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glance at Anyanwu, he rushed toward Isaac.
Anyanwu watched the cheering for a moment knew it to be cheering now then stumbled below, and
back to her cabin. There, she found water everywhere. It sloshed on the floor and the bed was sodden.
She stood in it staring helplessly until Doro came to her, saw the condition of the cabin, and took her
away to another somewhat drier one.
"Were you on deck?" he asked her.
She nodded.
"Then you saw."
She turned to stare at him, uncomprehending. "What did I see?"
"The very best of my sons," he said proudly. "Isaac doing what he was born to do. He brought us
through the storm faster than any ship was ever intended to move."
"How?"
"How!" Doro mocked, laughing. "How do you change your shape, woman. How have you lived for
three hundred years?"
She blinked, went to lie down on the bed. Finally, she looked around at the cabin he had brought her to.
"Whose place is this?"
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"The captain's," said Doro. "He'll have to make do with less for a while. You stay here. Rest."
"Are all your sons so powerful?"
He laughed again. "Your mind is leaping around tonight. But that's not surprising, I suppose. My other
sons do other things. None of them manage their abilities as well as Isaac, though."
Anyanwu lay down wearily. She was not especially tired her body was not tired. The strain she had
endured was of a kind that should not have bothered her at all once it was over. It was her spirit that was
weary. She needed time to sleep. Then she needed to go and find Isaac and look at him and see what
she could see beyond the smiling, yellow-haired young man.
She closed her eyes and slept, not knowing whether Doro would lie down beside her or not. It was not
until later, when she awoke alone that she realized he had not. Someone was pounding on her door.
She shook off sleep easily and got up to open the door. The moment she did, a very tall, thin crewman
thrust a semiconscious Isaac through it into her arms.
She staggered for a moment, more from surprise than from the boy's weight. She had caught him
reflexively. Now she felt the cold waxiness of his skin. He did not seem to know her, or even to see her.
His eyes were half open and staring. Without her arms around him, he would have fallen.
She lifted him as though he was a child, laid him on the bed, and covered him with a blanket. Then she
looked up and saw that the thin crewman was still there. He was a green-eyed man with a head that was
too long and bones that seemed about to break through his splotchy, unshaven brown skin. He was a
white man, but the sun had parched him unevenly and he looked diseased. He was one of the ugliest men
Anyanwu had ever seen. And he was one of those who had stood beside Doro during the
storm another son. A much lesser son, if looks mattered. This was one of the sons Doro had ordered
her to avoid. Well, she would willingly avoid him if he would only leave. He had brought her Isaac. Now,
he should go away and let her give the boy what care she could. In the back of her mind, she wondered
over and over what could be wrong with a boy who could speed great ships through the water. What
had happened? Why had Doro not told her Isaac was sick?
Her thought of Doro repeated itself strangely as a kind of echo within her mind. She could see Doro
suddenly or an image of him. She saw him as a white man, yellow-haired like Isaac, and green-eyed
like the ugly crewman. She had never seen Doro as white, had never heard him describe one of his white
bodies, but she knew absolutely that she was seeing him as he had appeared in one of them. She saw the
image giving Isaac to her placing the half-conscious boy into her arms. Then abruptly, wrenchingly, she
saw herself engaged in wild frantic sexual intercourse, first with Isaac, then with this ugly green-eyed man
whose name was Lale. Lale Sachs.
How did she know that?
What was happening!
The green-eyed man laughed, and somehow his grating laughter echoed within her as had the thought of
Doro. Somehow, this man was within her very thoughts!
She lunged at him and thrust him back through the door, her push hard enough to move a much heavier
man. He flew backward out of control, and she slammed the door shut the instant he was through it.
Even so, the terrible link she had with him was not broken. She felt pain as he fell and struck his
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head stunning pain that dropped her to her knees where she crouched dizzily holding her head.
Then the pain was gone. He was gone from her thoughts. But he was coming through the door again,
shouting words that she knew were curses. He seized her by the throat, literally lifted her to her feet by
her neck. He was no weak man, but his strength was nothing compared to her own. She struck him
randomly, as she broke away, and heard him cry out with pain.
She looked at him, and for an instant, she saw him clearly, the too-long face twisted with pain and anger,
its mouth open and gasping, its nose smashed flat and spurting blood. She had hurt him more than she
intended, but she did not care. No one had the right to go tampering with the very thoughts in her mind.
Then the bloody face was gone.
A thing stood before her a being more terrible than any spirit she could imagine. A great, horned, scaly
lizard-thing of vaguely human shape, but with a thick lashing tail and a scaly dog head with huge teeth set
in jaws that could surely break a man's arm.
In terror, Anyanwu transformed herself.
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