“No.”
“Why?”
“I want to see whether you can do it or not.”
He reminded her of one of her sons who, when he was very young had thrown several fowls into the river to see whether they could swim.
“Stay near the dolphins if they let you,” Doro said. “Dolphins know how to deal with sharks.”
Anyanwu tore off her cloth and dived into the sea before her confidence deserted her entirely. There, she transformed herself as quickly as was comfortable. She became the dolphin whose flesh she had eaten.
And she was moving through the water alongside the ship, propelling her long, sleek body forward with easy beats of her tail. She was seeing differently, her eyes now on the sides of her head instead of in front. Her head had extended itself into a hard beak. She was breathing differentlyor rather, she was not breathing at all until she felt the need and found herself surfacing in a slow forward roll that exposed her blowhole-nose briefly and allowed her to expel her breath and take new air into her lungs. She observed herself minutely, saw that her dolphin body used the air it breathed much more efficiently than an ordinary human body. The dolphin body knew tricks her own human body had taken time and pain to learn. How to expel and renew a much larger portion of the air in its lungs with each breath. How to leach more of the usable portion of that air from the rest, the waste, and use it to fuel the body. Other things. None of it was new to her, but she thought she would have learned it all much sooner and more easily with the help of a bit of dolphin flesh. Instead, she had had only men who attempted to drown her.
She reveled in the strength and speed of her new body, and in its keen hearing. In her human shape, she kept her hearing abnormally keenkept all her senses keen. But dolphin hearing was superior to anything she had ever created in herself. As a dolphin, she could close her eyes and perceive an only slightly diminished world around her with her ears. She could make sounds and they would come back to her as echoes bearing with them the story of all that lay before her. She had never imagined such hearing.
Finally, she directed her attention from herself to the other dolphins. She had heard them too, chattering not far from her, keeping alongside the ship as she did. Strangely, their chatter sounded more human nowmore like speech, like a foreign speech. She swam toward them slowly, uncertainly. How did they greet strangers? How would they greet one small, ignorant female? If they were speaking among themselves somehow, they would think her muteor mad.
A dolphin swam to meet her, paralleled her, observing her out of one lively eye. This was a male, she realized, and she watched him with interest. After a moment, he swam closer and rubbed his body against hers. Dolphin skin, she discovered, was pleasantly sensitive. It was not scaly as was the skin of true fish which she had never imitated, but whose bodies she understood. The male brushed her again, chattering in a way she felt was questioning, then swam away. She turned, checking the position of the ship, and saw that by keeping up with the dolphins, she was also keeping up with it. She swam after the male.
There were advantages, she thought, to being a female animal. The males of some species fought each other, mindlessly possessive of territory or females. She could remember being bullied as a female animal, being pursued by persistent males, but only in her true woman-shape could she remember being seriously hurt by malesmen. It was only accident that made her a female dolphin; she had eaten the flesh of a female. But it was a fortunate accident.
A very small dolphin, a baby, she assumed, came to make her acquaintance, and she swam slowly, allowing it to investigate her. Eventually, its mother called it away, and she was alone again. Alone, but surrounded by creatures like herselfcreatures she was finding it harder to think of as animals. Swimming with them was like being with another people. A friendly people. No slavers with brands and chains here. No Doro with gentle, terrible threats to her children, to her.
As time passed, several dolphins approached to touch her, rub themselves against her, get acquainted. When the male who had touched her first returned, she was startled to realize that she recognized him. His touch was his touchnot quite like that of any of the others as they were not quite like each other.
Suddenly, he leaped high out of the water and arced back, landing some distance ahead of her. She wondered why she had not tried this herself and leaped a short distance. Her dolphin body was wonderfully agile. She seemed to fly through the air, plunging back smoothly and leaping again without strain or weariness. This was the best body she had ever shaped for herself. If only dolphin speech came as easily as dolphin movement. Some part of her mind wondered why it did not, wondered whether Doro was superior to her in this. Did he gain a new language, new knowledge when he took a new bodysince he actually did possess the body, not merely duplicate it?
Her male dolphin came to touch her again and drove all thoughts of Doro from her mind. She understood that the dolphin’s interest had become more than casual. He stayed close to her now, touching her, matching his movements with her own. She realized that she did not mind his attention. She had avoided animal matings in the past. She was a woman. Intercourse with an animal was abomination. She would feel unclean reverting to her human form with the seed of a male animal inside her.
But now … it was as though the dolphins were not animals.
She performed a kind of dance with the male, moving and touching, certain that no human ceremony had ever drawn her in so quickly. She felt both eager and restrained, both willing and hesitant. She would accept him, had already accepted him. He was surely no more strange than the ogbanje, Doro. Now seemed to be a time for strange matings.
She continued the dance, wishing she had a song to go with it. The male seemed to have a song. She wondered whether he would leave her after the mating, and thought he probably would. But his would not be the greatest leave-taking. He would not leave the group as she would, deserting everyone. But that was something to think about in the future. It did not matter. Only what was happening now mattered.
Then, suddenly, there was a man in the water. Startled, both Anyanwu and her male swam a short distance away, their dance interrupted. The group of dolphins shied away from the man, but he pursued them, sometimes in the water, sometimes above it. He did not swim or leap or dive, but somehow arrowed through water and air holding his body still, apparently not using his muscles.
Finally, Anyanwu separated herself from the school and approached the man. It was Isaac, she knew. He looked very different to her nowa clumsy thing, stiff and strange, but not remarkably ugly or frightening. He was a threat, though. He had had no reason to lose his taste for dolphin flesh, but she had. He might make another kill if she did not distract him. She turned and swam to him, approaching very slowly so that he would see her and understand that she meant no harm. She was certain that he could not distinguish her from any other dolphin. She swam in a small circle around where he hovered now, just above the water.
He spoke in low, strange tones, said her name several times before she recognized it. Then, without stopping to wonder how she did it, she brought herself upright on her tail for a moment and managed a kind of nod. She swam to him, and he lowered himself into the water. She swam past his side, near enough to be touched. He caught her dorsal fin and said something else. She listened closely.
“Doro wants you back at the ship.”
That was that. She looked back at the dolphins regretfully, trying to pick out her male. She found him surprisingly nearbydangerously nearby. It would have been so good to return to him, stay with him, just for a while. The mating would have been good. She wondered whether Doro had known or suspected what she was doing when he sent Isaac out to get her.