Changer's Daughter (8 page)

“We haggled for a while, then she haggled with her husband, but the long and short of it was that I bought Tugger. When we were out of that area, I rechristened him ‘Bob,’ dyed his coat a nice dull brown, taught him to walk with a bit of a limp so that no one would covet him. Under different names and different colors, Tugger pulled my wagons for the next fifty some years. We moved our route out of the Beaumonts’ area soon after, as I was living out the usefulness of that identity. When cars started coming into use, I put Tugger out to pasture, first on my own nickel and later with Frank.”

During the story, which she heard mostly as the comforting rise and fall of human voices, Shahrazad has forgotten her embarrassment. Sitting on her haunches, she scratches busily behind one ear, examining Tugger and trying to decide whether he is as interesting as the Wanderer and Frank apparently think. She decides to take the matter on advisement, wondering with a great deal more intensity what might be for dinner.

“What,” says the Changer, his gravelly voice breaking the comfortable background music of equine chewing, “ever happened to the Beaumont family?”

“As I said, the charm I traded to Mistress Beaumont was a real one,” the Wanderer says, “for the family had been good to me from her grandfather’s day forward. When she died, she passed on the word of the charm to her son, who had taken over the farm by then. He passed on the information to his daughter, but she dismissed it as the ravings of fever. Still, her family did well as long as they stayed on the farm.

“When she was getting on, the decision was made to parcel up the land and share out the profits among her children. I lost touch with them around then. A few years later the house was torn down, and the charm lost. I was traveling at the time and didn’t hear until it was too late to save it. A subdivision stands there now. I think they call it Lucky Acres, but I doubt that it’s any luckier than any other piece of land.”

The conversation shifts then to lucky pieces, protective enchantments, and the like. Shahrazad drifts behind the human form as they finish feeding the OTQ residents, absorbing nothing much from their conversation, mostly hoping that they will not forget that a few mice are nowhere near enough dinner for a growing coyote.

Loverboy>> Hey! Hey! We have the word! :) Lil’s agreed and Tommy’ll be playing in our area. Who wants to go to the show?

Monk>> Sounds like a plan. Can we get a discount on tickets? Those arena shows aren’t cheap!

Demetrios>> More importantly, will the disguise charms be ready in time? We’ve only seen sample tokens, and the one I was sent was flawed. Made me look like a goat—not a human!

Loverboy>> Who cares about disguises? We fared fair at the Fair! Let’s sally forth in pants and boots. I want to go dancing with the toots!

Rebecca>> Georgios, when did you take up rhyme? Demetrios is right. We need to find out when the charms will be ready. I’ll e-mail my aunt. She’s down from Alaska and is helping Lovern at his Academy.

Monk>> OUR Academy. Lovern shouldn’t be permitted to perceive the new Academy as his own personal kingdom. He is already arrogant enough, and his creation of the Head shows that he is not worthy of such power.

Rebecca>> Does it matter what we think about him? :( He’s Arthur’s wizard and in charge. Everyone’s forgotten the Head. After what happened...

Demetrios>> I haven’t forgotten it. Monk has a good point. Let’s press to have our charms in time for Tommy’s show. We lobbied back in September for the simple right to do things like go to a concert. Besides, if Lovern’s busy filling our orders, he won’t have time for more black-magical creations.

Monk>> I’ll second your motion.

Demetrios>> I’ll send Lovern a formal request that our charms be finished on time for the California show.

Loverboy>> I’ll e-mail Tommy. He’ll get us that discount and seats near the stage! It’s gonna be great! :)

Bill Irish, reviewing the latest from the theriomorphs chatroom frowns, and drums the desk top with the rubber eraser on the end of his pencil, a quirk that, unconsciously, he has picked up from Arthur.

The theriomorphs’ site is no longer a strict secret, as it had been a few months before when the theriomorphs had been planning their rebellion against the policies of the Accord, but it is still shielded from all web-browsing programs, and the address is a closely guarded secret. Therefore, it remains used mainly by the theriomorphs, and they tend to forget that their discussions can be monitored.

Given that Rebecca Trapper had been his entry into the world of the athanor and was directly responsible for his current lucrative and fascinating job, Bill feels rather bad about spying on her, but that is Arthur’s command.

Neither he nor Chris is to log in to the chatroom for discussion; instead they are to “ghost” the site, downloading the discussions every couple of days and reviewing the material for evidence of dissatisfaction or a return to rebellion.

Arthur may have come to understand the theriomorphs’ point of view, even to sympathize with it somewhat, but that has not altered his awareness that of all the athanor the theriomorphs would find it easiest to reveal the presence of their kind to the world at large.

T
he works of a sorcerer might be dismissed as magicians, tricks
à la
Copperfield or Houdini, the claims of a human form immortal as a scam, but if the sasquatches, fauns, or satyrs want to convince the human world that the weird and wonderful still exist, all they need do is walk down the street.

So Bill faithfully follows Arthur’s orders and reviews the chatroom talk. Until today the discussions have been mild, even boring (once one dismisses the fact that the creatures typing away are real monsters). Today, though...

Bill thumps the pencil a few more times, saves his file, zaps a copy to Arthur’s e-mail, and then goes to find his employer. He may be jumping the gun, but perhaps the King should know about this before it goes any farther.

The bar is dark, though the day outside is sunny enough: sunny, hot, and windy. Inside, just enough light comes through the imperfectly sealed walls and open front door to give color to the decorations on the wall. These are posters mostly, advertisements for beers and wines. Smiling white people hold the long-stemmed glasses or elegantly shaped bottles, enjoying themselves on beaches or in elegantly furnished rooms the like of which most Nigerians will see only on television, if at all.

The bar’s sole occupant, other than the bartender who stands in the doorway chatting with some of his cronies, grimaces at the posters and drinks a bit more of his warm beer. There had been a time when he didn’t mind his beer warm, but fresh from America he does mind and resents being forced to sit here drinking warm beer. Perhaps palm wine would taste better. They had nothing like it in America, so his taste for it should not have been ruined.

“You!” he calls to the bartender, knowing that he is being rude but already too drunk to care. “Do you have palm wine?”

“I do,” the man says affably, trading a soft-voiced comment with his buddies before coming inside and rooting around behind the bar. “You want a glass of it?”

“Do you have a bottle?”

“Of course.”

“Give it to me.”

The bartender insists on payment in advance, naming an outrageous amount in
naira
. The drinker knows that he is being overcharged but doesn’t deign to barter, just slides the amount across the table, moving carefully to avoid knocking over the palisade of beer bottles that he has erected between himself and the world.

Seeing the money, the bartender hastens across the room, bringing the bottle of palm wine with him. He sets it down, then gathers up the money and stuffs it in his pocket.

“And pick up some of this mess.”

“Right, boss.” The bartender sounds respectful. He whistles, and a small boy dressed only in a pair of ragged trousers scampers in from the street.

“Pick these up and wash them,” the bartender tells him, “and don’t break any like last time.”

“Yes, Pa.” The boy starts gathering up the bottles.

“And when you’re done, come to me.” The bartender jingles the coins he has dropped into his pocket, and the boy’s sullen expression vanishes.

“Yes, Pa!”

The customer hardly hears this conversations, is slightly more aware of the muted clinking of glass on glass as the boy carries away the bottles. He is busy studying the bottle of palm wine. It is clearly home-brewed—tapped would be a better description—for palm wine is tapped directly from the top of the tree.

In the old days it would have been stored in a keg or perhaps even a gourd. He should remember, but his head is too fuddled to be certain. All he is sure of is that palm wine did not always come packaged in a glass bottle that had once held something else—soda, he thinks or maybe grape wine—that it was not always closed with a makeshift stopper and sealed with candle wax.

He pours some of the palm wine into a glass that the bartender had brought him with his first beer and which he had ignored. Holding up the glass to one of the shafts of light that penetrate the slatted wooden walls of the bar, he studies the contents. The palm wine looks rather like dirty dishwater.

He sips. Maybe it’s the beer numbing his tongue, but it tastes rather like dirty dishwater, too. Still, the warmth doesn’t trouble him as it had with the beer. He continues drinking.

He had arrived in Monamona a few hours before and had checked into the hotel under the name Ogunkeye, an
àbíso
name meaning roughly “The god Ogun has gathered honor.” It was one of many cultic names referring to the god Ogun: Ogunlola, Ogunrinde, others. In the old days they had been given to the child by a wise man, a
babalawo
. Today, if they were used at all, they are most frequently used in the same fashion as a first name is among the Europeans.

The hotel keeper had expected him to supply a surname, and in a fit of insanity the man had told him “Hunter Smith.” The fellow hadn’t even blinked.

“Ogunkeye Hunter Smith,” he had repeated, writing it down in his ledger.

Remembering, the man drinks more palm wine.

“I might as well have told him Dakar Agadez for all it meant to him,” he mutters into the glass. “Dakar Agadez.”

Caught in memories new and those awakened by the taste of the palm wine against his tongue, he does not notice that two men, one thin, one stocky, have walked up to his table. Then the stocky one speaks:

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he says, pulling out a chair and seating himself without waiting for an invitation, “how you came to use that name. Aren’t both Dakar and Agadez the names of cities in this area?”

“But farther north,” the thin man agrees and Dakar/Ogunkeye vaguely recognizes him as Anson A. Kridd, otherwise known as trouble and nuisance in a sometimes human form.

He growls something, realizes he is inarticulate, and begins again, addressing the stocky man.

“I was drunk,” he says with careful enunciation. “I had been in trouble, and I needed a name. Fast. There was a map on the wall. So...”

He shrugs, somewhat shamefaced, aware that he is drunk again but too tired to get belligerent about it.