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doing so, he might leave his body behind. She did not want to see him kill for so small a reason. She had listened to the stories he told as they traveled, and it seemed to her that he killed too easily. Far too easily—unless the stories were lies. She did not think they were. She did not know whether he would take a life just to get across a river quickly, but she feared he might. This made her begin to think of escaping from him. It made her think longingly of her people, her compound, her home . . .
    Yet she made herself womanly for him at night. He never had to ask her to do this. She did it because she wanted to, because in spite of her doubts and fears, he pleased her very much. She went to him as she had gone to her first husband, a man for whom she had cared deeply, and to her surprise, Doro treated her much as her first husband had. He listened with respect to her opinions and spoke with respect and friendship as though to another man. Her first husband had taken much secret ridicule for treating her this way. Her second husband had been arrogant, contemptuous, and brutal, yet he had been considered a great man. She had run away from him as she now wished to run away from Doro. Doro could not have known what dissimilar men he brought alive in her memory.
    He had still given her no proof of the power he claimed, no proof that her children would be in danger from other than an ordinary man if she managed to escape. Yet she continued to believe him. She could not bring herself to get up while he slept and vanish into the forest. For her children's sake she had to stay with him, at least until she had proof one way or the other.
    She followed him almost grimly, wondering what it would be like finally to be married to a man she could neither escape nor outlive. The prospect made her cautious and gentle. Her earlier husbands would not have known her. She sought to make him value her and care for her. Thus she might have some leverage with him, some control over him later when she needed it. Much married as she was, she knew she would eventually need it. They were in the lowlands now, passing through wetter country. There was more rain, more heat, many more mosquitoes. Doro got some disease and coughed and coughed. Anyanwu got a fever, but drove it out of herself as soon as she sensed it. There was enough misery to be had without sickness.
    "When do we pass through this land!" she asked in disgust. It was raining now. They were on someone's pathway laboring through sucking ankle-deep mud.
    "There is a river not far ahead of us," he told her. He stopped for a moment to cough. "I have an arrangement with people at a riverside town. They will take us the rest of the way by canoe."
    "Strangers," she said with alarm. They had managed to avoid contact with most of the people whose lands they had crossed.
    "You will be the stranger here," Doro told her. "But you need not worry. These people know me. I have given them gifts—dash, they call it—and promised them more if they rowed my people down the river."
    "Do they know you in this body?" she asked, using the question as an excuse to touch the hard flat muscle of his shoulder. She liked to touch him.
    "They know me," he said. "I am not the body I wear, Anyanwu. You will understand that when I change—soon, I think." He paused for another fit of coughing. "You will know me in another body as soon as you hear me speak."
    "How?" She did not want to talk about his changing, his killing. She had tried to cure his sickness so that he would not change, but though she had eased his coughing, prevented him from growing sicker, she had not made him well. That meant she might soon be finding out more about his changing whether she wanted to or not. "How will I know you?" she asked.
    "There are no words for me to tell you—as with your tiny living things. When you hear my voice, you will know me. That's all."
    "Will it be the same voice?"
    "No."
    "Then how . . .?"
    "Anyanwu . . ." He