Without a word, she walked away to another smaller building and returned with two large yams. Then she led him into her kitchen and gave him a deerskin to sit on since he carried nothing other than the cloth around his loins. Still in her male guise, she courteously shared a kola nut and a little palm wine with him. Then she began to prepare food. Besides the yams, she had vegetables, smoked fish, and palm oil. She built up a fire from the live coals in the tripod of stones that formed her hearth, then put a clay pot of water on to boil. She began to peel the yams. She would cut them up and boil the pieces until they were tender enough to be pounded as her people liked them. Perhaps she would make soup of the vegetables, oil, and fish, but that would take time.
“What do you do?” she asked him as she worked. “Steal food when you are hungry?”
“Yes,” he said. He stole more than food. If there were no people he knew near him, or if he went to people he knew and they did not welcome him, he simply took a new strong, young body. No person, no group could stop him from doing this. No one could stop him from doing anything at all.
“A thief,” said Anyanwu with disgust that he did not think was quite real. “You steal, you kill. What else do you do?”
“I build,” he said quietly. “I search the land for people who are a little different?or very different. I search them out, I bring them together in groups, I begin to build them into a strong new people.”
She stared at him in surprise. “They let you do this?let you take them from their people, their families?”
“Some bring their families with them. Many do not have families. Their differences have made them outcasts. They are glad to follow me.”
“Always?”
“Often enough,” he said.
“What happens when people will not follow you? What happens if they say, ‘It seems too many of your people are dying, Doro. We will stay where we are and live.’ ”
He got up and went to the doorway of the next room where two hard but inviting clay couches had been built out from the walls. He had to sleep. In spite of the youth and strength of the body he was wearing, it was only an ordinary body. If he were careful with it?gave it proper rest and food, did not allow it to be injured?it would last him a few more weeks. If he drove it, though, as he had been driving it to reach Anyanwu, he would use it up much sooner. He held his hands before him, palms down and was not surprised to see that they were shaking.
“Anyanwu, I must sleep. Wake me when the food is ready.”
“Wait!”
The sharpness of her voice stopped him, made him look back.
“Answer,” she said. “What happens when people will not follow you?”
Was that all? He ignored her, climbed onto one of the couches, lay down on the mat that covered it, and closed his eyes. He thought he heard her come into the room and go out again before he drifted off to sleep, but he paid no attention. He had long ago discovered that people were much more cooperative if he made them answer questions like hers for themselves. Only the stupid actually needed to hear his answer, and this woman was not stupid.
When she woke him, the house was full of the odor of food and he got up alert and ravenous. He sat with her, washed his hands absently in the bowl of water she gave him, then used his fingers to scoop up a bit of pounded yam from his platter and dip it into the common pot of peppery soup. The food was good and filling, and for some time he concentrated on it, ignoring Anyanwu except to notice that she was also eating and did not seem inclined to talk. He recalled distantly that there had been some small religious ceremony between the washing of hands and the eating when he had last been with her people. An offering of food and palm wine to the gods. He asked about it once he had taken the edge off his hunger.
She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?”
“None.”
“And why not?”
“I help myself,” he said.
She nodded. “In at least two ways, you do. I help myself too.”
He smiled a little, but could not help wondering how hard it might be to tame even partially a wild seed woman who had been helping herself for three hundred years. It would not be hard to make her follow him. She had sons and she cared for them, thus she was vulnerable. But she might very well make him regret taking her?especially since she was too valuable to kill if he could possibly spare her.
“For my people,” she said, “I respect the gods. I speak as the voice of a god. For myself … In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”
“You are very much out of place here.”
She sighed. “Everything comes back to that. I am content here, Doro. I have already had ten husbands to tell me what to do. Why should I make you the eleventh? Because you will kill me if I refuse? Is that how men get wives in your homeland?by threatening murder? Well, perhaps you cannot kill me. Perhaps we should find out!”
He ignored her outburst, noticed instead that she had automatically assumed that he wanted her as his wife. That was a natural assumption for her to make, perhaps a correct assumption. He had been asking himself which of his people she should be mated with first, but now he knew he would take her himself?for a while, at least. He often kept the most powerful of his people with him for a few months, perhaps a year. If they were children, they learned to accept him as father. If they were men, they learned to obey him as master. If they were women, they accepted him best as lover or husband. Anyanwu was one of the handsomest women he had ever seen. He had intended to take her to bed this night, and many more nights until he got her to the seed village he was assembling in the British?ruled Colony of New York. But why should that be enough? The woman was a rare find. He spoke softly.
“Shall I try to kill you then, Anyanwu? Why? Would you kill me if you could?”
“Perhaps I can!”
“Here I am.” He looked at her with eyes that ignored the male form she still wore. Eyes that spoke to the woman inside?or he hoped they did. It would be much more pleasant to have her come to him because she wanted
