He felt there was something for him farther on, a little farther, just ahead. He could have resisted it easily, but he did not. It was something new-an impulse, a feeling, a kind of mental undertow pulling at him. After a while, he realized it was no longer his anger at the loss of his seed village that drove him.

Yet he continued to move southwest, unthinkingly veering away from the section of the coast where his ship awaited him. He was killed several times-by disease, by animals, by hostile people. He wandered southwest toward the forest, leaving as he had arrived-alone, unarmed, without supplies, accepting the savanna and later the forest as easily as he accepted any terrain. They gave him their loyalty, their obedience, and he protected them. Not the individuals, perhaps, but the groups. It was a matter of pride with him that he protected his own. Which country or New World colony? How far would he have to travel to find the remnants of what had been a healthy, vigorous people?įinally, he stumbled away from the ruins bitterly angry, not knowing or caring where he went. He stood over a very small skeleton-the bones of a child-and wondered where the survivors had been taken. Doro found human bones, hair, bits of desiccated flesh missed by scavengers. Those villagers they had not herded away, they had slaughtered. With their guns and their greed, they had undone in a few hours the work of a thousand years. But Doro realized even before he reached it that its people were gone. The village was a comfortable mud-walled place surrounded by grasslands and scattered trees. The moment Doro meets Anyanwu, he covets her and from the villages of 17th-century Nigeria to 19th-century United States, their courtship becomes a power struggle that echoes through generations, irrevocably changing what it means to be human.ĭ ORO DISCOVERED THE WOMAN by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages.

No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu - until she meets Doro. She uses her powers to cure her neighbors and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her.

She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. He fears no one - until he meets Anyanwu.Īnyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire. An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. In an “epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant” story of love and hate, two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together - and changing the destiny of the human race (Viola Davis).ĭoro knows no higher authority than himself.

Wild seed by octavia e butler