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"I won't take her from you," Doro said quietly.
Isaac nodded. "If you did, I wouldn't last long." He rubbed his chest. "There's something wrong with my
heart. She makes a medicine for it."
"With your heart!"
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"She takes care of it. She says she doesn't like being a widow."
"I . . . thought she might be helping you a little."
"She was helping me 'a little' twenty years ago. How many children have I gotten for you in the past
twenty years?"
Doro said nothing. He watched Isaac without expression.
"She's helped both of us," Isaac said.
"What do you want?" Doro asked.
"Her life." Isaac paused, but Doro said nothing. "Let her live. She'll marry again after a while. She always
has. Then you'll have more of her children. She's a breed unto herself, after all. Something even you've
never seen before."
"I had another healer once."
"Did she live to be three hundred? Did she bear dozens of children? Was she able to change her shape
at will?"
"He. And no to all three questions. No."
"Then keep her. If she annoys you, ignore her for a while. Ignore her for twenty years or thirty. What
difference would it make to you or to her? When you go back to her, she'll have changed in one way
or another. But, Doro, don't kill her. Don't make the mistake of killing her."
"I don't want or need her any longer."
"You're wrong. You do. Because left alone, she won't die or allow herself to be killed. She isn't
temporary. You haven't accepted that yet. When you do, and when you take the trouble to win her back,
you'll never be alone again."
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
Isaac stood up, went to the table to look down on Doro. "If I don't know the two of you and your
needs, who does? She's exactly right for you not so powerful that you would have to worry about her,
yet powerful enough to take care of herself and of others on her own. You might not see each other for
years at a time, but as long as both of you are alive, neither of you will be alone."
Doro had begun to watch Isaac with greater interest, causing Isaac to wonder whether he had really
been too set in his ways to see the woman's value.
"You said you knew about Nweke's father," Doro said.
Isaac nodded. "Anyanwu told me. She was so angry and frustrated I think she had to tell someone."
"How do you feel about it?"
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"What difference does that make?" Isaac demanded. "Why bring it up now?"
"Answer."
"All right." Isaac shrugged. "I said I knew you and her so I wasn't surprised at what you'd done.
You're both stubborn, vengeful people at times. She's kept you angry and frustrated for years. You tried
to get even. You do that now and then, and it only fuels her anger. The only person I pity is the man,
Thomas."
Doro lifted an eyebrow. "He ran. He sided with her. He had outlived his usefulness."
Isaac heard the implied threat and faced Doro with annoyance. "Do you really think you have to do
that?" he asked quietly. "I'm your son, not wild seed, not sick, not stranded halfway through transition. I
could never hate you or run from you no matter what you did, and I'm one of the few of your children
who could have made a successful escape. Did you think I didn't know that? I'm here because I want to
be." Deliberately, Isaac extended his hand to Doro. Doro stared at him for a moment, then gave a long
sigh and clasped the large, calloused hand in his own briefly, harmlessly.
For a time, they sat together in relaxed silence, Doro getting up once to put another log on the fire. Isaac
let his thoughts go back to Anyanwu, and it occurred to him that what he had said of himself might also
be true of her. She might be another of the very few people who could escape Doro the way she could
change her form and travel anywhere . . . Perhaps that was one of the things that bothered Doro about
her. Though it shouldn't have.
Doro should have let her go wherever she chose, do whatever she chose. He should only see her now
and then when he was feeling lonely, when people died and left him, as everyone but her had to leave
him. She was a healer in more ways than Doro seemed to understand. Nweke's father had probably
understood. And now, in her pain, no doubt Nweke understood. Ironically, Anyanwu herself often
seemed not to understand. She thought the sick came to her only for her medicines and her knowledge.
Within herself, she had something she did not know she had.
"Nweke will be a better healer than Anyanwu could ever be," Doro said as though responding to Isaac's
thoughts. "I don't think her mind reading will cripple her."
"Let Nweke become whatever she can," Isaac said wearily. "If she's as good as you think she'll be, then
you'll have two very valuable women. You'd be a damned fool to waste either of them."
Nweke began screaming again hoarse, terrible sounds.
"Oh God," Isaac whispered.
"Her voice will soon be gone at that rate," Doro said. Then, offhandedly, "Do you have any more of
those cakes?"
Isaac knew him too well to be surprised. He got up to get the plate of fruit-filled Dutcholijkoecks that
Anyanwu had made earlier. It was rare for another person's pain to disturb Doro. If the girl seemed to be
dying, he would be concerned that good seed was about to be lost. But if she were merely in agony, it
did not matter. Isaac forced his thoughts back to Anyanwu.
"Doro?" He spoke so softly that the girl's screams almost drowned his single word. But Doro looked up.
He held Isaac's gaze, not questioningly or challengingly, not with any reassurance or compassion. He only [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]