Wild Seed Read Online Free PDF Page A

realize how much her small compliment pleased him—how 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 nonsense—as 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 gone—like 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 here—from 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 path—nothing to confuse Anyanwu's sensitive ears. Several times as they moved along at the pace she set—a swift walk—she 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