Wild Seed (4 page)

"Those," she said simply. "My mothers."

Symbols of ancestral spirits. He remembered now. He shook his head. "I am getting careless," he said in English.

"What are you saying?"

"That I am sorry. I've been away from your people too long."

"It does not matter. As I said, these things are for others to see. I must lie a little, even here."

"No more," he said.

"This town will think I am finally dead," she said staring at the figurines. "Perhaps they will make a shrine and give it my name. Other towns have done that. Then at night when they see shadows and branches blowing in the wind they can tell each other they have seen my spirit."

"A shrine with spirits will frighten them less than the living woman, I think," Doro said.

Not quite smiling, Anyanwu led him through the compound door, and they began the long trek over a maze of footpaths so narrow that they could walk only in single file between the tall trees. Anyanwu carried her basket on her head and her machete sheathed at her side. Her bare feet and Doro's made almost no sound on the path—nothing to confuse Anyanwu's sensitive ears. Several times as they moved along at the pace she set—a swift walk—she turned aside and slipped silently into the bush. Doro followed with equal skill and always shortly afterward people passed by. There were women and children bearing water pots or firewood on their heads. There were men carrying hoes and machetes. It was as Anyanwu had said. They were in the middle of her town, surrounded by villages. No European would have recognized a town, however, since most of the time there were no dwellings in sight. But on his way to her, Doro had stumbled across the villages, across one large compound after another and either slipped past them or walked past boldly as though he had legitimate business. Fortunately, no one had challenged him. People often hesitated to challenge a man who seemed important and purposeful. They would not, however, have hesitated to challenge strangers who hid themselves, who appeared to be spying. As Doro followed Anyanwu now, he worried that he still might wind up wearing the body of one of her kinsmen—and having great trouble with her. He was relieved when she told him they had left her people's territory behind.

At first, Anyanwu was able to lead Doro along already cleared paths through territory she knew either because she had once lived in it or because her daughters lived in it now. Once, as they walked, she was telling him about a daughter who had married a handsome, strong, lazy young man, then run away to a much less imposing man who had some ambition. He listened for a while, then asked: "How many of your children lived to adulthood, Anyanwu?"

"Every one," she said proudly. "They were all strong and well and had no forbidden things wrong with them."

Children with "forbidden" things wrong with them—twins, for instance, and children born feet first, children with almost any deformity, children born with teeth—these children were thrown away. Doro had gotten some of his best stock from earlier cultures who, for one reason or another, put infants out to die.

"You had forty-seven children," he said in disbelief, "and all of them lived and were perfect?"

"Perfect in their bodies, at least. They all survived."

"They are my people's children! Perhaps some of them and their descendants should come with us after all."

Anyanwu stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her. "You will not trouble my children," she said quietly.

He stared down at her—she had still not bothered to make herself taller though she told him she could—and tried to swallow sudden anger. She spoke to him as though he were one of her children. She did not yet understand his power!

"I am here," she said in the same quiet voice. "You have me."

"Do I?"

"As much as any man could."

That stopped him. There was no challenge in her voice, but he realized at once she was not telling him she was all his—his property. She was saying only that he had whatever small part of herself she reserved for her men. She was not used to men who could demand more. Though she came from a culture in which wives literally belonged to their husbands, she had power and her power had made her independent, accustomed to being her own person. She did not yet realize that she had walked away from that independence when she walked away from her people with him.

"Let's go on," he said.

But she did not move. "You have something to tell me," she said.

He sighed. "Your children are safe, Anyanwu." For the moment.

She turned and led on. Doro followed, thinking that he had better get her with a new child as quickly as he could. Her independence would vanish without a struggle. She would do whatever he asked then to keep her child safe. She was too valuable to kill, and if he abducted any of her descendants, she would no doubt goad him into killing her. But once she was isolated in America with an infant to care for, she would learn submissiveness.

Paths became occasional luxuries as they moved into country Anyanwu did not know. More and more, they had to use their machetes to clear the way. Streams became a problem. They flowed swiftly through deep gorges that had to be crossed somehow. Where the streams interrupted footpaths, local people had placed log bridges. But where Doro and Anyanwu found neither paths nor bridges, they had to cut their own logs. Travel became slower and more dangerous. A fall would not have killed either of them directly, but Doro knew that if he fell, he would not be able to stop himself from taking over Anyanwu's body. She was too close to him. On his way north, he had crossed several rivers by simply abandoning his body and taking over the body nearest to him on the far side. And since he was leading now, allowing his tracking sense to draw him to the crew aboard his ship, he could not send her ahead or leave her behind. He would not have wanted to anyway. They were in the country of people who waged war to get slaves to sell to the Europeans. These were people who would cut her to pieces if she began reshaping herself before them. Some of them even had European guns and powder.

Their slow progress was not a complete waste of time, though. It gave him a chance to learn more about Anyanwu—and there was more to learn. He discovered that he would not have to steal food while she was with him. Once the two yams were roasted and eaten, she found food everywhere. Each day as they traveled, she filled her basket with fruit, nuts, roots, whatever she could find that was edible. She threw stones with the speed and force of a sling and brought down birds and small animals. At day's end, there was always a hearty meal. If a plant was unfamiliar to her, she tasted it and sensed within herself whether or not it was poison. She ate several things she said were poison, though none of them seemed to harm her. But she never gave him anything other than good food. He ate whatever she gave him, trusting her abilities. And when a small cut on his hand became infected, she gave him even more reason to trust her.

The infected hand had begun to swell by the time she noticed it, and it was beginning to make him sick. He was already deciding how he would get a new body without endangering her. Then, to his surprise, she offered to help him heal.

"You should have told me," she said. "You let yourself suffer needlessly."

He looked at her doubtfully. "Can you get the herbs you need out here?"

She met his eyes. "Sometimes the herbs were for my people—like the gods in my compound. If you will let me, I can help you without them."

"All right." He gave her his swollen, inflamed hand.

"There will be pain," she warned.

"All right," he repeated.

She bit his hand.

He bore it, holding himself rigid against his own deadly reaction to sudden pain. She had done well to warn him. This was the second time she had been nearer to death than she could imagine.

For a time after biting him, she did nothing. Her attention seemed to turn inward, and she did not answer when he spoke to her. Finally, she brought his hand to her mouth again and there was more pain and pressure, but no more biting. She spat three times, each time returning to his hand, then she seemed to caress the wound with her tongue. Her saliva burned like fire. After that she kept a watch on the hand, attending it twice more with that startling, burning pain. Almost at once, the swelling and sickness went away and the wound began to heal.

"There were things in your hand that should not have been there," she told him. "Living things too small to see. I have no name for them, but I can feel them and know them when I take them into my body. As soon as I know them, I can kill them within myself. I gave you a little of my body's weapon against them."

Tiny living things too small to see, but large enough to make him sick. If his wound had not begun to heal so quickly and cleanly, he would not have believed a word she said. As it was, though, his trust in her grew. She was a witch, surely. In any culture she would be feared. She would have to fight to keep her life. Even sensible people who did not believe in witches would turn against her. And Doro, breeder of witches that he was, realized all over again what a treasure she was. Nothing, no one, must prevent his keeping her.

It was not until he reached one of his contacts near the coast that someone decided to try.

Anyanwu never told Doro that she could jump all but the widest of the rivers they had to cross. She thought at first that he might guess because he had seen the strength of her hands. Her legs and thighs were just as powerful. But Doro was not used to thinking as she did about her abilities, not used to taking her strength or metamorphosing ability for granted. He never guessed, never asked what she could do.

She kept silent because she feared that he too could leap the gorges—though in doing so, he might leave his body behind. She did not want to see him kill for so small a reason. She had listened to the stories he told as they traveled, and it seemed to her that he killed too easily. Far too easily—unless the stories were lies. She did not think they were. She did not know whether he would take a life just to get across a river quickly, but she feared he might. This made her begin to think of escaping from him. It made her think longingly of her people, her compound, her home . . .

Yet she made herself womanly for him at night. He never had to ask her to do this. She did it because she wanted to, because in spite of her doubts and fears, he pleased her very much. She went to him as she had gone to her first husband, a man for whom she had cared deeply, and to her surprise, Doro treated her much as her first husband had. He listened with respect to her opinions and spoke with respect and friendship as though to another man. Her first husband had taken much secret ridicule for treating her this way. Her second husband had been arrogant, contemptuous, and brutal, yet he had been considered a great man. She had run away from him as she now wished to run away from Doro. Doro could not have known what dissimilar men he brought alive in her memory.

He had still given her no proof of the power he claimed, no proof that her children would be in danger from other than an ordinary man if she managed to escape. Yet she continued to believe him. She could not bring herself to get up while he slept and vanish into the forest. For her children's sake she had to stay with him, at least until she had proof one way or the other.

She followed him almost grimly, wondering what it would be like finally to be married to a man she could neither escape nor outlive. The prospect made her cautious and gentle. Her earlier husbands would not have known her. She sought to make him value her and care for her. Thus she might have some leverage with him, some control over him later when she needed it. Much married as she was, she knew she would eventually need it. They were in the lowlands now, passing through wetter country. There was more rain, more heat, many more mosquitoes. Doro got some disease and coughed and coughed. Anyanwu got a fever, but drove it out of herself as soon as she sensed it. There was enough misery to be had without sickness.

"When do we pass through this land!" she asked in disgust. It was raining now. They were on someone's pathway laboring through sucking ankle-deep mud.

"There is a river not far ahead of us," he told her. He stopped for a moment to cough. "I have an arrangement with people at a riverside town. They will take us the rest of the way by canoe."

"Strangers," she said with alarm. They had managed to avoid contact with most of the people whose lands they had crossed.

"You will be the stranger here," Doro told her. "But you need not worry. These people know me. I have given them gifts—dash, they call it—and promised them more if they rowed my people down the river."

"Do they know you in this body?" she asked, using the question as an excuse to touch the hard flat muscle of his shoulder. She liked to touch him.

"They know me," he said. "I am not the body I wear, Anyanwu. You will understand that when I change—soon, I think." He paused for another fit of coughing. "You will know me in another body as soon as you hear me speak."

"How?" She did not want to talk about his changing, his killing. She had tried to cure his sickness so that he would not change, but though she had eased his coughing, prevented him from growing sicker, she had not made him well. That meant she might soon be finding out more about his changing whether she wanted to or not. "How will I know you?" she asked.

"There are no words for me to tell you—as with your tiny living things. When you hear my voice, you will know me. That's all."

"Will it be the same voice?"

"No."

"Then how . . .?"

"Anyanwu . . ." He glanced around at her. "I am telling you, you will know!"

Startled, she kept silent. She believed him. How was it she always believed him?

The village he took her to was a small place that seemed not much different from waterside communities she had known nearer home. Here some of the people stared at her and at Doro, but no one molested them. She heard speech here and there and sometimes it had a familiar sound to it. She thought she might understand a little if she could go closer to the speakers and listen. As it was, she understood nothing. She felt exposed, strangely helpless among people so alien. She walked closely behind Doro.