Seed to Harvest: The Complete Patternist Series (Patternist, #1-4)

by Octavia E. Butler

“This body needs rest if it is to continue to serve me.”

“Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave,” she said softly.

She frowned, suddenly cautious. “I am myself. You see me.” “As you see me. Do you imagine you see everything?” She did not answer. “A lie offends me, Anyanwu, and what I see of you is a lie. Show me what you really are.” “You see what you will see!” “Are you afraid to show me?” “… No.” It was not fear. What was it? A lifetime of concealment, of commanding herself never to play with her abilities before others, never to show them off as mere tricks, never to let her people or any people know the full extent of her power unless she were fighting for her life. Should she break her tradition now simply because this stranger asked her to? He had done much talking, but what had he actually shown her about himself? Nothing. “Can my concealment be a lie if yours is not?” she asked.

“I kill, Anyanwu. That is how I keep my youth, my strength. I can do only one thing to show you what I am, and that is kill a man and wear his body like a cloth.” He breathed deeply. “This is not the body I was born into. It’s not the tenth I’ve worn, nor the hundredth, nor the thousandth. Your gift seems to be a gentle one. Mine is not.”

“What is seed?” she asked. “People too valuable to be casually killed,” he said. Then more softly, “You must show me what you are.” “How can my sons be of value

“I build,” he said quietly. “I search the land for people who are a little different—or very different. I search them out, I bring them together in groups, I begin to build them into a strong new people.”

“I am here,” she said in the same quiet voice. “You have me.” “Do I?” “As much as any man could.”

That stopped him. There was no challenge in her voice, but he realized at once she was not telling him she was all his—his property. She was saying only that he had whatever small part of herself she reserved for her men. She was not used to men who could demand more. Though she came from a culture in which wives literally belonged to their husbands, she had power and her power had made her independent, accustomed to being her own person.

“No, but I have accepted him as my husband. It was what I wanted—to have a man who was as different from other men as I am from other women.” If this was not entirely true, Okoye did not need to know

Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.

Anyanwu stared at him in silence for a moment. “Shall I be glad that your slaves will not be wasted?” she asked. “Or shall I fear the uses you will find for them?”

“It seems that you could misunderstand your books,” she said. “Other men made them. Other men can lie or make mistakes. But the flesh can only tell me what it is. It has no other story.”

She could remember being bullied as a female animal, being pursued by persistent males, but only in her true woman-shape could she remember being seriously hurt by males—men.

“Take the time, Anyanwu. Break the shell; go in. He might turn out to be what you need, just as I think you’re what he needs.”