Chapter Six

ANYANWU HAD TOO MUCH power.

In spite of Doro’s fascination with her, his first inclination was to kill her. He was not in the habit of keeping alive people he could not control absolutely. But if he killed her and took over her body, he would get only one or two children from her before he had to take a new body. Her longevity would not help him keep her body alive. He did not acquire the use of his victims’ special abilities with his transmigrations. He inhabited bodies. He consumed lives. That was all. Had he killed Lale, he would not have acquired the man’s thought-transfer ability. He would only have been able to pass on that ability to children of Lale’s body. And if he killed Anyanwu, he would not acquire her malleability, longevity, or healing. He would have only his own special ability lodged within her small, durable body until he began to hunger—hunger in a way Anyanwu and Isaac could never understand. He would hunger, and he would have to feed. Another life. A new body. Anyanwu would last him no longer than any other good kill.

Therefore, Anyanwu must live and bear her valuable young. But she had too much power. In her dolphin form, and before that, in her leopard form, Doro had discovered that his mind could not find her. Even when he could see her, his mind, his tracking sense, told him she was not there. It was as though she had died, as though he confronted a true animal—a creature beyond his reach. And if he could not reach her, he could not kill her and take her body while she was in animal form. In her human shape, she was as vulnerable to him as anyone else, but as an animal, she was beyond him as animals had always been beyond him. He longed now for one of the animal sensitives his controlled breeding occasionally produced. These were people whose abilities extended to touching animal minds, receiving sensation and emotion from them, people who suffered every time someone wrung a chicken’s neck or gelded a horse or slaughtered a pig. They led short, unenviable lives. Sometimes Doro killed them before they could waste their valuable bodies in suicide. But now, he could have used a living one. Without one, his control of Anyanwu was dangerously limited.

And if Anyanwu ever discovered that limitation, she might run away from him whenever she chose. She might go the moment he demanded more of her than she was willing to give. Or she might go if she discovered that he meant to have both her and the children she had left behind in Africa. She believed her cooperation had bought their freedom—believed he would give up such potentially valuable people. If she found out the truth, she would surely run, and he would lose her. He had never before lost anyone in that way. He lost people to disease, accident, war, causes beyond his control. People were stolen from him or killed as had been his people of the savanna. This was bad enough. It was waste, and he intended to end much of it by bringing his people to less widely scattered communities in the Americas. But no individual had ever succeeded in escaping him. Individuals who ran from him were caught and most often killed. His own people knew better than to run from him.

But Anyanwu, wild seed that she was, did not know. Yet.

He would have to teach her, instruct her quickly and begin using her at once. He wanted as many children as he could get from her before it became necessary to kill her. Wild seed always had to be destroyed eventually. It could never conform as children born among his people conformed. But like no other wild seed, Anyanwu would learn to fear him and bend herself to his will. He would use her for breeding and healing. He would use her children, present and future, to create more acceptable long-lived types. The troublesome shape-changing ability could probably be bred out of her line if it appeared. The fact that it had not appeared so far told him he might be able to extinguish it entirely. But then, none of her special abilities had appeared among her children. They had inherited nothing more than potential—good blood that might produce special abilities after a few generations of inbreeding. Perhaps he would fail with them. Perhaps he would discover that Anyanwu could not be duplicated, or that there could be no longevity without shape-changing. Perhaps. But any finding positive or negative, was generations away.

Meanwhile, Anyanwu must never learn of his limitation, must never know it was possible for her to escape him, avoid him, live free of him even as an animal. This meant he must not restrict her transformations any more strenuously than he restricted his children in the use of their abilities. She would not be permitted to show what she could do among ordinary people or harm his people except in self-defense. That was all. She would fear him, obey him, consider him almost omnipotent, but she would notice nothing in his attitude that might start her wondering. There would be nothing for her to notice.

Thus, as the journey neared its end, he allowed Anyanwu and Isaac to indulge in wild, impossible play, using their abilities freely, behaving like the witch-children they were. They went into the water together several times when there was enough wind and Isaac was not needed to propel the ship. The boy was not fighting a storm now. He was able to handle the ship without overextending himself, able to expend energy cavorting in the water with a dolphin-shaped Anyanwu. Then Anyanwu took to the air as a great bird, and Isaac followed, doing acrobatics that Doro would never have permitted over land. Here, there was no one to shoot the boy out of the sky, no mob to chase him down and try to burn him as a witch. He had to restrain himself so much on land that Doro placed no restraints on him now.

Doro worried about Anyanwu when she ventured under water alone—worried that he would lose her to sharks or other predators. But when she was finally attacked by a shark, it was near the surface. She suffered only a single wound which she sealed at once. Then she managed to ram her beak hard into the shark’s gills. She must also have managed to take an undolphin like bite out of the shark, since she immediately shifted to the sleek, deadly shark form. As it happened, the change was unnecessary. The shark was crippled, perhaps dying. But the change had been made, and made too quickly. Anyanwu had to feed. With strength and speed she tore the true shark to pieces and gorged herself on it. When she became a woman again, Doro could find no sign of the wound she had suffered. He found her drowsy and content, not at all the shaking, tormented creature who had killed Lale. This time, her drive to feed had been quickly satisfied. Apparently, that was important.

She adopted the dolphins, refusing to let Isaac bring any more aboard to be killed. “They are like people,” she insisted in her fast-improving English. “They are not fish!” She swore she would have nothing more to do with Isaac if he killed another of them.

And Isaac, who loved dolphin flesh, brought no more dolphins aboard. Doro listened to the boy’s muttered complaints, smiled, and said nothing. Isaac listened to the crewmen’s complaints, shrugged, and gave them other fish. He continued to spend his spare time with Anyanwu, teaching her English, flying or swimming with her, merely being with her whenever he could. Doro neither encouraged nor discouraged this, though he did approve. He had been thinking a great deal about Isaac and Anyanwu—how well they got along in spite of their communication problems, in spite of their potentially, dangerous abilities, in spite of their racial differences. Isaac would marry Anyanwu if Doro ordered it. The boy might even like the idea. And once Anyanwu accepted the marriage, Doro’s hold on her would be secure. The children would come—desirable, potentially multi-talented children—and Doro could travel as he pleased to look after his other peoples. When he returned to his New York village of Wheatley, Anyanwu would still be there. Her children would hold her if her husband did not. She could become an animal or alter herself enough to travel freely among whites or Indians, but several children would surely slow her down. And she would not abandon them. She was too much a mother for that. She would stay—and if Doro found another man he wished to breed her with he could come to her wearing that man’s body. It would be a simple matter.

What would not be simple would be giving Anyanwu her first hard lesson in obedience. She would not want to go to Isaac. Among her people, a woman could divorce her husband by running away from him and seeing that the bride-wealth he had given for her was returned. Or her husband could divorce her by driving her away. If her husband was impotent, he could, with her consent, give her to another man so that she could bear children in her husband’s name. If her husband died, she could marry his successor, usually his oldest son as long as this was not also her own son. But there was no provision for what Doro planned to do—give her to his son while he, Doro, was still alive. She considered Doro her husband now. No ceremony had taken place, but none was necessary. She was not a young girl passing from the hands of her father to those of her first husband. It was enough that she and Doro had chosen each other. She would think it wrong to go to Isaac. But her thinking would change as had the thinking of other powerful, self-willed people whom Doro had recruited. She would learn that right and wrong were what he said they were.

At the place Doro had called “New York Harbor,” everyone except the crew was to change ships, move to a pair of smaller “river sloops” to travel up the “Hudson River” to Doro’s village of “Wheatley.” With less experience at absorbing change and learning new dialects if not new languages, Anyanwu thought she would have been utterly confused. She would have been frightened into huddling together with the slaves and looking around with suspicion and dread. Instead, she stood on deck with Doro, waiting calmly for the transfer to the new ships. Isaac and several others had gone ashore to make arrangements.

“When will we change?” she had asked Doro in English. She often tried to speak English now.

“That depends on how soon Isaac can hire the sloops,” he said. Which meant he did not know. That was good. Anyanwu hoped the wait would be long. Even she needed time to absorb the many differences of this new world. From where she stood she could see a few other large, square-rigged ships lying at anchor in the harbor. And there were smaller boats either moving under billowing, usually triangular sails or tied up at the long piers Doro had pointed out to her. But ships and boats seemed familiar to her now. She was eager to see how these new people lived on land. She had asked to go ashore with Isaac, but Doro had refused. He had chosen to keep her with him. She stared ashore longingly at the rows and rows of buildings, most two, three, even four stories high, and side against side as though like ants in a hill, the people could not bear to be far apart. In much of her own country, one could stand in the middle of a town and see little more than forest. The villages of the towns were well-organized, often long-established, but they were more a part of the land they occupied, less of an intrusion upon it.

“Where does one compound end and another begin?” she asked, staring at the straight rows of pointed roofs.

“Some of those buildings are used for storage and other things,” Doro said. “Of the others, consider each one a separate compound. Each one houses a family.”

She looked around, startled. “Where are the farms to feed so many?”

“Beyond the city. We will see farms on our way upriver. Also, many of the houses have their own gardens. And look there.” He pointed to a place where the great concentration of buildings tapered off and ended. “That is farmland.”

“It seems empty.”

“It is sown with barley now, I think. And perhaps a few oats.”

These English names were familiar to her because he and Isaac had told her about them. Barley for making the beer that the crew drank so much of, oats for feeding the horses the people of this country rode, wheat for bread, maize for bread and for eating in other ways, tobacco for smoking, fruits and vegetables, nuts and herbs. Some of these things were only foreign versions of foods already known to her, but many were as new to her as the anthill city.

“Doro, let me go to see these things,” she pleaded. “Let me walk on land again. I have almost forgotten how it feels to stand on a surface that does not move.”

Doro rested one arm comfortably around her. He liked to touch her before others more than any man she had ever known, but it did not seem that any of his people were amused or contemptuous of his behavior. Even the slaves seemed to accept whatever he did as the proper thing for him to do. And Anyanwu enjoyed his touches even now when she thought they were more imprisoning than caressing. “I will take you to see the city another time,” he said. “When you know more of the ways of its people, when you can dress as they do and behave as one of them. And when I get myself a white body. I am not interested in trying to prove to one suspicious white man after another that I own myself.”

“Are all black men slaves, then?”

“Most are. It is the responsibility of blacks to prove that they are free—if they are. A black without proof is taken to be a slave.”

She frowned. “How is Isaac seen?”

“As a white man. He knows what he is but he was raised white. This is not an easy place to be black. Soon it will not be an easy place to be Indian.”

She was silent for a moment, then asked fearfully, “Must I become white?”

“Do you want to?” He looked down at her.

“No! I thought with you I could be myself.”

He seemed pleased. “With me, and with my people, you can. Wheatley is a long way upriver from here. Only my people live there, and they do not enslave each other.”

“All belonging, as they do, to you,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Are blacks there as well as whites?”

“Yes.”

“I will live there then. I could not live in a place where being myself would mean being thought a slave.”

“Nonsense,” Doro said. “You are a powerful woman. You could live in any place I chose.”

She looked at him quickly to see whether he was laughing at her—speaking of her power and at the same time reminding her of his own power to control her. But he was watching the approach of a small, fast-moving boat. As the boat came alongside, its one passenger and his several bundles rose straight up and drifted onto the ship. Isaac, of course. Anyanwu realized suddenly that the boy had used neither oars nor sails to propel the boat.

“You’re among strangers!” Doro told him sharply, and the boy dropped, startled, to the deck.

“No one saw me,” he said. “But look, speaking of being among strangers …” He unrolled one of the bundles that had drifted aboard with him, and Anyanwu saw that it was a long, full, bright blue petticoat of the kind given to slave women when they grew cold as the ship traveled north. Anyanwu could protect herself from the cold without such coverings though she had cut a petticoat apart to make new cloths from it. She disliked the idea of covering her body so completely, smothering herself, she called it. She thought the slave women looked foolish so covered.

“You’ve come to civilization,” Isaac was telling her.

“You’ve got to learn to wear clothes now, do as the people here do.”

“What is civilization?” she asked.

Isaac glanced at Doro uncomfortably, and Doro smiled. “Never mind,” Isaac said after a moment. “Just get dressed. Let’s see how you look with clothes on.”

Anyanwu touched the petticoat. The material felt smooth and cool beneath her fingers—not like the drab, coarse cloth of the slave women’s petticoats. And the color pleased her—a brilliant blue that went well with her dark skin.

“Silk,” Isaac said. “The best.”

“Who did you steal it from?” Doro asked.

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.”

“No!” She jerked away from him, then cried out in pain and surprise when her sudden movement caused him to hurt her ear. She doused the pain quickly and repaired the slight injury. “We will not do such a thing!”

He gave her a smile of gentle condescension, picked up the earring from where it had fallen, and put it on her ear.

“Doro, we will not do it!”

“All right,” he said agreeably. “It was only a suggestion. You might enjoy it.”

“No!”

He shrugged.

“It would be a vile thing.” she whispered. “Surely an abomination.”

“All right,” he repeated.

She looked to see whether he was still smiling, and he was. For an instant, she wondered herself what such a switch might be like. She knew she could become an adequate man, but could this strange being ever be truly womanly? What if … ? No!

“I will show Isaac the clothing,” she said coldly.

He nodded. “Go.” And the smile never left his face.

There was, in Isaac’s eyes when Anyanwu stepped before him in the strange clothing, a look that warned her of another kind of abomination. The boy was open and easy to accept as a young stepson. Anyanwu was aware, however, that he would have preferred another relationship. In a less confined environment, she would have avoided him. On the ship, she had done the easy thing, the pleasurable thing, and accepted his company. Doro often had no time for her, and the slaves, who knew her power now, were afraid of her. All of them, even Okoye and Udenkwo, treated her with great formality and respect, and they avoided her as best they could. Doro’s other sons were forbidden to her and it would not have been proper for her to spend time with other members of the crew. She had few wifely duties aboard. She did not cook or clean. She had no baby to tend. There were no markets to go to—she missed the crowding and the companionship of the markets very much. During several of her marriages, she had been a great trader. The produce of her garden and the pottery and tools she created were always very fine. Her goats and fowls were always fat.

Now there was nothing. Not even sickness to heal or gods to call upon. Both the slaves and the crew seemed remarkably healthy. She had seen no diseases but what Doro called seasickness among the slaves, and that was nothing. In her boredom, Anyanwu accepted Isaac’s companionship. But now she could see that it was time to stop. It was wrong to torment the boy. She was pleased, though, to realize that he saw beauty in her even now, smothered as she was in so much cloth. She had feared that to eyes other than Doro’s she would look ridiculous.

“Thank you for these things,” she said softly in English.

“They make you even more beautiful,” he told her.

“I am like a prisoner. All bound.”

“You’ll get used to it. Now you can be a real lady.”

Anyanwu turned that over in her mind. “Real lady?” she said, frowning. “What was I before?”

Isaac’s face went red. “I mean you look like a New York lady.”

His embarrassment told her that he had said something wrong, something insulting. She had thought she was misunderstanding his English. Now she realized she had understood all too well.

“Tell me what I was before, Isaac,” she insisted. “And tell me the word you used before: Civilization. What is civilization?”

He sighed, met her eyes after a moment of gazing past her at the main mast. “Before, you were Anyanwu,” he said, “mother of I-don’t-know-how-many children, priestess to your people, respected and valued woman of your town. But to the people here, you would be a savage, almost an animal if they saw you wearing only your cloth. Civilization is the way one’s own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.” He smiled tentatively. “You’re already a chameleon, Anyanwu. You understand what I’m saying.”

“Yes.” She did not return his smile. “But in a land where most of the people are white, and of the few blacks, most are slaves, can only a few pieces of cloth make me a ‘real lady.’”

“In Wheatley I can!” he said quickly. “I’m white and black and Indian, and I live there without trouble.”

“But you look like a ‘real man.’”

He winced. “I’m not like you,” he said. “I can’t help the way I look.”

“No,” she admitted.

“And it doesn’t matter anyway. Wheatley is Doro’s ‘American’ village. He dumps all the people he can’t find places for in his pure families on us. Mix and stir. No one can afford to worry about what anyone else looks like. They don’t know who Doro might mate them with—or what their own children might look like.”

Anyanwu allowed herself to be diverted. “Do people even marry as he says?” she asked. “Does no one resist him?”

Isaac gave her a long, solemn look. “Wild seed resists sometimes,” he said softly. “But he always wins. Always.”

She said nothing. She did not need to be reminded of how dangerous and how demanding Doro could be. Reminders awakened her fear of him, her fear of a future with him. Reminders made her want to forget the welfare of her children whose freedom she had bought with her servitude. Forget and run!

“People run away sometimes,” Isaac said, as though reading her thoughts. “But he always catches them and usually wears their bodies back to their hometowns so that their people can see and be warned. The only sure way to escape him and cheat him out of the satisfaction of wearing your body, I guess, is my mother’s way.” He paused. “She hanged herself.”

Anyanwu stared at him. He had said the words with no particular feeling—as though he cared no more for his mother than he had for his brother Lale. And he had told her he could not remember a time when he and Lale had not hated each other.

“Your mother died because of Doro?” she asked, watching him carefully.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I was only four. But I don’t think so. She was like Lale—able to send and receive thoughts. But she was better at it than he was, especially better at receiving. From Wheatley, sometimes she could hear people in New York City over a hundred and fifty miles away.” He glanced at Anyanwu. “A long way. A damned long way for that kind of thing. She could hear anything. But sometimes she couldn’t shut things out. I remember I was afraid of her. She used to crouch in a corner and hold her head or scratch her face bloody and scream and scream and scream.” He shuddered. “That’s all I remember of her. That’s the only image that comes when I think of her.”

Anyanwu laid a hand on his arm in sympathy for both mother and son. How could he have come from such a family and remained sane himself, she wondered. What was Doro doing to his people, to his own children, in his attempt to make them more as the children of his own lost body might have been. For each one like Isaac, how many were there like Lale and his mother?

“Isaac, has there been nothing good in your life?” she asked softly.

He blinked. “There’s been a lot. Doro, the foster parents he found me when I was little, the travel, this.” He rose several inches above the deck. “It’s been good. I used to worry that I’d be crazy like my mother or mad-dog vicious like Lale, but Doro always said I wouldn’t.”

“How could he know?”

“He used a different body to father me. He wanted a different ability in me, and sometimes he knows exactly which families to breed together to get what he wants. I’m glad he knew for me.”

She nodded. “I would not want to know you if you were like Lale.”

He looked down at her in that intense disturbing way he had developed over the voyage, and she took her hand away from his arm. No son should look at his father’s wife that way. How stupid of Doro not to find a good girl for him. He should marry and begin fathering yellow-haired sons. He should be working his own farm. What good was sailing back and forth across the sea, taking slaves, and becoming wealthy when he had no children?

In spite of slight faltering winds, the trip upriver to Wheatley took only five days. The Dutch sloop captains and their Dutch-speaking, black-slave crews peered at the sagging sails, then at each other, clearly frightened. Doro complimented them in pretended ignorance on the fine time they were making. Then in English, he warned Isaac, “Don’t frighten them too badly, boy. Home isn’t that far away.”

Isaac grinned at him and continued to propel the sloops along at exactly the same speed.

Cliffs, hills, mountains, farmland and forests, creeks and landings, other sloops and smaller craft, fishermen, Indians … Doro and Isaac, having little to do as passengers on other men’s vessels, entertained Anyanwu by identifying and pronouncing in English whatever caught her interest. She had an excellent memory, and by the time they reached Wheatley, she was even exchanging a few words with the Afro-Dutch crew. She was beautiful and they taught her eagerly until Doro or Isaac or their duties took her from them.

Finally, they reached “Gilpin” as the captains and crews called the village of Wheatley. Gilpin was the name given to the settlement sixty years before by its first European settlers, a small group of families led by Pieter Willem Gilpin. But the English settlers whom Doro had begun bringing in well before the 1664 British takeover had renamed the village Wheatley, wheat being its main crop, and Wheatley being the name of the English family whose leadership Doro had supported. The Wheatleys had been Doro’s people for generations. They had vague, not-too-troublesome, mind-reading abilities that complemented their good business sense. With a little help from Doro, old Jonathan Wheatley now owned slightly less land than the Van Rensselaers. Doro’s people had room to spread and grow. Without the grassland village, they would not grow as quickly as Doro had hoped, but there would be others, odd ones, witches. Dutch, German, English, various African and Indian peoples. All were either good breeding stock or, like the Wheatleys, served other useful purposes. In all its diversity, Wheatley pleased Doro more than any of his other New World settlements. In America, Wheatley was his home.

Now, welcomed with quiet pleasure by his people, he dispersed the new slaves to several separate households. Some were fortunate enough to go to houses where their native languages were spoken. Others had no fellow tribesmen in or around the village and they had to be content with a more alien household. Relatives were kept together. Doro explained to each individual or group exactly what was happening. All knew they would be able to see each other again. Friendships begun during the voyage did not have to end now. They were apprehensive, uncertain, reluctant to leave what had become a surprisingly tight-knit group, but they obeyed Doro. Lale had chosen them well—had hand-picked every one of them, searching out small strangenesses, buddings, beginnings of talents like his own. He had gone through every group of new slaves brought out of the forest to Bernard Daly while Doro was away—gone through picking and choosing and doubtless terrifying people more than was necessary. No doubt he had missed several who could have been useful. Lale’s ability had been limited and his erratic temperament had often gotten in his way. But he had not included anyone who did not deserve to be included. Only Doro himself could have done a better job. And now, until some of his other potentially strong young thought readers matured, Doro would have to do the job himself. He did not seek people out as Lale did, deliberately, painstakingly. He found them almost as effortlessly as he had found Anyanwu—though not from as great a distance. He became aware of them as easily as a wolf became aware of a rabbit when the wind was right—and in the beginning he had gone after them for exactly the same reason wolves went after rabbits. In the beginning, he had bred them for exactly the same reason people bred rabbits. These strange ones, his witches, were good kills. They offered him the most satisfying durable food and shelter. He still preyed on them. Soon he would take one from Wheatley. The people of Wheatley expected it, accepted it, treated it as a kind of religious sacrifice. All his towns and villages fed him willingly now. And the breeding projects he carried on among them entertained him as nothing else could. He had brought them so far—from tiny, blind, latent talents to Lale, to Isaac, and even, in a roundabout way, to Anyanwu. He was building a people for himself, and he was feeding well. If he was sometimes lonely as his people lived out their brief lives, he was at least not bored. Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.

There was a large, low yellow-brick farmhouse at the ledge of town for Doro—an ex-Dutch farmhouse that was more comfortable than handsome. Jonathan Wheatley’s manor house was much finer, as was his mansion in New York City, but Doro was content with his farmhouse. In a good year, he might visit it twice.

An English couple lived in Doro’s house, caring for it and serving Doro when he was at home. They were a farmer, Robert Cutler, and his wife, youngest of the nine Wheatley daughters, Sarah. These were sturdy, resilient people who had raised Isaac through his worst years. The boy had been difficult and dangerous during his adolescent years as his abilities matured. Doro had been surprised that the couple survived. Lale’s foster parents had not—but then, Lale had been actively malevolent. Isaac had done harm only by accident. Also, neither of Lale’s foster parents had been Wheatleys. Sarah’s work with Isaac had proved again the worth of her kind—people with too little ability to be good breeding stock or food. It occurred to Doro that if his breeding projects were successful, there might come a time—in the far future—when he had to make certain such people continued to exist. Able people, but not so powerful that their ability might turn on them and cripple or kill them.

For now, though, it was his witches who had to be protected—even protected from him. Anyanwu, for instance. He would tell her tonight that she was to marry Isaac. In telling her, he would have to treat her not as ordinary recalcitrant wild seed, but as one of his daughters—difficult, but worth taking time with. Worth molding and coercing with more gentleness and patience than he would bother to use on less valuable people. He would talk to her after one of Sarah’s good meals when they were alone in his room, warm and comfortable before a fire. He would do all he could to make her obey and live.

He thought about her, worried about her stubbornness as he walked toward home where she waited. He had just placed Okoye and Udenkwo in a home with a middle-aged pair of their countrymen—people from whom the young couple could learn a great deal. He walked slowly, answering the greetings of people who recognized his current body and worrying about the pride of one small forest peasant. People sat outside, men and women, Dutch fashion, gossiping on the stoops. The women’s hands were busy with sewing or knitting while the men smoked pipes. Isaac got up from a bench where he had been sitting with an older woman and fell into step with Doro.

“Anneke is near her transition,” the boy said worriedly. “Mrs. Waemans says she’s been having a lot of trouble.”

“That’s to be expected,” Doro answered. Anneke Strycker was one of his daughters—a potentially good daughter. With luck, she would replace Lale when her transition was complete and her abilities mature. She lived now with her foster mother, Margaret Waemans, a big, physically powerful, mentally stable widow of fifty. No doubt, the woman needed all her resources to handle the young girl now.

Isaac cleared his throat. “Mrs. Waemans is afraid she’ll … do something to herself. She’s been talking about dying.”

Doro nodded. Power came the way a child came—with agony. People in transition were open to every thought, every emotion, every pleasure, every pain from the minds of others. Their heads were filled with a continuous screaming jumble of mental “noise.” There was no peace, little sleep, many nightmares—everyone’s nightmares. Some of Doro’s best people—too many of them—stopped at this stage. They could pass their potential on to their children if they lived long enough to have any, but they could not benefit from it themselves. They could never control it. They became hosts for Doro, or they became breeders. Doro brought them mates from distant unrelated settlements because that kind of cross-breeding most often produced children like Lale. Only great care and fantastic good luck produced a child like Isaac. Doro glanced at the boy fondly. “I’ll see Anneke first thing tomorrow,” he told him.

“Good,” Isaac said with relief. “That will help. Mrs. Waemans says she calls for you sometimes when the nightmares come.” He hesitated. “How bad will it get for her?”

“As bad as it was for you and for Lale.”

“My God!” Isaac said. “She’s only a girl. She’ll die.”

“She has as much of a chance as you and Lale did.”

Isaac glared at Doro in sudden anger. “You don’t care what happens to her, do you? If she does die, there will always be someone else.”

Doro turned to look at him, and after a moment, Isaac looked away.

“Be a child out here if you like,” Doro told him. “But act your age when we go in. I’m going to settle things between you and Anyanwu tonight.”

“Settle … you’re finally going to give her to me?”

“Think of it another way. I want you to marry her.”

The boy’s eyes widened. He stopped walking, leaned against a tall maple tree. “You … you’ve made up your mind, I suppose. I mean … you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“Of course.” Doro stopped beside him.

“Have you told her?”

“Not yet. I’ll tell her after dinner.”

“Doro, she’s wild seed. She might refuse.”

“I know.”

“You might not be able to change her mind.”

Doro shrugged. Worried as he was, it did not occur to him to share his concern with Isaac. Anyanwu would obey him or she wouldn’t. He longed to be able to control her with some refinement of Lale’s power, but he could not—nor could Isaac.

“If you can’t reach her,” Isaac said, “if she just won’t understand, let me try. Before you … do anything else, let me try.”

“All right.”

“And … don’t make her hate me.”

“I don’t think I could. She might come to hate me for a while, but not you.”

“Don’t hurt her.”

“Not if I can help it.” Doro smiled a little, pleased by the boy’s concern. “You like the idea,” he observed. “You want to marry her.”

“Yes. But I never thought you’d let me.”

“She’ll be happier with a husband who does more than visit her once or twice a year.”

“You’re going to leave me here to be a farmer?”

“Farm if you want to—or open a store or go back to smithing. No one could handle that better than you. Do whatever you like, but I am going to leave you here, at least for a while. She’ll need someone to help her fit in here when I’m gone.”

“God,” Isaac said. “Married.” He shook his head, then began to smile.

“Come on.” Doro started toward the house.

“No.”

Doro looked back at him.

“I can’t see her until you tell her … now that I know. I can’t. I’ll eat with Anneke. She could use the company anyway.”

“Sarah won’t think much of that.”

“I know.” Isaac glanced homeward guiltily. “Apologize for me, will you?”

Doro nodded, turned, and went in to Sarah Cutler’s linen-clothed, heavily laden table.

Anyanwu watched carefully as the white woman placed first a clean cloth, then dishes and utensils on the long, narrow table at which the household was to eat. Anyanwu was glad that some of the food and the white people’s ways of eating it were familiar to her from the ship. She could sit down and have a meal without seeming utterly ignorant. She could not have cooked the meal, but that would come, too, in time. She would learn. For now, she merely observed and allowed the interesting smells to intensify her hunger. Hunger was familiar and good. It kept her from staring too much at the white woman, kept her from concentrating on her own nervousness and uncertainty in the new surroundings, kept her attention on the soup, thick with meat and vegetables, and the roast deer flesh—venison, the white woman had called it—and a huge fowl—a turkey. Anyanwu repeated the words to herself, reassured that they had become part of her vocabulary. New words, new ways, new foods, new clothing. …She was glad of the cumbersome clothing, though, finally. It made her look more like the other women, black and white, whom she had seen in the village, and that was important. She had lived in enough different towns through her various marriages to know the necessity of learning to behave as others did. What was common in one place could be ridiculous in another and abomination in a third. Ignorance could be costly.

“How shall I call you?” she asked the white woman. Doro had said the woman’s name once, very quickly, in introduction, then hurried off on business of his own. Anyanwu remembered the name—Sarahcutler—but was not certain she could say it correctly without hearing it again.

“Sarah Cutler,” the woman said very distinctly. “Mrs. Cutler.”

Anyanwu frowned, confused. Which was right. “Mrs. Cutler?”

“Yes. You say it well.”

“I am trying to learn.” Anyanwu shrugged. “I must learn.”

“How do you say your name?”

“Anyanwu.” She said it very slowly, but still the woman asked:

“Is that all one name?”

“Only one. I have had others, but Anyanwu is best. I come back to it.”

“Are the others shorter?”

“Mbgafo. That is the name my mother gave me. And once I was called Atagbusi, and honored by that name. I have been called—”

“Never mind.” The woman sighed, and Anyanwu smiled to herself. She had had to give five of her former names to Isaac before he shrugged and decided Anyanwu was a good name after all.

“Can I help to do these things?” she asked. Sarah Cutler was beginning to put food on the table now.

“No,” the woman said. “Just watch now. You’ll be doing this soon enough.” She glanced at Anyanwu curiously. She did not stare, but allowed herself these quick curious glances. Anyanwu thought they each probably had an equal number of questions about the other.

Sarah Cutler asked: “Why did Doro call you ‘Sun Woman’?”

Doro had taken to doing that affectionately when he spoke to her in English, though Isaac complained that it made her sound like an Indian.

“Your word for my name is ‘Sun,’” she answered. “Doro said he would find an English name for me, but I did not want one. Now he makes English of my name.”

The white woman shook her head and laughed. “You’re more fortunate than you know. With him taking such an interest in you, I’m surprised you’re not already Jane or Alice or some such.”

Anyanwu shrugged. “He has not changed his own name. Why should he change mine?”

The woman gave her what seemed to be a look of pity.

“What is Cutler?” Anyanwu asked.

“What it means?”

“Yes.”

“A cutler is a knifemaker. I suppose my husband had ancestors who were knifemakers. Here, taste this.” She gave Anyanwu a bit of something sweet and oily, fruit-filled, and delicious.

“It is very good!” Anyanwu said. The sweet was unlike anything she had tasted before. She did not know what to say about it except the words of courtesy Doro had taught her. “Thank you. What is this called?”

The woman smiled, pleased. “It’s a kind of cake I haven’t made before—special for Isaac and Doro’s homecoming.”

“You said …” Anyanwu thought for a moment. “You said your husband’s people were knifemakers. Cutler is his name?”

“Yes. Here, a woman takes the name of her husband after marriage. I was Sarah Wheatley before I married.”

“Then Sarah is the name you keep for yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I call you Sarah—your own name?”

The woman glanced at her sidelong. “Shall I call you … Mbgafo?” She mispronounced it horribly.

“If you like. But there are very many Mbgafos. That name only tells the day of my birth.”

“Like … Monday or Tuesday?”

“Yes. You have seven. We have only four: Eke, Oye, Afo, Nkwo. People are often named for the day they were born.”

“Your country must be overflowing with people of the same name.”

Anyanwu nodded. “But many have other names as well.”

“I suppose Anyanwu really is better.”

“Yes.” Anyanwu smiled. “Sarah is good too. A woman should have something of her own.”

Doro came in then, and Anyanwu noted how the woman brightened. She had not been sad or grim before, but now, years seemed to drop from her. She only smiled at him and said dinner was ready, but there was a warmth in her voice that had not been there before in spite of all her friendliness. At some time, this woman had been wife or lover to Doro. Probably lover. There was still much fondness between them, though the woman was no longer young. Where was her husband, Anyanwu wondered. How was it that a woman here could cook for a man neither her kinsman nor in-law while her husband probably sat with others in front of one of the houses and blew smoke out of his mouth?

Then the husband came in, bringing two grown sons and a daughter, along with the very young shy wife of one of the sons. The girl was slender and olive-skinned, black-haired and dark-eyed, and even to Anyanwu’s eyes, very beautiful. When Doro spoke to her courteously, her answer was a mere moving of the lips. She would not look at him at all except once when his back was turned. But the look she gave him then spoke as loudly as had Sarah Cutler’s sudden brightening. Anyanwu blinked and began to wonder what kind of man she had. The women aboard the ship had not found Doro so desirable. They had been terrified of him. But these women of his people. …Was he like a cock among them, going from one hen to another? They were not, after all, his kinsmen or his friends. They were people who had pledged loyalty to him or people he had bought as slaves. In a sense, they were more his property than his people. The men laughed and talked with him, but none presumed as much as Isaac had. All were respectful. And if their wives or sisters or daughters looked at Doro, they did not notice. Anyanwu strongly suspected that if Doro looked back, if he did more than look, they would make an effort not to notice that either. Or perhaps they would be honored. Who knew what strange ways they practiced?

But now, Doro gave his attention to Anyanwu. She was shy in this company—men and women together eating strange food and talking in a language she felt she spoke poorly and understood imperfectly. Doro kept making her talk, speaking to her of trivial things.

“Do you miss the yams? There are none quite like yours here.”

“It does not matter.” Her voice was like the young girl’s—no more than a moving of the lips. She felt ashamed to speak before all these strangers—yet she had always spoken before strangers, and spoken well. One had to speak well and firmly when people came for medicine and healing. What faith could they have in someone who whispered or bowed her head?

Determinedly, she raised her head and ceased concentrating so intently on her soup. She did miss the yams. Even the strange soup made her long for an accompanying mound of pounded yam. But that did not matter. She looked around, meeting the eyes first of Sarah Cutler, then of one of Sarah’s sons and finding only friendliness and curiosity in both. The young man, thin and brown-haired, seemed to be about Isaac’s age. Thought of Isaac made Anyanwu look around.

“Where is Isaac?” she asked Doro. “You said this was his home.”

“He’s with a friend,” Doro told her. “He’ll be in later.”

“He’d better!” Sarah said. “His first night back and he can’t come home to supper.”

“He had reason,” Doro told her. And she said nothing more.

But Anyanwu found other things to say. And she no longer whispered. She paid some attention to spooning up the soup as the others did and to eating the other meats and breads and sweets correctly with her fingers. People here ate more carefully than had the men aboard the ship; thus, she ate more carefully. She spoke to the shy young girl and discovered that the girl was an Indian—a Mohawk. Doro had matched her with Blake Cutler because both had just a little of the sensitivity Doro valued. Both seemed pleased with the match. Anyanwu thought she would have been happier with her own match with Doro had her people been nearby. It would be good for the children of their marriage to know her world as well as Doro’s—to be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery. She resolved to make her homeland live for them whether Doro permitted her to show it to them or not. She resolved not to let them forget who they were.

Then she found herself wondering whether the Mohawk girl would have preferred to forget who she was as the conversation turned to talk of war with Indians. The white people at the table were eager to tell Doro how, earlier in the year, “Praying Indians” and a group of whites called French had stolen through the gates of a town west of Wheatley—a town with the unpronounceable name of Schenectady—and butchered some of the people there and carried off others. There was much discussion of this, much fear expressed until Doro promised to leave Isaac in the village, and leave one of his daughters, Anneke, who would soon be very powerful. This seemed to calm everyone somewhat. Anyanwu felt that she had only half understood the dispute between so many foreign people, but she did ask whether Wheatley had ever been attacked.

Doro smiled unpleasantly. “Twice by Indians,” he said. “I happened to be here both times. We’ve had peace since that second attack thirty years ago.”

“That’s time enough for them to forget anything,” Sarah said. “Anyway, this is a new war. French and Praying Indians!” She shook her head in disgust.

“Papists!” her husband muttered. “Bastards!”

“My people could tell them what powerful spirits live here,” whispered the Mohawk girl, smiling.

Doro looked at her as though not certain whether she were serious, but she ducked her head.

Anyanwu touched Doro’s hand. “You see?” she said. “I told you you were a spirit!”

Everyone laughed, and Anyanwu felt more comfortable among them. She would find out another time exactly what Papists and Praying Indians were and what their quarrel was with the English. She had had enough new things for one day. She relaxed and enjoyed her meal.

She enjoyed it too much. After much eating and drinking after everyone had gathered around the tall, blue-tiled parlor hearth for talking and smoking and knitting she began to feel pain in her stomach. By the time the gathering broke up, she was controlling herself very closely lest she vomit up all the food she had eaten and humiliate herself before all these people. When Doro showed her her room with its fireplace and its deep soft down mattresses covering a great bed, she undressed and lay down at once. There she discovered that her body had reacted badly to one specific food—a rich sweet that she knew no name for, but that she had loved. This on top of the huge amount of meat she had eaten had finally been too much for her stomach. Now, though, she controlled her digestion, soothed the sickness from her body. The food did not have to be brought up. Only gotten used to. She analyzed slowly, so intent on her inner awareness that she appeared to be asleep. If someone had spoken to her, she would not have heard. Her eyes were closed. This was why she had waited, had not healed herself downstairs in the presence of others. Here, though, it did not matter what she did. Only Doro was present—across the large room sitting at a great wooden desk much finer than the one he had had on the ship. He was writing, and she knew from experience that he would be making marks unlike those in any of his books. “It’s a very old language,” he had told her once. “So old that no one living can read it.”

“No one but you,” she had said.

And he had nodded and smiled. “The people I learned it from stole me away into slavery when I was only a boy. Now they’re all dead. Their descendants have forgotten the old wisdom, the old writing, the old gods. Only I remember.”

She had not known whether she heard bitterness or satisfaction in his voice then. He was very strange when he talked about his youth. He made Anyanwu want to touch him and tell him that he was not alone in outliving so many things. But he also roused her fear of him, reminded her of his deadly difference. Thus, she said nothing.

Now, as she lay still, analyzing, learning not only which food had made her ill, but which ingredient in that food, she was comfortably aware of Doro nearby. If he had left the room in complete silence, she would have known, would have missed him. The room would have become colder.

It was milk that had sickened her. Animal milk! These people cooked many things with animal milk! She covered her mouth with her hand. Did Doro know? But of course he did. How could he not? These were his people!

Again it required all her control to prevent herself from vomiting—this time from sheer revulsion.

“Anyanwu?”

She realized that Doro was standing over her between the long cloths that could be closed to conceal the bed. And she realized that this was not the first time he had said her name. Still, it surprised her that she had heard him without his shouting or touching her. He had only spoken quietly.

She opened her eyes, looked up at him. He was beautiful standing there with the light of candles behind him. He had stripped to the cloth he still wore sometimes when they were alone together. But she noticed this with only part of her mind. Her main thoughts were still of the loathsome thing she had been tricked into doing—the consumption of animal milk.

“Why didn’t you tell me!” she demanded.

“What?” He frowned, confused. “Tell you what?”

“That these people were feeding me animal milk!”

He burst into laughter.

She drew back as though he had hit her. “Is it a joke then? Are the others laughing too now that I cannot hear?”

“Anyanwu …” He managed to stop his laughter. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I was thinking of something else or I wouldn’t have laughed. But, Anyanwu, we all ate the same food.”

“But why was some of it cooked with—”

“Listen. I know the custom among your people not to drink animal milk. I should have warned you—would have, if I had been thinking. No one else who ate with us knew the milk would offend you. I assure you, they’re not laughing.”

She hesitated. He was sincere; she was certain of that. It was a mistake then. But still … “These people cook with animal milk all the time?”

“All the time,” Doro said. “And they drink milk. It’s their custom. They keep some cattle especially for milking.”

“Abomination!” Anyanwu said with disgust.

“Not to them,” Doro told her. “And you will not insult them by telling them they are committing abomination.”

She looked at him. He did not seem to give many orders but she had no doubt that this was one. She said nothing.

“You can become an animal whenever you wish,” he said. “You know there’s nothing evil about animal milk.”

“It is for animals!” she said. “I am not an animal now! I did not just eat a meal with animals!”

He sighed. “You know you must change to suit the customs here. You have not lived three hundred years without learning to accept new customs.”

“I will not have any more milk!”

“You need not. But let others have theirs in peace.”

She turned away from him. She had never in her long life lived among people who violated this prohibition.

“Anyanwu!”

“I will obey,” she muttered, then faced him defiantly. “When will I have my own house? My own cooking fire?”

“When you’ve learned what to do with them. What kind of meal could you cook now with foods you’ve never seen before? Sarah Cutler will teach you what you need to know. Tell her milk makes you sick and she’ll leave it out of what she teaches you.” His voice softened a little, and he sat down beside her on the bed. “It did make you sick, didn’t it?”

“It did. Even my flesh knows abomination.”

“It didn’t make anyone else sick.”

She only glared at him.

He reached under the blanket, rubbed her stomach gently. Her body was almost buried in the too-soft feather mattress. “Have you healed yourself?” he asked.

“Yes. But with so much food, it took me a long time to learn what was making me sick.”

“Do you have to know?”

“Of course. How can I know what to do for healing until I know what healing is needed and why? I think I knew all the diseases and poisons of my people. I must learn the ones here.”

“Does it hurt you—the learning?”

“Oh yes. But only at first. Once I learn it, it does not hurt again.” Her voice became bantering. “Now, give me your hand again. You can touch me even though I am well.”

He smiled and there was no more tension between them. His touches became more intimate.

“That is good,” she whispered. “I healed myself just in time. Now lie down here and show me why all those women were looking at you.”

He laughed quietly, untied his cloth, and joined her in the too-soft bed.

“We must talk tonight,” he said later when both were satiated and lying side by side.

“Do you still have strength for talking, husband?” she said drowsily. “I thought you would go to sleep and not awaken until sunrise.”

“No.” There was no humor in his voice now. She had laid her head on his shoulder because he had shown her in the past that he wanted her near him, touching him until he fell asleep. Now, though, she lifted her head and looked at him.

“You’ve come to your new home, Anyanwu.”

“I know that.” She did not like the flat strangeness of his tone. This was the voice he used to frighten people—the voice that reminded her to think of him as something other than a man.

“You are home, but I will be leaving again in a few weeks.”

“But—”

“I will be leaving. I have other people who need me to rid them of enemies or who need to see me to know they still belong to me. I have a fragmented people to hunt and reassemble. I have women in three different towns who could bear powerful children if I give them the right mates. And more. Much more.”

She sighed and burrowed deeper into the mattress. He was going to leave her here among strangers. He had made up his mind. “When you come back,” she said resignedly, “there will be a son for you here.”

“Are you pregnant now?”

“I can be now. Your seed still lives inside me.”

“No!”

She jumped, startled at his vehemence.

“This is not the body I want to beget your first children here,” he said.

She made herself shrug, speak casually. “All right. I’ll wait until you have … become another man.”

“You need not. I have another plan for you.”

The hairs at the back of her neck began to prickle and itch. “What plan?”

“I want you to marry,” he said. “You’ll do it in the way of the people here with a license and a wedding.”

“It makes no difference. I will follow your custom.”

“Yes. But not with me.”

She stared at him, speechless. He lay on his back staring at one of the great beams that held up the ceiling.

“You’ll marry Isaac,” he said. “I want children from the two of you. And I want you to have a husband who does more than visit you now and then. Living here, you could go for a year, two years, without seeing me. I don’t want you to be that alone.”

“Isaac?” she whispered. “Your son?”

“My son. He’s a good man. He wants you, and I want you with him.”

“He’s a boy! He’s …”

“What man is not a boy to you, except me? Isaac is more a man than you think.”

“But … he’s your son! How can I have the son when his father, my husband, still lives? That is abomination!”

“Not if I command it.”

“You cannot! It is abomination!”

“You have left your village, Anyanwu, and your town and your land and your people. You are here where I rule. Here, there is only one abomination: disobedience. You will obey.”

“I will not! Wrong is wrong! Some things change from place to place, but not this. If your people wish to debase themselves by drinking the milk of animals, I will turn my head. Their shame is their own. But now you want me to shame myself, make myself even worse than they. How can you ask it of me, Doro? The land itself will be offended! Your crops will wither and die!”

He made a sound of disgust. “That’s foolishness! I thought I had found a woman too wise to believe such nonsense.”

“You have found a woman who will not soil herself! How is it here? Do sons lie with their mothers also? Do sisters and brothers lie down together?”

“Woman, if I command it, they lie down together gladly.”

Anyanwu moved away from him so that no part of her body touched his. He had spoken of this before. Of incest, of mating her own children together with doglike disregard for kinship. And in revulsion, she had led him quickly from her land. She had saved her children, but now … who would save her?

“I want children of your body and his,” Doro repeated. He stopped, raised himself to his elbow so that he leaned over her. “Sun woman, would I tell you to do something that would hurt my people? The land is different here. It is my land! Most of the people here exist because I caused their ancestors to marry in ways your people would not accept. Yet everyone lives well here. No angry god punishes them. Their crops grow and their harvests are rich every year.”

“And some of them hear so much of the thoughts of others that they cannot think their own thoughts. Some of them hang themselves.”

“Some of your own people hang themselves.”

“Not for such terrible reasons.”

“Nevertheless, they die. Anyanwu, obey me. Life can be very good for you here. And you will not find a better husband than my son.”

She closed her eyes, dismissed his pleading as she had his commands. She strove to dismiss her budding fear also, but she could not. She knew that when both commanding and pleading failed, he would begin to threaten.

Within her body, she killed his seed. She disconnected the two small tubes through which her own seed traveled to her womb. She had done this many times when she thought she had given a man enough children. Now she did it to avoid giving any children at all, to avoid being used. When it was done, she sat up and looked down at him. “You have been telling me lies from the day we met,” she said softly.

He shook his head against the pillow. “I have not lied to you.”

“‘Let me give you children who will live,’ you said. ‘I promise that if you come with me, I will give you children of your own kind,’ you said. And now, you send me away to another man. You give me nothing at all.”

“You will bear my children as well as Isaac’s.”

She cried out as though with pain, and climbed out of his bed. “Get me another room!” she hissed. “I will not lie there with you. I would rather sleep on the bare floor. I would rather sleep on the ground!”

He lay still, as though he had not heard her. “Sleep wherever you wish,” he said after a while.

She stared at him, her body shaking with fear and anger. “What is it you would make of me, Doro? Your dog? I cared for you. It has been lifetimes since I cared as much for a man.”

He said nothing.

She stepped nearer to the bed, looked down into his expressionless face, pleading herself now. She did not think it was possible to move him by pleading once he had made up his mind, but so much was at stake. She had to try.

“I came here to be a wife to you,” she said. “But there were always others to cook for you, others to serve you in nearly all the ways of a wife. And if there had not been others, I know so little of this place that I would have performed my duties poorly. You knew it would be this way for me, but still you wanted me—and I wanted you enough to begin again like a child, completely ignorant.” She sighed and looked around the room, feeling as though she were hunting for the words that would reach him. There was only the alien furniture: the desk, the bed, the great wooden cabinet beside the door—a kas, it was called, a Dutch thing for storing clothing. There were two chairs and several mats—rugs—of heavy, colorful cloth. It was all as alien as Doro himself. It gave her a feeling of hopelessness—as though she had come to this strange place only to die. She stared into the fire in the fireplace—the only familiar thing in the room—and spoke softly:

“Husband, it may be a good thing that you’re going away. A year is not so long, or two years. Not to us. I have been alone before for many times that long. When you come back, I will know how to be a wife to you here. I will give you strong sons.” She turned her eyes back to him, saw that he was watching her. “Do not cast me aside before I show you what a good wife I can be.”

He sat up, put his feet on the floor. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed. “Haven’t I told you what I’m building? Over the years, I’ve taken people with so little power they were almost ordinary, and bred them together again and again until in their descendants, small abilities grew large, and a man like Isaac could be born.”

“And a man like Lale.”

“Lale wasn’t as bad as he seemed. He handled what ability he had very well. And I’ve created others of his kind who had more ability and a better temperament.”

“Did you create him, then? From what? Mounds of clay?”

“Anyanwu!”

“Isaac tells me the whites believe their god made the first people of clay. You talk as though you think you were that god!”

He drew a deep breath, looked at her sadly. “What I am or think I am need not concern you at all. I’ve told you what you must do—no, be quiet. Hear me.”

She closed her mouth, swallowed a new protest.

“I said you didn’t understand,” he continued. “Now I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding. Do you truly believe I mean to cast you aside because you’ve been a poor wife?”

She looked away. No, of course she did not believe that. She had only hoped to reach him, make him stop his impossible demands. No, he was not casting her aside for any reason at all. He was merely breeding her as one bred cattle and goats. He had said it: “I want children of your body and his.” What she wanted meant nothing. Did one ask a cow or a nanny goat whether it wished to be bred?

“I am giving you the very best of my sons,” he told her. “I expect you to be a good wife to him. I would never send you to him if I thought you couldn’t.”

She shook her head slowly. “It is you who have not understood me.” She gazed at him—at his very ordinary eyes, at his long, handsome face. Until now, she had managed to avoid a confrontation like this by giving in a little, obeying. Now she could not obey.

“You are my husband,” she said quietly, “or I have no husband. If I need another man, I will find one. My father and all my other husbands are long dead. You gave no gifts for me. You can send me away, but you cannot tell me where I must go.”

“Of course I can.” His quiet calm matched her own, but in him it was clearly resignation. “You know you must obey, Anyanwu. Must I take your body and get the children I want from it myself?”

“You cannot.” Within herself, she altered her reproductive organs further, made herself literally no longer a woman, but not quite a man—just to be certain. “You may be able to push my spirit from my body,” she said. “I think you can, though I have never felt your power. But my body will give you no satisfaction. It would take too long for you to learn to repair all the things I have done to it—if you can learn. It will not conceive a child now. It will not live much longer itself without me to keep watch on it.”

She could not have missed the anger in his voice when he spoke again. “You know I will collect your children if I cannot have you.”

She turned her back on him, not wanting him to see her fear and pain, not wanting her own eyes to see him. He was a loathsome thing.

He came to stand behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She struck them away violently. “Kill me!” she hissed. “Kill me now, but never touch me that way again!”

“And your children?” he said unmoved.

“No child of mine would commit the abominations you want,” she whispered.

“Now who’s lying?” he said. “You know your children don’t have your strength. I’ll get what I want from them, and their children will be as much mine as the people here.”

She said nothing. He was right, of course. Even her own strength was mere bravado, a facade covering utter terror. It was only her anger that kept her neck straight. And what good was anger or defiance? He would consume her very spirit; there would be no next life for her. Then he would use and pervert her children. She felt near to weeping.

“You’ll get over your anger,” he said. “Life will be rich and good for you here. You’ll be surprised to see how easily you blend with these people.”

“I will not marry your son, Doro! No matter what threats you make, no matter what promises, I will not marry your son!”

He sighed, tied his cloth around him, and started for the door. “Stay here,” he told her. “Put something on and wait.”

“For what!” she demanded bitterly.

“For Isaac,” he answered.

And when she turned to face him, mouth open to curse both him and his son, he stepped close to her and struck her across the face with all his strength.

There was an instant before the blow landed when she could have caught his arm and broken the bones within it like dry sticks. There was an instant before the blow landed when she could have torn out his throat.

But she absorbed the blow, moved with it, made no sound. It had been a long time since she had wanted so powerfully to kill a man.

“I see you know how to be quiet,” he said. “I see you’re not as willing to die as you thought. Good. My son asked for a chance to talk to you if you refused to obey. Wait here.”

“What can he say to me that you have not said?” she demanded harshly.

Doro paused at the door to give her a look of contempt. His blow had had less power to hurt her than that look.

When the door closed behind him, she went to the bed and sat down to stare, unseeing, into the fire. By the time Isaac knocked on the door, her face was wet with tears she did not remember shedding.

She made him wait until she had wrapped a cloth around herself and dried her face. Then with leaden, hopeless weariness, she opened the door and let the boy in.

He looked as depleted as she felt. The yellow hair hung limp into his eyes and the eyes themselves were red. His sun-browned skin looked as pale as Anyanwu had ever seen it. He seemed not only tired, but sick.

He stood gazing at her, saying nothing, making her want to go to him as though to Okoye, and try to give him comfort. Instead, she sat down in one of the room’s chairs so that he could not sit close to her.

Obligingly, he sat opposite her in the other chair. “Did he threaten you?” he asked softly.

“Of course. That is all he knows how to do.”

“And promise you a good life if you obey?”

“… yes.”

“He’ll keep his word, you know. Either way.”

“I have seen how he keeps his word.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Finally, Isaac whispered, “Don’t make him do it, Anyanwu. Don’t throw away your life!”

“Do you think I want to die?” she said. “My life has been good, and very long. It could be even longer and better. The world is a much wider place than I thought; there is so much for me to see and know. But I will not be his dog! Let him commit his abominations with other people!”

“With your children?”

“Do you threaten me too, Isaac?”

“No!” he cried. “You know better, Anyanwu.”

She turned her face away from him. If only he would go away. She did not want to say things to hurt him. He spoke softly:

“When he told me I would marry you, I was surprised and a little afraid. You’ve been married many times, and I not even once. I know Okoye is your grandson—one of your younger grandsons—and he’s at least my age. I didn’t see how I could measure up against all your experience. But I wanted to try! You don’t know how I wanted to try.”

“Will you be bred, Isaac? Does it mean nothing to you?”

“Don’t you know I wanted you long before he decided we should marry?”

“I knew.” She glanced at him. “But wrong is wrong!”

“It isn’t wrong here. It …” He shrugged. “People from outside always have trouble understanding us. Not very many things are forbidden here. Most of us don’t believe in gods and spirits and devils who must be pleased or feared. We have Doro, and he’s enough. He tells us what to do, and if it isn’t what other people do, it doesn’t matter—because we won’t last long if we don’t do it, no matter what outsiders think of us.”

He got up, went to stand beside the fireplace. The low flame seemed to comfort him too. “Doro’s ways aren’t strange to me,” he said. “I’ve lived with them all my life. I’ve shared women with him. My first woman …” He hesitated, glanced at her as though to see how she was receiving such talk, whether she was offended. She was almost indifferent. She had made up her mind. Nothing the boy said would change it.

“My first woman,” he continued, “was one he sent to me. The women here are glad to go to him. They didn’t mind coming to me either when they saw how he favored me.”

“Go to them then,” Anyanwu said quietly.

“I would,” he said, matching her tone. “But I don’t want to. I’d rather stay with you—for the rest of my life.”

She wanted to run out of the room. “Leave me alone, Isaac!”

He shook his head slowly. “If I leave this room tonight, you’ll die tonight. Don’t ask me to hurry your death.”

She said nothing.

“Besides, I want you to have the night to think.” He frowned at her. “How can you sacrifice your children?”

“Which children, Isaac? The ones I have had or the ones he will make me have with you and with him?”

He blinked. “Oh.”

“I cannot kill him—or even understand what there is to kill. I have bitten him when he was in another body, and he seemed no more than flesh, no more than a man.”

“You never touched him,” Isaac said. “Lale did once—he reached out in that way of his to change Doro’s thoughts. He almost died. I think he would have died if Doro hadn’t struggled hard not to kill him. Doro wears flesh, but he isn’t flesh himself—nor spirit, he says.”

“I cannot understand that,” she said. “But it does not matter. I cannot save my children from him. I cannot save myself. But I will not give him more people to defile.”

He turned from the fire, went back to his chair and pulled it close to her. “You could save generations unborn if you wished, Anyanwu. You could have a good life for yourself, and you could stop him from killing so many others.”

“How can I stop him?” she said in disgust. “Can one stop a leopard from doing what it was born to do?”

“He’s not a leopard! He’s not any sort of mindless animal!”

She could not help hearing the anger in his voice. She sighed. “He is your father.”

“Oh God,” muttered Isaac. “How can I make you see … I wasn’t resenting an insult to my father, Anyanwu, I was saying that in his own way, he can be a reasonable being. You’re right about his killing, he can’t help doing it. When he needs a new body, he takes one whether he wants to or not. But most of the time, he transfers because he wants to, not because he has to; and there are a few people—four or five—who can influence him enough sometimes to stop him from killing, save a few of his victims. I’m one of them. You could be another.”

“You do not mean stop him,” she said wearily. “You mean”—she hunted through her memory for the right word—“you mean delay him.”

“I mean what I said! There are people he listens to, people he values beyond their worth as breeders or servants. People who can give him … just a little of the companionship he needs. They’re among the few people in the world that he can still love—or at least care for. Although compared to what the rest of us feel when we love or hate or envy or whatever, I don’t think he feels very much. I don’t think he can. I’m afraid the time will come when he won’t feel anything. If it does—there’s no end to the harm he could do. I’m glad I won’t have to live to see it. You, though, you could live to see it—or live to prevent it. You could stay with him, keep him at least as human as he is now. I’ll grow old; I’ll die like all the others, but you won’t—or, you needn’t. You are treasure to him. I don’t think he’s really understood that yet.”

“He knows.”

“He knows, of course, but he doesn’t … doesn’t feel it yet. It’s not yet real to him. Don’t you see? He’s lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years. When Christ, the Son of God of most white people in these colonies, was born, Doro was already impossibly old. Everyone has always been temporary for him—wives, children, friends, even tribes and nations, gods and devils. Everything dies but him. And maybe you, Sun Woman, and maybe you. Make him know you’re not like everyone else—make him feel it. Prove it to him, even if for a while, you have to do some things you don’t like. Reach out to him; keep reaching. Make him know he’s not alone anymore!”

There was a long period of silence. Only the log in the fireplace slipped, then spat and crackled as new wood began to burn. Anyanwu covered her face, shook her head slowly. “I wish I knew you to be a liar,” she whispered. “I am afraid and angry and desperate, yet you heap burdens on me.”

He said nothing.

“What is forbidden here, Isaac? What is so evil that a man could be taken out and killed?”

“Murder,” Isaac said. “Theft sometimes, some other things. And of course, defying Doro.”

“If a man killed someone and Doro said he must not be punished, what would happen?”

Isaac frowned. “If the man had to be kept alive—maybe for breeding, Doro would probably take him. Or if it was too soon, if he was being saved for a girl still too young, Doro would send him away from the colony. He wouldn’t ask us to tolerate him here.”

“And when the man was no longer needed, he would die?”

“Yes.”

Anyanwu took a deep breath. “Perhaps you try to keep some decency then. Perhaps he has not made animals of you yet.”

“Submit to him now, Anyanwu, and later, you can keep him from ever making animals of us.”

Submit to him. The words brought a vile taste to her mouth, but she looked at Isaac’s haggard face, and his obvious misery and his fear for her calmed her somehow. She spoke softly. “When I hear you speak of him, I think you love him more than he loves you.”

“What does that matter?”

“It does not matter. You are a man to whom it need not matter. I thought he could be a good husband. On the ship, I worried that I could not be the wife he needed. I wanted to please him. Now I can only think that he will never let me go.”

“Never?” Isaac repeated with gentle irony. “That’s a long time, even for you and him.”

She turned away. Another time she might have been amused to hear Isaac counseling patience. He was not a patient young man. But now, for her sake, he was desperate.

“You’ll get freedom, Anyanwu,” he said, “but first you’ll have to reach him. He’s like a tortoise encased in a shell that gets thicker every year. It will take a long time for you to reach the man inside, but you have a long time, and there is a man inside who must be reached. He was born as we were. He’s warped because he can’t die, but he’s still a man.” Isaac paused for breath. “Take the time, Anyanwu. Break the shell; go in. He might turn out to be what you need, just as I think you’re what he needs.”

She shook her head. She knew now how the slaves had felt as they lay chained on the bench, the slaver’s hot iron burning into their flesh. In her pride, she had denied that she was a slave. She could no longer deny it. Doro’s mark had been on her from the day they met. She could break free of him only by dying and sacrificing her children and leaving him loose upon the world to become even more of an animal. So much of what Isaac said seemed to be right. Or was it her cowardice, her fear of Doro’s terrible way of killing that made his words seem so reasonable? How could she know? Whatever she did would result in evil.

Isaac got up, came to her, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. “I don’t know what kind of husband I could be to … to someone like you,” he said. “But if wanting to please you counts for anything …”

Wearily, hopelessly, she allowed him to draw her closer. Had she been an ordinary woman, he could have crushed the breath from her. After a moment, she said, “If Doro had done this differently, Isaac, if he had told me when we met that he wanted a wife for his son and not for himself, I would not have shamed you by refusing you.”

“I’m not ashamed,” he whispered. “Just as long as you’re not going to make him kill you …”

“If I had the courage of your mother, I would kill myself.”

He stared at her in alarm.

“No, I will live,” she said reassuringly. “I have not the courage to die. I had never thought before that I was a coward, but I am. Living has become too precious a habit.”

“You’re no more a coward than the rest of us,” he said.

“The rest of you, at least, are not doing evil in your own eyes.”

“Anyanwu …”

“No.” She rested her head against him. “I have decided. I will not tell any more brave lies, even to myself.” She looked up at his young face, his boy face. “We will marry. You are a good man, Isaac. I am the wrong wife for you, but perhaps, somehow, in this place, among these people, it will not matter.”

He lifted her with the strength of his arms alone and carried her to the great soft bed, there to make the children who would prolong her slavery.