“Almost every night,” Nweke said, “David … he goes to his sister’s bed.”
Startled, Doro laughed aloud. “Does he?”
“Just like married people. Why is that funny? They could get into trouble?brother and sister. They could …”
“They’ll be all right.”
She looked at him closely. “Did you know about it?”
“No.” Doro was still smiling. “How old is the girl? Around sixteen?”
“Seventeen.” Nweke hesitated. “She likes it.”
“So do you,” Doro observed.
Nweke twisted away, embarrassed. There was no coyness to her; her embarrassment was real. “I didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t try to know!”
“Do you imagine I’m criticizing you for knowing? Me?”
She blinked, licked her lips. “Not you, I guess. Were you going to … to put them together anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“No. I was going to move them down to Pennsylvania. I see now that I’d better prepare a place for them quickly.”
“They were almost a relief,” Nweke said. “It was so easy to get caught up in what they were doing that sometimes I didn’t have to feel other things. Last night, though … last night there were some Indians. They caught a white man. He had done something?killed one of their women or something. I was in his thoughts and they were all blurred at first. They tortured him. It took him so long … so long to die.” Her hands were clinched tight around each other, her eyes wide with remembering. “They tore out his fingernails, then they cut him and burned him and the women bit him?bit pieces away like wolves at their kill. Then …” She stopped, choked. “Oh God!”
“You were with him the whole time?” Doro asked.
“The whole time?through … everything.” She was crying silently, not sobbing, only staring straight ahead as tears ran down her face and her nails dug themselves into her palms. “I don’t understand how I can be alive after all that,” she whispered.
“None of it happened to you,” Doro said.
“All of it happened to me, every bit of it!”
Doro took her hands and unclinched the long, slender fingers. There were bloody marks on her palms where the nails had punctured. Doro ran a finger across the hard neatly cut nails. “All ten,” he said, “right where they should be.None of it happened to you .”
“You don’t understand.”
“I’ve been through transition, girl. In fact, I may have been the first person ever to go through it?back more years than you can imagine. I understand, all right.”
“Then you’ve forgotten! Maybe what happens doesn’t leave marks on your body, but it leaves marks. It’s real. Oh God, it’s so real!” She began sobbing now. “If someone whips a slave or a criminal, I feel it, and it’s as real to me as to the person under the lash!”
“But no matter how many times others die,” Doro said, “you won’t die.”
“Why not? People die in transition. You died!”
He grinned. “Not entirely.” Then he sobered. “Listen, the one thing you don’t have to worry about is becoming what I am. You’re going to be something special, all right, but nothing like me.”
She looked at him timidly. “I would like to be like you.”
Only the youngest of his children said such things. He pushed her head back to his shoulder. “No,” he said, “that wouldn’t be safe. I know what you’re supposed to be. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to surprise me.”
She understood and said nothing. Like most of his people, she did not try to move away from him when he warned or threatened. “What will I be?” she asked.
“I hope, someone who will be able to do for others what your mother can do for herself. A healer. The next step in healers. But even if you inherit talent from only one of your parents, you’ll be formidable, and nothing like me. Your father, before I took him, could not only read thoughts but could see into closed places?mentally ‘see.’ ”
“You’re my father,” she said against him. “I don’t want to hear about anyone else.”
“Hear it!” he said harshly. “When your transition is over, you’ll see it in Isaac’s mind and Anyanwu’s. You should know from Anneke that a mind reader can’t delude herself for long.” Anneke Strycker Croon. She was the one who should have been having this talk with Nweke. She had been his best mind reader in a half-dozen generations?beautifully controlled. Once her transition was ended, she never entered another person’s mind unless she wanted to. Her only flaw was that she was barren. Anyanwu tried to help her. Doro brought her one male body after another, all in vain. Thus, finally, Anneke had half adopted Nweke. The young girl and the old woman had found a similarity in each other that pleased Doro. It was rare for someone with Anneke’s ability to take any pleasure at all in children. Doro saw the friendship as a good omen for Nweke’s immature talents. But now, Anneke was three years dead, and Nweke was alone. No doubt her next words came at least partially out of her loneliness.
“Do you love us?” she asked.
“All of you?” Doro asked, knowing very well that she did not mean everyone?all his people.
“The ones of us who change,” she said not looking at him. “The different ones.”
