“Have you promised him more gifts?”
“Yes. But he sees only my empty hands. Move away from me, Anyanwu, I have no more patience.”
She wanted to protest, but her mouth was suddenly dry. Frightened and silent, she stumbled backward away from him. She did not know what to expect, but she was certain the young man would be killed. How would he die? Exactly what would Doro do?
Doro stepped past the young man and toward a boy-child of about seven years who had been watching the men talk. Before the young man or the child could react, Doro collapsed.
His body fell almost on top of the boy, but the child jumped out of the way in time. Then he knelt on the ground and took Doro’s machete. People were beginning to react as the boy stood up and leaned on the machete. The sounds of their questioning voices and their gathering around almost drowned out the child’s voice when he spoke to the young man. Almost.
The child spoke calmly, quietly in his own language, but as Anyanwu heard him, she thought she would scream aloud. The child was Doro. There was no doubt of it. Doro’s spirit had entered the child’s body. And what had happened to the child’s spirit? She looked at the body lying on the ground, then she went to it, turned it over. It was dead.
“What have you done?” she said to the child.
“This man knew what his arrogance could cost,” Doro said. And his voice was high and childlike. There was no sound of the man Doro had been. Anyanwu did not understand what she was hearing, what she was recognizing in the boy’s voice.
“Keep away from me,” Doro told her. “Stay there with the body until I know how many others of his household this fool will sacrifice to his arrogance.”
She wanted nothing more than to keep away from him. She wanted to run home and try to forget she had ever seen him. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, fighting panic. There was shouting around her, but she hardly heard it. Intent on her own fear, she paid no attention to anything else until someone knocked her down.
Then someone seized her roughly, and she realized she was to pay for the death of the child. She thrust her attacker away from her and leaped to her feet ready to fight.
“That is enough!” Doro shouted. And then more quietly, “Do not kill him!”
She saw that the person she had thrust away was the young man?and that she had pushed him harder than she thought. Now he was sprawled against the compound wall, half conscious.
Doro went to him and the man raised his hands as though to deflect a blow. Doro spoke to him in quiet, chilling tones that should never have issued from the mouth of a child. The man cringed, and Doro spoke again more sharply.
The man stood up, looked at the people of the household he had inherited from his father. They were clearly alarmed and confused. Most had not seen enough to know what was going on, and they seemed to be questioning each other. They stared at the new head of their household. There were several young children, women, some of whom must have been wives or sisters of the young man, men who were probably brothers and slaves. Everyone had come to see.
Perhaps the young man felt that he had shamed himself before his people. Perhaps he was thinking about how he had cringed and whimpered before a child. Or perhaps he was merely the fool Doro took him to be. Whatever his reasoning, he made a fatal error.
With shouted words that had to be curses, the man seized the machete from Doro’s hand, raised it, and brought it slashing down through the neck of the unresisting child-body.
Anyanwu looked away, absolutely certain of what would happen. There had been ample time for the child to avoid the machete. The young man, perhaps still groggy from Anyanwu’s blow, had not moved very quickly. But the child had stood still and awaited the blow with a shrug of adult weariness. Now she heard the young man speaking to the crowd, and she could hear Doro in his voice. Of course.
The people fled. Several of them ran out of the compound door or scrambled over the wall. Doro ignored them, went to Anyanwu.
“We will leave now,” he said. “We will take a canoe and row ourselves.”
“Why did you kill the child?” she whispered.
“To warn this young fool,” he said hitting the chest of his lean, new body. “The boy was the son of a slave and no great loss to the household. I wanted to leave a man here who had authority and who knew me, but this man would not learn. Come, Anyanwu.”
She followed him dumbly. He could turn from two casual murders and speak to her as though nothing had happened. He was clearly annoyed that he had had to kill the young man, but annoyance seemed to be all he felt.
Beyond the walls of the compound, armed men waited. Anyanwu slowed, allowed Doro to move well ahead of her as he approached them. She was certain there would be more killing. But Doro spoke to the men?said only a few words to them?and they drew back out of his path. Then Doro made a short speech to everyone, and the people drew even farther away from him. Finally, he led Anyanwu down the river, where they stole a canoe and paddles.
“You must row,” she told him as they put the craft into the water. “I will try to help you when we are beyond sight of this place.”
“Have you never rowed a canoe?”
“Not for perhaps three times as long as this new body of yours has been alive.”
He nodded and paddled the craft alone.
“You should not have killed the child,” she said sadly. “It was wrong no matter why you did it.”
“Your own people kill children.”
