“Touché,” he said, and shrugged. He took a chair from beside the fireplace and brought it to the foot of the bed. There, he waited. When Nweke came to, shaking and crying wildly, he spoke to her, but she did not seem to hear him. Anyanwu went onto the bed silent, grim-faced, and held the girl until her tears had slowed, until she had stopped shaking.
“You are in transition,” Doro heard Anyanwu whisper. “Stay with us until tomorrow and you will have the powers of a goddess.” That was all she had time to say. Nweke’s body stiffened. She made retching sounds and Anyanwu drew back from her slightly. But instead of vomiting, she went limp again, her consciousness gone to join someone else’s.
Eventually, she seemed to come to again, but her open eyes were glazed and she made the kind of gibbering sounds Doro had heard in madhouses—especially in the madhouses to which his people had been consigned when their transitions caught them outside their settlements. Nweke’s face was like something out of a madhouse, too—twisted and unrecognizable, covered with sweat, eyes, nose, and mouth streaming. Wearily, sadly, Doro got up to leave.
There had been a time when he had to watch transitions—when no one else could be trusted not to run away or murder his writhing charge or perform some dangerous, stupid ritual of exorcism. But that was long ago. He was not only building a people now; they were building themselves. It was no longer necessary for him to do everything see everything.
He looked back once as he reached the door and saw that Anyanwu was watching him.
“It is easier to doom a child to this than to stay and watch it happen, isn’t it?” she said.
“I watched it happen to your ancestors!” he said angrily. “And I’ll watch it happen to your descendants when even you are dust!” He turned and left her.
When Doro had gone, Anyanwu clambered off the featherbed and went to the washstand. There she poured water from the pitcher to the basin and wet a towel. Nweke was having a difficult time already, poor girl. That meant a long, terrible night. There was no duty Anyanwu hated more than this—especially with her own children. But no one else could handle it as well as she could.
She bathed the girl’s face, thinking, praying: Oh, Nweke, little one, stay until tomorrow. The pain will go away tomorrow.
Nweke quieted as though she could hear the desperate thoughts. Perhaps she could. Her face was gray and still now. Anyanwu caressed it, seeing traces of the girl’s father in it as she always did. There was a man damned from the day of his birth—all because of Doro. He was fine breeding stock, oh yes. He was a forest animal unable to endure the company of other people, unable to get any peace from their thoughts. He had not been as Nweke was now, receiving only large emotions, great stress. He received everything. And also, he saw visions of things far from him, beyond the range of even her eyes, of things closed away from any eyes. In a city, even in a small town, he would have gone mad. And his vulnerability was not a passing thing, not a transition from powerlessness to godlike power. It was a condition he had had to endure to the day of his death. He had loved Doro pathetically because Doro was the one person whose thoughts could not entangle him. His mind would not reach into Doro’s. Doro said this was a matter of self-preservation; the mind that reached into his became his. It was consumed, extinguished, and Doro took over the body it had animated. Doro said even people like this man—Thomas, his name was—even people whose mind-reading ability seemed completely out of control somehow never reached into Doro’s thoughts. People with control could force themselves to try—as they could force their hands into fire—but they could not make the attempt without first feeling the “heat” and knowing they were doing a dangerous thing.
Thomas could not force his “hands” into anything at all. He lived alone in a filthy cabin well hidden within a dark, awesome Virginia woods. When Doro brought her to him, he cursed her. He told her she should not mind the way he lived, since she was from Africa where people swung through the trees and went naked like animals. He asked Doro what wrong he had done to be given a nigger woman. But it was not his wrong that had won him Anyanwu. It was hers.
Now and then, Doro courted her in his own way. He arrived with a new body—sometimes an appealing one. He paid attention to her, treated her as something more than only a breeding animal. Then, courting done, he took her from Isaac’s bed to his own and kept her there until he was certain she was pregnant. Still, Isaac urged her to use these times to tie Doro to her and strengthen whatever influence she had with him. But Anyanwu never learned to forgive Doro’s unnecessary killings, his casual abuse when he was not courting her, his open contempt for any belief of hers that did not concur with his, the blows for which she could not retaliate and from which she could not flee, the acts she must perform for him no matter what her beliefs. She had lain with him as a man while he wore the body of a woman. She had not been able to become erect naturally. He was a beautiful woman, but he repelled her. Nothing he did gave her pleasure. Nothing.
No …
She sighed and stared down at her daughter’s still face. No, her children gave her pleasure. She loved them, but she also feared for them. Who knew what Doro might decide to do to them? What would he do to this one?
She lay down close to Nweke, so that the girl would not awake alone. Perhaps even now, some part of Nweke’s spirit knew that Anyanwu was nearby. Anyanwu had seen that people in transition thrashed around less if she lay close to them and sometimes held them. If her nearness, her touch, gave them any peace, she was willing to stay close. Her thoughts returned to Thomas.
Doro had been angry with her. He never seemed to get truly angry with anyone else—but then, his other people loved him. He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them—usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them. More than once, Anyanwu wondered how much time she might have left. Had Doro merely been waiting for her to help this last daughter through transition? If so, he might be in for a surprise. Once Nweke had power and could care for herself, Anyanwu did not plan to stay in Wheatley. She had had enough of Doro and everything to do with him; and no person was better fitted to escape him than she was.
If only Thomas had been able to escape …
But Thomas had not had power—only potential, unrealized, unrealizable. He had had a long sparse beard when Doro took her to him, and long black hair clotted together with the grease and dirt of years of neglect. His clothing might have stood alone, starched as it was with layers of dirt and sweat, but it was too ragged to stand. In some places, it seemed to be held together by the dirt. There were sores on his body, ignored and filthy—as though he were rotting away while still alive. He was a young man, but his teeth were almost gone. His breath, his entire body, stank unbelievably.
And he did not care. He did not care about anything—beyond his next drink. He looked, except for the sparse beard, like an Indian, but he thought of himself as a white man. And he thought of Anyanwu as a nigger.
Doro had known what he was doing when in exasperation, he had said to her, “You think I ask too much of you? You think I abuse you? I’m going to show you how fortunate you’ve been!”
And he gave her to Thomas. And he stayed to see that she did not run away or kill the grotesque ruin of a man instead of sharing his vermin-infested bed.
But Anyanwu had never killed anyone except in self-defense. It was not her business to kill. She was a healer.
At first, Thomas cursed her and reviled her blackness. She ignored this. “Doro has put us
together,” she told him calmly. “If I were green, it would make no difference.”
“Shut your mouth!” he said. “You’re a black bitch brought here for breeding and nothing more. I don’t have to listen to your yapping!”
She had not struck back. After the first moments, she had not even been angry. Nor had she been pitying or repelled. She knew Doro expected her to be repelled, but that proved nothing more than that he could know her for decades without really knowing her at all. This was a man sick in a dozen ways—the remnants of a man. Healer that she was, creator of medicines and poisons, binder of broken bones, comforter—could she take the remnants here and build them into a man again?
Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick—especially those with problems she had not seen before—and wondered whether she could defeat their disease.
Helplessly, Thomas caught her thoughts. “Stay away from me!” he muttered alarmed. “You heathen! Go rattle your bones at someone else!”
Heathen, yes. He was a god-fearing man himself. Anyanwu went to his god and said, “Find a town and buy us food. That man won’t sire any children as he is now, living mostly on beer and cider and rum—which he probably steals.”
Doro stared at her as though he could not think of anything to say. He was wearing a big burly body and had been using it to chop wood while Anyanwu and Thomas got acquainted.
“There’s food enough here,” he protested finally. “There are deer and bear and game birds and fish. Thomas grows a few things. He has what he needs.”
“If he has it, he is not eating it!”
“Then he’ll starve. But not before he gets you with a child.”
In anger that night, Anyanwu took her leopard form for the first time in years. She hunted deer, stalking them as she had at home so long ago, moving with the old stealth, using her eyes and her ears even more efficiently than a true leopard might. The result was as it had been at home. Deer were deer. She brought down a sleek doe, then took her human form again, threw her prize across her shoulders, and carried it to Thomas’ cabin. By morning, when the two men awoke, the doe had been skinned, cleaned, and butchered. The cabin was filled with the smell of roasting venison.
Doro ate heartily and went out. He didn’t ask where the fresh meat had come from or thank Anyanwu for it. He simply accepted it. Thomas was less trusting. He drank a little rum, sniffed at the meat Anyanwu gave him, nibbled at a little of it.
“Where’d this come from?” he demanded.
“I hunted last night,” Anyanwu said. “You have nothing here.”
“Hunted with what? My musket? Who allowed you to …”
“I did not hunt with your musket! It’s there, you see?” She gestured toward where the gun, the cleanest thing in the cabin, hung from a peg by the door. “I don’t hunt with guns,” she added.
He got up and checked the musket anyway. When he was satisfied, he came to stand over her, reeking and forcing her to breathe very shallowly. “What did you hunt with, then?” he demanded. He wasn’t a big man, but sometimes, like now, he spoke in a deep rumbling voice. “What did you use?” he repeated. “Your nails and teeth?”
“Yes,” Anyanwu said softly.
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes suddenly wide. “A cat!” he whispered. “From woman to cat to woman again. But how … ?” Doro had explained that since this man had never completed transition, he had no control over his ability. He could not deliberately look into Anyanwu’s thoughts, but he could not refrain from looking into them either. Anyanwu was near him and her thoughts, unlike Doro’s, were open and unprotected.
“I was a cat,” she said simply. “I can be anything. Shall I show you?”
“No!”
“It’s like what you do,” she reassured him. “You can see what I’m thinking. I can change my shape. Why not eat the meat? It is very good.” She would wash him, she decided. This day, she would wash him and start on the sores. The stink was unendurable.
He snatched up his portion of food and threw it into the fire. “Witch food!” he muttered, and turned his jug up to his mouth.
Anyanwu stifled an impulse to throw the rum into the fire. Instead, she stood up and took it from his hands as he lowered it. He did not try to keep it from her. She set it aside and faced him.
“We are all witches,” she said. “All Doro’s people. Why would he notice us if we were ordinary?” She shrugged. “He wants a child from us because it will not be ordinary.”
He said nothing. Only stared at her with unmistakable suspicion and dislike.
“I have seen what you can do,” she continued. “You keep speaking my thoughts, knowing what you should not know. I will show you what I can do.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Seeing it will make it more real to you. It isn’t a hard thing to watch. I don’t become ugly. Most of the changes happen inside me.” She was undressing as she spoke. It was not necessary. She could shrug out of the clothing as she changed, shed it as a snake sheds its skin, but she wanted to move very slowly for this man. She did not expect her nudity to excite him. He had seen her unclothed the night before and he had turned away and gone to sleep—leaving her to go hunting. She suspected that he was impotent. She had made her body slender and young for him, hoping to get his seed in her and escape quickly, but last night had convinced her that she had more work to do here than she had thought. And if the man was impotent, all that she did might not be enough. What would Doro do then?
She changed very slowly, took the leopard form, all the while keeping her body between Thomas and the door. Between Thomas and the gun. That was wise because when she had finished, when she stretched her small powerful cat-body and spread her claws, leaving marks in the packed earth floor, he dived for his gun.
Claws sheathed, Anyanwu batted him aside. He screamed and shrank back from her. By his manner, arm thrown up to protect his throat, eyes wide, he seemed to expect her to leap upon him. He was waiting to die. Instead, she approached him slowly, her body relaxed. Purring, she rubbed her head against his knee. She looked up at him, saw that the protective arm had come down from the throat. She rubbed her fur against his leg and went on purring. Finally, almost unwillingly, his hand touched her head, caressed tentatively. When she had him scratching her neck—which did not itch—and muttering to himself, “My God!” she broke away, went over and picked up a piece of venison and brought it back to him.
“I don’t want that!” he said.
She began to growl low in her throat. He took a step back but that put him against the rough log wall. When Anyanwu followed, there was nowhere for him to go. She tried to put the meat into his hand, but he snatched the hand away. Finally, around the meat, she gave a loud, coughing roar.
Thomas sank to the floor terrified, staring at her. She dropped the meat into his lap and roared again.
He picked it up and ate—for the first time in how long, she wondered. If he wanted to kill himself, why was he doing it in this slow terrible way, letting himself rot alive? Oh, this day she would wash him and begin his healing. If he truly wanted to die, let him hang himself and be done with it.
When he had finished the venison, she became a woman again and calmly put on her clothing as he watched.
“I could see it,” he whispered after a long silence. “I could see your body changing inside. Everything changing …” He shook his head uncomprehending, then asked: “Could you turn white?”
The question startled her. Was he really so concerned about her color? Usually Doro’s people were not. Most of them had backgrounds too thoroughly mixed for them to sneer at anyone. Anyanwu did not know this man’s ancestry but she was certain he was not as white as he seemed to think. The Indian appearance was too strong.
“I have never made myself white,” she said. “In Wheatley, everyone knows me. Who would I deceive—and why should I try?”
“I don’t believe you,” he said
. “If you could become white, you would!”
“Why?”
He stared at her hostilely.
“I’m content,” she said finally. “If I have to be white some day to survive, I will be white. If I have to be a leopard to hunt and kill, I will be a leopard. If I have to travel quickly across land, I’ll become a large bird. If I have to cross the sea, I’ll become a fish.” She smiled a little. “A dolphin, perhaps.”
“Will you become white for me?” he asked. His hostility had died as she spoke. He seemed to believe her. Perhaps he was hearing her thoughts. If so, he was not hearing them clearly enough.
“I think you will have to endure it somehow that I am black,” she said with hostility of her own. “This is the way I look. No one has ever told me I was ugly!”
He sighed. “No, you’re not. Not by some distance. It’s just that …” He stopped, wet his lips. “It’s just that I thought you could make yourself look like my wife … just a little.”
“You have a wife?”
He rubbed at a scabbed over sore on his arm. Anyanwu could see it through a hole in his sleeve and it did not look as though it was healing properly. The flesh around the scab was very red and swollen.
“I had a wife,” he said. “Big, handsome girl with hair yellow as gold. I thought it would be all right if we didn’t live in a town or have neighbors too nearby. She wasn’t one of Doro’s people, but he let me have her. He gave me enough money to buy some land, get a start in tobacco. I thought things would be fine.”
“Did she know you could hear her thoughts?”
He gave her a look of contempt. “Would she have married me if she had? Would anyone?”
“One of Doro’s people, perhaps. One who could also hear thoughts.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said bitterly.
His tone made her think, made her remember that some of the most terrible of Doro’s people were like Thomas. They weren’t as sensitive, perhaps. Living in towns didn’t seem to bother them. But they drank too much and fought and abused or neglected their children and occasionally murdered each other before Doro could get around to taking them. Thomas was probably right to marry a more ordinary woman.