Louhi starts. “Human, I think.”
“Then someone must have cared for you because human babies are even more useless than mice. Do you know he didn’t?”
“No.”
“And why aren’t you angry at your mother?”
“I don’t know who she is!”
Shahrazad wags her tail. “You have more knots in your thinking than I have in my coat. Be angry if you want. All I can do is make you not a mouse.”
And, as simple as that, Louhi isn’t a mouse. She’s standing on the table, a slightly soiled towel in one hand. Quickly, she drapes herself, grateful that it’s a big towel. Shahrazad looks up at her and wags her tail in a satisfied fashion.
Louhi gets off the table, and, as she does so, she catches her reflection in one of the windows. She looks as she usually does, a slender, pale blond woman of stark Nordic beauty, but there is one change.
Where Louhi usually deliberately evokes ice, in the form that Shahrazad has given her, the clean, straight sheet of her almost-white hair is embellished with pink and yellow five-petaled flowers, rather like a child’s drawing of a daisy. The flowers are printed directly onto her hair. Amazed, Louhi examines one lock. The color goes through the depth of her hair.
“Pretty,” comes a parting thought from Shahrazad. “I like flowers. Don’t you?”
Shango crawls out of the unconscious darkness, feeling pain humming like a hive of bees: present but dulled so that he can almost ignore it. Someone must have given him a painkiller. With a conscious effort he forces his eyes open and finds Katsuhiro staring down at him. The Japanese’s eyebrows have been burnt away, as have the outer edges of his beard and hair, but otherwise he seems unharmed.
“That was a good fight, Shango,” Katsuhiro says. “You have been keeping in practice.”
“I have,” Shango admits, barely moving his mouth. The left side of his face has been bound up and is suspiciously numb. “There was no advantage to telling you.”
“Here,” says a soft, female voice with just the faintest quavering in it. “Sip this.”
Shango looks and sees Taiwo’s wife offering him a bottle of water. She props him up against a heap of something soft—probably pillows taken from the shelters. As he cautiously swallows a mouthful, he forces himself to look into the human face of the misery he has caused and feels ashamed.
Yoruban myth says that the god-king Shango committed suicide once when he could not face having slain his own followers in a fit of righteous anger. When he rose from the dead, he realized he was one of the orisha. Only Shango himself knows how true that story is. He feels tears hot in his eyes at the thought that he could ever have forgotten a lesson learned at such a price.
“Thank you,” he says, clumsily wiping away the tears. “Thank you.”
Aduke withdraws, and Shango says huskily to Katsuhiro Oba, “I have lost and am prepared to listen to your proposal, Oba-san.”
Katsuhiro nods. “You know you have lost your right leg?”
“Through the thigh,” Shango replies. “And I must live with that and with the scarring of my face for fifty years before I can seek help from a ‘plastic surgeon.’”
“We have cleaned and treated your wounds,” Katsuhiro says, “but even when it is healed your face will be quite hideous. Your leg...”
Shango nods, the painkiller in his blood making him feel distant enough from his own suffering that he can appreciate the cleverness of Katsuhiro’s choice of target. If the leg had been amputated at a joint, an artificial leg would have been much easier to fit. This way, either further trimming must be done—slowing any possible regeneration—or he must live with the deadweight dangling from his hip, a constant reminder of his folly.
Shango suspects he will be quite angry later, but for now he takes refuge in the numbing drug.
“You had a proposal,” he persists.
Katsuhiro looks approving. “Dakar, this is more your business than mine. Would you begin?”
“I could use Anson,” Dakar says, looking around.
“He went to seek Teresa,” Oya explains from where she sits near the gate, “after she shot Regis.”
Shango turns his throbbing head in the direction she had glanced and sees Regis’s corpse crumpled on the ground off to one side of the dueling field. Flies already swarm around the drying blood on the Chief General Doctor’s shirt.
Upon seeing his onetime ally dead, Shango is filled with a weird joy and a sense of being set free. Using disease both to blackmail his opponents and as a means of gaining sympathy and relief money from the first world nations had seemed a good idea when it had first come to him. When Shango had begun to have second thoughts, he could not withdraw lest Regis see his weakness. By then, too, Regis had gathered power and influence of his own.
“Tell me, Dakar,” Shango croaks, “what you propose. I will attend to Anson’s part as well.”
“You know why Anson came to Monamona,” Dakar begins, uneasy in the unaccustomed role of spokesman.
Shango nods painfully and resolves thereafter to lie perfectly still. “To meddle. He always does.”
“Yes, to meddle,” Dakar starts growing angry and instantly is more relaxed. “To meddle for the good of people you and I claim for our own. He wanted to see oil revenues administered for the good of the people rather than being siphoned off by corrupt ministers or used for showy projects.”
“I am, of course,” Shango sadly, “one of those corrupt administrators.”
“You don’t have to be,” Dakar growls. He gestures widely toward the statue of Shango off to one side of the Grove. Presents of gowns, chickens, bitter kola nuts, and yam porridge are heaped at its base. “Join us.”
“What?”
“That’s our proposal,” Dakar says impatiently. “Join us. Give up your ambitions to be president of Nigeria or whatever it is that you want and join us.”
Shango hears a thump. Anson, back in his own typical form and wearing nothing but a pair of briefs (probably stolen from someone’s wash), has jumped down from the fence.
“You don’t even need to give up your ambition,” Anson adds, accepting the pair of trousers that Aduke hands him, “just postpone it for a while.”
Shango frowns. This sounds far too good.
“Why do you want me?” he asks.
“For the same reasons we wanted you before,” Anson says. “You have political connections, followers, influence. You can help us decide who must be bribed, who can be ignored, who must be gently encouraged out of office.”
“I do,” Shango muses, “have something to offer, don’t I?”
“I think so,” Anson says. “Dakar may need convincing.”
“I will,” Dakar agrees.
“And I will be watching,” Katsuhiro adds, “to see that my business associates are not cheated.”
Shango nods slowly. “I expected nothing less. And Eddie, what does he want?”
“Nothing,” Eddie replies. “I’ll be working on this project with Anson—if Arthur can spare me—but I want nothing additional.”
“My intentions,” Oya adds, “are much like Eddie’s.”
“And the Changer?” Shango glances at the ancient who stands leaning back against the statue of Olodumare.
“This is not my business,” the Changer says, “but I have a personal dislike of those who use disease as weapons. If I learn you have returned to such things, I will come after you, and, I promise, there is very little that can infect me.”
Shango turns to Aduke. “And you, lady?”
“Who am I,” she says, “to dictate to those with the powers of gods?”
Shango thinks of the heap of sacrifices at the base of his statue. “A person without those powers,” he says, “is the very person who reminds those with them of our responsibilities.”
“That,” Aduke replies in complete seriousness, “I am fully prepared to do.”
“Shall we return then,” Anson says, “to Oya’s place and discuss this further?”
“What do we do about that?” Katsuhiro gestures toward Regis’s corpse.
In reply, Dakar scoops up the body, then drops it at the base of the makeshift clay statue to Shopona, the King of the World, the King of Hot Water.
“Leave it there,” he says, “as a reminder that none of us, no matter what powers we wield, are gods.”
Forty-eight hours are needed before various loose ends are tied up, ends that must be resolved before the wind wall can be dispelled.
Shango is carried on a litter to his allies. With Dakar ever at his side, he tells them that now is not the time for revolution. He hints that great things are yet to come, that promises made will be fulfilled. Despite his wounds—or perhaps because of them—he succeeds in convincing them.
Regis’s compound must be dismantled and every trace of the deadly viruses that the Chief General Doctor played with eliminated. The Changer demands a role in this, his yellow eyes lighting with a passion few have seen in him before. Anson welcomes his help. Wearing Taiwo’s form and bearing a letter from Shango that tells of Regis’s disgrace, the Spider disbands the private army, paying them off with naira from Regis’s enormous hoard. If later some of the cruelest of the survivors are found dead in mysterious circumstances, no one asks questions.
Most of the sufferers in Regis’s “hospital” have died from neglect or from the smallpox. Those who survive are taken to a clean, well-lighted place where a handful of medical professionals—all vaccinated against the disease—tend to them. There is hope that when the athanor doctor, Garrett Kocchui, can be brought in that he will have some means to repair the scarring, blindness, and other side effects of the virus.
Then there are problems that can be contained, but cannot be so easily resolved.
There is Teresa who, after killing Regis, fled into the tangled streets of Monamona. There Anson found her, brought her to Oya’s floor of the factory, and locked her in a room.
The first time Teresa is let out she sneaks downstairs and nearly kills Kehinde, believing him Taiwo. Currently, she sleeps a dreamless sleep in Oya’s own bedroom, comforted by sweet music and Oya’s gentle singing. Plans are for Garrett Kocchui to tend her as well: to learn if she indeed has contracted AIDS and then to do what he can for her damaged body.
Teresa’s damaged mind is something for which no one may have a cure.
Taiwo is another problem. Unlike Shango, he believes himself irreparably evil and does not trust himself ever to do good. The consensus among the athanor is that the only thing that might get him to reconsider is forgiveness from Aduke, but Aduke will have nothing to do with him. Therefore, he must be kept locked in a room. Given his past intimacy with Teresa, he, too, must be tested for AIDS.
Aduke is aware of all of this, but she determinedly doesn’t think about anything except for the specific project she is assisting with—and especially she doesn’t think about Taiwo.
That part of her soul is still numb, still empty, and she doesn’t care to have it reawakened. So, though it embarrasses her, she looks the other way when Oya tries to persuade her, even going so far as to flee to the lower reaches of the factory, where Oya will not dare broach the subject in front of the family.
The Fadaka family is taking the comings and goings from Oya’s floor with a mixture of curiosity and complacency. They, Aduke thinks, have not had to learn uncomfortable truths in return for their new home. The knowledge that she is, in a sense, paying the rent gives her the strength to defy Oya.
And so when the athanor gather to lower the wind wall, Aduke is with them, ready to do anything but speak with the man who sits alone in a room down the hall, staring at the wall.
She wears her dancing clothes of scarlet and purple and brown. Oya has told her that the wind will need to be dispersed much as it was called, with songs, sacrifices, and entreaties. Oya had looked worried, Aduke had noted, but she had not thought about it overmuch. Oya is a colleague of those who throw lightning and change shape at will. Certainly, there will be no problem with a wind.
“The wind is always weakest after sunset,” Oya explains, “just as it rises with the day’s heat. It should listen to us then.”
“Don’t you mean,” Aduke says, “that Oya should listen?”
“I mean what I say,” Oya says. “The wind, like Oya, can have a mind of its own.”
The Changer speaks, startling Aduke a little. That one can go for an entire day not saying anything at all.
“When I crossed the wind,” he says, “it seemed to me that she did have a mind of her own and that she was very much enjoying having a city looking up at her with wonder and awe.”
“Do you think she will refuse to release the city?” Dakar asks, looking concerned at the prospect of an opponent that he cannot hit.
“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.”
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