Changer's Daughter Read online

  “Damn!” the Changer yells furiously.

  He surges into the air in an almost involuntary shapeshift, turning himself into a jay remarkably like the one who had scolded her at the forest’s edge.

  Then he returns to human form, safely away from the puddle of urine. With a strength that one would not expect in his lean body, he scoops his daughter up by the scruff of her neck.

  Too late, Shahrazad realizes that she has overstepped the limits of what her father will permit. She whimpers repentantly, but her whining does not stop him from cuffing her soundly. Dropping her to the ground, the Changer sends her off in disgrace with a last solid wallop.

  “I am going,” he says to Frank, his voice more gravelly than usual, “to have to do something about her.”

  Katsuhiro never gets off the plane at Lagos airport.

  After Anson pays some heavy bribes to a clerk with a superior attitude, he and Eddie discover that the Japanese had arrived two days before, gone through Customs, and then, to all intents and purposes, vanished.

  Katsuhiro had not arrived at the hotel where they had made him reservations nor had he checked in to any of the hotels that cater to foreign travelers. None of the taxi drivers would admit to having him as a passenger; none of the porters would admit to having carried his luggage.

  Eddie and Anson spend the better part of Katsuhiro’s scheduled day of arrival and the morning of the day after searching for him. Before they depart for Monamona, Anson promises substantial rewards to some shifty men in a darkened room if they can locate the tall, bearded Asian.

  “I am praying,” Anson says to Eddie, no trace of irony in his voice, “that Susano simply let his impulsiveness carry him into Monamona early.”

  “The same way it carried him into Nigeria two days ahead of schedule.” Eddie nods, then frowns. “That would be nice, but I don’t think it’s likely. If that was the case, someone should remember him: a lorry driver, a hotel keeper, a car dealer, a porter.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And think of the trouble we had leaving Monamona. The quarantine for smallpox is getting tighter. If you hadn’t known how much dash to pay and we hadn’t been able to prove we’d been vaccinated, we would have never gotten out. I have trouble believing that Katsuhiro would have been as smooth.”

  “Keep cheering me up, friend,” Anson says glumly, dipping his free hand into a bag of cookies. “My life can use brightness, eh?”

  Eddie doesn’t laugh. “I’m being practical. In case you hadn’t noticed, things are getting out of control.”

  “I had noticed.”

  “Any thoughts about what we do next?”

  Anson licks cookie crumbs off of his fingers. “One, we look for Katsuhiro or any rumor of him in Monamona. Two, we go ahead and have our first meeting with Shango. He and Dakar will argue anyhow. They don’t need Katsuhiro present to do that.”

  “True.” Eddie manages a small chuckle. “You certainly have chosen a contentious group.”

  “Are any of us not contentious?” Anson says. “I think not. Those of us who have survived a lifetime or two have a strong sense of our own worth and of our own territory. Humans go to war over countries established by people they never knew. Our people—we often established the country, eh?”

  “And view those who come into it as interlopers,” Eddie agrees, “even if they have been there for centuries. I really think that’s why so many of us have emigrated to America—there aren’t so many old rivalries.”

  “Not so many”—Anson shakes his head—“but some. Now, whether or not it is true, Dakar has come to identify with the tales that say he was the one who opened the way into Yorubaland for the gods and those who came after them. The first kings of the first city are supposed to be his descendants. Shango’s lineage is old, but not that old. Besides, there are stories that Ogun’s wife left him for Shango.”

  “Really?”

  “True as can be. Her name was Oya. She is called ‘The wife who is fiercer than her husband,’ so I don’t know why warlike Ogun still resents her moving on, but he does.”

  “Was she a real person?”

  Anson shakes his head. “I doubt it, but you know how we athanor can be. Look at good Arthur. He never did half of what legend has attributed to the noble King of England, but now he expects to be treated as if he did it all and more besides. Our once and current king.”

  “He did a great deal,” Eddie says, automatically resenting a slight to his ruler and close friend. “Much of what he really did has been forgotten. No wonder he clings to the legends.”

  “Maybe.” Anson shrugs.

  Eddie suddenly feels guilty. “I haven’t checked in with him for too long. I should e-mail him at least. Do you want me to tell him about Katsuhiro?”

  “Not yet. Let us look for him a while longer.”

  When they are back in their hotel, Eddie finds that both electricity and phone service are working. Since it is late, he has no trouble getting an international connection and downloads his e-mail. He is astonished by the number of messages waiting for him. By the time they have all been transferred, that astonishment has turned to concern.

  Many of the messages are repetitions of an urgent request that Eddie call or at least e-mail. Arthur has not gotten over a primitive belief that many and louder requests will get action faster than one.

  At last Arthur’s messages begin to offer details, and Eddie quickly grasps the import of Lil and Tommy’s plan to use the fauns and satyrs in their stage show.

  His first reaction is a mirror of Arthur’s. There is a good chance that such publicity will at least lead to the discovery that the fauns and satyrs are real. At the very worst, the athanor as a community may be exposed.

  Much of Eddie’s attention and energy for the last fifteen hundred years—as human society became less tolerant of multiple gods and multiple ways of viewing strange happenings—has been spent misdirecting attention from the athanor. Especially during the last two hundred years, ever since science won out over magic as the means of explaining odd events, the athanor have taken care not to draw attention to themselves. Now a rock star and his less-than-scrupulous manager plan to risk all of this for a flamboyant stage show.

  Eddie’s fingers are racing across his computer keyboard, drafting a reply to Arthur, suggesting strategies to counter, even hinting that he might be available for recall, when he suddenly recalls present events.

  His fingers grow still and he stares at the wall of his hotel room. How much does any of this really matter?

  During the last week and more he has been forced to face how much of the world still lives. He has seen people drinking water that in America wouldn’t be given to a pet, children gaunt from malnutrition, and smallpox (which he had believed forever banished) rearing its head once more. In the newspapers he has read the statistics on the spread of AIDS in Africa—a plague that has hit Nigeria very hard because of its lingering tradition of male privilege and polygamous marriages.

  An undercurrent to his and Anson’s searches both for Anson’s friends and for Katsuhiro has been their acceptance that human rights are very delicate things indeed, that all it takes is a few unscrupulous people in power to undermine all the rhetoric and make it no more meaningful than a child’s nursery song.

  Eddie’s hands slip from the keyboard and he rereads the words that he has written as if they had been typed by a stranger. After a moment, he erases that message and types another:

  Arthur - Sorry that things are less than peaceful there. Don’t worry. Most Americans don’t believe anything the entertainment industry does, even if they experience it with their own five senses. Go see the show yourself if you want proof. Just try to keep them from touring internationally since Customs could be a problem. Busy here. Too much to tell now. I’ll try to be better about keeping in touch.

  Eddie.

  After reviewing the message, Eddie sends it. He doesn’t doubt that Arthur is going to be unhappy when he gets it. After a moment he
types another message:

  Chris and Bill - My apologies, but the King is going to be a bit pissy for the next couple of days. Or more than he has been. I append a message I just sent him by way of explanation. Weather the storm. I’m authorizing my banker to put a bonus directly in your accounts. Thanks.

  Eddie.

  Once that message is sent, Eddie links to his bank accounts, arranges for the promised bonus, then arranges for more money to be sent to him in Nigeria. He suspects he’s going to need it before this is over.

  Gazing into his computer screen, he mulls over who else he might contact. Vera is probably getting a less intense version of Arthur’s barrage, so Eddie sends her a brief message encouraging her to stay at work on Atlantis, no matter how much Arthur whines:

  If things do go south, (he continues) that refuge will be worth far more than any soothing you can give to Arthur’s fractured pride. Arthur envisioned that all athanor would want to follow his conservative path toward educating human culture about our existence. Now he knows he’s wrong. When he adjusts, he’ll be at his best again. He’ll adjust faster with a minimum of hand-holding. Trust me. I append a copy of the message I sent him, so you’ll understand why he’s in a foul mood.

  Eddie.

  This sent, he drafts a nearly identical message to Jonathan Wong, the athanor to whom Arthur is certain to turn for legal counsel. Feeling that he’s covered all the bases, Eddie logs off.

  When he tucks the computer into its case, he has a feeling that he won’t be using it very often over the next few days. Problems here promise to need more immediate solutions—ones that will waste blood and sweat, not electrons.

  Katsuhiro does not get his cellmate talking all at once, but sharing the drinking water that has been liberally supplied for him, treating his wounds, and sympathizing with his misery finally gets the other man to open up.

  The man’s name is Adam. He is a Christian, a member of one of the ecstatic religious sects that blend African religious practices with Christian doctrine. It was after his return from a church service that he had been kidnapped.

  “My wife and I,” Adam says, speaking carefully in his stilted schoolroom English, “come back to our hotel. We go into our rooms and there are men waiting for us. Men w’ guns. They tell us that they want to know about some guests who are coming.”

  “Wait,” Katsuhiro says. “You said, ‘your hotel.’”

  “Yes, yes,” Adam says. “My wife and I, we have a hotel. Not so big but very comfortable. Even some air-conditioning and a backup generator for electricity.”

  “Ah.” Katsuhiro has a bad feeling he knows where this is going, but he needs all the information he can get. “Please, continue.”

  “I tell them this is privileged information, but after they hit me a few times I show them the register.” Adam frowns. “They not find what they want der. I can tell this. So then I know what they want.”

  Adam’s voice drops, becoming so soft that Katsuhiro must bend his head to hear him.

  “There is a man. Strange one. African, very wealthy, but I have no idea where his money come from. When I was at school, he made friends with my father. Later, when I want to start the hotel, he give me a loan. This man have called me some weeks before and say he need to get some rooms at my hotel and that he will need me to do a favor for him, too.

  “I say ‘Of course’ because this man is my benefactor. He tells me that he not want that he staying there told to anyone. I say ‘Of course’—he is a rich man. He not need beggars to follow him. He tell me that a foreign businessman will be coming, too. That he will need special food, special drink. My benefactor say ‘I give you money for this. You order it.’ I say ‘Of course.’”

  Adam pauses for breath. Katsuhiro hands him a plastic cup partially filled with clean, though warm, water.

  “Drink,” he orders. Then, “Your benefactor—what is his name?”

  With the stiff motion of the totally blind, Adam holds out the empty cup so that Katsuhiro can take it.

  “That is one thing they want to know,” he says sadly. “I try not to tell them, even when they beat me. But then they take me to their big boss.”

  Adam shudders, his command of English slipping. “When I tink that the last ting I see is dat man’s ugly face, I am sick. Dat man beat me more. I say nothing. Maybe he know that I hurt too much, ‘cause den he say to me, ‘Adam, you got a pretty wife.’ I get real sick then, ‘cause I have been thinking dat dey leave her at the hotel.

  “The boss man say, ‘Adam, you got a pretty wife. It be real bad if something happened to her.’ I say, ‘If you not hurt Teresa, I tell you everything.’ So he promises, and I tell him. I tell him that my benefactor is Anson A. Kridd. I tell him that he have a big-shot Japanese man coming.”

  Adam falls silent for so long that Katsuhiro must prompt him.

  “Anything else?”

  “Then the boss man laugh at me. He pick up a gun and I tink he gonna shoot me dead, but he jus’ spit into my face and say ‘Good nigger boy.’ Then he say to two guards, ‘Tie him in a chair. I want him to watch me fuck his wife.’”

  Adam is weeping now, tears trailing from his blind eyes. Katsuhiro reaches out, though normally he shies from physical contact with any but his most intimate associates, and puts an arm around him.

  “He make me watch w’ a gun to my head. Den when he done, he kick Teresa to the floor and pick up a gun again. He come and lean into my face, ‘she’s not bad for a nigger bitch. I think I’ll keep her for a while.’”

  Adam is talking fast now, forgetting to keep his voice low.

  “I don’t know, maybe Jesus give me the strength, maybe Ogun, but I get so mad that I forget I’m all beaten up. I go at him, even with the chair tied to my backside and my arms all bound. I hit him in the belly with my head and he falls and I fall on top of him. I try to bite him or crush him. Then the guards pull me off.

  “The boss man he stands up w’ the gun and I tink he gonna shoot me but he jus’ hit me in the face w’ it. That’s the last I see. His face in a snarl like the devil incarnate. Then I not see nothing anymore, nothing but dese lights in my head.”

  Katsuhiro offers Adam more water and while Adam drinks he says:

  “I promise that man will die if I make it out of here.”

  Adam smiles and shakes his head. “You no get out.”

  “Maybe.” Katsuhiro will not share more of his budding plans with the broken man beside him.

  “You tink Teresa still alive?”

  Katsuhiro considers whether or not to tell Adam the truth. If Adam learns that she is alive, his captors have a hold over him, yet ignorance is its own torture. Regis had made certain that Katsuhiro saw the girl... why?

  Adam speaks again. “If she is alive, she’s in hell. I tink dey might make her whore by threatening to hurt me more.”

  Katsuhiro grunts noncommittally.

  “The preacher say dat it wrong to kill yourself, dat you go to hell, but if you livin’ is hurting somebody else, den is it so bad to kill yourself?”

  “In my country,” Katsuhiro says, “it is not wrong to kill yourself if you do so from honor, not from fear.”

  Adam sighs. “I been tinkin’ I know who you mus’ be. You talk English w’ an accent like I been hearing in the movies. Tell me, Oba, is you Anson’s friend, the Japanese businessman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Den you mus’ hate me, ‘cause I why the boss man know you comin’.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Thanks.”

  They sit in silence for a long while, long enough that Katsuhiro decides that Adam must have fallen asleep. He occupies himself thinking of revenge, counting the booted feet that pass the narrow window above, trying to estimate his chances for escape. Then Adam’s voice breaks the silence.

  “I not know if I could kill myself. I have nothing to do it w’. Maybe I jus’ starve. Dey not feed me for so long.”

  “Maybe.” Katsuhiro is well aware how long it
has been since he has eaten. His dreams the night before were haunted by that ham and cheese sandwich—and he doesn’t even like cheese.

  “I not tink I could not eat if they give me even a yam full of worms.” Adam sighs. “Or stale bread w’ mold. My stomach forget what hungry is, but my brain won’t stop.”

  “Yeah,” Katsuhiro pats him. “I know.”

  “Oba,” Adam’s tone is solemn now, “I want to ask you a favor.”

  “Ask.”

  “Kill me.”

  “The trouble is,” the Changer says to Frank MacDonald as they sit over dinner the day after Shahrazad’s encounter with the wolves, “Shahrazad expects me to be there to rescue her.”

  The coyote puppy, sides rounded from her own dinner, thumps her tail sleepily from where she drowses on a rag rug in front of a blazing fire. She has learned not to mind that she must share the space with assorted cats, dogs, and jackalopes, or that the perpetually miserable clouded leopard gets the cushion closest to the blaze where he can dream of the warm rain forests that were once his home.

  “Yes.” Frank twirls some fettucini around his fork. “Her faith in you in unshaken, despite the fact that you haven’t been the one to rescue her from her last two escapades.”

  “I was lucky,” the Changer says, “that I found the griffin the first time or I might have had to intervene. The second time, Hip and Hop had already warned the unicorns where Shahrazad was heading.”

  “Would you have interfered if they hadn’t shown up in time?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the Changer admits.

  “Then Shahrazad is right to count on you.”

  “I’ve wondered if somehow she knows when I am near, even if I haven’t given any indication.”

  “Some of the animals, the dogs in particular,” Frank says, “claim that you have a distinctive scent that underlies whatever form you take. Could Shahrazad be scenting that?”