Wild Seed

Doro’s people had told him this was the time they suffered most, too. This was the time when the madness of absorbing everyone else’s feelings seemed endless—when, in desperation, they would do anything to stop the pain. Yet this was also the time when they began to feel there was a way just beyond their reach—a way of controlling the madness, shutting themselves away from it. A way of finding peace.

But instead of peace for Nweke, there was more screaming, and there was Isaac springing up like a boy, running for the door, shouting that the screams were not Nweke’s, but Anyanwu’s.

And Isaac was right. What had happened? Had Anyanwu been unable to keep the girl alive in spite of her healing ability? Or was it something else, some other trouble with transition? What could make the formidable Anyanwu scream that way?

“Oh my God,” Isaac cried from within the bedroom. “What have you done? My God!”

Doro ran into the room, stood near the door staring. Anyanwu lay on the floor, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her eyes were closed and she made no sound now at all. She seemed only barely alive.

On the bed, Nweke sat up, her body half concealed by the feather mattress. She was staring down at Anyanwu. Isaac had stopped for a moment beside Anyanwu. He shook her as though to rouse her and her head lolled over bonelessly.

He looked up and saw Nweke’s face over a bulge of feather-filled cloth. Before Doro could guess what he meant to do Isaac seized the girl, slapped her hard across the face.

“Stop what you’re doing!” he shouted. “Stop it! She’s your mother!”

Nweke put a hand to her face, her expression startled, uncomprehending. Doro realized that before Isaac’s blow, her face had held no expression at all. She had looked at Anyanwu, fallen and bleeding, with no more interest than she might have expressed in a stone. She had looked, but she had almost certainly not seen—did not see now. Perhaps she felt the pain of Isaac’s blow. Perhaps she heard him shouting—though Doro doubted that she was able to distinguish words. All that reached her was pain, noise, confusion. And she had had enough of all three.

Her small, pretty, empty face contorted, and Isaac screamed. It had happened before. Doro had seen it happen. Some people’s bodies survived transition well enough, but their minds did not. They gained power and control of that power, but they lost all that would have made that power meaningful or useful. Why had Doro been so slow to understand? What if the damage to Isaac could not be repaired? What if both Isaac and Nweke were lost?

Doro stepped over Anyanwu and around Isaac, who was now writhing on the floor, and to the girl.

He seized her, slapped her as Isaac had done. “That’s enough!” he said, not shouting at all. If his voice reached her, she would live. If it did not, she would die. Gods, let it reach her. Let her have her chance to come back to her senses—if she had any left.

She drew back from Doro like a cornered animal. Whatever she had done to hurt Isaac and perhaps kill Anyanwu, she did nothing to Doro. His voice had reached her—after a fashion.

She half leaped and half fell from the bed to get away from him and somehow she landed on Isaac. Anyanwu was farther away, as though she had been trying to escape when Nweke struck her down.

Also, Anyanwu was unconscious. She would probably never have known it if the girl had landed on her. But Isaac knew, and he reacted instantly to this new pain.

He gripped Nweke, threw her upward away from his pain-racked body—threw her upward with all the power he had used so many times to propel great ships out of storms. He did not know what he was doing any more than she did. He never saw her hit the ceiling, never saw her body flatten into it, distorted, crushed, never saw her head slam into one of the great beams and break and send down a grisly rain of blood and bits of bone and brain.

Her body fell toward Doro, rag-limp and ruined. Somehow he caught it, kept it from landing on Isaac again. The girl was lost. She would have been lost with such wounds had she been twice the healer Doro had hoped for. He put her body on the bed hastily and bent to see whether Isaac was also lost. Later, he would feel this. Later, perhaps he would leave Wheatley—leave it for several years.

Isaac’s face was pale—a gray, ugly color. He was still now, very still though not quite unconscious. Doro could hear him panting, trying to catch his breath. Trouble with his heart, he had said. Could Nweke have aggravated that somehow? Why not? Who was more suited to causing illness than one born to cure it?

Desperately, Doro turned to Anyanwu. The moment his attention was focused on her, he knew she was still alive. He could sense it. She felt like prey, not like a useless corpse. Doro took her hand, then released it because it felt limp and dead. He touched her face, leaned down close to her ear. “Can you hear me, Anyanwu?”

She gave no sign.

“Anyanwu, Isaac needs you. He’ll die without your help.”

Her eyes opened. She stared up at him for a second, perhaps reading his desperation on his face. “Am I on a rug?” she whispered finally.

He frowned wondering whether she too had gone out of her mind. But she was Isaac’s only hope. “Yes,” he said.

“Then use it to pull me close to him. As close as you can. Don’t touch me otherwise.” She took a deep breath. “Please don’t touch me.”

He moved back from her and drew her toward Isaac with the rug.

“She went mad,” Anyanwu whispered. “Her mind broke somehow.”

“I know,” Doro said.

“Then she tried to break everything inside me. Like being cut and torn from the inside. Heart, lungs, veins, stomach, bladder … She was like me, like Isaac, like … maybe like Thomas too—reaching into minds, seeing into my body. She must have been able to see.”

Yes. Nweke had been all Doro had hoped for and more. But she was dead. “Help Isaac, Anyanwu!”

“Go get me food,” she said. “Is there some stew left?”

“Can you reach Isaac?”

“Yes. Go!”

Trying to trust her, Dore, left the room.

Somehow, Anyanwu healed herself enough so that moving would not start her bleeding inside again. There was so much damage, and it had all been done so quickly, so savagely. When she changed her shape, she transformed organs that already existed and formed any necessary new organs while sustained by old ones. She was still partly human in most changes long after she had ceased to look human. But Nweke had all but destroyed organ after organ. If the girl had gone to work on her brain, Anyanwu knew she would have died before she could heal herself. Even now, there were massive repairs to be made and massive illnesses to be avoided. Even not touching her brain at all, Nweke had nearly killed her.

How could she make herself fit now to help Isaac? But she had to. She had known in the first year of their marriage that she had been wrong about him. He had been the best possible husband. With his power and hers, they had built this house. People came to watch them and watch for them so that no strangers happened by to see the witchcraft. Her strength had fascinated Isaac, but it had never disturbed him. His power she trusted absolutely. She had seen him carry great logs from the forest and strip them of bark. She had seen him kill wolves without touching them. In a fight once, she had seen him kill a man—a fool who had drunk too much and chosen to take offense at Isaac’s quiet, easy refusal to be insulted. The fool had a gun and Isaac did not. Isaac never went armed. There was no need. The man died as the wolves had died—instantly, his head broken and bloodied as though he had been bludgeoned. Afterward, Isaac himself was sickened by the killing.