Wild Seed

by Octavia E. Butler

At the boy’s cry, everyone looked at him, then upward at the gallery where he was looking. There, Helen was slowly climbing over the railing.

  Instantly, Anyanwu moved. Luisa had never seen a human being move that quickly. When Helen jumped, Anyanwu was in position beneath her. Anyanwu caught her in careful, cushioning fashion, so that even though the girl had dived off the railing head first, her head did not strike the ground. Neither her head nor her neck were injured. She was almost as large as Anyanwu, but Anyanwu was clearly not troubled by her size or weight. By the time Luisa realized what was happening, it was over. Anyanwu was calming her weeping daughter.

  “Why did she do it?” Luisa asked. “What is happening?”

  Anyanwu shook her head, clearly frightened, bewildered.

  “It was Joseph,” Helen said at last. “He moved my legs again. I thought it was only a dream until …” She looked up at the gallery, then at her mother who still held her. She began to cry again.

  “Obiageli,” Anyanwu said. “Stay here with Luisa. Stay here. I’m going up to see him.”

  But the child clung to Anyanwu and screamed when Luisa tried to pry her loose. Anyanwu could have pried her loose easily, but she chose to spend a few moments more comforting her. When Helen was calmer, it was Iye, not Luisa, who took her.

  “Keep her with you,” Anyanwu said. “Don’t let her go into the house. Don’t let anyone in.”

  “What will you do?” Iye asked.

  Anyanwu did not answer. Her body had already begun to change. She threw off her cloak and her gown. By the time she was naked, her body was clearly no longer human. She was changing very quickly, becoming a great cat this time instead of the familiar large dog. A great spotted cat.

  When the change was complete, she went to the door, and Luisa opened it for her. Luisa started to follow her in. There would be at least one other door that needed opening, after all. But the cat turned and uttered a loud coughing cry. It barred Luisa’s path until she turned and went outside again.

  “My God,” whispered Iye as Luisa returned. “I’m never afraid of her until she does something like that right in front of me.”

  Luisa ignored her, went to Stephen and straightened his neck and body, then covered him with Anyanwu’s discarded cloak.

  “What’s she going to do?” Iye asked.

  “Kill Joseph,” Helen said gently.

  “Kill?” Iye stared uncomprehending into the small solemn face.

  “Yes,” the child said. “And she ought to kill Doro too before he brings us somebody worse.”

  In leopard form, Anyanwu padded down the hall and up the main stairs, then up the narrower stairs to the attic. She was hungry. She had changed a little too quickly, and she knew she would have to eat soon. She would control herself, though; she would eat none of Joseph’s disgusting flesh. Better to eat stinking meat crawling with maggots! How could even Doro have brought her human vermin like Joseph?

  His door was shut, but Anyanwu opened it with a single blow of her paw. There was a hoarse sound of surprise from inside. Then, as she bounded into the room, something plucked at her forelegs, and she went sliding on chin and chest to jam her face against his washstand. It hurt, but she could ignore the pain. What she could not ignore was the fear. She had hoped to surprise him, catch him before he could use his ability. She had even hoped that he could not stop her while she was in a nonhuman form. Now, she gave her tearing, coughing roar of anger and of fear that she might fail.

  For an instant, her legs were free. Perhaps she had frightened him into losing control. It did not matter. She leaped, claws extended, as though to the back of a running deer.

  Joseph screamed and threw his arms up to shield his throat. At the same moment, he controlled her legs again. He was inhumanly quick in his desperation. Anyanwu knew that because she was inhumanly quick all the time.

  Sensation left her legs, and she almost toppled off him. She seized a hold with her teeth, sinking them into one of his arms, tearing away flesh, meaning to get at the throat.

  Feeling returned to her legs, but suddenly she could not breathe. Her throat felt closed, blocked somehow.

  Instantly, she located the blockage, opened a place beneath it—a hole in her throat through which to breathe. And she got his throat between her teeth.

  Utterly desperate, he jammed his fingers in the newly-made breathing hole.

  At another time with other prey, she might have collapsed at the sudden, raw agony. But now the image of her dead son was before her, and her daughter nearly dead in the same way. What if he had merely closed their throats as he had just closed hers? She might never have known for sure. He might have gotten away with it.

  She ripped his throat out.

  He was dying when she gave way to her own pain. He was too far gone to hurt her any more. He died with soft bubbling noises and much bleeding as she lay across him reviving herself, mending herself. She was hungry. Great God, she was hungry. The smell of blood filled her nostrils as she restored her normal breathing ability, and the smell and the flesh beneath her tormented her.

  She got up quickly and loped down the narrow stairs, down the main stairs. There, she hesitated. She wanted food before she changed again. She was sick with hunger now. She would be mad with it if she had to change to order food.

  Luisa came into the house, saw her, and stopped. The old woman was not afraid of her. There was none of that teasing fear smell to make her change swiftly before she lost her head.

  “Is he dead?” the old woman asked.

  Anyanwu lowered her cat head in what she hoped would be taken for a nod.

  “Good riddance,” Luisa said. “Are you hungry?”

  Two more quick nods.

  “Go into the dining room. I’ll bring food.” She went through the house and out toward the kitchen. She was a good, steady, sensible friend. She did more than sewing for her keep. Anyanwu would have kept her if she had done nothing at all. But she was so old. Over seventy. Soon some frailty that Anyanwu could not make a medicine for would take her life and another friend would be gone. People were temporary. So temporary.

  Disobeying orders, Iye and Helen came in through the front door and saw Anyanwu, still bloody from her kill, and not yet gone to the dining room. If not for the presence of the child, Anyanwu would have roared her anger and discomfort at Iye. She did not like having her children see her at such a time. She loped away down the hall to the dining room. Iye stayed where she was, but allowed Helen to follow Anyanwu. Anyanwu, struggling with fear smell, blood smell, hunger, and anger, did not notice the child until they were both in the dining room. There, wearily, Anyanwu lay down on a rug before the cold fireplace. Fearlessly, the child came to sit on the rug beside her.

  Anyanwu looked up, knowing that her face was smeared with blood and wishing she had cleaned herself before she came downstairs. Cleaned herself and left her daughter in the care of someone more reliable.

  Helen stroked her, fingered her spots, caressed her as though she were a large house cat. Like most children born on the plantation, she had seen Anyanwu change her shape many times. She was as accepting of the leopard now as she had been of the black dog and the white man named Warrick who had to put in an occasional appearance for the sake of the neighbors. Somehow, under the child’s hands, Anyanwu began to relax. After a while, she began to purr.

  “Agu,” the little girl said softly. This was one of the few words of Anyanwu’s language Helen knew. It meant simply, “leopard.” “Agu,” she repeated. “Be this way for Doro. He wouldn’t dare hurt us while you’re this way.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  DORO RETURNED A MONTH after Joseph Toler’s grisly corpse had been buried in the weed patch that had once been a slaves’ graveyard, and Stephen Ifeyinwa Mgbada had been buried in ground that had once been set aside for the master and his family. Joseph would be very lonely in his slave plot. No one else had been buried as a slave since Anyanwu bought the plantation.

  Doro arrived knowing throu
gh his special senses that both Joseph and Stephen were dead. He arrived with replacements—two boy children no older than Helen. He arrived unannounced and walked through the front door as though he owned the house.

  Anyanwu, unaware of his presence, was in the library writing out a list of supplies needed for the plantation. So much was purchased now instead of homemade. Soap, ordinary cloth, candles—even some medicines purchased ready-made could be trusted, though sometimes not for the purposes their makers intended. And of course, new tools were needed. Two mules had died and three others were old and would soon need replacing. Field hands needed shoes, hats. …It was cheaper to have people working in the fields bringing in large harvests than it was to have them making things that could be bought cheaply elsewhere. That was especially important here, where there were no slaves, where people were paid for their work and supplied with decent housing and good food. It cost more to keep people decently. If Anyanwu had not been a good manager, she would have had to return to the sea much more often for the wearisome task of finding and robbing sunken vessels, then carrying away gold and precious stones—usually within her own body.

  She was adding a long column of figures when Doro entered with the two little boys. She turned at the sound of his footsteps and saw a pale, lean, angular man with lank, black hair and two fingers missing from the hand he used to lower himself into the armchair near her desk.

  “It’s me,” he said wearily. “Order us a meal, would you? We haven’t had a decent one for some time.”

  How courteous of him to ask her to give the order, she thought bitterly. Just then, one of her daughters came to the door, stopped, and looked at Doro with alarm. Anyanwu was in her youthful female shape, after all. But Edward Warrick was known to have a handsome, educated black mistress.

  “We’ll be having supper early,” Anyanwu told the girl. “Have Rita get whatever she can ready as quickly as possible.”

  The girl vanished obediently, playing her role as a maid, not knowing the white stranger was only Doro.

  Anyanwu stared at Doro’s latest body wanting to scream at him, order him out of her house. It was because of him that her son was dead. He had let the snake loose among her children. And what had he brought with him this time? Young snakes? God, she longed to be rid of him!

  “Did they kill each other?” Doro asked her, and the two little boys looked at him wide-eyed. If they were not young snakes, he would teach them to crawl. Clearly, he did not care what was said before them.

  She ignored Doro. “Are you hungry now?” she asked the boys.

  One nodded, a little shy. “I am!” the other said quickly.

  “Come with me then,” she said. “Rita will give you bread and peach preserve.” She noticed that they did not look to Doro for permission to leave. They jumped up, followed her, and ran out to the kitchen when she pointed it out to them. Rita would not be pleased. It was enough, surely, to ask her to rush supper. But she would feed the children and perhaps send them to Luisa until Anyanwu called for them. Sighing, Anyanwu went back to Doro.

  “You were always one to overprotect children,” he commented.

  “I only allow them to be children for as long as they will,” she said. “They will grow up and learn of sorrow and evil quickly enough.”

  “Tell me about Stephen and Joseph.”

  She went to her desk, sat down, and wondered whether she could discuss this calmly with him. She had wept and cursed him so many times. But neither weeping nor cursing would move him.

  “Why did you bring me a man without telling me what he could do?” she asked quietly.

  “What did he do?”

  Anyanwu told him, told him everything, and ended with the same falsely calm question. “Why did you bring me a man without telling me what he could do?”

  “Call Margaret,” Doro said, ignoring her question. Margaret was the daughter who had married Joseph.

  “Why?”

  “Because when I brought Joseph here, he couldn’t do anything. Not anything. He was just good breeding stock with the potential to father useful children. He must have had a transition in spite of his age, and he must have had it here.”

  “I would have known. I’m called here whenever anyone is sick. And there were no signs that he was approaching transition.”

  “Get Margaret. Let’s talk to her.”

  Anyanwu did not want to call the girl. Margaret had suffered more than anyone over the killings, had lost both the beautiful, worthless husband she had loved, and the younger brother she had adored. She had not even a child to console her. Joseph had not managed to make her pregnant. In the month since his and Stephen’s death, the girl had become gaunt and solemn. She had always been a lively girl who talked too much and laughed and kept people around her amused. Now, she hardly spoke at all. She was literally sick with grief. Recently, Helen had taken to sleeping with her and following her around during the day, helping her with her work or merely keeping her company. Anyanwu had watched this warily at first, thinking that Margaret might resent Helen as the cause of Joseph’s trouble—Margaret was not in the most rational of moods—but this was clearly not the case. “She’s getting better,” Helen told Anyanwu confidentially. “She was by herself too much before.” The little girl possessed an interesting combination of ruthlessness, kindness, and keen perception. Anyanwu hoped desperately Doro would never notice her. But the older girl was painfully vulnerable. And now, Doro meant to tear open wounds that had only just begun to heal.

  “Let her alone for a while, Doro. This has hurt her more than it’s hurt anyone else.”

  “Call her, Anyanwu, or I will.”

  Loathing him, Anyanwu went to find Margaret. The girl did not work in the fields as some of Anyanwu’s children did, thus she was nearby. She was in the washhouse sweating and ironing a dress. Helen was with her, sprinkling and rolling other clothing.

  “Leave that for a while,” Anyanwu told Margaret. “Come in with me.”

  “What is it?” Margaret asked. She put one iron down to heat and, without thinking, picked up another.

  “Doro,” Anyanwu said softly.

  Margaret froze, holding the heavy iron motionless and upright in the air. Anyanwu took it from her hand and put it down on the bricks of the hearth far from the fire. She moved the other two irons away from where they were heating.

  “Don’t try to iron anything,” she told Helen. “I have enough of a bill for cloth now.”

  Helen said nothing only watched as Anyanwu led Margaret away.

  Outside the washhouse, Margaret began to tremble. “What does he want with me? Why can’t he leave us alone?”

  “He will never leave us alone,” Anyanwu said flatly.

  Margaret blinked, looked at Anyanwu. “What shall I do?”

  “Answer his questions—all of them, even if they are personal and offensive. Answer and tell him the truth.”

  “He scares me.”

  “Good. There is very much to fear. Answer him and obey him. Leave any criticizing or disagreeing with him to me.”

  There was silence until just before they reached the house. Then Margaret said, “We’re your weakness, aren’t we? You could outrun him for a hundred more years if not for us.”

  “I’ve never been content without my own around me,” Anyanwu said. She met the girl’s light brown eyes. “Why do you think I have all these children? I could have husbands and wives and lovers into the next century and never have a child. Why should I have so many except that I want them and love them? If they were burdens too heavy for me, they would not be here. You would not be here.”

  “But … he uses us to make you obey. I know he does.”

  “He does. That’s his way.” She touched the smooth, red-brown skin of the girl’s face. “Nneka, none of this should concern you. Go and tell him what he wants to hear, then forget about him. I have endured him before. I will survive.”

  “You’ll survive until the world ends,” said the girl solemnly. “You and
him.” She shook her head.

  They went into the house together and to the library where they found Doro sitting at Anyanwu’s desk looking through her records.

  “For God’s sake!” Anyanwu said with disgust.

  He looked up. “You’re a better businesswoman than I thought with your views against slavery,” he said.

  To her amazement, the praise reached her. She was not pleased that he had gone snooping through her things, but she was abruptly less annoyed. She went to the desk and stood over him silently until he smiled, got up, and took his armchair again. Margaret took another chair and sat waiting.

  “Did you tell her?” Doro asked Anyanwu.

  Anyanwu shook her head.

  He faced Margaret. “We think Joseph may have undergone transition while he was here. Did he show any signs of it?”

  Margaret had been watching Doro’s new face, but as he said the word transition, she looked away, studied the pattern of the oriental rug.

  “Tell me about it,” said Doro quietly.

  “How could he have?” demanded Anyanwu. “There was no sign!”

  “He knew what was happening,” Margaret whispered. “I knew too because I saw it happen to … to Stephen. It took much longer with Stephen though. For Joe it came almost all at once. He was feeling bad for a week, maybe a little more, but nobody noticed except me. He made me promise not to tell anyone. Then one night when he’d been here for about a month, he went through the worst of it. I thought he would die, but he begged me not to leave him alone or tell anyone.”

  “Why?” Anyanwu demanded. “I could have helped you with him. You’re not strong. He must have hurt you.”

  Margaret nodded. “He did. But … he was afraid of you. He thought you would tell Doro.”

  “It wouldn’t have made much sense for her not to,” Doro said.

  Margaret continued to stare at the rug.

  “Finish,” Doro ordered.

  She wet her lips. “He was afraid. He said you killed his brother when his brother’s transition ended.”

  There was silence. Anyanwu looked from Margaret to Doro. “Did you do it?” she asked frowning.