Wasser approached the wide, empty doorway leading out to the wood. “More like he can’t resist the chance to show how clever he is. Wherever he is physically, this room is the connection between his reality and ours. He wants us to know he’s in control of it.” He moved carefully into the doorway, then out onto the first wide, white marble step. He’d eased down onto the second when Erde darted forward and grabbed his arm.
“Don’t go down there without some kind of lifeline, a rope or something! The door will vanish, I know it will, and you’ll not find your way back again!”
Wasser retreated to the top step and stood staring out into the wood. The same trees, the same grass. Erde shivered and sat down on the edge of the step. She remembered it all too well.
N’Doch leaned against the doorway, waiting. “What d’you think, bro?”
Wasser turned. “I think . . . that’s exactly what he wants. The object of this entire exercise: Lealé’s dreams, the wood, everything. If I am trapped here, as perhaps my sister Air is, I cannot carry out my Purpose, the Work that is our collective Purpose.”
Erde spotted movement then, among the trees. Her head jerked to follow it, but it was gone.
“You saw . . . ?” Wasser asked.
She nodded.
“Me, too.” N’Doch came forward and pointed.
“No,” said Erde. “It was over there.”
“It’s everywhere,” Wasser concluded. “It’s trying to attract our attention.”
“To speak to us,” added Erde.
“Or just trying to lure you out there where it can take control . . .” worried N’Doch.
“Here.” Wasser extended a small hand to Erde. “We’ll make a chain. Brother N’Doch, you be the anchor.”
Erde took his hand and then N’Doch’s, and stepped down onto the bottom stair with Wasser. N’Doch wrapped his free hand around one of the columns flanking the doorway. When they signaled that they were ready, Wasser let himself down onto the velvet grass and . . .
. . . disappeared. All but his hand, which remained tightly clasped in Erde’s. The pull on her was light and irregular, like a fishing line bobbing in a slow moving stream. It was easy to maintain her grasp. She smiled over her shoulder at N’Doch, who said, “You know what? It’s getting real hot inside this little room.”
And, yes, she saw that he was wreathed in smoke. There was even a faint ruddy flicker down the passageway behind him. “Oh, dear. What if the house is burning?”
N’Doch raised an eyebrow. “Don’t even think about it.”
Suddenly her hand was yanked roughly, knocking her off balance and nearly breaking both holds. But Wasser hung on hard, and N’Doch quickly redoubled his grip. Erde righted herself and hauled back against the pressure.
“Pull, girl, pull him in! Throw your weight into it!”
The wood came alive with movement, always just out of her line of sight. The smoke in the room seeped out from the doorway in darkening curls. Erde felt like her bones might separate at every joint, she was being held so firmly and hauled on so hard.
N’Doch began to cough. “Gonna have trouble breathing in here before long! Pull, girl, pull!”
A breeze sprang up, a sudden tiny whirlwind that shredded the smoke into wisps but did not stir a single leaf or blade of grass. Abruptly the pressure gave from the wood side. Wasser came flying back into view and slammed against Erde, sending her sprawling on the stone step.
“Quickly!” he gasped, grabbing at her, missing, and stumbling. “Out! We’ve got to get out!”
N’Doch snatched them both to their feet. The doorway behind him was a wall of hot black smoke.
“Take a deep breath and run for it,” Wasser advised. “Now!”
“We’ll fry!” N’Doch objected.
“Better that than an eternity in between!”
“What?”
Wasser scrambled up the steps. “I’ll explain later. Come on!”
As he reached the doorway, the whole room burst into flame. He threw out his arms to hold the others back. He retreated a step, and the flames came after him.
“Trying to drive us into the wood,” N’Doch yelled.
Then Wasser planted his feet. “Wait!” he cried. “Wait!” His small form wavered darkly against the sear of flame. “I am . . . I am . . .”
—WATER
A roaring filled Erde’s ears and eyes and consciousness, and swept her up and into darkness, a long tumbling passage where she wasn’t sure if she was breathing or not, whether it was air or water filling her lungs. She felt the weight of heat and light behind her, driving her forward, down and down through darkness, rivers and oceans of darkness, until she gasped and was spat out by the flood onto the thick wool of Lealé’s carpets.
“Hit the deck!” N’Doch bellowed, and Erde cowered, awaiting the conflagration that would finish them when all that heat and fire behind them came exploding out of the passageway. Instead, she heard Lealé wailing and pounding on the wall where the opening had been until it delivered them from instant incineration as if from the mouth of Hell itself.
“What have you done?” Lealé screamed and wept and pounded. “What have you done?”
“Where’s the kid?” N’Doch croaked.
Erde raised her head. She was back in the alcove, dripping wet like everything and everyone else around her, but otherwise unharmed. There was no fire. Not even a lingering wisp of smoke. Only a blank, wood-paneled wall that no longer yielded its secrets to Lealé’s pleading touch.
“Where is he?” rasped N’Doch again.
“Here.” A whisper, barely audible, from the corner, nearly drowned out by the renewed crackle of gunfire outside. Wasser was smashed up against one of the couches like a discarded doll. Erde crawled toward him. N’Doch got to him first and turned him over, ever so gently unfolding, surveying his limp and twisted limbs.
“Nothing broken, little bro. You okay?”
“No . . .” His voice was weak and scratchy.
“I thought you said this asshole brother of yours couldn’t hurt anyone.”
Wasser stirred. “Are you hurt? Is she . . . ?”
“No, no, lay still. We’re both drenched but we’re in one piece.”
“I . . . made water? Real water?”
“You sure as hell did. It was awesome, and it saved our lives. That dude’s fire was real enough also, except . . .” N’Doch glanced up to frown at the wall where Lealé huddled, getting hold of herself.
“Except his fire couldn’t leave his reality. Good thing, huh?” Wasser coughed and groaned and tried to lift his head. “I can’t move . . .”
Glass shattered in the outer room, once, twice. A woman screamed. N’Doch ignored it. “What is it? What happened to you?”
“Weak . . . so weak . . .”
“Then you’ll just have to rest up, little bro.” He gathered the small slack body into his lap, trying to arrange it comfortably. He looked to Erde, his eyes troubled. “What’s wrong with him?”
She leaned close and kept her voice low. “The magic she . . . he made cost all his strength. I think he found more power than he knew he had. If he’s like Earth, he’ll need food and rest, the really deep sleep that renews the life forces.” In her head, she heard Earth confirming her guess.
N’Doch’s mouth tightened. “He can’t eat in this form.”
“We must carry him back to the grove.”
He shook his head. “Listen to it out there. We’d get cut to ribbons the minute we stepped out the door. Think of something else.”
She gazed back at him helplessly.
“There’s gotta be something!” he insisted.
“Sing to me . . .” Wasser murmured.
“What? Now?”
“Sing to me. Sing me your strength. Sing me . . . Sedou.”
* * *
N’Doch feels the ache rise up in his gut. He tries to press it down, back down there where it’s been all along, where he needs it to stay.
“I don’t h
ave a song about Sedou.”
“Yes . . . you do . . . I’ve heard it in you.”
You’ve no right to ask this, he thinks, no right! But the small body on his lap moves him beyond measure. A moment ago it was a magical being of awesome power. Now it needs him. It needs him.
Still, maybe he can fool it.
“You mean the one that goes like this?” He hums a few soft bars of a raunchy little ditty he and Sey used to sing together. It catches in his throat, but he gets it out at least.
“No . . . not that one.”
The ache’s still there, pressing on his ribs, pushing upward against his lungs and heart. It won’t go back down like it always has before. N’Doch understands that the kid is right, the song is there. The ache is the song, and it’ll come if he lets it. It’ll be right there on his tongue, words, melody, everything, formed way back down over the years he’s denied it. He’s reminded of a woman’s pain in childbirth, and wonders if it could ever be as bad as the agony of this bearing forth. He gives in to it and lets the song open his mouth.
It’s a hard song and a sweet song. It jangles and growls, and then cuts away swiftly to soar on high pure notes of light, only to swoop down again, hawklike and ruthless, and plunge into darkness. He’s real shaky on the first verse. The song is still drying its wings. But as the wings unfold their dark, crystalline brilliance, the singer unfolds with them, revealing the black knot of loss that he’s carried inside him like a stone he swallowed and could never pass. In the light of day, the stone crumbles and lifts, each dark shard a rising note.
He’s aware of his small audience—the girl, Lealé, a few others who have nosed through the draperies to listen. He can see that he has them enraptured. He’s aware that the shuddering of the ground and the rattle of machine guns outside is the perfect thematic baseline for the story he’s weaving. Most of all he’s aware that, as his voice clears and strengthens, as he moves into sync with the song and with his feelings, the small body in his lap is enlivening, enlarging, transforming, until it’s no longer the slim weight of a child that presses against his knees, but the solid burden of a man.
N’Doch clamps his eyes shut. He doesn’t dare look down.
But the song has an ending, a dark inevitability he doesn’t want to reach, and have to live through twice in one lifetime. The weight on his lap stirs and lifts away from him. A large hand grips his knee.
“That’s a great song, bro,” says Sedou’s voice. “Let’s end it right there.”
He does, within a breath, before the inevitability. He opens his eyes and stares into his brother’s smiling face.
“Sey . . .” is all he can manage.
“No,” the apparition reminds him gently. “But almost.”
N’Doch surprises himself with a nod. No hot flush of rage that this well-loved face before him isn’t really Sedou. He’s content just to see it again, alive and whole, and know that seeing it means the dragon’s back in working order.
“Hey, big bro . . . good to see you,” he says, and smiles.
Somebody at the archway starts applauding. Others join in. N’Doch wonders what they think and how much they’ve seen, and how much of that they could possibly understand. But the applause dies quickly as explosions shake the walls, leaving only one pair of hands offering up a precise and heavy syncopation with the chatter of the machine guns. Out of the corner of his eye, N’Doch sees Lealé rise from where she’d settled in raptly to listen. The apparition’s chin lifts, his smile dies.
“Making music while the city burns?” crows Baraga cheerfully. “A man after my own heart!”
N’Doch just manages not to leap to his feet in panic. The Big Man herds the other spectators away and draws the drapes tight, dusting his hands together with satisfaction. “Well, Glory! You been hiding the local talent from me?”
Now N’Doch stands up. The apparition’s rise beside him is even slower and more collected. N’Doch senses a new power in the dragon, filling his brother’s already powerful body with an even greater strength and presence. This dragon-form he resolves to call by name. Sedou would be honored. Baraga’s eyes are on the singer, but they stray again and again to Sedou.
It’s easier to face Baraga with Sedou standing behind him, easier to look into those predatory eyes, and not wince and stutter.
“Glad you liked the song,” N’Doch says, amazed at how calm he sounds.
“The song and the singer.” The Big Man is actually shorter than N’Doch, but wider. Big shoulders, thickly built. His glossy black hair is artfully streaked with silver. His skin is clear and Mediterranean. He’s stripped off his expensive suit jacket somewhere and rolled up his silk sleeves. He holds out his right hand and gives N’Doch a broad smile. “Kenzo Baraga. You’ve got talent, son. What’s your name?”
N’Doch shakes the Media King’s hand, something he’s always dreamed of doing. “N’Doch N’Djai.”
“Good name. You can always change it.”
Not on your life, N’Doch thinks. Naming has always been important to him. “Sure could,” he replies brightly. “Oh, ah, this is my friend Erde von Alte.” He’s proud that the first time he has to say her whole name, he gets it all out right. “And my brother Sedou.”
Baraga responds to the girl’s old-fashioned little curtsy by catching up her hand and touching it lightly to his lips. To N’Doch’s surprise, she seems to accept this as an appropriate greeting among strangers. But he notices that the Media King is a little slower to shake the hand that Sedou offers. Intuition grips him.
—He knows.
—He suspects. But he’s not sure.
—He recognizes me, from the tape.
—Perhaps. And he has a touch of Fire in him.
—What do we do?
—We have no choice. We’ll hear what his offer is.
Shots ring out and more glass shatters in the dining room. Baraga tilts his head to listen, then shrugs and smiles. “Hell of a time to do business, eh?”
N’Doch says carefully, “Is that what we’re doing?”
“Think I’m going to let a talent like you slip by me because of some minor coup? No way. I need a kid like you right now. Real star potential, with the right promotion and development.”
Star potential. N’Doch has waited all his life to hear those words. And now that he does, all he can do is smile and nod like some rube from the bush. He hates himself for it. “That’s real kind of you, Mr. Baraga.”
“Kind, schmind. You know my rep, right? You know ‘kind’ isn’t a word anyone applies to Kenzo Baraga. Business is business. We work out a deal, you and me, then I own you, ’cause it’ll cost me big to make you big. But you turn it around and make me money, I’ll treat you right. So. You ready to talk?”
Lealé glides forward and slips her arm around Baraga’s elbow. “Dear Kenzo, give the boy a chance to think.”
“It is a little . . . sudden, Mr. Baraga.” Too sudden. Even an overnight discovery is supposed to have to work a little harder for it than just one song. He knows he should be suspicious, but he’s so, so willing to let the Media King convince him.
“It sure is. I don’t like it either. But we’re smack in the middle of a goddamn revolution—got no time for the niceties of courtship. I’d like to get myself to high ground. You want to talk turkey or not?”
It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. “I . . . yes, of course I do.”
“Good! Good! So, first thing we do is find ourselves some place safe to talk. I sent my guys out a while ago to bring back some secured ground transportation.” Baraga glances around the alcove, seeming to court noses. “How ’bout an unplanned beachside vacation while we wait for all this to blow over?”
N’Doch can’t believe it. Safety and his chance for the Big Break. His own scheme exactly, as if he’d laid it out himself for Baraga’s approval. But beside him, he feels Sedou shift with what feels like disapproval.
Lealé laughs her Glory laugh. “But, darling, I thought they were shel
ling your beach house!”
“Oh, we wiped them out hours ago. A hornet’s nest, nothing more. We . . .”
A huge explosion shakes the crystals in the chandelier, and the lights flicker. Two more softer thuds follow, then a burst of gunfire. The girl gasps and lets Sedou wrap his arm around her. Lealé’s hand flies to her mouth to hold back a scream. The soft background hush of the AC dies into silence.
Baraga cocks an eyebrow. “Huh.”
Abruptly the bodyguard Nikko shoves through the draperies, a phone clutched in one hand and a semiautomatic in the other. “That was the gate, Mr. B. We’re down to emergency power, and our ground transport’s been held up trying to get in through the front.”
“How long can we hold the house?”
“Minutes.”
“Risk it and call in a copter?”
Nikko shakes his head, brandishing the phone. “Base says everything’s getting shot out of the air. These bastards are very well organized.”
“Your suggestion?”
“Only chance is to work our way to the rear and let ground transport come through the back and pick us up there.”
“Okay, let ’em know.” Baraga thrusts his chin at N’Doch and Sedou. “You men stick with me. Nikko, keep an eye on the ladies.”
“Yessir, Mr. B. Got your vest on?”
“Always.” Baraga yanks open the drapes. The dining room is a haze of smoke and dust rising in the ruddy light of sunset that pours through the shattered windows. “Let’s move.”
N’Doch feels Sedou’s hand on his shoulder as they start after Baraga. The familiar touch about cracks his heart open. He turns, meets his brother’s eyes, and sees the dragon in them, trying to act like a man she knows only from his memories.
“What’s on your mind, bro?” Sedou murmurs.
“Gettin’ outa here.”
“Listen. Only listen.”
—We’ve only to get to the back door. My brother Earth can pick us up there and we’ll be away from here.
—But Baraga will protect us, especially if he thinks he’s got a live dragon he can put on his network. Where else can we go? Anywhere in the city’s a war zone. We go out to the bush, we put Papa Dja in danger. Baraga’ll keep us safe. He’s got the money and the power to do it.
The Book of Water Page 32
