The Book of Water Read Free

ones, a storm-grounded supertanker whose half-submerged stern juts into the water for the length of several soccer fields. N’Doch has a long run over open sand, but if he can reach the tanker before the brothers pass the landing craft, he’ll be home free. He canhide himself forever in the dark and complex bowels of that derelict giant.
    But as he rounds the end of the landing craft, his next disastrous miscalculation is revealed. This time, N’Doch curses himself out loud. The fishing fleet is in, as he’d have known it would be, if he’d given it a moment’s clear thought. Hauled up on the sand between him and his refuge are thirty high-sided, high-prowed, brightly painted boats shaped like hollowed-out melon slices, heavy old wooden boats with galley-sized oars pulled by four men each. They’re as tightly packed as a school of tuna. N’Doch can see no alley through them. A path around will take too long. Over the top, then, it has to be, though even at mid-ships, they’re half again his height. He races at the nearest, leaping to grab for the gunwales. He misses, catches a strand of fishnet instead, then flails and falls back, pulling the load of netting and floaters over on top of himself. By the time he’s struggled free of the web of slimy, stinking rope, the brothers have made it around the landing craft. They slow and walk toward him, with nasty grins on their faces.
    “Hey, water boy . . .”
    “D’ja eat good, water boy?”
    “Time to pay up now . . .”
    They fan out in a semicircle as they approach, cutting off his chance of a last minute end run. The shortest and lightest-skinned of them has picked up a ragged scrap of metal. He swings it casually, like a baseball bat, but there is nothing casual in his eyes. N’Doch shakes off the last of the netting and backs toward the water. Maybe he can outswim them. He knows this is folly. He has hardly a full breath left in his body. His chest is heaving like a bellows, but then, so are theirs.
    The surf pounds. A long wave foams up around his ankles. He hopes there’s nothing too lethal hiding in the sand behind him, or in the water. The beach slants sharply. It drops off fast here, so the waves crest and break close to shore. The undertow is already pulling at his calves, sucking the gravel from beneath his heels, tipping his balance. He feels not so much driven backward into the water by the brothers’ approach, as drawn inexorably into its depths, like he’s being inhaled by the ocean, as if the water itself was alive. It’s a peculiar sensation. It makes him light-headed,and now he’s thinking he hears music in the crashing roar of the surf. He thinks maybe this is how you feel when you know you’re about to die. He doesn’t understand why he isn’t terrified.
    A particularly big wave breaks loudly behind him. The spray flings needles at his back. He braces himself against the hard swirl of water, the boil of foam around his knees. Another big wave coils and crashes, then throws itself at his thighs. And another. N’Doch backs deeper into the water, wondering if there’s a new storm offshore that he hasn’t heard about. Two of the brothers are wading in after him now. The short one is in the lead, brandishing his metal club. He lashes out suddenly. N’Doch ducks. It’s a near miss. The short guy has very long arms. Another monster wave breaks. N’Doch knows he’ll have to swim for it soon. He can’t back out much farther in this high rough surf and keep his footing. The very next wave knocks him off-balance, and the club-wielder lunges after him with such a splashing and buffeting of metal and limbs and water that it isn’t until the swell is pulling back and N’Doch has his feet under him again that he feels the sear along his upper arm. A thin trail of blood slips out with the wave like a coil of brown kelp. He claps his hand to his bicep. The bastard’s cut him!
    Finally N’Doch begins to feel afraid. An open wound