There’s no road the way he’s going. It’s a direct overland route, a mile and a half across the dry, empty fields waiting for the fall rains that have been coming later and less often every year. The soil is as dry and hot as beach sand beneath his bare feet, and the scattered grass clumps rattle like drum-rolls as he brushes past. N’Doch thinks it’s odd but all the same incredibly cool that he knows exactly in which direction his grandpapa’s house lies. Exactly, as if flashing signs or a homing beacon were showing him the way, ’cept it’s right there in his head and he’s sure of it in ways he isn’t about a lot of other things he’s had to do with much more recently and in greater detail. He’s even impatient with the occasional detour around brush thickets or rocks. He can sense the deviation from the straight line as acutely as he would hear a string out of tune. Pretty weird, he muses, but then everything is, right about now. Why should this be any different?
He decides he’ll tell Papa Dja that the dragons are research clones escaped from some top secret American zoo, like in that old vid about the dinosaur island. If the old guy questions him too closely, he’ll just say that’s what the girl told him, he doesn’t know any more. How he’ll explain the girl, he’s not sure, with all her bizarro clothes and speaking German. Maybe he’d better make it a German zoo. He’ll just say she showed up on the beach looking for help, which isn’t far from the actual truth. It just ain’t all of it. . . .
He’s there almost before he realizes. Ahead of him, just as he remembers it, the unlikely copse of thick-trunked trees, like a handful of forest tossed down among the parched scrub to spread the miracle of leaf and shade over Papa Djawara’s tiny homestead. The real miracle is, there’s no barbed wire or broken glass palisade along the tops of those mustard-colored walls, and N’Doch knows the gate will not be locked. When everyone else in their right mind has taken the appropriate security precautions, Djawara has steadfastly refused to do anything but adopt a pack of mangy stray dogs. N’Doch looks around, wondering where the dogs are. There must be dogs. Papa Dja always had dogs. Out hunting, most likely, good luck to them, and leaving the compound open to surprise intruders such as himself. Papa Dja always said he had nothing worth stealing, but an intact house under trees is prime real estate. Plus, the old man grows a lot of good, safe edibles inside those unassuming walls. N’Doch knows this, and he guesses everyone else around knows it, too. There must be water underground somewhere, though no well digger’s ever been able to find it. If they had, Papa Dja would’ve lost his house long ago. But Fâtime says the locals are afraid that if they steal from Papa Djawara, he’ll put a bad spell on them and that’ll be that. This wouldn’t hold the gangs back, but so far, they’ve pretty much kept to the towns and the City. So in some ways, the old coot’s nutty reclusiveness works in his favor. Fâtime says he’s even managed to hold on to a goat.
N’Doch approaches the gate quietly. It’s that still, amber part of early evening. Entire flocks of birds are appearing out of nowhere to settle in Djawara’s trees. In town, the market stalls would be going great guns again, after the midday lull for the heat. Housewives would be bartering their last pair of shoes for the evening meal. Out here, the farmers in the villages are probably setting their chairs out in the street to fan themselves a while before falling exhausted into bed. And that’s just what his grandpapa is doing when N’Doch sticks his head inside, past the broken ironwork gate: sitting under a big lemon tree, fanning himself slowly.
Like the trees and the mustard-colored walls, Djawara is exactly as N’Doch remembers him. Thinner and grayer, maybe, but the same slight, erect, round-faced man in an antiquated white tunic and woven tribal skullcap. At least he doesn’t have his ceremonial robes on. N’Doch recalls asking Fâtime one time why Papa Dja wore so many clothes. She just shook her head, probably at both of them. He’s always been told he has her height but his grandpapa’s frame. He’s not sure who shares the old man’s ready but ambiguous smile. Certainly not his mama, at least not anymore. And though he’d like to think his own smile could be as complex as he remembers Djawara’s, he doubts he’s lived long enough for that.
The old man is smiling like that right now, easing back comfortably in one of a pair of metal folding chairs, the least bent one, facing the gate as if someone has just gotten up from a conversation and Djawara expects them back presently. N’Doch hesitates, glances behind him. The flood of memories is a surprise to him. It’s hard just to stroll in to this place so pungent with his boyhood. But he can’t not go in. The old man has seen him and waves him in with his palm frond fan.
“There you are, there you are. Took your own sweet time, did you? Took a nap along the way?”
N’Doch looks behind him again. Has the old geezer mistaken him for someone else? Is he losing what’s left of his marbles? “Papa Dja? It’s me, N’Doch, Fâtime’s boy.”
“I know who you are, though it’s been so long, that’s a miracle in itself.”
“I know, Papa, and I’m sorry.”
“Sure, sure. We’re all sorry these days.”
The bright smile belies his grandfather’s dire tone. N’Doch edges in a few steps farther, both eager and reluctant. He nods at the second chair. “You were expecting someone?”
“You. I was expecting you.”
“Oh.” That’s just the sort of thing the old man’s always saying, that earns him his reputation as a crazy man. “Well . . . how are you?”
“Very well, very well. And yourself?”
“Oh, fine, real fine. And the cousins? And the neighbors? And the goat? And the garden?” N’Doch throws himself into the old-style greeting pattern, hoping to lure this very traditional old man into the right frame of mind about him. “And by the way, where are the dogs?”
Djawara’s smile barely wavers. “The family won’t talk to me, what’s left of them, and the neighbors are afraid to, as well they ought to be. The goat’s stopped milking and the garden’s just squeaking by. I’m getting too old to care for it properly.” He pauses for a little cough and a breath, peering at N’Doch from under lowered brows. “But the dogs, mercifully, are hale and healthy. Only I put them inside, as I hear one of our visitors isn’t fond of dogs . . . I hadn’t counted on that.”
N’Doch’s eyes narrow. “Visitors?”
“You know, you know.” Djawara tosses a casual wave in the precise direction that N’Doch has come.
“Ah,” N’Doch replies, thinking of how tired he’s getting of being caught entirely by surprise. “So . . . you know about the, ah . . .”
Djawara nods. “Visitors. The signs were all pointing to it. If I’d read them more truly, I’d be better prepared. But as it is, it is. We’ll make do, won’t we?”
N’Doch nods with him, still second-guessing. Like, what if they’re talking about two different things? Dragons and, say, the visiting relief workers, or the Frenchmen who try unsuccessfully to sell Djawara a windmill every year? N’Doch leans against the crumbling gatepost. “Well, Papa Dja, funny you should mention, since I was hoping you could take in a visitor or two for a while, only I’m not sure . . .” His eyes flick around the visible parts of the courtyard and the small thatched-roof bungalow at its center.
“. . . there’s room?” The old man leans back in his chair, palm fan waving. “You’d be surprised. This place is a lot bigger than it looks.”
N’Doch sucks his teeth, says nothing. He’s spent the whole trip from the rock pile inventing explanations for dragons, without a thought of what to say about why he’s come.
Djawara chuckles. “Come in, come in, son. I’ll make us some tea. Sit down and rest a bit till the light fades. Then we’ll go out and bring them back.”
N’Doch slouches into the welcome sweet shade of the lemon tree. He shakes his grandfather’s small, dry hand, then sets the water jug at his feet and sits. He looks up and sees actual lemons hiding among the shiny dark leaves, like little suns among storm clouds. He can hear but not see the birds settling into the branches, chattering and r
esettling each time another flock lands. After a long silence, he gets his courage up.
“’Scuse me for asking, Papa Dja, but how did you . . . ?”
“Know?” The old man takes a grateful swig from the jug. “Well, your mama told me, of course. But as I said, even if she hadn’t, I’d been feeling it was time.”
“I see.” N’Doch considers this briefly. He’s forgotten about the old man’s irritating habit of finishing your sentences before you can even get them out. “How did she know?”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“No way.”
“Well, there you are. That’s Fâtime for you. I always said she could pry secrets out of a stone. I recall one time she even . . .”
“’Scuse me again, Papa, but how did she tell you? You put in a phone since I was here last?”
Djawara frowns. “Phone? This is no rich man you’re kin to. Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t have one in the house.” His hands sketch little circles above his head. “All those waves, you know . . . they get in the way. No, she told me in a dream, son. That’s how the poor folk talk together.”
Speak for yourself, thinks N’Doch. It’s true his mama’s always put great stock in dreams, but he’s still not convinced he and his grandpapa are on the same page. Just doesn’t seem possible. “So, ah . . . what exactly did she tell you?”
“That you’ll need help understanding where to go next.”
N’Doch gives up, sits back with a sigh. “Well, that ain’t lying.”
* * *
When it’s dark, and the tea has been made and drunk—three ritual cups of the thick, sweet brew—Djawara dons a brightly printed robe over his worn white tunic and carefully brushes out the folds. They walk in silence back to the rock pile. The old man keeps pace through the night heat without complaint. They’re almost there when he grasps N’Doch’s wrist suddenly and draws him beneath the canopy of a thicket.
“What?” N’Doch demands.
“Quietly!” Djawara points upward.
N’Doch listens. After a while he hears the airy whock-whock of a hovercopter approaching from the south, from town. It’s flying low, like it’s looking for something.
“Damn, Papa! You got great ears!”
“Shhh!”
They watch it pass by to the east, the direction they’re headed, and vanish into the night toward the north.
“Already!” N’Doch has figured to have more safe time.
“Who is it?”
“Baraga, I’m fairly sure of it.”
The old man does not ask how or why. “Then we must hurry.”
The girl and the dragons are awake when they get there, awaiting his return. He can see that this time they were sure he’d come back, which makes him feel predictable, and that really bugs him.
Papa Dja touches his shoulder as they step under the shadow of the rocks. “One moment. What are their names?”
“Didn’t Mama tell you that, along with everything else?”
“No more than she taught you manners, it appears.”
N’Doch wants to explain that his manners are fine, it’s the damn situation that’s making him so touchy. But the old man’s frown can lay him out like no one else’s. How could he have forgotten that?
“Umm, the big one’s called Earth and my . . . the other one’s Water.”
“Don’t be so afraid to claim what’s yours, son.”
Djawara’s past him before N’Doch can think of a proper comeback. But it occurs to him maybe this is why he stayed away after all those extended visits when he was young: this man, half his size and weight, can still make him feel like a child. Pretending he’s moving through the frames of some surrealist stop-action video, N’Doch does the introductions. To his chagrin, Djawara greets the girl in what sounds like pretty good German. She has some difficulty with it at first, so Djawara adjusts his pronunciation. N’Doch hears it, like a change of key in a piece of music. The girl nods and smiles.
“Didn’t know you spoke Kraut, Papa Dja,” he marvels sullenly.
“It’s Alte Deutsch,” Djawara says, moving on to gaze up at the dragons. “Old German. Not all that different, really. Knew it would come in handy some day.”
“Hunh.” N’Doch notices how both critters have withdrawn into the deepest recesses of the rocks so that their true shape and size is lost in darkness. Maybe they hoped not to frighten this elderly and frail-looking human, but N’Doch thinks they look scarier that way, looming up out of the earthly void like myths or nightmares, the pale ambient moonlight touching just the relevant detail: a giant ivory claw, the gleaming curve of a horn, a shimmer of velvet, and two pairs of eyes that seem to radiate a warmer kind of light. N’Doch backs up involuntarily. But Djawara seems to have a very clear idea what a man should do when faced with a brace of dragons. He goes right to them and stands with his arms spread wide and his chin high. He looks so small in front of them, smaller than the girl even, and painfully vulnerable, but N’Doch sees that his eyes are closed and his smile transcendent. Drawing his palms together beneath his chin, the old man bows to them deeply, and the dragons incline their great heads in solemn recognition.
* * *
Erde saw that this dark little man she understood to be N’Doch’s grandfather knew his way around dragons, and liked him immediately. That he spoke her language, albeit a bit oddly, naturally increased her high opinion of him. That he seemed totally unsurprised by herself and her companions made her suddenly much more relaxed about the future of the dragons’ Quest. If N’Doch was not the mage they sought, perhaps this old man was. He certainly looked more like a mage. For one thing, he wasn’t going around half-naked like everyone else she’d seen. He even wore a hat, and soft leather sandals on his neat, ash-colored feet. Covertly, Erde searched the intricate patterning of his ankle-length, wide-sleeved robe for familiar alchemical or astrological symbols but all she could make out in the dim light were fish and birds, or maybe they were flying fish, which sounded at least somewhat magical.
She let him pay his proper obeisance to the dragons, then approached him with the formality and respect due to a learned elder and probable mage.
“We seek a wise man’s counsel, honored sir.”
“And his hospitality as well, I’m told.” His bright, crinkly eyes were on a level with her own. “Both of which you shall have, such as I can offer, which I fear these days is slight.”
Earth’s urgent need cut through her own impulse toward at least a smidgen of polite introductory conversation.—ASK HIM.
Erde cleared her throat. “My companion asks: Are you the mage we seek?”
This seemed to surprise him as nothing had so far. His eyes flicked up at the dragon and back again. “Why would he think that?”
—Why, Dragon?
—BECAUSE HE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EXPECTING US.
Erde relayed this, and the old man smiled. “No and yes, daughter. Never and always. Waiting for long centuries, without expectation. From grandfather to grandson. You of all people know how it is, how it has always been.”
“Not entirely, learned sir. My grandmother died before she could explain everything to me in detail.”
“Ah, then I am sorry for your loss, but you see, she gifted you with what detail was necessary, or you’d never have found . . .” He nodded gravely toward Earth. “. . . him. Any deeper knowledge would create an improper anticipation. Preparation, yes, but one cannot live one’s life waiting for a thing that might never happen.”
But I’d have been happy to be even as prepared as you seem to be, Erde thought. “I’ve no wish to cause offense, honored sir, but would this explain why your grandson . . . ummm . . . ?”
“Yes, daughter?”
“Sir, he doesn’t seem to understand much about dragons.”
“Well, now, there don’t seem to be many of them around nowadays, do there?” The old man’s smile hinted at her own imperfect understanding. “But, yes, he has been a reluctant pupil. He’s grown up in a wor
ld that has no use for the old knowledge. Yet he absorbed what he needed, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Erde saw the truth in that. She glanced at N’Doch, who had moved away into the moonlight and was staring up into the air. Despite his ignorance and disbelief, he had finally not deserted them. He had gotten them where they apparently needed to be.
“Papa Dja,” he called now from the edge of the light. “That copter’s coming back.”
Prepared, thought Erde, but still unpardonably rude. But instead of scolding the youth for interrupting, the old man turned his way and listened.
“It is indeed.”
“Think it can see us under all these rocks?”
“Heat, son. The warm exhalations of life.”
N’Doch nodded disgustedly. “Damn Baraga anyway. I won’t let him get her.”
Djawara’s smile broadened. “No. I should say not.”
Erde followed this exchange as best she could, but the dragons’ understanding of idiomatic speech was loose at best. “What flies in the night sky that worries you, honored sir?”
“One of Baraga’s hovercopters,” grumped N’Doch.
The old man eyed Erde sympathetically. “She will not be acquainted with that particular type of bird, my boy. We’ll speak of these things later,” he reassured her. “First we must figure out how to get ourselves to safety without being sighted.”
The Book of Water Page 12