Changer's Daughter (50 page)

Hip and Hop have launched themselves from the underbrush, pushing her from the human. Now they sit on him, weighing him down, guarding him, preventing Shahrazad from killing him.

Her confused and furious barks do not move the jackalopes, and she is reluctant to attack them—not from fear of their antlers, but because they are her friends.

A wind stirs above, and the eagle-puma lands. It screeches warning at her, refusing to let her kill the man. Shahrazad yaps her frustration, but knows this is an impasse. If she were the Changer, she might be able to challenge these three, but she is just a little coyote.

Behind her, a branch breaks, and she starts, jumping straight into the air as she might when mousing. Then a familiar voice soothes her.

“Easy, Shahrazad. I’m here now, and everything is going to be all right.”

Frank MacDonald’s hand brushes the top of her head as he moves past her to where Wayne lies prone in the dirt.

“Unconscious. You bit him pretty hard.” Gentle Frank raises his hand and hits Wayne solidly on the back of his head. “That will make certain that he stays unconscious.”

Moving more quickly now, he goes to where Pearl snuffles with pain, her soft cries closer to those of a deer than a horse.

Hands steady, Frank checks her over, ending by inspecting her foreleg.

“The rest of the wounds are superficial, but this is a very bad break,” he tells the unicorn. Shahrazad, creeping up beside him, realizes that he is speaking less for the benefit of the nearly unconscious unicorn, than for the rest of them. “But we should be able to treat it, though you’re in for a long spell of recovery. I’ll need more than what I could bring in my little black bag. Is anyone else hurt?”

A wolf bitch has emerged from the wood. Shahrazad recognizes her as the alpha female. In answer to her whine, Frank shakes his head.

“Lupé is dead. Somehow Wayne knew to load with silver. I’ve been careful, but he must have seen something. Who knows how much time he has spent spying on us?”

The bitch whines again, less imploring this time than heartbroken. Shahrazad forgets her fear and, going to her, licks the widow’s ear with a compassionate tongue. The wolf permits the liberty, but her gaze never leaves Frank.

“Revenge is a complicated matter,” he answers, his hands busy beginning to treat Pearl’s injuries. “And will be more rapidly addressed once the wounded are treated. If you want to speed things along, go to the house and bring me back...”

Shahrazad cannot follow the list of medical supplies he rattles off, but the alpha bitch apparently understands. With a defiant howl that turns into a very human wail, she shifts shape, becoming a diminutive, though singularly scruffy, human female.

“Let the griffin carry you,” Frank suggests. “It will be faster. Right now speed could save Pearl’s leg.”

Grunting acquiescence, the alpha female does so. Hip the jackalope sings a short protest.

“I know we’re taking risks,” Frank answers, “but that can’t be helped. I’ve lost one friend today. I won’t let another be crippled.”

Shahrazad bumps her head against Frank’s arm, then takes a tentative lick at the drying blood on Pearl’s flank. The unicorn shivers, and Frank quiets her with a hand to her head.

“The little coyote just saved your life,” he tells her. “She isn’t going to hurt you now. Better get those cuts cleaned before they fester.”

Glad to be able to do something, Shahrazad continues licking, but she does spare a moment to stare accusingly at Frank and then at the still-unconscious Wayne.

“You wonder why the jackalopes didn’t let you kill him, don’t you?” Frank answers. “Because Wayne’s death couldn’t be hidden or easily explained. That would raise trouble—human law officers investigating, perhaps learning more than I want them ever to know. Moreover, with your bite marks on him, some canine would have to pay.

“Accord policy, which in this case is just common sense, is never to cause a death that cannot be hidden or explained by normal means. For Wayne to die here, on my land, killed by a coyote—or a unicorn’s horn, a griffin’s talon, a werewolf’s hand—would cause problems. If Wayne hadn’t shot Lupé, Lupé would have subdued him, and I would have ‘discovered’ him later.”

Shahrazad whines a question.

“No, Lupé wouldn’t have killed him. At least, he would have tried not to. He was a very old werewolf and very wise in avoiding trouble with humans. I’ll miss him.”

The griffin’s return ends conversation. Shahrazad slinks back as Frank begins to straighten Pearl’s shattered leg, cringing each time the unicorn screams. After an interminable period, the broken leg is set. Sun, the gold unicorn, arrives to tend his mate, and Frank can turn his attention to Wayne.

Earlier, when the human had started to come around, Frank had given him a mild tranquilizer. Now the human lies drowsy and muttering on the ground.

“I can’t let you carry him,” Frank says to the griffin, “not in this condition, and getting a horse up here would be a waste of time, not to mention difficult.”

Sun snorts a question.

“No, you stay with Pearl. She’s going to need you. I can carry him if the werewolves will help me load.”

To Shahrazad’s surprise (and she had truly thought she was beyond surprise), Frank begins removing his clothing. The action is so matter of fact that she instantly recognizes what he is about to do. The Changer had done the same thing whenever he had left human form.

She yips laughter and Frank grins in return.

“I have a small gift,” he says. “In fact, I wasn’t born a human. About two thousand years ago, in the Middle East, I was born a camel, and as a camel I attended the birth of a child in a stable. Later, as an auxiliary to the Romans, I watched his short, but brilliant career. It changed my life.”

Saint Francis shifts then, becoming a brown quadruped with a humped back, flat feet, and broad lips. Only his brown eyes with their long lashes look familiar. Shahrazad thumps her tale in approval and applause.

Back at the ranch house, Frank tests Wayne’s reflexes, decides he can handle another dose of sedative, and puts him one of the spare bedrooms. Then he heads for the telephone.

Although the door is locked and the windows shuttered, Shahrazad leaves nothing to chance. Exhausted, she drapes herself across the doorway before collapsing into sleep.

19

Caput gerat lupinum.
(Let his be a wolf’s head.)

—Old English Law

E
ddie spoke softly to her in the Chinese of a court that had vanished long before Jesus Christ was an item, when well-spoken men and women wearing silk practiced politics as subtle and intricate as the designs embroidered on their clothing.

“So the Celestial One has again graced Earth’s poor soil with the caress of her dainty slipper.”

Oya, large of breast and hip, wrapped in layers of brightly patterned cotton print, turns to meet his gaze and smiles.

“You’ve found me out, have you, Eddie?” She speaks the same ancient language, her voice different than the one he had known, reshaped by a broader chest, a flatter nose. “What gave me away? I thought I was doing quite well.”

Eddie shrugs. “Little things. The way you cradle a cup. How you lightly blot your lips when wiping your mouth. A turn of phrase so subtle that even now I cannot place it. I’m not certain that anyone who had not been as intimately associated with you as I once was would have seen the likeness. And, of course, I have been trying to figure out who you were since you admitted to raising the wind. That narrowed the field quite a bit, but still, it was the semblance of my Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven, that told me who you are.”

“Sometimes,” Oya says, “I wonder why we separated. You may be my favorite love over all the long years of my life. I think you are still fond of me, too.”

“I am,” Eddie says, “but Arthur needs me—without me he blunders, and people get hurt. You could not bear my loyalty to him.”

“No,” she says bluntly. “I could not. He is a born ruler, true, but you are too good to be stuck with the role of first follower.”

Eddie shrugs again. They have had this discussion before. It never ends differently. Better to remember the closeness, the delight that they have felt in each other’s company, the friendship they have maintained despite Arthur’s influence.

Oya must have come to the same conclusion, for she changes the subject without surrendering her point.

“Were you surprised to find me here?”

“Very. I thought that you were quite happy with the role of Alice Chun, novelist. What are you doing in Nigeria?”

“It’s a long story, but one I have been looking for an opportunity to tell, since part of it sheds light on our current difficulties. Come into the kitchen with me. I have some Chinese oolong that I have forborne from making lest you remember my fondness for that particular blend.”

“I’d enjoy that,” Eddie replies. “Will we be left alone? Or have you told your Aduke about your past history?”

“Aduke is writing a letter to her absent husband.” A line forms between Oya’s brows. “Then she is taking her turn caring for the little ones. Besides, if we talk Chinese, she will not understand us, even if she runs up here for something.”

“Very well,” Eddie answers. Having dealt with this routine matter of security, he is prepared to listen. “I would love to join you for tea and a tale.”

Oya begins speaking even as she moves around the kitchen, graceful despite her generous figure, putting water on to boil, rinsing the dust from a delicate porcelain teapot, and performing other little domestic tasks.

“Last June at the Lustrum Review,” she says, “I found myself in conversation—argument at times—with Dakar and Anson on the future of Africa. As you well know, they both are devoted to this continent, Dakar particularly to Nigeria, since he was born here. I learned a great deal both about its problems and its potential. I agreed with them that Nigeria, properly handled, could do much for the continent at large.

“The details of our conversation are neither here nor there, but I decided to make a visit. As you know, I am quite skilled in magic. Through various ways and means that I will not bother explaining now, I provided myself with a new shape, a command of several local languages, and identity documents.”

Eddie interrupts. “Pendragon Productions could have handled some of that. That’s part of what you get for your dues.”

Oya dismisses this with a wave of her hand and pours water carefully over the tea leaves.

“I didn’t need your help. In any case, as I recall, you were having troubles of your own at that time. Now, where was I?

“Ah, yes. I came here,” she continues, “illegally and blended into the population without a great deal of difficulty. Although Nigeria does have its shortcomings, I began to seriously consider relocating here. Alice Chun is becoming too noticeable, and I have written all the books I want to write—at least for now. Nigeria is rather like America was in the beginning.”

Eddie takes the cup of tea she offers him. “I don’t quite follow you there.”

Oya smiles. “When Europe became so stratified that the local athanor could no longer blend in at the higher levels of society (where so many of us prefer to be) without causing difficulties or having to memorize long genealogies, many came to the Americas, where fortune and reputation was there for the making.”

“True,” Eddie nods.

“Well, Nigeria is like that. It also has the advantage of not being effectively computerized.”

“I’ve learned that it’s rather hard,” Eddie comments, “to maintain computer records when the electricity keeps going out. And with the insects, the humidity, and the constant social and political upheaval. I understand that no one believes the results of the last census.”

“That’s right,” Oya agrees. “Too many groups have too much to gain from declaring that a specific tribe or religion is dominant. Names are a problem, too. Many people maintain different names for different situations. My little Aduke, for example. Do you remember how I introduced her?”

“Aduke Idowu,” Eddie replies promptly.

“And you took that to mean that her first name is ‘Aduke’ and her surname is ‘Idowu.’”

“Isn’t it?” Eddie asks, searching his artificially created memory of Yoruban to find a contradiction.