He nodded. As long as she kept him going in the right direction, she could lead as long as she wanted to. She had given him pounded yam from the night before to break his fast, and during the night, she had managed to exhaust his strong young body with lovemaking. “You are a good man,” she had observed contentedly. “And it has been too long since I had this.”
He was surprised to realize how much her small compliment pleased himhow much the woman herself pleased him. She was a worthwhile find in many ways. He watched her take a last look at her house, left swept and neat; at her compound, airy and pleasant in spite of its smallness. He wondered how many years this had been her home.
“My sons helped me build this place,” she told him softly. “I told them I needed a place apart where I could be free to make my medicines. All but one of them came to help me. That one was my oldest living son, who said I must live in his compound. He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsenseas it often is. He did not understand anything about me, so I showed him a little of what I have shown you. Only a little. It closed his mouth.”
“It would,” laughed Doro.
“He is a very old man now. I think he is the only one of my sons who will not miss me. He will be glad to find me gonelike some others of my people, even though I have made them rich. Few of them living now are old enough to remember my great changes herefrom woman to leopard to python. They have only their legends and their fear.” She got two yams and put them into her basket, then got several more and threw them to her goats who scrambled first to escape them, then to get them. “They have never eaten so well,” she said laughing. Then she sobered, went to a small shelter where clay figurines representing gods sat.
“This is for my people to see,” she told Doro. “This and the ones inside.” She gestured toward her house.
“I did not see any inside.”
Her eyes seemed to smile through her somber expression. “You almost sat on them.”
Startled, he thought back. He usually tried not to outrage people’s religious beliefs too quickly, though Anyanwu did not seem to have many religious beliefs. But to think he had come near sitting on religious objects without recognizing them …
“Do you mean those clay lumps in the corner?”
“Those,” she said simply. “My mothers.”
Symbols of ancestral spirits. He remembered now. He shook his head. “I am getting careless,” he said in English.
“What are you saying?”
“That I am sorry. I’ve been away from your people too long.”
“It does not matter. As I said, these things are for others to see. I must lie a little, even here.”
“No more,” he said.
“This town will think I am finally dead,” she said staring at the figurines. “Perhaps they will make a shrine and give it my name. Other towns have done that. Then at night when they see shadows and branches blowing in the wind they can tell each other they have seen my spirit.”
“A shrine with spirits will frighten them less than the living woman, I think,” Doro said.
Not quite smiling, Anyanwu led him through the compound door, and they began the long trek over a maze of footpaths so narrow that they could walk only in single file between the tall trees. Anyanwu carried her basket on her head and her machete sheathed at her side. Her bare feet and Doro’s made almost no sound on the pathnothing to confuse Anyanwu’s sensitive ears. Several times as they moved along at the pace she seta swift walkshe turned aside and slipped silently into the bush. Doro followed with equal skill and always shortly afterward people passed by. There were women and children bearing water pots or firewood on their heads. There were men carrying hoes and machetes. It was as Anyanwu had said. They were in the middle of her town, surrounded by villages. No European would have recognized a town, however, since most of the time there were no dwellings in sight. But on his way to her, Doro had stumbled across the villages, across one large compound after another and either slipped past them or walked past boldly as though he had legitimate business. Fortunately, no one had challenged him. People often hesitated to challenge a man who seemed important and purposeful. They would not, however, have hesitated to challenge strangers who hid themselves, who appeared to be spying. As Doro followed Anyanwu now, he worried that he still might wind up wearing the body of one of her kinsmenand having great trouble with her. He was relieved when she told him they had left her people’s territory behind.
At first, Anyanwu was able to lead Doro along already cleared paths through territory she knew either because she had once lived in it or because her daughters lived in it now. Once, as they walked, she was telling him about a daughter who had married a handsome, strong, lazy young man, then run away to a much less imposing man who had some ambition. He listened for a while, then asked: “How many of your children lived to adulthood, Anyanwu?”
“Every one,” she said proudly. “They were all strong and well and had no forbidden things wrong with them.”
Children with “forbidden” things wrong with themtwins, for instance, and children born feet first, children with almost any deformity, children born with teeththese children were thrown away. Doro had gotten some of his best stock from earlier cultures who, for one reason or another, put infants out to die.
“You had forty-seven children,” he said in disbelief, “and all of them lived and were perfect?”
“Perfect in their bodies, at least. They all survived.”
“They are my people’s children! Perhaps some of them and their descendants should come with us after all.”
Anyanwu stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her. “You will not trouble my children,” she said quietly.
He stared down at hershe had still not bothered to make herself taller though she told him she couldand tried to swallow sudden anger. She spoke to him as though he were one of her children. She did not yet understand his power!
“I am here,” she said in the same quiet voice. “You have me.”
“Do I?”
“As much as any man could.”
That stopped him. There was no challenge in her voice, but he realized at once she was not telling him she was all hishis property. She was saying only that he had whatever small part of herself she reserved for her men. She was not used to men who could demand more. Though she came from a culture in which wives literally belonged to their husbands, she had power and her power had made her independent, accustomed to being her own person. She did not yet realize that she had walked away from that independence when she walked away from her people with him.
“Let’s go on,” he said.
But she did not move. “You have something to tell me,” she said.
He sighed. “Your children are safe, Anyanwu.” For the moment.
She turned and led on. Doro followed, thinking that he had better get her with a new child as quickly as he could. Her independence would vanish without a struggle. She would do whatever he asked then to keep her child safe. She was too valuable to kill, and if he abducted any of her descendants, she would no doubt goad him into killing her. But once she was isolated in America with an infant to care for, she would learn submissiveness.
Paths became occasional luxuries as they moved into country Anyanwu did not know. More and more, they had to use their machetes to clear the way. Streams became a problem. They flowed swiftly through deep gorges that had to be crossed somehow. Where the streams interrupted footpaths, local people had placed log bridges. But where Doro and Anyanwu found neither paths nor bridges, they had to cut their own logs. Travel became slower and more dangerous. A fall would not have killed either of them directly, but Doro knew that if he fell, he would not be able to stop himself from taking over Anyanwu’s body. She was too close to him. On his way north, he had crossed several rivers by simply abandoning his body and taking over the body nearest to him on the far side. And since he was leading now, allowing his tracking sense to draw him to the crew aboard his ship, he could not send her ahead or leave her behind. He would not have wanted to anyway. They were in the country of people who waged war to get slaves to sell to the Europeans. These were people who would cut her to pieces if she began reshaping herself before them. Some of them even had European guns and powder.