The Book of Water Read Free Page A

in
this
water? Any number of nasty things he could pick up. And then there are the sharks that cruise the beaches, for lack of prey farther out. The merest whiff of blood will bring them in, and a starving shark is more fearsome than any number of Malimba’s brothers.
    The biggest wave so far thunders into its curl behind him. N’Doch waits to be engulfed. No, he’ll dunk fast just before it hits and let it pummel
them
into the gravel. He scans the brothers’ faces for a measure of the wave’s size and sees instead a stark and uncomprehending terror. The short one has dropped his club. Suddenly, all three of them are back-stepping through the surging water as fast as they can, heading for shore. N’Doch is sure the sharks have come in with the wave, but he cannot bear to look. He throws himself after the brothers, paddling frantically with his hands. Briefly he worries that it might be a ruse to draw him within range, but he doesn’t believe they’re
that
gifted as actors.Their terror is pretty convincing. The minute they’re out of the water, they’re pounding away up the beach. They seem to have forgotten him entirely.
    N’Doch struggles against the pull of the undertow. He expects jaws lined with razors to clamp onto his thigh and haul him back again. As he stumbles into ankle-deep water and regains his balance, two of the brothers halt, high up on the beach. The short one is yanking on the taller one’s arm. The tall one shrugs him off. He’s yelling, and pointing toward the water. With his feet safely under him, N’Doch can resist no longer. He turns, and he sees a thing beyond his wildest imaginings.
    It’s not a shark. At first he thinks,
Damn, that’s a really big porpoise
. Then he thinks,
No, it has legs. It’s a giant crocodile
. No, the head’s too small, neck’s too long, it’s . . . like something he’s seen in the movies. The only word he can come up with is
dinosaur
. Right. Okay. A dinosaur. It can’t be, but there is it. And now he’s sure he’s hearing music. Very strange music, like, inside his head. Maybe that tomato wasn’t so safe after all.
It’s poisoned me
, he thinks.
I’m hallucinating
.
    And then, for a moment, he stops thinking anything at all.
    With a flash of wet blue-gray and silver, the creature rises out of the waves in front of him. It has four mammalian legs and a sleek, close-eared head set on a sinuous muscular neck. It stands motionless in waist-deep water but he can
feel
its liquid grace. He thinks of a big cat inside the skin of a seal. He’s never seen anything so beautiful. Though it seems to tower over him, it’s actually no bigger than a large horse. Its eyes are dark and round, almost level with his own, and they are staring straight at him.
    N’Doch takes the obvious step backward but that odd absence of fear has taken hold of him again. He feels no need to run. The music fills his inner ears and mostly he’s thinking how absolutely fucking weird this whole thing is, and could the brothers have poisoned the tomato on purpose? Were they only chasing him to be there watching and laughing when he freaked out? Well, he isn’t going to give them the satisfaction. Besides, they’re the ones who’re freaking out. Which means either they’re pretending to see something terrifying, or they really
are
seeing something terrifying, which means . . .
    N’Doch notices his legs have given up supporting him. He sits down hard on the sand and stares dumbfounded into a pair of round, dark eyes that are beginning to show signs of impatience.
    Behind him, he hears someone coughing.

C HAPTER T WO

    A t first she was sure he’d landed them in the middle of a fire. The hot light was so hazed and the air so thick with soot and fetid odor. She shrank against him, pressing her shoulder to the dragon’s side to take comfort from his girth and solidity, from the hard geometry of his leathery hide, retreating into his shadow from the glare of this sun, this