Free Seed to Harvest: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster (Patternist) by Octavia E. Butler Page B

Anyanwu. “You might have been like me, having one ordinary child after another.”
    Doro shrugged and changed the subject. “You must take your daughter’s son to meet that girl when he is feeling better. The girl’s age is wrong, but she is still a little younger than Okoye. Perhaps they will comfort each other.”
    “They are kinsmen!”
    “They will not know that unless you tell them, and you should be silent once more. They have only each other, Anyanwu. If they wish, they can marry after the customs of their new land.”
    “And how is that?”
    “There is a ceremony. They pledge themselves to each other before a”—he said an English word, then translated—“a priest.”
    “They have no family but me, and the girl does not know me.”
    “It does not matter.”
    “It will be a poor marriage.”
    “No. I will give them land and seed. Others will teach them to live in their new country. It is a good place. People need not stay poor there if they will work.”
    “Children of mine will work.”
    “Then all will be well.”
    He left her and she wandered around the deck looking at the ship and the sea and the dark line of trees on shore. The shore seemed very far away. She watched it with the beginnings of fear, of longing. Everything she knew was back there deep within those trees through strange forests. She was leaving all her people in a way that seemed far more permanent than simply walking away.
    She turned away from the shore, frightened of the sudden emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at the men, some black, some white, as they moved about the deck doing work she did not understand. The yellow-haired white man came to smile at her and stare at her breasts until she wondered whether he had ever seen a woman before. He spoke to her slowly, very distinctly.
    “Isaac,” he said pointing to his chest. “Isaac.” Then he jabbed a finger toward her, but did not touch her. He raised his bushy pale eyebrows questioningly.
    “Isaac?” she said stumbling over the word.
    “Isaac.” He slapped his chest. Then he pointed again. “You?”
    “Anyanwu!” she said understanding. “Anyanwu.” She smiled.
    And he smiled and mispronounced her name and walked her around the deck naming things for her in English. The new language, so different from anything she had ever heard, had fascinated her since Doro began teaching it to her. Now she repeated the words very carefully and strove to remember them. The yellow-haired Isaac seemed delighted. When finally, someone called him away, he left her reluctantly.
    The loneliness returned as soon as he was gone. There were people all around her, but she felt completely alone on this huge vessel at the edge of endless water. Loneliness. Why should she feel it so strongly now? She had been lonely since she realized she would not die like other people. They would always leave her—friends, husbands, children. …She could not remember the face of her mother or her father.
    But now, the solitude seemed to close in on her as the waters of the sea would close over her head if she leaped into them.
    She stared down into the constantly moving water, then away at the distant shore. The shore seemed even farther away now, though Doro had said the ship was not yet under way. Anyanwu felt that she had moved farther from her home, that already perhaps she was too far away ever to return.
    She gripped the rail, eyes on the shore. What was she doing, she wondered. How could she leave her homeland, even for Doro? How could she live among these strangers? White skins, yellow hairs—what were they to her? Worse than strangers. Different ones, people who could be all around her working and shouting, and still leave her feeling alone.
    She pulled herself up onto the rail.
    “Anyanwu!”
    She did not quite hesitate. It was as though a mosquito had whined past her ear. A tiny distraction.
    “Anyanwu!”
    She would leap into the sea. Its waters would take her home, or