The Book of Water (31 page)

“I thought it was you who sent for us,” N’Doch retorted.

Lealé held on to him even more intensely. “Who are you? I don’t even know why I sent that card! I need to understand why . . .” She broke off again abruptly and drew her hand away. “Forgive my rudeness.”

“Hey, no problem. And my name’s N’Doch, just so you know. Try to remember it. Someday you might see it plastered all over town just like yours.”

“N’Doch, then. Is that why you think I’m a fraud? Please understand, then: It’s not the fame I crave. I do have to promote myself in ways I’d prefer not to, but that’s to get the people in. To get their attention, so they know there is hope for them. To support this house, this place of peace and safety, so they can come here and be helped. People need truth in their lives!”

N’Doch avoided her earnest stare. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for turning whatever gimmick you got into making your name and fortune. I hope to do that myself real soon. But this spirit guy, he’s your thing, not mine. My thing’s something else at the moment, a lot of questions that need answering, and one of them just became: What’s out there?”

“No! You mustn’t! You can’t!” Lealé’s hands began to lift and fly about her in random fitful movements. Erde saw finally that simple envy was making N’Doch misbehave. In his desire to win, he was ignoring what was sensible. She stepped between them.

“Remember that Master Djawara sent us here to listen to Mistress Lealé, not to frighten and insult her.”

“Aw, girl, this is stupid! We’re here, why not just check the place out? It’s just a bunch of trees.”

“You know better than that by now, surely?”

“What is she saying?” asked Lealé.

Wasser turned away from the grove for the first time.
“Anyway, we certainly shouldn’t go out there without telling my brother. I don’t want to leave him stranded, in case we . . .”

“So tell him!”

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

For a moment, even to Erde, Wasser seemed tall and threatening in the eerie green glow. “Listen.”

N’Doch blinked, and listened. “Yeah? So?”

“Listen
inside
.”

N’Doch lowered his eyes, then quickly raised them again. “Hey. Where’d he go?”

His smaller self again, Wasser replied, “I don’t think he went anywhere. Question is, where did
we
go?”

“Hunh.” N’Doch’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. You win. But, Sister Lealé, it seems silly to bring us here if it’s so risky for you.”

Lealé had been watching their exchange with narrowed eyes. Erde wondered what she’d made of it. “It’s less risky than everywhere else.”

“Right, so you said. The listeners. So who’s listening?”

Lealé took on an entirely new face, world-weary and amused. She waved a dismissive, bright-nailed hand. “Oh, that’s a whole other story. It’s not really fit for children, and it certainly doesn’t concern you.”

“It does if you can’t feel good about us talking where they’re listening.”

She gave him a quick, seductive smile. “It’s just a jealous man, you know?”

N’Doch’s sly grin bloomed in reply. “Ah! Now we get to the guy down the hall.”

“Yes.” Her smile turned faintly bitter. “Keeping track of his investment. Really, it’s not your problem. I just don’t want him knowing about all this.” She gestured around the dark recess and outward, toward the grove. “Where my dreams come from or this . . . other business.”

“The business of the card you sent Papa Djawara.”

Lealé’s nervousness returned. “Yes.”

*   *   *

N’Doch glances around the cramped dark space. He sees low cushioned benches set along the wall that he hadn’t
noticed were there. In fact, if you’d asked him, he’d have sworn there was no place to sit before.

He sits. “Okay. You wanna talk. Let’s talk.”

The girl and the apparition join him. The kid grabs the seat nearest the door, probably so he can keep an eye out for any goings-on in the weird park thing. Lealé does not sit. She paces, not the smoothest thing to do in a space that small. N’Doch can see she’s as nervous as a cat.

“I need to start at the beginning, if the story’s to make any sense at all. You see, Djawara and I grew up together. We were distantly related.” She turns to face N’Doch. “He is truly your grandfather, Djawara is?”

Her doubting makes him huffy again, but the girl is watching him, so he nods in a way he hopes looks noncommittal.

“I should have guessed it would be someone close to him. But I recall him mentioning, when we were still in contact, that he’d lost a grandson or two.”

“Three. I’m the fourth, the one he wasn’t close to, for a while at least.”

Still pacing, she stops in front of the apparition, her face softening like women always do around little kids. “Is he your grandpapa, too?”

The apparition shakes its head.

“What’s your name, then?”

“Wasser. It means ‘Water.’”

N’Doch is still not happy with this name, has not once yet used it.

Lealé turns to him. “An interesting coincidence. Your name in Wolof is also . . .”

He nods. “Water.”

Lealé looks to the girl now. “And yours, my dear?”

“Erde,” the girl says, just a bit late.

“A lovely name.”

The girl nods. “
Danke
.”

“It means ‘Earth,’” says the apparition, his child’s eyes narrowing on Lealé. N’Doch wonders if the kid means it to sound so much like a challenge.

But Lealé brightens. “Ah. Like my little boulevard outside. Then it must be right.” She starts up her pacing again. “I’ll go on with my story.”

“So, as we were growing up together, Djawara and I, we discovered we shared interests that set us apart from our other friends and relatives. Interests in the past, in history, in the old myths and customs. Djawara, particularly, was a gifted storyteller. He could expand his tales indefinitely, until they became entire sagas based on the adventures of some mythic hero. Later, when I did a little study myself, I discovered that he’d invented most of what he’d held us so enthralled with. When I put it to him, he admitted it readily enough, even seemed pleased with me for finding him out. Then he swore me to secrecy and confessed that he did it to distract himself—and us—from his growing obsession with the one tale that he hadn’t invented, at least not consciously, the one tale he just somehow
knew
.”

“The boy and the sea monster,” N’Doch murmurs in spite of himself.

“Yes. The very one. He told you?”

“He used to sing it to me, when I was little.”
Before I decided he was just too uncool to be with
, N’Doch reminds himself ruefully.

“It frightened him, I think,” Lealé goes on. “This tale that would not leave him alone, whose central figure—the keeper of the ancient ways—he finally realized was himself.” She stops in mid-pace and lets her gaze drift to the floor. “I had my own . . . dilemmas . . . at the time. I was having strange, well . . . visitations. Dreams and visions I couldn’t explain. So when Djawara came to me—hoping, I’m sure, for a dose of healthy skepticism—I met him instead with encouragement and belief. I thought, well, if my much respected friend was being overtaken by some inexplicable fate, then my own bizarre experiences might be valid too. So, you see, each of us became the other’s proof of sanity, and thus we were bonded for life.”

She sighs and leans her head back, smiling, and she’s beautiful again. N’Doch can tell she’s picturing the young Djawara in her mind, and wishes he could be there to see him, too. “Later on,” she continues, “When the events of our lives led us apart, we promised to be available for each other whenever our spiritual lives reached a crisis. For many years, they never did. Then I began having a kind of dream I’d never had before.”

For the girl’s sake, N’Doch asks, “When was that?”

“Two months ago,” the girl puts in abruptly.

He frowns at her. “Let her tell us, huh?”

Lealé asks, “What did she say?”

“She said, two months ago, but that’s just . . .”

“That’s right. She’s exactly right.” Slowly, Lealé turns and looks at the girl, like she’s seeing her for the first time. The girl smiles, like she’s trying to look helpful, but Lealé shudders, moans a little, then drops right down in the middle of the floor cross-legged and buries her head in her hands. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear!” she wails, rocking back and forth. “I knew it I knew it I just knew all this was much more complicated than it seemed at first, much more than he said it would be! Oh dear oh dear oh dear!”

N’Doch sees tears and all, but he’s not quite convinced—the change came on her so sudden. But the girl jumps up right away and kneels at Lealé’s side, and puts both arms around her like she’s known her forever.
Women can do that
, N’Doch reflects. And here comes the apparition now, only he goes around the front and sits facing Lealé, taking her hand more like a woman would do than a little kid. N’Doch thinks maybe the two of them are getting a little carried away, and he stays put, waiting for his part in it to come clear to him. Lotta times, since all this began, he’s felt more like a glorified tour guide than this so-called “dragon guide” he’s supposed to be. Like, where’s his converted armored personnel carrier with the bullet-proof viewing windows, so he can say stuff like, “and on your right, ladies and gentlemen . . .” He’s heard the patter. For some weird reason, the tour APCs broadcast it over their exterior speakers as they troll along the city streets and byways. Maybe they’re trying to prove those rich foreigners riding in there in air-conditioned comfort are actually learning something useful.

Meanwhile, the girl is saying, “There, there,” and other meaningless stuff made even more meaningless by the fact that she’s saying it in German, like she’s forgotten that Lealé’s not a subscriber to the dragon comnet. But the apparition is translating softly in its little-kid voice, and to N’Doch’s surprise, all this fuss seems to be having some results. At least Lealé has stopped her wailing.

“There, there,” parrots the apparition, its small hands soothing Lealé’s knee. “It’s all right.”

Lealé takes a breath, a long shuddering one, then lets it out in an even longer sigh. “No, you don’t know . . . it’s not all right! I should never have told him about Djawara and our pact. I never expected it to come to anything, you see, but now . . .”

“Tell us, Mother Lealé,” urges the apparition while the girl murmurs and pats. “Tell us about your dreams.”

“I can’t!” She hunches up, whispering suddenly. “Not here! He might hear me!”

“Seems like you got overhearing problems wherever you go,” N’Doch comments sourly.

“Mother Lealé,” whispers the apparition, “surely if he can call you into this room, he can hear you wherever you are.”

“Yeah,” N’Doch agrees. “So it doesn’t really matter, does it, and that’s supposing he’s listening at all.”

Lealé eases herself back onto her heels. She looks a bit cornered but maybe a little comforted and, N’Doch could already tell, always willing to accept an excuse to talk about herself.

“Well, okay, but I refuse to say anything bad about him.” She palms tears from her cheeks. N’Doch can see her preparing for a long recital. “Before, you see, my dreams were entirely random. I’d have one every now and then and there’d be someone in it I knew, so I’d go tell them about it and interpret it for them. And I was often helpful to them about some problem they were having, which made me feel good, like I wasn’t going through all this weirdness for nothing. Then word got around, though, and people I didn’t know came by looking for readings, and sometimes these people would offer me money, and we were poor, so I’d take it.”

She shifts a little, her eyes wandering to the walls. N’Doch notices she’s placed herself with her back to the door and the still green grove outside. “But then I felt they shouldn’t go home empty-handed, so I looked them over as hard as I knew how, and made stuff up best as I could, to satisfy them. Yes!” She slaps her knees lightly with both palms and stares her challenge all around. “I’ve said it! I used to take money for fakery. But, children, if you understand the world at all at your tender age, you know that all people really
want is an exciting performance and close personal attention to their mundane little problems. One way or another, I
always
gave them their money’s worth! But then . . .”

Lealé takes another deep breath, steadier this time, and flicks a glance at the girl. “But then one night, about two months ago just like you said, I had this new kind of dream. It was a very specific dream, full of very precise information about some guy I’d never seen before in my life, like watching a vid-doc on the tube or something. I thought it was odd at the time but I didn’t worry myself too much about it until later that day, the guy himself—the
exact same guy
, no doubt of it, I could tell you what he looked like even now—he knocks on my gate over on Water Street asking for a Reading.

“Well, needless to say, I gave that guy the Reading of his natural life, and he went out of my house and made a whole lot of money in some business deal, the crucial detail of which had been revealed in my dream! When I heard that, it gave me a chill. Then I had second dream like that, and again the stranger I dreamed about showed up right after, and it kept on happening. Then word really got around fast, and . . .” She stops, breathless, then looks around at each of them as if for sympathy, and shrugs.

“And
presto!
” N’Doch supplies. “You’re the Mahatma Glory Magdalena.”

Lealé nods as if she can’t quite believe it either. “Except that it’s not me doing it. Oh—I dreamed this house myself and made it so. Or rather, I learned how to make it so. He taught me.”

“This spirit guy . . . ?”

She laughs full-out this time. “Oh, no. Sorry. The
other
one. My investor. I dreamed him once and he showed up.”

“And saw you had a gift could make you both a handsome living.”

“Yes.”

“Which now you don’t want to let go of.”

“Do you blame me?”

N’Doch stretches his legs. “No way. I’m in awe of your achievement, sister.” But it seems to him there’s one big detail missing. “So the spirit guy . . . when did he put in a personal appearance?”