Wild Seed

Then she saw him looking at Thomas. The bath had made the most visible difference in Thomas’ appearance, and Anyanwu had shaved him, cut off much of his hair, and combed the rest. But there were other more subtle changes. Thomas was smiling, was helping to carry the supplies into the cabin instead of standing aside apathetically, instead of muttering at Anyanwu when she passed him, her arms full.

“Now,” he said, happily oblivious to Doro’s eyes on him. “Now we’ll see how well you can cook, Sun Woman.”

That stupid name,she thought desperately. Why had he called her that? He must have read it in her thoughts. She had not told him it was Doro’s name for her.

Doro smiled. “I never thought you could do this so well,” he said to her. “I would have brought you my sick ones before.”

“I am a healer,” she said. His smile terrified her for Thomas’ sake. It was a smile full of teeth and utterly without humor. “I have conceived,” she said, though she had not meant to tell him that for days—perhaps weeks. Suddenly, though, she wanted him away from Thomas. She knew Doro. Over the years, she had come to know him very well. He had given her to a man he hoped would repel her, make her know how well off she had been. Instead, she had immediately begun helping the man, healing him so that eventually he would not repel anyone. Clearly, she had not been punished.

“Already,” Doro said in mock surprise. “Shall we leave then?”

“Yes.”

He glanced toward the cabin where Thomas was.

Anyanwu came around the wagon and caught Doro’s arms. He was wearing the body of a round-faced very young-looking white man. “Why did you bring the supplies?” she demanded.

“You wanted them,” he said reasonably.

“For him. So he could heal.”

“And now you want to leave him before that healing is finished.”

Thomas came out of the cabin and saw them standing together. “Is something wrong?” he asked. Anyanwu realized later that it was probably her expression or her thoughts that alerted him. If only he could have read Doro’s thoughts.

“Anyanwu wants to go home,” said Doro blandly.

Thomas stared at her with disbelief and pain. “Anyanwu …?”

She did not know what to do—what would make Doro feel that he had extracted enough pain, punished her enough. What would stop him now that he had decided to kill?

She looked at Doro. “I will leave with you today,” she whispered. “Please, I will leave with you now.”

“Not quite yet,” Doro said.

She shook her head, pleaded desperately: “Doro, what do you want of me? Tell me and I will give it.”

Thomas had come closer to them, looking at Anyanwu, his expression caught between anger and pain. Anyanwu wanted to shout at him to stay away.

“I want you to remember,” Doro said to her. “You’ve come to think I couldn’t touch you. That kind of thinking is foolish and dangerous.”

She was in the midst of a healing. She had endured abuse from Thomas. She had endured part of a night beside his filthy body. Finally, she had been able to reach him and begin to heal. It was not only the sores on his body she was reaching for. Never had Doro taken a patient from her in the midst of healing, never! Somehow, she had not thought he would do such a thing. It was as though he had threatened one of her children. And, of course, he was threatening her children. He was threatening everything dear to her. He was not finished with her, apparently, and thus would not kill her. But since she had made it clear that she did not love him, that she obeyed him only because he had power, he felt some need to remind her of that power. If he could not do it by giving her to an evil man because that man obstinately ceased to be evil, then he would take that man from her now while her interest in him was strongest. And also, perhaps Doro had realized the thing she had told Thomas—that she would rather share Thomas’ bed than Doro’s. For a man accustomed to adoration, that realization must have been a heavy blow. But what could she do?

“Doro,” she pleaded, “it’s enough. I understand. I have been wrong. I will remember and behave better toward you.”

She was clinging to both his arms now, and lowering her head before the smooth young face. Inside, she screamed with rage and fear and loathing. Outside, her face was as smooth as his.

But out of stubbornness or hunger or a desire to hurt her, he would not stop. He turned toward Thomas. And by now, Thomas understood.

Thomas backed away, his disbelief again clear in his expression. “Why?” he said. “What have I done?”

“Nothing!” shouted Anyanwu suddenly, and her hands on Doro’s arms locked suddenly in a grip Doro would not break in any normal way. “You’ve done nothing, Thomas, but serve him all your life. Now he thinks nothing of throwing away your life in the hope of hurting me. Run!”

For an instant, Thomas stood frozen.

“Run!” screamed Anyanwu. Doro had actually begun struggling against her—no doubt a reflex of anger. He knew he could not break her grip or overcome her by physical strength alone. And he would not use his other weapon. He was not finished with her yet. There was a potentially valuable child in her womb.

Thomas ran off toward the woods.

“I’ll kill her,” shouted Doro. “Your life or hers.”

Thomas stopped, looked back.

“He’s lying,” Anyanwu said almost gleefully. Man or devil, he could not get a lie past her. Not any longer. “Run, Thomas. He is telling lies!”

Doro tried to hit her, but she tripped him, and as he fell, she changed her grip on his arms so that he would not move again except in pain. Very much pain.

“I would have submitted,” she hissed into his ear. “I would have done anything!”

“Let me go,” he said, “or you won’t live, even to submit. It’s truth now, Anyanwu. Get up.”

There was death frighteningly close to the surface in his voice. This was the way he sounded when he truly meant to kill—his voice went fiat and strange and Anyanwu felt that the thing he was, the spirit, the feral hungry demon, the twisted ogbanje was ready to leap out of his young man’s body and into hers. She had pushed him too far.

Then Thomas was there. “Let him go, Anyanwu,” he said. She jerked her head up to stare at him. She had risked everything to give him a chance to escape—at least a chance—and he had come back.

He tried to pull her off Doro. “Let him go, I said. He’d go through you and take me two seconds later. There’s nobody else out here to confuse him.”

Anyanwu looked around and realized that he was right. When Doro transferred, he took the person nearest to him. That was why he sometimes touched people. In a crowd, the contact assured his taking the one person he had chosen. If he decided to transfer, though, and the person nearest to him was a hundred miles away, he would take that person. Distance meant nothing. If he was willing to go through Anyanwu, he could reach Thomas.

“I’ve got nothing,” Thomas was saying. “This cabin is my future—staying here, getting older, drunker, crazier. I’m nothing to die for, Sun Woman, even if your dying could save me.”

With far less strength than Doro had in his current body, he pulled her to her feet, freeing Doro. Then he pushed her behind him so that he stood nearest to Doro.

Doro stood up slowly, watching them as though daring them to ran—or encouraging them to panic and run hopelessly. Nothing human looked out of his eyes.

Seeing him, Anyanwu thought she would die anyway. Both she and Thomas would die.

“I was loyal,” Thomas said to him as though to a reasonable man.

Doro’s eyes focused on him.

“I gave you loyalty,” Thomas repeated. “I never disobeyed.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I loved you—even though I knew this day might come.” He held out a remarkably steady right hand. “Let her go home to her husband and children,” he said.