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.
