The Book of Water

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Hsst!” Wasser jogged her arm.

  A square of green light shone ahead—how could she not have seen it before?—an enlarging square rather like an open window. She seemed to be moving toward it, but at an oddly unpredictable rate. For a while, it would grow steadily, then it would stay the same for what seemed like minutes, though Erde knew she had not slowed her pace. Occasionally she would glance behind her, unthinking, to check on the others even though it was too dark to see anything. When she looked ahead again, the square would have suddenly enlarged, and she would be sure she was almost on top of it, ready to burst through into whatever mystery lay beyond.

  “You could at least tell us where you’re taking us,” N’Doch muttered.

  “To the only safe place. Everywhere else, I am watched. It’s the price of fame. But this place no one knows about except . . .” Her voice faded, then as quickly recovered. “I call it my ‘Dream Haven.’”

  “Say it again?”

  “It’s where the Dreams come to me.”

  “Hunh. Seems like everyone’s having dreams lately.”

  Erde knew Lealé had stopped short when she heard N’Doch’s soft explosion of breath as he ran into her.

  “You’re not the Dreamer, surely,” Lealé said.

  “Sure, I have dreams, I guess. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “I mean the dreams you remarked upon.”

  N’Doch was silent a moment. Erde tried to will him to keep his silence, tried to nudge Wasser to still him before he said too much. “No,” he admitted finally, “that would be her, I guess. Mine are pretty ordinary. But she’s been having some real humdingers.”

  “Yes,” Lealé replied slowly. Erde could almost feel the woman’s eyes boring into her through the darkness. “Yes, I know. And I am meant to warn her against them. I see that now.”

  “So you did know we were coming.”

  “I must tell her not to listen to them. Except . . .” She broke off, as if changing her mind or suddenly losing her train of thought.

  “Don’t think that’s gonna be necessary,” N’Doch went on, oblivious. “She’s already . . .”

  “Wasser,” Erde murmured, “Ask her if she saw us in her dreams.”

  But N’Doch’s ears were keen. “Hey, girl, how ’bout me? I can do that now, remember, just as good as him.”

  Erde doubted it, but she could see how much it meant to him, so much that he’d forgotten (or conveniently ignored) the fact that it was thanks to Wasser that the translations entered his head in the first place. He didn’t even seem to have noticed that there was currently one less link in their communications chain.

  “Then you must do it,” she said to him. “But don’t tell her about my dreams, ask her about hers. Did they tell her about us? What did they say? Why does she need to warn me? Ask her if . . .”

  “Whoa, slow down, girl. I’ll get to it.”

  His insistence on always appearing casual was, Erde thought, his most irritating characteristic. After all, some things were more important than others. Some things were worth getting excited about. But N’Doch had to behave as if nothing in the world mattered at all.

  “So that’s how you knew we were coming, Sister Lealé, from your dreams?”

  But Lealé did not answer, and just then the passage widened and they were in a tiny empty room, lit only by the watery light from a wide doorway directly in front of them. This was the elusive green square that had led Erde through the darkness. It looked out on a bright grove of slender, smooth-trunked trees. Three broad steps of translucent stone led down to a flawless lawn that looked but did not smell like it had been fresh-cut minutes ago with a very sharp scythe. And there was something odd about the trees. A prickle up her spine made Erde halt just inside the opening. The others gathered beside her.

  N’Doch spoke first. “So, are we there?”

  “Yes,” Lealé murmured. “This is my Dream Haven.”

  “Pretty weird lookin’ trees out there.”

  “They’re all the same,” Wasser supplied.

  “Yes,” said Erde. “How remarkable. Every one of them, exactly alike.”

  “Cloned, must be,” N’Doch remarked. “This is kinda like your little park out back, ’cept those trees are, y’know, normal.”

  “I see you’ve been exploring already.” In a brief flash of humor, Lealé deftly parodied his answering shrug, then turned serious again. “I think it is sort of my little park out back, but whenever I go in there, I never end up here. It’s very confusing.”

  “What happens when you go out there from here?”

  “I never do.”

  “There’s someone out there,” Wasser said quietly.

  “Oh, no, dear,” Lealé assured him.

  “There is.”

  N’Doch eased forward. “Let’s go find out.”

  Lealé grabbed his arm. “No! You can’t!” When he looked back at her in surprise, she let go but her eyes begged him. “Really. I never go out there. He wouldn’t like it.”

  “He?” N’Doch gave her a sly look. “Aahh. The guy down the hall.”

  Lealé laughed. “Oh, no. Not him.” Then she sobered and fell silent. Her moods were so mercurial that Erde was unable to make sense of them. The pale green light from the grove flowed over her anxious face as if it had substance, like smoke or water. This is how it would feel, Erde mused, if you could live at the bottom of a clear lake. She noticed how oddly steady the light was, as if every branch and leaf in the entire grove was utterly motionless. As still as the grave, she found herself thinking, then made herself stop, because of the chill it gave her. She remembered certain spring mornings at Tor Alte when the castle on its barren crag was wrapped in fog, and the sunlight seemed to come not from above, but from all around, as if trees and rocks, everything, even the fog itself, were aglow. This place, she decided, is not of this world.

  “Then who is it you’re so worried about?” N’Doch prodded.

  “When I do my readings,” Lealé offered finally. “I call him my spirit guide. My clients prefer to be able to envision their contact with the Infinite. Actually, I don’t know what he is. I just know when he’s here.”

  “Here? You meet him here?”

  “He speaks to me here.”

  “Only here?”

  “Yes. He calls me and I come.”

  Erde’s ears pricked up at her use of the word “call” but N’Doch only nodded.

  “Seems obvious to me—it’s him out there, whoever he is.”

  Lealé shook her head. “He doesn’t speak to me from out there. He’s . . . somewhere else.”

  Watching the grove, Erde saw a flicker of movement. “Wait!”

  Lealé started. “What? What is it, dear?”

  Erde pointed, then let her hand fall. “No, it’s gone.”

  N’Doch shifted his weight onto the first of the white stone steps. “You saw something?”

  “It’s nothing. That’s how it always is,” Lealé said. “Especially lately. I’m sure I’m seeing something, but he always tells me to pay no attention, and there’s never anything out there really.”

  But Erde knew she’d seen something. “Did you see it, Wasser?”

  The boy/dragon shuddered. “I felt it. We’re very near now. . . .”

  “Near to what?”

  “Knowledge.”

  “I tell you, it’s nothing,” Lealé insisted.

  “How do you know,” countered N’Doch, “if you never go out there and look?”

  “Please. Don’t.”

  The fear that had been building in Lealé’s voice finally drew Erde’s attention away from the grove. Looking back into the darkness, she noticed that it was no longer so dark, and that the room was a little larger than she’d thought. She could see the walls now, paneled wood below and an intricately repeating pattern of some kind above, like a tapestry, only smoother and more abstract. It didn’t seem to have any particular color. It just reflected the watery green glow pouring in from the grove.<
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  “He doesn’t want me to go there,” Lealé continued. “He’s been very clear on that score. And he’s . . . not very pleasant when he’s crossed.”

  N’Doch made a broad show of looking around. “I don’t see any gate here, no bars or signs or nothing.”

  “I know. It’s . . . like a test. He asks very little of me, but if I disobey him, he won’t send the Dreams to me.”

  He folded his arms. Erde could see stubbornness rising in him like sap. “Okay, but he’s not sending me any gigabillion-dollar dream scam, right? So you just stay put like you’re supposed to, and I’ll go have a look around.”

  Lealé grabbed him again, and a flare of the Mahatma’s fire burned in her gaze. “Listen, it’s you who’ve shown up like beggars on my doorstep! I don’t even know who you are! Now, I’ve been generous because you invoked the name of my friend, but I’ll not have you calling my Dreams a scam! My Dreams are true ones!”

  “I thought it was you who sent for us,” N’Doch retorted.

  Lealé held on to him even more intensely. “Who are you? I don’t even know why I sent that card! I need to understand why . . .” She broke off again abruptly and drew her hand away. “Forgive my rudeness.”

  “Hey, no problem. And my name’s N’Doch, just so you know. Try to remember it. Someday you might see it plastered all over town just like yours.”

  “N’Doch, then. Is that why you think I’m a fraud? Please understand, then: It’s not the fame I crave. I do have to promote myself in ways I’d prefer not to, but that’s to get the people in. To get their attention, so they know there is hope for them. To support this house, this place of peace and safety, so they can come here and be helped. People need truth in their lives!”

  N’Doch avoided her earnest stare. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for turning whatever gimmick you got into making your name and fortune. I hope to do that myself real soon. But this spirit guy, he’s your thing, not mine. My thing’s something else at the moment, a lot of questions that need answering, and one of them just became: What’s out there?”

  “No! You mustn’t! You can’t!” Lealé’s hands began to lift and fly about her in random fitful movements. Erde saw finally that simple envy was making N’Doch misbehave. In his desire to win, he was ignoring what was sensible. She stepped between them.

  “Remember that Master Djawara sent us here to listen to Mistress Lealé, not to frighten and insult her.”

  “Aw, girl, this is stupid! We’re here, why not just check the place out? It’s just a bunch of trees.”

  “You know better than that by now, surely?”

  “What is she saying?” asked Lealé.

  Wasser turned away from the grove for the first time. “Anyway, we certainly shouldn’t go out there without telling my brother. I don’t want to leave him stranded, in case we . . .”

  “So tell him!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  For a moment, even to Erde, Wasser seemed tall and threatening in the eerie green glow. “Listen.”

  N’Doch blinked, and listened. “Yeah? So?”

  “Listen inside.”

  N’Doch lowered his eyes, then quickly raised them again. “Hey. Where’d he go?”

  His smaller self again, Wasser replied, “I don’t think he went anywhere. Question is, where did we go?”

  “Hunh.” N’Doch’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. You win. But, Sister Lealé, it seems silly to bring us here if it’s so risky for you.”

  Lealé had been watching their exchange with narrowed eyes. Erde wondered what she’d made of it. “It’s less risky than everywhere else.”

  “Right, so you said. The listeners. So who’s listening?”

  Lealé took on an entirely new face, world-weary and amused. She waved a dismissive, bright-nailed hand. “Oh, that’s a whole other story. It’s not really fit for children, and it certainly doesn’t concern you.”

  “It does if you can’t feel good about us talking where they’re listening.”

  She gave him a quick, seductive smile. “It’s just a jealous man, you know?”

  N’Doch’s sly grin bloomed in reply. “Ah! Now we get to the guy down the hall.”

  “Yes.” Her smile turned faintly bitter. “Keeping track of his investment. Really, it’s not your problem. I just don’t want him knowing about all this.” She gestured around the dark recess and outward, toward the grove. “Where my dreams come from or this . . . other business.”

  “The business of the card you sent Papa Djawara.”

  Lealé’s nervousness returned. “Yes.”

  * * *

  N’Doch glances around the cramped dark space. He sees low cushioned benches set along the wall that he hadn’t noticed were there. In fact, if you’d asked him, he’d have sworn there was no place to sit before.

  He sits. “Okay. You wanna talk. Let’s talk.”

  The girl and the apparition join him. The kid grabs the seat nearest the door, probably so he can keep an eye out for any goings-on in the weird park thing. Lealé does not sit. She paces, not the smoothest thing to do in a space that small. N’Doch can see she’s as nervous as a cat.

  “I need to start at the beginning, if the story’s to make any sense at all. You see, Djawara and I grew up together. We were distantly related.” She turns to face N’Doch. “He is truly your grandfather, Djawara is?”

  Her doubting makes him huffy again, but the girl is watching him, so he nods in a way he hopes looks noncommittal.

  “I should have guessed it would be someone close to him. But I recall him mentioning, when we were still in contact, that he’d lost a grandson or two.”

  “Three. I’m the fourth, the one he wasn’t close to, for a while at least.”

  Still pacing, she stops in front of the apparition, her face softening like women always do around little kids. “Is he your grandpapa, too?”

  The apparition shakes its head.

  “What’s your name, then?”

  “Wasser. It means ‘Water.’”

  N’Doch is still not happy with this name, has not once yet used it.

  Lealé turns to him. “An interesting coincidence. Your name in Wolof is also . . .”

  He nods. “Water.”

  Lealé looks to the girl now. “And yours, my dear?”

  “Erde,” the girl says, just a bit late.

  “A lovely name.”

  The girl nods. “Danke.”

  “It means ‘Earth,’” says the apparition, his child’s eyes narrowing on Lealé. N’Doch wonders if the kid means it to sound so much like a challenge.

  But Lealé brightens. “Ah. Like my little boulevard outside. Then it must be right.” She starts up her pacing again. “I’ll go on with my story.”

  “So, as we were growing up together, Djawara and I, we discovered we shared interests that set us apart from our other friends and relatives. Interests in the past, in history, in the old myths and customs. Djawara, particularly, was a gifted storyteller. He could expand his tales indefinitely, until they became entire sagas based on the adventures of some mythic hero. Later, when I did a little study myself, I discovered that he’d invented most of what he’d held us so enthralled with. When I put it to him, he admitted it readily enough, even seemed pleased with me for finding him out. Then he swore me to secrecy and confessed that he did it to distract himself—and us—from his growing obsession with the one tale that he hadn’t invented, at least not consciously, the one tale he just somehow knew.”

  “The boy and the sea monster,” N’Doch murmurs in spite of himself.

  “Yes. The very one. He told you?”

  “He used to sing it to me, when I was little.” Before I decided he was just too uncool to be with, N’Doch reminds himself ruefully.

  “It frightened him, I think,” Lealé goes on. “This tale that would not leave him alone, whose central figure—the keeper of the ancient ways—he finally realized was himself.” She stops in mid-p
ace and lets her gaze drift to the floor. “I had my own . . . dilemmas . . . at the time. I was having strange, well . . . visitations. Dreams and visions I couldn’t explain. So when Djawara came to me—hoping, I’m sure, for a dose of healthy skepticism—I met him instead with encouragement and belief. I thought, well, if my much respected friend was being overtaken by some inexplicable fate, then my own bizarre experiences might be valid too. So, you see, each of us became the other’s proof of sanity, and thus we were bonded for life.”

  She sighs and leans her head back, smiling, and she’s beautiful again. N’Doch can tell she’s picturing the young Djawara in her mind, and wishes he could be there to see him, too. “Later on,” she continues, “When the events of our lives led us apart, we promised to be available for each other whenever our spiritual lives reached a crisis. For many years, they never did. Then I began having a kind of dream I’d never had before.”

  For the girl’s sake, N’Doch asks, “When was that?”

  “Two months ago,” the girl puts in abruptly.

  He frowns at her. “Let her tell us, huh?”

  Lealé asks, “What did she say?”

  “She said, two months ago, but that’s just . . .”

  “That’s right. She’s exactly right.” Slowly, Lealé turns and looks at the girl, like she’s seeing her for the first time. The girl smiles, like she’s trying to look helpful, but Lealé shudders, moans a little, then drops right down in the middle of the floor cross-legged and buries her head in her hands. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear!” she wails, rocking back and forth. “I knew it I knew it I just knew all this was much more complicated than it seemed at first, much more than he said it would be! Oh dear oh dear oh dear!”

  N’Doch sees tears and all, but he’s not quite convinced—the change came on her so sudden. But the girl jumps up right away and kneels at Lealé’s side, and puts both arms around her like she’s known her forever. Women can do that, N’Doch reflects. And here comes the apparition now, only he goes around the front and sits facing Lealé, taking her hand more like a woman would do than a little kid. N’Doch thinks maybe the two of them are getting a little carried away, and he stays put, waiting for his part in it to come clear to him. Lotta times, since all this began, he’s felt more like a glorified tour guide than this so-called “dragon guide” he’s supposed to be. Like, where’s his converted armored personnel carrier with the bullet-proof viewing windows, so he can say stuff like, “and on your right, ladies and gentlemen . . .” He’s heard the patter. For some weird reason, the tour APCs broadcast it over their exterior speakers as they troll along the city streets and byways. Maybe they’re trying to prove those rich foreigners riding in there in air-conditioned comfort are actually learning something useful.