"What am I?" Angrily he gripped her arms and pulled her face next to his. The fierceness of his eyes again recalled the old babalawo in Brazil; he had had the same pride in himself, his people. "I am more than the Ingles here are. Ask of them, and you will discover half once were criminals, or men with no lands of their own, no lineage. In my veins there is royal blood, a line hundreds of generations old. My own father was nearest the throne of the ruling Oba in Ife. He was a babalawo, as I am, but he was also a warrior. Before he was betrayed in battle, he was the second most powerful man in Ife. That's who I am, my father's son."
"What happened? Was he killed?" Impulsively she took his hand and was surprised by its warmth.
"He disappeared one day. Many markets later I learned he was betrayed by some of our own people. Because he was too powerful in Ife. He was captured and taken down to the sea, sold to the Portugues. I was young then. I had only known twelve rainy seasons. But I was not too young to hunt down the traitors who made him slave. They all died by my sword." He clenched his fist, then slowly it relaxed. "But enough. Tonight I want just one thing. To teach you that you still can be free. That you can be Yoruba again."
"Why do you want so much to change me?"
"Because, Dara"—his eyes were locked on hers—"I would have you be my wife. Here. I will not buy you with a bride price; instead I will kill the man who owns you."
She felt a surge of confusion, entwined with want. But again her disdain of everything preto caught in her breast. Why, she wondered, was she even bothering to listen?
"After you make me 'Yoruba,' I will still be a slave to the Ingles."
"Only for a few more days." His face hardened, a tenseness that spread upward through his high cheeks and into his eyes. "Wait another moon and you will see my warriors seize this island away from them."
"I'll not be one of your Yoruba wives." She drew back and clasped her arms close to her breasts, listening to the night, alive now with the sounds of whistling frogs and crickets.
"Rather than be wife to a Yoruba, you would be whore to an Ingles." He spat out the words. "Which means to be nothing."