Changer's Daughter (64 page)

“I do,” the Changer says. “We must be ready for the prospect.”

And so it is a solemn, intense group who mounts the ladder to the roof and sets their offerings on Oya’s altar. These are much the same as before, though Shango has added some pretty trinkets of his own. He has also brought a
bata
drum with him and, since he cannot dance, plans to beat accompaniment.

“It is Shango’s drum,” he explains, “and I need to remember Shango’s responsibilities.”

Aduke, herself, is rather nervous, for her place will be with Oya at the center of the dance. The men, including Katsuhiro but excepting the Changer, will dance around the edges.

Despite the large meal Anson had insisted on preparing earlier in the evening, Aduke feels empty and afraid. As on the day of the duel, she feels as if the gods are looking down on her, watching and judging. She shivers.

“Cold?” Oya asks, coming to hug her. “You’ll warm up when we start dancing. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

And so, to the steady beat of the
bata
drum, they begin as they did before. In raised voices they sing Oya’s praise names, thanking her for her generosity, telling her that the crisis has ended, asking her to lower the wall of wind and let her people go out into the world and spread the news of her greatness.

They dance for hours, never relenting, never ceasing in their praise. This time the deeper voices of the men join them, husky and rich, making the women’s voices seem lighter and sweeter by comparison.

The stars wheel above. The moon, her light distorted by the wind shroud about the city, slowly rises. Even when Aduke has long since forgotten that her feet could feel anything but swollen and sore, that there is any motion outside of the shuffling bounce of the dance, still the wind continues to hold the city in her arms.

Then a new voice joins the ones already raised, a voice speaking Yoruban that is vaguely archaic, but still understandable, a male voice whose intonation is one of command, not entreaty. It is the Changer.

“Enough of this nonsense! We have been polite to you. Be polite to us. We have humored your vanity. We have thanked you for your assistance. Now release your hold on these people, people who will slowly starve, who will cease to feel wonder but will instead feel hate, people who will no longer view you as a protecting mother, but who will come to fear you as the cruelest of jailers. Release this city. Drop your wall, or you shall deal with me!”

Aduke turns her head, moving it slowly on a neck grown sore and tired, and sees that the Changer has risen to his feet. She wonders what he is that he should speak so to the wind. Then her attention is drawn by something else, a miniature cyclone above the altar, a form that has no mouth but nevertheless speaks.

“Why should I grant this?” it howls. “I would be no less kind to these people than they are to each other. Let all within my hold acknowledge me, call me goddess and patron, then I will bring them food. I will shower them with rain. Within my loving hold they will build a paradise, knowing that the divine is not far and uncaring, but near and nurturing.”

One by one, the athanors’ voices fall silent. Aduke stops singing aloud, but her lips still move through the praises, afraid what might happen to her if she stops.

“You are not divine,” the Changer replies, “any more than I am.”

“Brother of the Sea, Ancient, Changer,” the wind retorts. “If they knew you, they would call you divine.”

“Would that make me so?”

The wind howls in fury. “I am the wind!”

“You are one wind.”

“I can hold these people for my own!”

“I can stop you, and I will.”

“Try it!”

“Wait!”

Aduke hardly realizes that she has spoken until the word escapes her lips. The Changer looks at her, and she is certain that there is a faint smile on his lips.

“Yes?”

“Must you? I’m so very tired of fighting, of watching fighting, of all of this. What is that?” she points to the swirling cyclone. “Is that Oya, or is it another creature like you?”

“It is not Oya,” the Changer replies. “It is an athanor, a rare but powerful type. When your mentor called up a wind, she thought it was her own sorcery that shaped the wall, but because she drew upon your latent powers, she used charms that spoke to the listening winds.”

Oya nods. “What he says is true. I did not suspect that I had done more than use our powers to create a sorcerous wind until the Changer warned me otherwise.”

“Innocent!” hisses the wind. “I am far older than you, older than the human form who think themselves so wise.”

“Not older than me,” the Changer says, “or so I believe.”

“Wait!” Eddie says, unconsciously echoing Aduke even in intonation. “Is this a natural? I thought wind elementals were just legend!”

“I am the wind!” the cyclone whispers. Then when the Changer glowers at it, it rephrases the statement. “I am a wind!”

“It is a natural,” the Changer says. “In the old days sorcerers would sometimes bind them, giving birth to the legends of Aeolus and his bag of winds, and of weather workers. Many were slain in those days, and those who remained became wild and shy. Don’t you recall?”

“I have never been a wizard,” Eddie says, “and such claims seemed exaggeration to me.”

“They are not,” the wind protests. “I am a wind. I have sisters in waters, in trees, in great old rocks. Only the fauns and satyrs have maintained our memories green.”

Eddie shakes his head in disbelief. “I knew—had heard of—the dryads. I thought that even that was an exaggeration.”

“And you are old,” the Changer says, “for a human form, but not old compared to the Earth.”

“Surely you don’t want a city!” Katsuhiro protests, his beard blown askew by the swirling wind. “I have some small wind magic of my own. I am sure that winds don’t want cities.”

“Small magics you have,” the wind agrees. “Farts.”

Aduke giggles nervously and feels the wind’s attention drawn to her. She stiffens, falls silent, but it is too late.

“Give this one to me,” the wind says. “She sings well and with conviction. Give her to me, and she shall be my chief priestess.”

Oya steps forward. “We do not give people away!”

“I hadn’t noticed,” the wind whistles snidely. “What else is war but the giving of people to death?”

Aduke puts a restraining hand on Oya’s arm. “Wind? Do you really want to be worshiped?”

“I want to be,” the voice agrees. Something like a hand tickles Aduke’s face.

“Why?”

“I am the... a wind!”

“But what good will worship do you?”

“I...”

Aduke takes advantage of the hesitation to charge forward. “My husband wanted power and lost everything for it. This man called Shango wanted power and was crippled for it. What is worship if not a form of power? You don’t need it to sustain yourself, do you?”

“No! I am a wind!”

“What good does power do anyone—especially power for no reason but for having power?” Aduke demands.

“I am a wind.”

“Would you be less a wind if you were not worshiped?”

“Everyone would forget I am a wind!”

“I would know, the Changer has never forgotten, these gathered here can tell their fellows. You are known now. How will worship change that?”

“I am... a... I have always been a... I have always been wind. I have so long been a-lone. These days many eyes have looked at me. I have not been alone, invisible, breathed but unacknowledged. I am a-lone.”

“So am I,” Aduke whispers. “My baby is gone. My husband is mad. I cannot tell my sisters what I now know to be true. I am a-lone, too. You spoke of your sisters. Can I be your sister?”

“You are a-lone?”

Aduke realizes she is crying, but she can’t stop.

“I am terribly alone, wind. I have no son, no husband, no father or mother. Knowledge sets me apart from my kinfolk. I am the one mortal among those who are almost gods. You are rich in un-aloneness compared to me.”

Aduke notices Oya looking at her, big eyes both sorrowful and proud, but there is no time to wonder what Oya thinks now.

“Poor child,” the wind whispers. “Be my priestess, and I will make you ruler of this city and many others. You will be first among mortals and honored by athanor.”

“No!” Aduke chokes around a sob. “That is a madness and a special kind of a-loneness. Do you really pity me?”

“Yes.”

“Then be my friend. Walk with me in the market. Touch my cheek, pat my hand, carry my laughter, dry my tears. Then I won’t be alone and neither”—she pauses, looks where the eyes would be if a cyclone had eyes—“neither would you.”

“I would not be a-lone. I would be a wind. I am a wind.” The soft words rush over each other as if spoken by three sets of lips with one mind behind them. “My sisters are far away. Most flit through distant crags, over lonely ocean, afraid of the bags. You would not let a wizard bag me?”

“Never!” Aduke says fiercely, not knowing how she could keep such a promise, but knowing that she would.

“Should we let the city go?”

“I think so. Many of these people are separated from those they love. Many are afraid. Let them go. You can walk with me instead of being worshiped by those who fear you.”

The wind sighs. “I could be a goddess. You could be honored.”

“If I was your friend,” Aduke says firmly, “that would be honor enough. Nothing can make you a goddess—ask Shango.”

“A friend,” the wind whistles. “Why not? Maybe later, we will be goddesses together.”

And felt as a popping of ears, the wind wall about the city of Monamona falls. There is a tremendous stillness, then the westward beating of the harmattan resumes.

Aduke raises her hand to shield her eyes from the dust and feels a gentle breeze coasting over her body, driving away the dirt and heat, leaving her deliciously comfortable.

“Let me, sister,” the wind says softly. “I will protect you who are my friend.”

Aduke nods thanks and only then does she find the courage to face the six athanor who have been listening to this strange conversation. The Changer is the first to break the silence.

“I’m very pleased,” he says. “I’ve never found it productive to fight against the wind.”

I can govern the United States or I can govern my daughter Alice, but I can’t do both.

—Theodore Roosevelt

T
he glossy program in Arthur’s hands reads: “Pan: A Musical Experience.” The fancy titles are printed over a photograph of Tommy Thunderburst playing the lyre. He is wearing nothing but a leopard skin and a vine wreath. Adoring females with wild hair, clad only in strategically placed vine leaves, cling to his legs or bite into huge, dark purple grapes. In the background, fauns play accompaniment on their syrinxes and satyrs dance or drink or leer at the girls.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Arthur mutters to Chris.

The human just grins at him. “My friends can’t believe I have front-row tickets to this show. It’s the hottest concert going right now. Those who don’t want to hear Tommy want to get a look at the fauns and satyrs so they can brag that they saw through the stage makeup.”

Arthur moans softly. “I can’t believe that Lil and Tommy insisted on using them after all the trouble Georgios and his buddies caused.”

Chris’s grin doesn’t fade. “From what little I know about both Lil and Tommy, the risk would be irresistible.”

“That’s true enough.”

Arthur looks over his shoulder, back around the Pit, Albuquerque’s premier sport’s arena and concert facility. Every one of the seats is packed, the place aswarm with moving bodies, reeking with the odors of marijuana, alcohol, and human sweat. Idly, he wonders just how many ordinances are being violated here tonight.

“I do wish,” he continues, “that the theriomorphs had accepted Tommy and Lil’s offer of a box. We would have been safer there.”

Chris shakes his head. “This”—he gestures to the front row seats—“is exactly what they wanted—a chance to experience a concert up close and personal. In a box, you might as well be at home watching on the video screen. That’s what lots of the folks in the back are going to be doing anyhow.”

“I just hope that Lovern and his team can maintain their illusions,” Arthur says, glancing over to where Lovern, seated beside Louhi, is deep in conversation with Bronson and Rebecca Trapper. The sasquatches had driven down with Monk and Hiero, two of the
tengu
. They are disguised, courtesy of a temporary illusion—the trouble with the satyrs had left no time to make permanent amulets—to look like two very tall African-American humans.

Louhi, for her part, is visiting quite socially with a young woman—not one of their own party, Arthur notes nervously. Since the women must shout to be heard over the general hubbub, he is able to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“I just love your hair,” the young woman is saying. “It’s so cool! Where did you get it done?”

“My sister did it,” Louhi answers.

“Wow! Does she have a salon?”

“No. She’s still... in school.”

“Around here?”

“No, she lives on a ranch in Colorado.”

Shahrazad’s sister
, Arthur thinks, shaking his head slightly. No one knows what passed between the young coyote and the sorceress, but whatever it was, Louhi no longer hates Shahrazad—as her maintaining the outlandish hair coloring demonstrates. Louhi still may not be acknowledged as the Changer’s daughter, but apparently being Shahrazad’s sister means something special.

Maybe,
he thinks cynically,
this is simply Louhi’s newest attempt to get a hook into the Changer, just like maybe her agreeing to work with Lovern is merely a way to get an inside track on athanor politics and to win her way back into the Accord. She must know that there are those of us who aren’t as ready as Lovern to forget the werewolf Lupé’s death. Flowers in her hair or not, I’m not ready to trust Louhi quite yet.

Louhi’s apparent change of heart is hardly the biggest revelation of the past few days. Arthur has spent hours on the phone or writing e-mail, bringing Eddie up-to-date on events in the U.S. and learning what had happened in Nigeria. Shango’s ambitions hadn’t surprised him—athanor are far from immune to ambition—but the confirmation that there are indeed wind naturals has shaken him deeply.