Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

Isaac blushed dark beneath his tan and glared at his father.

“Did you steal it, Isaac?” Anyanwu demanded, alarmed.

“I left money,” he said defensively. “I found someone your size, and I left twice the money these things are worth.”

Anyanwu glanced at Doro uncertainly, then stepped away from him as she saw how he was looking at Isaac.

“If you’re ever caught and pulled down in the middle of a stunt like that,” Doro said, “I’ll let them burn you.”

Isaac licked his lips, put the petticoat into Anyanwu’s arms. “Fair enough,” he said softly. “If they can.”

Doro shook his head, said something harshly in a language other than English. Isaac jumped. He glanced at Anyanwu as though to see whether she had understood. She stared back at him blankly, and he managed a weak smile of what she supposed to be relief at her ignorance. Doro gathered Isaac’s bundles and spoke in English to Anyanwu. “Come on. Let’s get you dressed.”

“It would be easier to become an animal and wear nothing,” she muttered, and was startled when he pushed her toward the hatchway.

In their cabin, Doro seemed to relax and let go of his anger. He carefully unwrapped the other bundles. A second petticoat, a woman’s waistcoat, a cap, underclothing, stockings, shoes, some simple gold jewelry …

“Another woman’s things,” Anyanwu said, lapsing into her own language.

“Your things now,” Doro said. “Isaac was telling the truth. He paid for them.”

“Even though he did not ask first whether the woman wished to sell them.”

“Even so. He took a foolish, unnecessary risk. He could have been shot out of the air or trapped, jailed, and eventually executed for witchcraft.”

“He could have gotten away.”

“Perhaps. But he would probably have had to kill a few people. And for what?” Doro held up the petticoat.

“You care about such things?” she asked. “Even though you kill so easily?”

“I care about my people,” he said. “Every witch-scare one person’s foolishness creates can hurt many. We are all witches in the eyes of ordinary people, and I am the only witch they cannot eventually kill. Also, I care about my son. I would not want Isaac making a marked man of himself—marked in his own eyes as well as the eyes of others. I know him. He is like you. He would kill, then suffer over it, wallowing in shame.”

She smiled, laid one hand on his arm. “It is only his youth making him foolish. He is good. He gives me hope for our children.”

“He is not a child,” Doro said. “He is twenty-five years old. Think of him as a man.”

She shrugged. “To me, he is a boy. And to you, both he and I are children. I have seen you watching us like an all-knowing father.”

Doro smiled, denying nothing. “Take off your cloth,” he said. “Get dressed.”

She stripped, eyeing the new clothing with distaste.

“Accustom your body to these things,” he told her as he began helping her dress. “I have been a woman often enough to know how uncomfortable woman’s clothing can be, but at least this is Dutch, and not as confining as the English.”

“What is Dutch?”

“A people, like the English. They speak a different language.”

“White people?”

“Oh yes. Just a different nationality—a different tribe. If I had to be a woman, though, I think I’d rather pass as Dutch than as English. I would here, anyway.”

She looked at his tall, straight black man’s body. “It is hard to think of you ever being a woman.”

He shrugged. “It would be hard for me to imagine you as a man if I hadn’t seen you that way.”

“But …” She shook her head. “You would make a bad woman, however you looked. I would not want to see you as a woman.”

“You will, though, sooner or later. Let me show you how to fasten that.”

It became almost possible to forget that he was not a woman now. He dressed her carefully in the stifling layers of clothing, stepped back to give her a quick critical glance, then commented that Isaac had a good eye. The clothing fit almost perfectly. Anyanwu suspected that Isaac had used more than his eyes to learn the dimensions of her body. The boy had lifted her, even tossed her into the air many times without his hand coming near her. But who knew what he could measure and remember with his strange ability? She felt her face go hot. Who knew, indeed. She decided not to allow the boy to use his ability on her so freely any longer.

Doro cut off some of her hair and combed the rest with a wooden comb clearly purchased somewhere near her own country. She had seen Doro’s smaller white man’s comb made of bone. She found herself giggling like the young girl she appeared to be at the thought of Doro combing her hair.

“Can you braid it for me?” she asked him. “Surely you should be able to do that, too.”

“Of course I can,” he said. He took her face between his hands, looked at her, tilted her head to see her from a slightly different angle. “But I will not,” he decided. “You look better with it loose and combed this way. I used to live with an island tribe who wore their hair this way.” He hesitated. “What do you do with your hair when you change? Does it change, too?”

“No, I take it into myself. Other creatures have other kinds of hair. I feed on my hair, nails, any other parts of my body that I cannot use. Then later, I re-create them. You have seen me growing hair.”

“I did not know whether you were growing it or it was … somehow the same hair.” He handed her his small mirror. “Here, look at yourself.”

She took it eagerly, lovingly. Since the first time he had shown it to her, she had wanted such a glass of her own. He had promised to buy her one.

Now she saw that he had cut and combed her hair into a softly rounded black cloud around her head. “It would be better braided,” she said. “A woman of the age I seem to be would braid her hair.”

“Another time.” He glanced at two small bits of gold jewelry. “Either Isaac has not looked at your ears, or he thinks it would be no trouble for you to create small holes to attach these earrings. Can you?”

She looked at the earrings, at the pins meant to fasten them to her ears. Already she wore a necklace of gold and small jewels. It was the only thing she had on that she liked. Now she liked the earrings as well. “Touch where the holes should be,” she said.

He clasped each of her earlobes in the proper places—then jerked his hands away in surprise.

“What is the matter?” she asked, surprised herself.

“Nothing. I … I suppose it’s just that I’ve never touched you before while you were changing. The texture of your flesh is … different.”

“Is not the texture of clay different when it is pliable and when it has set?”

“… yes.”

She laughed. “Touch me now. The strangeness is gone.”

He obeyed hesitantly and seemed to find what he felt more familiar this time. “It was not unpleasant before,” he said. “Only unexpected.”

“But not truly unfamiliar,” she said. She looked off to one side, not meeting his eyes, smiling.

“But it is. I’ve never …” He stopped and began to interpret the look on her face. “What are you saying, woman? What have you been doing?”

She laughed again. “Only giving you pleasure. You have told me how well I please you.” She lifted her head. “Once I married a man who had seven wives. When he had married me, though, he did not go as often to the others.”

Slowly, his expression of disbelief dissolved into amusement. He stepped closer to her with the earrings and began to attach them through the small new holes in her earlobes. “Someday,” he murmured, vaguely preoccupied, “we will both change. I will become a woman and find out whether you make an especially talented man.”