Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

The people fled. Several of them ran out of the compound door or scrambled over the wall. Doro ignored them, went to Anyanwu.

“We will leave now,” he said. “We will take a canoe and row ourselves.”

“Why did you kill the child?” she whispered.

“To warn this young fool,” he said hitting the chest of his lean, new body. “The boy was the son of a slave and no great loss to the household. I wanted to leave a man here who had authority and who knew me, but this man would not learn. Come, Anyanwu.”

She followed him dumbly. He could turn from two casual murders and speak to her as though nothing had happened. He was clearly annoyed that he had had to kill the young man, but annoyance seemed to be all he felt.

Beyond the walls of the compound, armed men waited. Anyanwu slowed, allowed Doro to move well ahead of her as he approached them. She was certain there would be more killing. But Doro spoke to the men—said only a few words to them—and they drew back out of his path. Then Doro made a short speech to everyone, and the people drew even farther away from him. Finally, he led Anyanwu down the river, where they stole a canoe and paddles.

“You must row,” she told him as they put the craft into the water. “I will try to help you when we are beyond sight of this place.”

“Have you never rowed a canoe?”

“Not for perhaps three times as long as this new body of yours has been alive.”

He nodded and paddled the craft alone.

“You should not have killed the child,” she said sadly. “It was wrong no matter why you did it.”

“Your own people kill children.”

“Only the ones who must be killed—the abominations. And even with them … sometimes when the thing wrong with the child was small, I was able to stop the killing. I spoke with the voice of the god, and as long as I did not violate tradition too much, the people listened.”

“Killing children is wasteful,” he agreed. “Who knows what useful adults they might have grown into? But still, sometimes a child must be sacrificed.”

She thought of her sons and their children, and knew positively that she had been right to get Doro away from them. Doro would not have hesitated to kill some of them to intimidate others. Her descendants were ordinarily well able to take care of themselves. But they could not have stopped Doro from killing them, from walking about obscenely clothed in their flesh. What could stop such a being—a spirit. He was a spirit, no matter what he said. He had no flesh of his own.

Not for the first time in her three hundred years, Anyanwu wished she had gods to pray to, gods who would help her. But she had only herself and the magic she could perform with her own body. What good was that against a being who could steal her body away from her? And what would he feel if he decided to “sacrifice” her? Annoyance? Regret? She looked at him and was surprised to see that he was smiling.

He took a deep breath and let it out with apparent pleasure. “You need not row for a while,” he told her. “Rest. This body is strong and healthy. It is so good not to be coughing.”

CHAPTER 3

Doro was always in a good mood after changing bodies—especially when he changed more than once in quick succession or when he changed to one of the special bodies that he bred for his use. This time, his pleasurable feelings were still with him when he reached the coast. He noticed that Anyanwu had been very quiet, but she had her quiet times. And she had just seen a thing that was new to her. Doro knew people took time to get used to his changes. Only his children seemed to accept them naturally. He was willing to give Anyanwu all the time she needed.

There were slavers on the coast. An English factor lived there, an employee of the Royal African Company, and incidentally, Doro’s man. Bernard Daly was his name. He had three black wives, several half-breed children, and apparently, strong resistance to the numerous local diseases. He also had only one hand. Years before, Doro had cut off the other.

Daly was supervising the branding of new slaves when Doro and Anyanwu pulled their canoe onto the beach. There was a smell of cooking flesh in the air and the sound of a slave boy screaming.

“Doro, this is an evil place,” Anyanwu whispered. She kept very close to him.

“No one will harm you,” he said. He looked down at her. She always spent her days’ as a small, muscular man, but somehow, he could never think of her as masculine. He had asked her once why she insisted on going about as a man. “I have not seen you going about in women’s bodies,” she retorted. “People will think before they attack a man—even a small man. And they will not become as angry if a man gives them a beating.”

He had laughed, but he knew she was right. She was somewhat safer as a man, although here, among African and European slavers, no one was truly safe. He himself might be forced out of his new body before he could reach Daly. But Anyanwu would not be touched. He would see to it.

“Why do we stop here?” she asked.

“I have a man here who might know what happened to my people—the people I came to get. This is the nearest seaport to them.”

“Seaport …” She repeated the word as he had said it—in English. He did not know the word in her language for sea. He had described to her the wide, seemingly endless water that they had to cross, but in spite of his description, she stared at it in silent awe. The sound of the surf seemed to frighten her as it mixed with the screaming of slaves being branded. For the first time, she looked as though the many strange new things around her would overwhelm her. She looked as though she would turn and run back into the forest as slaves often tried to do. Completely out of character, she looked terrified.

He stopped, faced her, took her firmly by the shoulders. “Nothing will harm you, Anyanwu.” He spoke with utter conviction. “Not these slavers, not the sea, not anything at all. I have not brought you all this way only to lose you. You know my power.” He felt her shudder. “That power will not harm you either. I have accepted you as my wife. You have only to obey me.”

She stared at him as he spoke, as though those eyes of hers could read his expression and discern truth. Ordinary people could not do that with him, but she was far from ordinary. She had had time enough in her long life to learn to read people well—as Doro himself had learned. Some of his people believed he could read their unspoken thoughts, so transparent were their lies to him. Half-truths, though, could be another matter.

Anyanwu seemed to relax, reassured. Then something off to one side caught her eye and she stiffened. “Is that one of your white men?” she whispered. He had told her about Europeans, explaining that in spite of their pale skins, they were neither albinos nor lepers. She had heard of such people but had not seen any until now.

Doro glanced at the approaching European, then spoke to Anyanwu. “Yes,” he said, “but he is only a man. He can die as easily as a black man. Move away from me.”

She obeyed quickly.

Doro did not intend to kill the white man if he could avoid it. He had killed enough of Daly’s people back at their first meeting to put the Englishman out of business. Daly had proved tractable, however, and Doro had helped him to survive.

“Welcome,” the white man said in English. “Have you more slaves to sell us?” Clearly, Doro’s new body was no stranger here. Doro glanced at Anyanwu, saw how she was staring at the slaver. The man was bearded and dirty and thin as though wasted by disease—which was likely. This land swallowed white men. The slaver was a poor example of his kind, but Anyanwu did not know that. She was having a good look. Her curiosity now seemed stronger than her fear.