She was moving now with the line of men. Before she realized what she was doing, she had caught the hem of her swaying white shift and begun to swing it from side to side in time with the booms of the iya ilu drum. It was a dance figure she remembered from some lost age, a joyous time long ago. She would dance for her love of Atiba, but not for his gods.
Now the rhythm of the drums grew more dizzying, as though pulling her forward. It was increasingly hard to think; only through the dance could she keep control, stay centered on her own self. Only by this arcing of her body, as the movement of her hips flowed into her swaying torso, could she . . .
Suddenly she saw herself, in Pernambuco, being urged gently forward by her Yoruba mother as the slaves drummed in the cool evening air. It was Sunday, and all the preto had gathered to dance, the black women in ornate Portuguese frocks of bright primary colors and the men in tight-fitting trousers. The drums were sounding and the plantation air was scented by a spray of white blossoms that drifted down from the spreading tree. The senhor de engenho was there, the white master, clapping and leering and calling something to Dara about her mulata daughter's new frock. He was watching her now, waiting. Soon, very soon, he would take her.
Lightning flashed again, and she felt its warmth against her icy skin. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to stay in that world of faraway whose warmth beckoned. But now she felt her own will beginning to ebb. Something was happening. . . .
"No! Please, no!" She forced her long fingernails into her palm, and the pain seemed to restore some of the awareness she had felt slipping from her. Desperately she tore herself away from the dance and seized the center post of the mill, gasping for air and digging her nails into the wood until she felt one snap. Then she pulled away the African kerchief and threw back her head, swirling her hair about her face till it caught in her mouth. All at once she was thirsty, hungry, yearning for a dark presence that hovered over her body like a lover.
Again the blossoms of Pernambuco drifted down, tiny points of fire as they settled against her face, and she began to hum a simple Portuguese song she had known as a child. It was spring in Brazil, and as she looked up she saw the face of the old Yoruba babalawo.
"Dara, come." He was reaching toward her, beckoning
her away from the Portuguese master, saying something about Shango she did not understand, and the sight of his sad eyes and high black cheeks filled her with love. But now there was a youthfulness in his face, as though he were here and powerful and young. Her old babalawo had come back: there was the same glistening black skin, the same three face-marks cut down his cheek, the powerful eyes she had somehow forgotten over the years.
She gasped as he pulled her back into the circle of dancers.
He was Atiba. His clan-marks were Atiba's. And so was his voice . . .