The Book of Water Read Online Free PDF

what he’s doing. The girl retreats from him a bit, into the shadow of her beast like a child into its mother’s skirts. She’s definitely on the tall side, he sees now, and her eyes, studying him so carefully, are very dark for a white girl’s, almost black. Her skin is a fine pale olive roughened by sun or wind or maybe, though N’Doch cannot truly imagine it, by actual cold. And it looks real, now that he sees her close, like she’s not even wearing makeup. He guesses her to be about fourteen.
    The brown beast shrugs gently, a slow earthquake that jostles the girl sideways off her perch on his forearm. She regains her balance easily on the sand. N’Doch can see she’s no stranger to exercise. She tosses the beast what N’Doch reads as a dirty look, the first sign of spirit he’s seen in her. Then she squares her shoulders as if preparing for some onerous task, and turns to face him.
    “
Mein Name ist Erde
,” she announces. “
Erde Katerina Meriah von Alte
.”
    “Ummm,” says N’Doch. He recognizes the harsh gutturals of one of those white northern European languages, but does not understand a word. He can’t recall the last time he saw a vid in anything but French. Even the American ones are mostly dubbed. Are they trying to trip him up? Okay, it’s gonna be a scene about communication. He smiles. “
Comment ça va?
”
    Her dark eyes narrow. She doesn’t understand him either. N’Doch is surprised. Most Europeans speak French. Will the viewers buy that she can’t? Maybe she’s supposed to be from some boondock isolationist principality. He’s heard of such things. He’s sure now she won’t speak Wolof, so heswitches to English, which he’s learned only from vids. “Hey there, how ya doin’, kid?”
    She still doesn’t get it. N’Doch gets ready to try sign language. So far, he doesn’t think much of this script. He thumps his bare chest, like some guy in a bad jungle movie. “N’Doch,” he says, “N’Doch.”
    The girl gives the big brown guy a quick sidelong glance, as if he’s said something she didn’t quite hear. But next she looks back at N’Doch with a gleam of understanding. She points at him and forms the sounds carefully.
    “En-doche.”
    He nods encouragingly. “N’Doch,” he repeats, correcting her pronunciation. He points back at her and cocks his head.
    She taps her own leather-clad chest. “
Erde. Mien Name ist Erde
.”
    N’Doch tries it out. “Airda?”
    “
Erde
.”
    “Right. Airda.” They both nod, but N’Doch is thinking,
God, this is stupid
. He’s never met anyone he didn’t share at least one language with before.
    Then he notices how the two beasts are regarding them with patient indulgence, like parents whose toddlers are meeting for the first time. He relaxes a little.
Well then
, he thinks,
I guess it’s okay. Must be I’ve kept to the script so far
.

C HAPTER F OUR

    I n her eagerness to follow the dragon’s Quest, Erde had expected to travel a goodly distance, but she hadn’t counted on finding herself in a country that was so hot and where people didn’t speak German. Never mind that she’d only recently gotten her own voice back: Just what did you do if somebody couldn’t speak your language? But she was fairly sure language would be the least of her problems—the dragons would figure it out between them. Certainly the two of them were having no problem understanding one another. She felt Earth’s relief and excitement humming through his body like a murmur of gratitude. Not since he’d woken up in that deep cold cave above Tor Alte had he been able to communicate with another being so fast and so fully, too fast for Erde to keep up. But she had snagged one astonishing revelation as it flashed by her: This new dragon from the sea was apparently Earth’s relative. She’d actually heard him call her his sister.
    Erde recalled how she’d felt when Rose of Deep Moor had proved able to sense and decipher Earth’s image signals in