Free The Book of Water by Marjorie B. Kellogg Page B

stay fast and loose, with ties to nothing and no one. He’ll do what he can to help his mama, but she pretty much takes care of herself. The only thing he believes in, really, is his music, and that he carries safely inside him. It’s sustained him through the hard times like no person ever could or would.
    Of course, a dragon is not exactly a person.
    The images stop, leaving him bathed in a waiting silence. N’Doch looks up finally, meeting the silver dragon’s gaze.
    All right
, he concedes.
This is really happening
.
    Her music, their music, swells in his head, and the next thing he asks himself is
Why me?

C HAPTER T EN

    E rde dreamed that the dragon was nudging her shoulder. When she stirred, she saw him crouched beside Water across the room. The floor beneath her was still shuddering gently. Ah, she thought. One of his baby-quakes.
    She allowed herself a proud smile. He was using his gifts without having to be endlessly petted and encouraged beforehand, which meant he was finally gaining some self-confidence. Despite the mob outside and the peril of their situation, she decided she could tease him a little.
    —
I am awake, O Great One, and at your service
.
    Earth turned from his huddle and stared at her. He blinked slowly, twice. In her head, Erde saw only an embarrassed blank. She giggled, and for a moment, the dragon let his big tongue loll from the corner of his mouth, as he used to in comic puzzlement. But Erde sensed it was self-parody this time, Earth recalling his former self for her amusement as well as his own, and sharing a bit of pride in his maturing. But not too much pride.
    —
I am not great yet, not until I have learned what Purpose I am to be great for
.
    Erde thought his logic a trifle circuitous and literal-minded, but she knew what he meant.
    —
Will you still talk to me, then, and wake me with earthquakes?
    She had meant it fondly and in jest, but he blinked again, regarding her gravely.
    —
I will, for you will be great with me
.
    —
I am already great. I am a baron’s daughter
.
    It was lovely to be able to joust with him verbally. Hisgrasp of language had grown dizzyingly. Erde mused that if human children learned so fast, there’d be no keeping up with them.
    Then Water was there, flowing into Earth’s consciousness, eddying busily in his mind, diverting both their thoughts like a guild master calling a meeting to order, reminding them both that they had a crisis to deal with by pelting them with images of a howling armed mob tearing an unseen something limb from limb. Earth returned his attention to her so obediently that Erde found herself wondering if the sea dragon was perhaps his older sister, since he deferred to her so readily. Or was it that, despite her having waked more recently into the world, she had more confidence than he did? She was graceful and she was beautiful, and Erde knew Earth thought himself dull, brown, and clumsy. But the sea dragon was also turning out to be a little bit bossy. Now that she’d gotten their attention, she was flooding them with images of Endoch.
    Erde tried stopping up her mental ears.
    —
Shouldn’t you ask her about the Caller, who she thinks it is?
    —
Her first concern is the boy, to wake him to his duty , Earth relayed. And she needs your help. She wants you to explain things to him. She says you must use your words to help him understand
.
    —
My words? I don’t do words very well. I only just got them back
.
    —
You must try. Please, you must. He knows how to hear the meaning in words
.
    —
But, Dragon, he doesn’t speak my language, and I don’t speak his
.
    She could feel his puzzlement, like an itch inside her brain. A hurried conference with the sea dragon eventually produced the understanding that the sounds Erde heard Earth speak in her head were an illusion of words he had learned to create in order to accommodate her human habits of communication. Earth was surprised (and interested) to learn that the sounds Erde