The Book of Water

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “It was my grandmother’s brooch, the dragon brooch of the von Altes. She had it from her father and he from his.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  She blinks at him. “You do not believe me? Why should you think I would lie to you, Endoch?”

  It’s the first time she’s actually used his name, or at least an attempt at it. She’s probably trying to manipulate him. “N’Doch,” he corrects irritably, “And I think so because anybody would and everyone does.”

  “No,” she says back, straight as a bullet, as if she expects that’ll clear it up, just like that.

  “You think I’m a fool, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  What’s weird is that N’Doch does believe her, but he can’t let her see that. “Like for instance, you’d lie to me if you stole it.”

  Now she looks perplexed. “But I wouldn’t have to steal it. It’s mine. It was in my family. Besides, it wouldn’t let itself be stolen. It belongs to the Dragon Guide.”

  “The what?”

  “The Dragon Guide. That’s me. You. Us. Like I told you.” She peers at him. “You really don’t know, do you.”

  And that’s what finally riles him, her sympathy so close to condescension. He tosses the big stone down and springs to his feet. “No! I don’t! And you know what? I don’t care! I’ve had enough of this shit!”

  The girl looks down at her hands while his snarled words ricochet around the room. He feels rather than hears the dragons stirring behind him.

  “I am sorry, Endoch. It is difficult at first,” she concedes softly, “But you get used to it.”

  “I don’t have to get used to anything!”

  “But you do, Endoch. It’s your destiny.”

  “There’s no such thing! My life is what I make it! No rich girl with family jewels tells me what to do! I do what I want, you hear?”

  N’Doch’s pacing brings him face-to-face with the sea dragon, shimmering blue and silver in the moonlight. Her calm, intent stare stops him cold, fills him with dread. Actually, he does believe in Destiny, but he’s always said his destiny is to sing songs and be famous. This dragon business would put a serious crimp in his plans. The beast wants him, wants everything he has or is to be put to her service. He’ll be a slave to her. He sees a lifetime of being bonded in some weird-ass mystical way he doesn’t understand to a creature he doesn’t want to believe in, pursuing some mysterious “purpose” that sounds like a wild goose chase with a crazy white girl he has the misfortune to feel protective about. If anything is proof that this dragon stuff is dangerous, that is. If he was his normal self, he’d have seduced this girl long ago. It scares him that he can’t even bring himself to fantasize about taking off all those layers she’s wearing and laying her down on one of the gym mats. The thought stirs nothing down there, only a chill nausea in his belly. He feels like a stranger to himself and it frightens him, more than hunger or the mob, even the sharks off the beach. More than anything. He can think of only one way out, and in his panic, he takes it.

  He whirls, snatches up the red jewel from where he’s tossed it down in front of her. He’s at the door in a second, through it in two, and is racing down the corridors to freedom.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The stone is hot in his clenched fist. N’Doch slams the hatch behind him, shifts the stone from hand to hand distractedly, then shoves it into the pocket of his shorts as he bolts soundlessly down the dark passageway. At the verge of the shark tank, he halts to catch his breath and survey the black, still stretch of water, his protection and his nemesis. A faint clank and rustle floats across from the far side. N’Doch freezes, cursing inwardly. In his desperate need to be free of the dragons, he’s forgotten the mob of fishermen. He listens, squinting into the dark. He hears a low murmur, spots a dim, quick flickering. Okay, they’ve posted a watch, and the watcher is lighting up a joint.

  Actually, N’Doch is glad for an excuse not to brave the shark tank twice in one day. At least he thinks it’s one day. He hasn’t a clue how long the fever had him down and out. How long would this mob bother to lie in wait for him, once they’ve had their fun? He’s not that big a deal. Maybe the watcher is one of Malimba’s brothers. N’Doch sucks his teeth and grins. Let ’em wait. The shark tank may be the quickest way out of this rust bucket, but it’s not the only one.

  He backs up along the passage, feeling behind him for the stack of metal rungs he knows are there, climbing the right-hand wall. The lowest two or three are slimy with the nameless ooze that coats most of the tanker’s lower surfaces. It feels toxic and nasty, but it’s never harmed him so far. N’Doch grabs hold and hauls himself upward, through the torso-sized opening, past the hatch cover blown against the side of a narrow shaft peppered with shrapnel scars. He feels the hot draft moving through the holes, but no moonlight penetrates to the shredded upper decks. It gets hotter as he climbs.

  The shaft empties into the remains of Engineering and Navigation, just below the Bridge. Plenty of moonlight here. N’Doch shoves aside a pile of concealing rubble and lifts himself onto the jury-rigged boardwalk of charred plastic paneling that threads a crooked path across the intermittent floor. He has spent envious hours imagining the wealth of equipment and high-tech wonders once housed within this deck. Now it’s an empty, cubicled wilderness of hanging cables and shattered glass, the usual wake of the scavengers. The Toe Bone Gang claimed this prize and refused to share it, just to make a point, even though there was plenty to go around. N’Doch recalls watching hungrily from the beach with the lesser gangs, while the Boners carried armload after armload to their waiting trucks.

  He pads past a mad sculpture of twisted metal, all that’s left of the forward companionway to the deck below. He tosses more rubble aside and uncovers the second emergency access shaft. All this time, he refuses to think about what’s in his pocket or what he’s left behind. He closes the ears of his mind to the siren music playing in his head. It’s the blue dragon calling him, he knows that now, and he’s told himself he doesn’t care. She’s calling him back and promising him nothing. Like he said, what’s in it for him?

  As best he can, he ignores the faint voice inside him that’s offering an outrageous suggestion: “How ’bout a reason to live?” Up till now, N’Doch has thought life was its own reason, which is why he’s a good survivor. And it would be inconvenient to admit he’s been thinking that just surviving is getting real old. So he hears, but tells the voice to shut the hell up.

  He lowers himself into the second shaft, pulling the debris back to hide the opening as he descends. He’s careful on the ladder where it starts to get slippery. The bottom of this shaft ends in a watery pit that’s too far up the beach to get washed clean by the tide. The stench makes him retch and hold his breath. The air itself could be contagious. N’Doch figures if the dead do walk the tanker, it’s out of this dank and fetid shaft bottom that they’d rise. He leaves it at the galley level, where a small breach in the outer hull offers escape through the tanker’s far side. But first he decides he’d better scope out the beach.

  From a broken-out porthole a few decks above the big gap on the port side, he can survey the sand below. He peers out carefully. To his disgust, the mob is still there. In fact there seem to be even more of them. They’ve built a bonfire out of palm fronds and turned his pursuit into a party. A few of the men are roasting fish over the blaze. One idiot’s using his precious gas ration to power a vid set with a portable generator so no one’ll miss the soccer match. Jugs of home brew are being surreptitiously passed. Even out there, far from the imam’s watchful gaze, the men are cautious. N’Doch’s mouth waters. The thing about being a fisherman is you can just go out and catch something more or less edible, as long as you avoid the bottom feeders. He’d have learned the trade himself if they’d let him, but he didn’t have the family connections. These days, you can’t even surf cast on a Saturday without them getting after you, protecting their territory. N’Doch doesn’t blame them, really. There’s
so few fish left to catch. I’d protect mine, too, he muses, if I had any.

  Now there are voices raised around the fire, over the yells and catcalls from the soccer game. He hears his name being tossed about, so he settles in to listen. It seems the fishermen are annoyed. They haven’t yet laid eyes on these sea monsters supposedly in the act of gobbling up their boats. Where’s all the excitement they were promised? Some are calling the brothers liars. Others had clearly reached N’Doch’s first conclusion, that the whole thing was a vid shoot, so they’d rushed off to the beach to take part and are sullen about missing their chance to be on camera.

  The brothers—all five of them now (one has his foot heavily bandaged and keeps checking it worriedly)—are busy tapdancing, tossing out this tale and that excuse to keep the mob from turning on them. They have to shout to be heard over the game, and must have been doing this for a while, ’cause they’re all going hoarse. N’Doch would enjoy this drunken spectacle, were it not that their most successful tactic seems to be exaggerating the heinousness of his own crime and hyping him into a threat big enough to throw the mob’s rage back in his direction. So now, in the short brother’s mouth, N’Doch the tomato thief becomes N’Doch the vandalizer, the armed looter and hostage-taker, N’Doch the violator of innocent young women.

  Violator? N’Doch swells up with outrage. He grips the ragged sides of the porthole and almost yells out in his own defense. He’d never take a woman against her will! Most of the pleasure is wooing them and winning them over.

  But the fishermen are buying it, hook, line, and sinker. They are shaking their fists and roaring because, N’Doch thinks, it’s probably what they’d like to do to at least one woman of their acquaintance, and they’re pissed that he got there first. He tells himself he’ll get even, in the way he always has: when this nonsense is over, there’ll be a whole new repertoire of nasty songs about drunken fishermen going around town.

  When it’s over. . . .

  He realizes he’s thinking about the blue dragon, holed up forward in the gym. He has been all along, with a part of his brain that won’t set her aside. It keeps asking, will she be safe in the ship? Will this stupid mob get bored and go home, or will they keep at their drinking and roaring until they’ve worked up enough courage of numbers to invade his sanctuary? What will the dragons do then? Eat them?

  For a moment, he thinks how much he’d like to be there to see that. Then he reminds himself forcibly that he doesn’t care what happens to the blue dragon, or the brown one with the girl. But he doesn’t need to check his pocket for the jewel he’s stolen. It lies warm and heavy against his thigh, weighing inexplicably more than a thing its size reasonably should. Small as it is, for a jewel, it’s big enough. Finding a fence for it will be tricky. N’Doch has never dealt with the Big Guys before.

  Meanwhile, it’s time to be out of range of the mob before its outrage whips up from passive to active. N’Doch crosses back to starboard and skins through the thin gap between two in-bent metal plates. Between the inner hull and the outer, he has stashed a tarred length of rope for just such an emergency, looped around a cross-tie. He drops the loose ends through the outer hole and lowers himself hand over hand to the sand. He jerks the rope free, coils it quickly and tosses it deftly up into the hole. He’s racing away before he’s sure if it’s landed correctly.

  He speeds along the beach without really knowing where he’s heading. His brain is full, too full to think. He puts himself on autopilot, his eyes squinting to scan for debris. The moon has set, and a predawn glow is creeping across the sky. N’Doch feels vulnerable, too visible, dark against the lightening sand. The damp night air is thick with fish stink. He wonders about it until he feels the first few dead ones under his feet. Another kill, washed in with the tide. Getting to be commonplace. He shifts his trajectory, avoiding the water’s edge, and slows. He skirts two small inhabited wrecks, people he knows. He sees the elder son of one family pacing the deck with a shotgun, probably anxious about all the shouting and firelight down the beach. N’Doch stays out of sight and cuts inland at the next path through the palm brake.

  He spots the thicket of old vid antennas and satellite dishes sprouting from the bidonville, and slows when he reaches the first tents and lean-tos. A runner always looks guilty, he reasons, even if running for help. People in the camp are just stirring, the women mostly, starting their morning duties in the dull, slow way of the unwillingly awakened. Maybe the mob back at the tanker will go straight to their boats when dawn comes. Wait till they see the beach already littered with their day’s catch. But they’ll go out anyway, and maybe this morning, their wives will get to eat some of the breakfast they cook.

  Several campfires are already burning. The starchy hot scent of boiling rice reminds N’Doch that he’s now as hungry as he’s ever been. The girl’s little morsels of bread and cheese were just a tease. He decides he’d better head home. Whatever little food his mama might have, she’s sure to give him some.

  It’s full dawn when he reaches her house, a cinderblock box lined up with a thousand others along a dusty road on the far side of town. The houses are small and dark, having been thrown up several governments ago during a rare moment of social oratory convincing enough to lure foreign aid. The mortar between the cinder blocks is already crumbling and the corrugated plastic roofing is brittle and cracking from the heavy, steady dose of UV in the sunlight. But it’s a house and his mama is lucky to have it. She knows this. She’s so aware of it that she hardly ever leaves it for fear some squatter will move in and take possession while she’s out at the market. It’s the only thing she has, the house and her vid set, which is as old as she is but like herself, still functional.

  She’s up and talking to it when N’Doch steps in the open doorway, a tall woman in a once-bright print moving slowly around her one small room, scraping up last night’s cold rice from the bottom of the pot. Surreal color flickers along the cement-gray walls. His mama is shaking her head.

  “I told you yesterday if you let him do that to you, you’d sure be sorry,” she’s scolding. On the pinched old screen, a lovely woman is weeping while an angry man throws crockery around a perfectly appointed room. It looks like no room N’Doch has ever seen.

  “Ma,” he says. He’s sorry now that he has nothing to bring her. But wait. He has. The stone in his pocket. She could fence it, maybe. Say she found it somewhere in the rubble.

  His mother clucks her tongue. “Anybody could have told you that, girl.”

  N’Doch tries again. “Ma.” He does not move from the doorway.

  Her eyes are fixed on the vid, reflecting the dancing image and brimming with knowledge and empathy. She turns her long back to N’Doch as she shakes the used tea leaves loose in her cup and pours in boiling water. “Well, don’t just stand there like a lump, boy. Get on in and sit down.”

  N’Doch thinks it’s weird that his mama never calls anyone by their name. A lot of the time he calls her by her name, which is Fâtime, mostly to get her attention. He slouches in and drops down at the scarred metal table under the window next to the door. The window’s too high and narrow to see out of, but it’s the only one and it does let in some light and air, to add to the breeze provided by the man-sized hole his father pickaxed through the back wall just before he took off. To cover it, N’Doch salvaged an old Venetian blind as soon as he was old enough to carry something that big. He gazes around the room, taking stock. The pocked cement floor is gritty under his feet.

  “You sold the couch?”

  She nods, spooning the cold rice into a plastic tub. Her eyes on the vid, she sets the tub in front of him. “Ayeesha’s third is too old to be sleeping with her now. She took it. I told her she’d have to come get it herself, ’cause I wasn’t gonna be dragging it all the way ’cross the street, so she did.”

  N’Doch pouts irritably, knowing Fâtime won’t turn away from the screen long enough to notice. Now the table and the two folding chairs beside it, plus the TV on its plasti
c crate, are the only furniture in the house besides the loom in the corner and the broken-down cot behind the sheet on a rope that offers Fâtime a measure of privacy. The sofa was hers, after all, and it’s true he hasn’t been home in a while, but where’s she think he’s going to sleep?

  “She pay for it?” he demands through a sticky mouthful. He sees the finished weave on the loom is still short, a long way until her next sale. His mama’s generosity worries him sometimes.

  “‘A sack of relief rice, near full. Ten cans of beans, two melons, and the promise of a dozen of those big yams she’s growing up right.”

  He sits up, impressed. “Got any melon left?” He can’t think of anything that would taste better right now.

  Fâtime rolls her eyes back at him briefly. “Finished the first two weeks ago. She’ll bring the second when her next crop comes in.”

  Two weeks?’ It’s been longer than he realized since he’s visited. He should come by more often, he knows he should. He’s all she has left, ’cept that crazy old man out in the bush, his grandfather. But he hears no reproach in her voice. His mama, he knows, gave up a long time ago expecting much out of the men in her life. They’re always dying or leaving.

  He reaches for another fistful of rice and discovers he’s cleaned the bowl out already. Impossible! He’s just started eating! He tips it toward him. Sure enough, he hasn’t left her so much as a grain. He sets the bowl down and flattens his palms on the table. But maybe he won’t show her the jewel just yet. In fact, he can’t really bring himself to take it out of his pocket, to reveal such a lovely thing in the drear light of this house.

  “Ma, I didn’t bring you anything this time. I was . . .” How can he begin to explain? “. . . kinda in a rush.”

  Fâtime shrugs, points at the screen. The lovely woman has changed one sparkling gown for another and redone her makeup. “Not a brain in her head, this one with the nails. Now that other one, with the head of hair, look, here she comes now, see her? She’s a smart one. She don’t let anybody by her.”