Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

When she woke him, the house was full of the odor of food and he got up alert and ravenous. He sat with her, washed his hands absently in the bowl of water she gave him, then used his fingers to scoop up a bit of pounded yam from his platter and dip it into the common pot of peppery soup. The food was good and filling, and for some time he concentrated on it, ignoring Anyanwu except to notice that she was also eating and did not seem inclined to talk. He recalled distantly that there had been some small religious ceremony between the washing of hands and the eating when he had last been with her people. An offering of food and palm wine to the gods. He asked about it once he had taken the edge off his hunger.

She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?”

“None.”

“And why not?”

“I help myself,” he said.

She nodded. “In at least two ways, you do. I help myself too.”

He smiled a little, but could not help wondering how hard it might be to tame even partially a wild seed woman who had been helping herself for three hundred years. It would not be hard to make her follow him. She had sons and she cared for them, thus she was vulnerable. But she might very well make him regret taking her—especially since she was too valuable to kill if he could possibly spare her.

“For my people,” she said, “I respect the gods. I speak as the voice of a god. For myself … In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”

“You are very much out of place here.”

She sighed. “Everything comes back to that. I am content here, Doro. I have already had ten husbands to tell me what to do. Why should I make you the eleventh? Because you will kill me if I refuse? Is that how men get wives in your homeland—by threatening murder? Well, perhaps you cannot kill me. Perhaps we should find out!”

He ignored her outburst, noticed instead that she had automatically assumed that he wanted her as his wife. That was a natural assumption for her to make, perhaps a correct assumption. He had been asking himself which of his people she should be mated with first, but now he knew he would take her himself—for a while, at least. He often kept the most powerful of his people with him for a few months, perhaps a year. If they were children, they learned to accept him as father. If they were men, they learned to obey him as master. If they were women, they accepted him best as lover or husband. Anyanwu was one of the handsomest women he had ever seen. He had intended to take her to bed this night, and many more nights until he got her to the seed village he was assembling in the British—ruled Colony of New York. But why should that be enough? The woman was a rare find. He spoke softly.

“Shall I try to kill you then, Anyanwu? Why? Would you kill me if you could?”

“Perhaps I can!”

“Here I am.” He looked at her with eyes that ignored the male form she still wore. Eyes that spoke to the woman inside—or he hoped they did. It would be much more pleasant to have her come to him because she wanted to rather than because she was afraid.

She said nothing—as though his mildness confused her. He had intended it to.

“We would be right together, Anyanwu. Have you never wanted a husband who was worthy of you?”

“You think very much of yourself.”

“And of you—or why would I be here?”

“I have had husbands who were great men,” she said. “Titled men of proven courage even though they had no special ability such as yours. I have sons who are priests, wealthy sons, men of standing. Why should I want a husband who must prey on other men like a wild beast?”

He touched his chest. “This man came to prey on me. He attacked me with a machete.”

That stopped her for a moment. She shuddered. “I have been cut that way—cut almost in half.”

“What did you do?”

“I … I healed myself. I would not have thought I could heal so quickly.”

“I mean what did you do to the man who cut you?”

“Men. Seven of them came to kill me.”

“What did you do, Anyanwu?”

She seemed to shrink into herself at the memory. “I killed them,” she whispered. “To warn others and because … because I was angry.”

Doro sat watching her, seeing remembered pain in her eyes. He could not recall the last time he had felt pain at killing a man. Anger, perhaps, when a man of power and potential became arrogant and had to be destroyed—anger at the waste. But not pain.

“You see?” he said softly. “How did you kill them?”

“With my hands.” She spread them before her, ordinary hands now, not even remarkably ugly as they had been when she was an old woman. “I was angry,” she repeated. “I have been careful not to get too angry since then.”

“But what did you do?”

“Why do you want to know all the shameful details!” she demanded. “I killed them. They are dead. They were my people and I killed them!”

“How can it be shameful to kill those who would have killed you?”

She said nothing.

“Surely those seven are not the only ones you’ve killed.”

She sighed, stared into the fire. “I frighten them when I can, kill only when they make me. Most often, they are already afraid and easy to drive away. I am making the ones here rich so that none of them have wanted me dead for years.”

“Tell me how you killed the seven.”

She got up and went outside. It was dark out now—deep, moonless darkness, but Doro did not doubt that Anyanwu could see with those eyes of hers. Where had she gone, though, and why?

She came back, sat down again, and handed him a rock. “Break it,” she said tonelessly.

It was a rock, not hardened mud, and though he might have broken it with another rock or a metal tool, he could make no impression on it with his hands. He returned it to her whole.

And she crushed it in one hand.

He had to have the woman. She was wild seed of the best kind. She would strengthen any line he bred her into, strengthen it immeasurably.

“Come with me, Anyanwu. You belong with me, with the people I’m gathering. We are people you can be part of—people you need not frighten or bribe into letting you live.”

“I was born among these people,” she said. “I belong with them.” And she insisted, “You and I are not alike.”

“We are more like each other than like other people. We need not hide from each other.” He looked at her muscular young man’s body. “Become a woman again, Anyanwu, and I will show you that we should be together.”

She managed a wan smile. “I have borne forty-seven children to ten husbands,” she said. “What do you think you can show me?”

“If you come with me, I think someday, I can show you children you will never have to bury.” He paused, saw that he now had her full attention. “A mother should not have to watch her children grow old and die,” he continued. “If you live, they should live. It is the fault of their fathers that they die. Let me give you children who will live!”

She put her hands to her face, and for a moment he thought she was crying. But her eyes were dry when she looked at him. “Children from your stolen loins?” she whispered.

“Not these loins.” He gestured toward his body. “This man was only a man. But I promise you, if you come with me, I will give you children of your own kind.”

There was a long silence. She sat staring into the fire again, perhaps making up her mind. Finally, she looked at him, studied him with such intensity he began to feel uncomfortable. His discomfort amazed him. He was more accustomed to making other people uncomfortable. And he did not like her appraising stare—as though she were deciding whether or not to buy him. If he could win her alive, he would teach her manners someday!