Meanwhile, Anyanwu must never learn of his limitation, must never know it was possible for her to escape him, avoid him, live free of him even as an animal. This meant he must not restrict her transformations any more strenuously than he restricted his children in the use of their abilities. She would not be permitted to show what she could do among ordinary people or harm his people except in self-defense. That was all. She would fear him, obey him, consider him almost omnipotent, but she would notice nothing in his attitude that might start her wondering. There would be nothing for her to notice.
Thus, as the journey neared its end, he allowed Anyanwu and Isaac to indulge in wild, impossible play, using their abilities freely, behaving like the witch-children they were. They went into the water together several times when there was enough wind and Isaac was not needed to propel the ship. The boy was not fighting a storm now. He was able to handle the ship without overextending himself, able to expend energy cavorting in the water with a dolphin-shaped Anyanwu. Then Anyanwu took to the air as a great bird, and Isaac followed, doing acrobatics that Doro would never have permitted over land. Here, there was no one to shoot the boy out of the sky, no mob to chase him down and try to burn him as a witch. He had to restrain himself so much on land that Doro placed no restraints on him now.
Doro worried about Anyanwu when she ventured under water aloneworried that he would lose her to sharks or other predators. But when she was finally attacked by a shark, it was near the surface. She suffered only a single wound which she sealed at once. Then she managed to ram her beak hard into the shark’s gills. She must also have managed to take an undolphinlike bite out of the shark, since she immediately shifted to the sleek, deadly shark form. As it happened, the change was unnecessary. The shark was crippled, perhaps dying. But the change had been made, and made too quickly. Anyanwu had to feed. With strength and speed she tore the true shark to pieces and gorged herself on it. When she became a woman again, Doro could find no sign of the wound she had suffered. He found her drowsy and content, not at all the shaking, tormented creature who had killed Lale. This time, her drive to feed had been quickly satisfied. Apparently, that was important.
She adopted the dolphins, refusing to let Isaac bring any more aboard to be killed. “They are like people,” she insisted in her fast-improving English. “They are not fish!” She swore she would have nothing more to do with Isaac if he killed another of them.
And Isaac, who loved dolphin flesh, brought no more dolphins aboard. Doro listened to the boy’s muttered complaints, smiled, and said nothing. Isaac listened to the crewmen’s complaints, shrugged, and gave them other fish. He continued to spend his spare time with Anyanwu, teaching her English, flying or swimming with her, merely being with her whenever he could. Doro neither encouraged nor discouraged this, though he did approve. He had been thinking a great deal about Isaac and Anyanwuhow well they got along in spite of their communication problems, in spite of their potentially dangerous abilities, in spite of their racial differences. Isaac would marry Anyanwu if Doro ordered it. The boy might even like the idea. And once Anyanwu accepted the marriage, Doro’s hold on her would be secure. The children would comedesirable, potentially multitalented childrenand Doro could travel as he pleased to look after his other peoples. When he returned to his New York village of Wheatley, Anyanwu would still be there. Her children would hold her if her husband did not. She could become an animal or alter herself enough to travel freely among whites or Indians, but several children would surely slow her down. And she would not abandon them. She was too much a mother for that. She would stayand if Doro found another man he wished to breed her with he could come to her wearing that man’s body. It would be a simple matter.
What would not be simple would be giving Anyanwu her first hard lesson in obedience. She would not want to go to Isaac. Among her people, a woman could divorce her husband by running away from him and seeing that the bridewealth he had given for her was returned. Or her husband could divorce her by driving her away. If her husband was impotent, he could, with her consent, give her to another man so that she could bear children in her husband’s name. If her husband died, she could marry his successor, usually his oldest son as long as this was not also her own son. But there was no provision for what Doro planned to dogive her to his son while he, Doro, was still alive. She considered Doro her husband now. No ceremony had taken place, but none was necessary. She was not a young girl passing from the hands of her father to those of her first husband. It was enough that she and Doro had chosen each other. She would think it wrong to go to Isaac. But her thinking would change as had the thinking of other powerful, self-willed people whom Doro had recruited. She would learn that right and wrong were what he said they were.
At the place Doro had called “New York Harbor,” everyone except the crew was to change ships, move to a pair of smaller “river sloops” to travel up the “Hudson River” to Doro’s village of “Wheatley.”
With less experience at absorbing change and learning new dialects if not new languages, Anyanwu thought she would have been utterly confused. She would have been frightened into huddling together with the slaves and looking around with suspicion and dread. Instead, she stood on deck with Doro, waiting calmly for the transfer to the new ships. Isaac and several others had gone ashore to make arrangements.
“When will we change?” she had asked Doro in English. She often tried to speak English now.
“That depends on how soon Isaac can hire the sloops,” he said. Which meant he did not know. That was good. Anyanwu hoped the wait would be long. Even she needed time to absorb the many differences of this new world. From where she stood she could see a few other large, square-rigged ships lying at anchor in the harbor. And there were smaller boats either moving under billowing, usually triangular sails or tied up at the long piers Doro had pointed out to her. But ships and boats seemed familiar to her now. She was eager to see how these new people lived on land. She had asked to go ashore with Isaac, but Doro had refused. He had chosen to keep her with him. She stared ashore longingly at the rows and rows of buildings, most two, three, even four stories high, and side against side as though like ants in a hill, the people could not bear to be far apart. In much of her own country, one could stand in the middle of a town and see little more than forest. The villages of the towns were well-organized, often long-established, but they were more a part of the land they occupied, less of an intrusion upon it.
“Where does one compound end and another begin?” she asked, staring at the straight rows of pointed roofs.
“Some of those buildings are used for storage and other things,” Doro said. “Of the others, consider each one a separate compound. Each one houses a family.”
She looked around, startled. “Where are the farms to feed so many?”
“Beyond the city. We will see farms on our way upriver. Also, many of the houses have their own gardens. And look there.” He pointed to a place where the great concentration of buildings tapered off and ended. “That is farmland.”