Wild Seed (8 page)

But the man left without coercion.

Anyanwu coaxed Okoye to swallow some of the liquid. It made him cough and choke at first, but he got it down. By the time Doro came to the cabin, Okoye was asleep.

Doro opened the door without warning and came in. He looked at her with obvious pleasure and said, "You are well, Anyanwu. I thought you would be."

"I am always well."

He laughed. "You will bring me luck on this voyage. Come and see whether my men have bought any more of your relatives."

She followed him deeper into the vessel through large rooms containing only a few people segregated by sex. The people lounged on mats or gathered in pairs or small groups to talk—those who had found others who spoke their language.

No one was chained as the slaves on shore had been. No one seemed to be hurt or frightened. Two women sat nursing their babies. Anyanwu heard many languages, including, finally, her own. She stopped at the mat of a young woman who had been singing softly to herself.

"Who are you?" she asked the woman in surprise.

The woman jumped to her feet, took Anyanwu's hands. "You can speak," she said joyfully. "I thought I would never again hear words I could understand. I am Udenkwo."

The woman's own speech was somewhat strange to Anyanwu. She pronounced some of her words differently or used different words so that Anyanwu had to replay everything in her mind to be certain what had been said. "How did you get here, Udenkwo?" she asked. "Did these whites steal you from your home?" From the corner of her eye, she saw Doro turn to look at her indignantly. But he allowed Udenkwo to answer for herself.

"Not these," she said. "Strangers who spoke much as you do. They sold me to others. I was sold four times—finally to these. She looked around as though dazed, surprised. "No one has beaten me here or tied me."

"How were you taken?"

"I went to the river with friends to get water. We were all taken and our children with us. My son . . ."

"Where is he?"

"They took him from me. When I was sold for the second time, he was not sold with me." The woman's strange accent did nothing to mask her pain. She looked from Anyanwu to Doro. "What will be done with me now?"

This time Doro answered. "You will go to my country. You belong to me now."

"I am a freeborn woman! My father and my husband are great men!"

"That is past."

"Let me go back to my people!"

"My people will be your people. You will obey me as they obey."

Udenkwo sat still, but somehow seemed to shrink from him. "Will I be tied again? Will I be beaten?"

"Not if you obey."

"Will I be sold?"

"No."

She hesitated, examining him as though deciding whether or not to believe him. Finally, tentatively, she asked: "Will you buy my son?"

"I would," Doro said, "but who knows where he may have been taken—one boy. How old was he?"

"About five years old."

Doro shrugged. "I would not know how to find him."

Anyanwu had been looking at Udenkwo uncertainly. Now, as the woman seemed to sink into depression at the news that her son was forever lost to her, Anyanwu asked: "Udenkwo, who is your father and his father?"

The woman did not answer.

"Your father," Anyanwu repeated, "his people."

Listlessly, Udenkwo gave the name of her clan, then went on to name several of her male ancestors. Anyanwu listened until the names and their order began to sound familiar—until one of them was the name of her eighth son, then her third husband.

Anyanwu stopped the recitation with a gesture. "I have known some of your people," she said. "You are safe here. You will be well treated." She began to move away. "I will see you again." She drew Doro with her and when they were beyond the woman's hearing, she asked: "Could you not look for her son?"

"No," Doro said. "I told her the truth. I would not know where to begin—or even whether the boy is still alive."

"She is one of my descendants."

"As you said, she will be well treated. I can offer no more than that." Doro glanced at her. "The land must be full of your descendants."

Anyanwu looked somber. "You are right. They are so numerous, so well scattered, and so far from me in their generations that they do not know me or each other. Sometimes they marry one another and I hear of it. It is abomination, but I cannot speak of it without focusing the wrong kind of attention on the young ones. They cannot defend themselves as I can."

"You are right to keep silent," Doro said. "Sometimes ways must be different for people as different as ourselves."

"We," she said thoughtfully. "Did you have children of . . . of a body born to your mother?"

He shook his head. "I died too young," he said. "I was thirteen years old."

"That is a sad thing, even for you."

"Yes." They were on deck now, and he stared out at the sea. "I have lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years and fathered thousands of children. I have become a woman and borne children. And still, I long to know what my body could have produced. Another being like myself? A companion?"

"Perhaps not," said Anyanwu. "You might have been like me, having one ordinary child after another."

Doro shrugged and changed the subject. "You must take your daughter's son to meet that girl when he is feeling better. The girl's age is wrong, but she is still a little younger than Okoye. Perhaps they will comfort each other."

"They are kinsmen!"

"They will not know that unless you tell them, and you should be silent once more. They have only each other, Anyanwu. If they wish, they can marry after the customs of their new land."

"And how is that?"

"There is a ceremony. They pledge themselves to each other before a"—he said an English word, then translated—"a priest."

"They have no family but me, and the girl does not know me."

"It does not matter."

"It will be a poor marriage."

"No. I will give them land and seed. Others will teach them to live in their new country. It is a good place. People need not stay poor there if they will work."

"Children of mine will work."

"Then all will be well."

He left her and she wandered around the deck looking at the ship and the sea and the dark line of trees on shore. The shore seemed very far away. She watched it with the beginnings of fear, of longing. Everything she knew was back there deep within those trees through strange forests. She was leaving all her people in a way that seemed far more permanent than simply walking away.

She turned away from the shore, frightened of the sudden emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at the men, some black, some white, as they moved about the deck doing work she did not understand. The yellow-haired white man came to smile at her and stare at her breasts until she wondered whether he had ever seen a woman before. He spoke to her slowly, very distinctly.

"Isaac," he said pointing to his chest. "Isaac." Then he jabbed a finger toward her, but did not touch her. He raised his bushy pale eyebrows questioningly.

"Isaac?" she said stumbling over the word.

"Isaac." He slapped his chest. Then he pointed again. "You?"

"Anyanwu!" she said understanding. "Anyanwu." She smiled.

And he smiled and mispronounced her name and walked her around the deck naming things for her in English. The new language, so different from anything she had ever heard, had fascinated her since Doro began teaching it to her. Now she repeated the words very carefully and strove to remember them. The yellow-haired Isaac seemed delighted. When, finally, someone called him away, he left her reluctantly.

The loneliness returned as soon as he was gone. There were people all around her, but she felt completely alone on this huge vessel at the edge of endless water. Loneliness. Why should she feel it so strongly now? She had been lonely since she realized she would not die like other people. They would always leave her—friends, husbands, children . . . She could not remember the face of her mother or her father.

But now, the solitude seemed to close in on her as the waters of the sea would close over her head if she leaped into them.

She stared down into the constantly moving water, then away at the distant shore. The shore seemed even farther away now, though Doro had said the ship was not yet under way. Anyanwu felt that she had moved farther from her home, that already, perhaps she was too far away ever to return.

She gripped the rail, eyes on the shore. What was she doing, she wondered. How could she leave her homeland, even for Doro? How could she live among these strangers? White skins, yellow hairs—what were they to her? Worse than strangers. Different ones, people who could be all around her working and shouting, and still leave her feeling alone.

She pulled herself up onto the rail.

"Anyanwu!"

She did not quite hesitate. It was as though a mosquito had whined past her ear. A tiny distraction.

"Anyanwu!"

She would leap into the sea. Its waters would take her home, or they would swallow her. Either way, she would find peace. Her loneliness hurt her like some sickness of the body, some pain that her special ability could not find and heal. The sea . . .

Hands grasped her, pulled her backward and down onto the deck. Hands kept her from the sea.

"Anyanwu!"

The yellow hair loomed above her. The white skin. What right had he to lay hands on her?

"Stop, Anyanwu!" he shouted.

She understood the English word "stop," but she ignored it. She brushed him aside and went back to the rail.

"Anyanwu!"

A new voice. New hands.

"Anyanwu, you are not alone here."

Perhaps no other words could have stopped her. Perhaps no other voice could have driven away her need to end the terrible solitude so quickly. Perhaps only her own language could have overwhelmed the call of the distant shore.

"Doro?"

She found herself in his arms, held fast. She realized that she had been on the verge of breaking those arms, if necessary, to get free, and she was appalled.

"Doro, something happened to me."

"I know."

Her fury was spent. She looked around dazedly. The yellow hair—what had happened to him? "Isaac?" she said fearfully. Had she thrown the young man into the sea?

There was a burst of foreign speech behind her, frightened and defensive in tone. Isaac. She turned and saw him alive and dry and was too relieved to wonder at his tone. He and Doro exchanged words in their English, then Doro spoke to her.

"He did not hurt you, Anyanwu?"

"No." She looked at the young man who was holding a red place on his right arm. "I think I have hurt him." She turned away in shame, appealed to Doro. "He helped me. I would not have hurt him, but . . . some spirit possessed me."

"Shall I apologize for you?" Doro seemed amused.

"Yes." She went over to Isaac, said his name softly, touched the injured arm. Not for the first time, she wished she could mute the pain of others as easily as she could mute her own. She heard Doro speak for her, saw the anger leave the young man's face. He smiled at her, showing bad teeth, but good humor. Apparently he forgave her.

"He says you are as strong as a man," Doro told her.

She smiled. "I can be as strong as many men, but he need not know that."

"He can know," Doro said. "He has strengths of his own. He is my son."

"Your . . ."

"The son of an American body." Doro smiled as though he had made a joke. "A mixed body, white and black and Indian. Indians are a brown people."

"But he is white."

"His mother was white. German and yellow-haired. He is more her son than mine—in appearance, at least."

Anyanwu shook her head, looked longingly at the distant coast.

"There is nothing for you to fear," Doro said softly. "You are not alone. Your children's children are here. I am here."

"How can you know what I feel?"

"I would have to be blind not to know, not to see."

"But . . ."

"Do you think you are the first woman I have taken from her people? I have been watching you since we left your village, knowing that this time would come for you. Our kind have a special need to be with either our kinsmen or others who are like us."

"You are not like me!"

He said nothing. He had answered this once, she remembered. Apparently, he did not intend to answer it again.

She looked at him—at the tall young body, well made and handsome. "Will I see, someday, what you are like when you are not hiding in another man's skin?"

For an instant, it seemed that a leopard looked at her through his eyes. A thing looked at her, and that thing feral and cold—a spirit thing that spoke softly.

"Pray to your gods that you never do, Anyanwu. Let me be a man. Be content with me as a man." He put his hand out to touch her and it amazed her that she did not flinch away, that she trembled, but stood where she was.

He drew her to him and to her surprise, she found comfort in his arms. The longing for home, for her people, which had threatened to possess her again receded—as though Doro, whatever he was, was enough.

When Doro had sent Anyanwu to look after her grandson, he turned to find his own son watching her go—watching the sway of her hips. "I just told her how easy she was to read," Doro said.

The boy glanced downward, knowing what was coming.

"You're fairly easy to read yourself," Doro continued.

"I can't help it," Isaac muttered. "You ought to put more clothes on her."

"I will, eventually. For now, just restrain yourself. She's one of the few people aboard who could probably kill you—just as you're one of the few who could kill her. And I'd rather not lose either of you."

"I wouldn't hurt her. I like her."

"Obviously."

"I mean . . ."

"I know, I know. She seems to like you too."

The boy hesitated, stared out at the blue water for a moment, then faced Doro almost defiantly. "Do you mean to keep her for yourself?"

Doro smiled inwardly. "For a while," he said. This was a favorite son, a rare, rare young one whose talent and temperament had matured exactly as Doro had intended. Doro had controlled the breeding of Isaac's ancestors for millennia, occasionally producing near successes that could be used in breeding, and dangerous, destructive failures that had to be destroyed. Then, finally, true success. Isaac. A healthy, sane son no more rebellious than was wise for a son of Doro, but powerful enough to propel a ship safely through a hurricane.