare taste of power, however fleeting, to wait until the sleds and dogs and whatever have pulled up around them, then vanish right out from under their noses.

  He lets the image dance through his mind and abruptly, the background dragon music he’s almost forgotten about turns sharp and urgent. Not even his fantasies are his own anymore. Dogs or no, he’d like to sulk, but the dragon will not indulge him. Hard music, a storm of music in his head presses for action. He feels like a child being punished, and it turns out that’s just what he’s needed to vividly recall his time in the bush.

  “Okay, I got one!” The dogs are in sight. “How do I do this?”

  The sensation is painless, but he feels like his brain is being vacuumed.

  * * *

  It’s an odd little place, just a thicket of rocks and an old baobab tree out in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is good right now, he thinks. He’d recalled it at the last minute, mainly because it’s where he escaped to when he missed his mama, or his grandfather was mad at him. Uncannily, the rocks themselves—pale, wind-smoothed boulders—are piled up in the shape of a dragon. As a kid, he’d called it the dinosaur. Now he sees it differently.

  He’s impressed by the big guy’s accuracy. First, he’s brought them nearly a hundred klicks in less than a heartbeat. On these roads, that’s a long day’s ride on a crowded, rickety bush taxi, not counting breakdowns or hijackings. Second, N’Doch had envisioned the rock pile from a bit of a distance, trying to fit the whole of it within his mind’s eye, and that’s exactly where he finds himself, once again breathless and queasy, a short walk away from this almost forgotten shrine of his childhood.

  “Cosmic,” he murmurs. He scans the horizon, notes that the girl does, too, only he doubts she’ll know what to look for. He’s glad she’s held tight to the water bottle he gave her. She does seem to grasp that you gotta carry everything you need if you mean to survive.

  So far, the horizon is empty, just the dry unplanted fields and scrub. He remembers there used to be some untilled land out this far, but that’s long gone. It’s the bush in name only these days. The scrub is gray and limp, and the sky’s got that sickish yellow tinge to it even here.

  But he sees no telltale rise of dust, no thin trail of smoke from some midday cookfire too close for comfort. ’Course maybe nobody’s got much left to cook. Still, he’s pretty sure the nearest village is at least two miles past his grandpapa’s. He feels the old twinge of agoraphobia that the bush always brought on but, right now, anywhere but Baraga’s beach is okay with him. Once he gets everyone into the rocks, where they can’t be spotted from the air, they’ll be safe—for a while, at least.

  * * *

  Erde sensed the true isolation of this new place he’d brought them to and let herself relax a little. True, it was hot as a smithy’s forge and the air was full of red dust, but as N’Doch herded them toward the rock pile, she could see shade there. The crevices between the biggest boulders were as deep as caves, and, mercifully, dragon-sized. Nobody would be chasing them for a while. She mentioned this to Earth and he agreed it would be a novelty, at least in their own recent lives. Time to settle in, time to finally question Water, and then, plan the next leg of their Quest.

  N’Doch seemed to share this need, once he had the dragons under cover. Erde thought him overly concerned about the view from above—did he suspect the very birds might give them away? But she smiled benignly to see him fuss so over Water, when a few hours ago he would scarcely acknowledge her. These wise and ancient creatures bound you by making you feel responsible for them. How silly, to think that great and magical dragons might have need of mere mortals, yet there it was. She remembered well how helpless Earth had seemed when she’d first found him—or rather, when he’d found her, at a time when her life had collapsed in ruins around her. The only thing that kept her sane and moving forward was the dragon’s obvious need of her. Perhaps N’Doch’s life was in a similar crisis, or was it just coincidence that they’d both been on the run when their dragons found them?

  With a final upward glance, N’Doch shrugged, apparentl
y satisfied. He took a long drink from his white water jug—Erde had been honored when he delivered one of these magical objects into her care—then he dropped down cross-legged to face her with the air of a man with a billion questions and no idea where to begin. He glanced furtively at Water, dozing behind him. He hadn’t learned yet that his connection with the dragon wasn’t directional and did not require eye contact. Only awareness, an inner listening.

  “Okay,” he began. “Now let me get this straight . . .”

  * * *

  “These are real dragons,” he states propositionally. It’s getting familiar now, almost comfortable, this simultaneous translation thing. Like talking with the vid playing. “And somehow I’m hooked up with one of them.”

  The girl nods. So far, so good. He knows this sounds like kindergarten, but he’s got to get all this weird shit out on the table where he can see it. Maybe saying it in words will give it logic or structure, like writing a song makes sense of messed up emotions.

  “Like you’re tied up with the big guy.”

  “Earth.”

  “Yah. Earth.” He’s not sure why he avoids calling the dragons by name, except that it feels like giving in. If you name a thing, it’s for sure real, but at least you retain the power of the naming, which is a kind of power over the thing. If a thing tells you its name and you accept it, you also accept that the thing has a power in its own right: self-determination. If he had a dog or a monkey, he’d pick a name and that would be that: The dog or monkey would be his. He studies the silver-blue dragon thoughtfully.