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He was killed several times—by disease, by animals, by hostile people.
I missed this the first time, "he was killed several times." Hinting at his special abilities.
His words were clear to her now, though he had an accent that reminded her of the way people spoke long ago when she was truly young. She did not like it. Everything about him made her uneasy.
She senses that something is off, well she's right
“I am old,” she said, masking her fear with anger. “I could be your mother’s mother!” She could have been an ancestor of his mother’s mother. But she kept that to herself. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I could be your mother’s father,” he said. She took another step backward, somehow controlling her growing fear.
This was a scary response from Doro, which matches up to the character
“It is better to be a master than to be a slave.”
“Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave,” she said softly.
This man was far more unusual than she was. This man was not a man.
No person, no group could stop him from doing this. No one could stop him from doing anything at all.
He had to have the woman. She was wild seed of the best kind. She would strengthen any line he bred her into, strengthen it immeasurably.
But once she was isolated in America with an infant to care for, she would learn submissiveness.
He was a spirit, no matter what he said. He had no flesh of his own.
“Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.” Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he whispered. “Not even you are beyond the reach of God.” “Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, “and your righteous indignation.”
They were also a highly intuitive people who involuntarily saw into each other’s thoughts and fought with each other over evil intentions rather than evil deeds. This without ever realizing that they were doing anything unusual.
At twenty, she had a violent, terrible sickness during which she had heard voices, felt pain in one part of her body after another, screamed and babbled in foreign dialects.
“I have lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years and fathered thousands of children. I have become a woman and borne children. And still, I long to know that my body could have produced. Another being like myself? A companion?”
She would leap into the sea. Its waters would take her home, or they would swallow her. Either way, she would find peace. Her loneliness hurt her like some sickness of the body, some pain that her special ability could not find and heal. The sea …
Perhaps only her own language could have overwhelmed the call of the distant shore.
For an instant, it seemed that a leopard looked at her through his eyes. A thing looked at her, and that thing feral and cold—a spirit thing that spoke softly.
“Perhaps I will not obey then. Even a slave must follow his own thoughts sometimes.” “That is your decision,” Doro agreed. “What will you do? Kill me?” “Yes.”
“No, I could see what the leopard was like. I could mold myself into what I saw. I was not a true leopard, though, until I killed one and ate a little of it. At first, I was a woman pretending to be a leopard—clay molded into leopard shape. Now when I change, I am a leopard.”
Now seemed to be a time for strange matings.
She considered Doro her husband now. No ceremony had taken place, but none was necessary. She was not a young girl passing from the hands of her father to those of her first husband. It was enough that she and Doro had chosen each other.
Civilization is the way one’s own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”
She had lived in enough different towns through her various marriages to know the necessity of learning to behave as others did. What was common in one place could be ridiculous in another and abomination in a third. Ignorance could be costly.
He’s lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years. When Christ, the Son of God of most white people in these colonies, was born, Doro was already impossibly old.
I find myself walking a foot or so off the ground or throwing things. The ability doesn’t seem to weaken with age.”
The only reason she did not know of his colony of her African descendants in South Carolina was that he had never given her reason to ask. Even Isaac did not know.
she won’t die or allow herself to be killed. She isn’t temporary. You haven’t accepted that yet. When you do, and when you take the trouble to win her back, you’ll never be alone again.”
The only person I pity is the man, Thomas.”
They gained power and control of that power, but they lost all that would have made that power meaningful or useful.
“Then she tried to break everything inside me. Like being cut and torn from the inside. Heart, lungs, veins, stomach, bladder. …She was like me, like Isaac, like … maybe like Thomas too—reaching into minds, seeing into my body. She must have been able to see.”
But Nweke had all but destroyed organ after organ. If the girl had gone to work on her brain, Anyanwu knew she would have died before she could heal herself. Even now, there were massive repairs to be made and massive illnesses to be avoided. Even not touching her brain at all, Nweke had nearly killed her.
“He will be your husband now. Bow your head, Anyanwu. Live!”
her. She had submitted and submitted and submitted to keep him from killing her even though she had long ago ceased to believe what Isaac had told her—that her longevity made her the right mate for Doro. That she could somehow prevent him from becoming an animal.
If Doro had not found her an adequate mate, he would find her an adequate adversary. He would not enslave her again. And she would never be his prey.
They would have pleased you, Doro. They thought very much as you do.” “I doubt it,” he said amiably.
“Why did she marry you?” “Because I believed her when she told me what she could do. Because I was not afraid or ridiculing. And because after a while, we started to want each other.”
Nothing must happen to her. No amount of anger or stupidity on her part or his must induce him to think again of killing her. She was too valuable in too many ways.
“Listen to me. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to be able to lie down beside you and die when you die. You can’t know how I’ve longed …” He swallowed. “Sun Woman, please don’t leave me.” His voice caught and broke. He wept. He choked out great sobs that shook his already shaking body almost beyond bearing. He wept as though for all the past times when no tears would come, when there was no relief.
