Her father came to her one night and said, Go away. Why? she asked him. They don’t understand you anymore, he said to her. They haven’t understood you since the night you saved us. I haven’t asked that they understand me, she said. She said, Do you understand me? Something sad came into his eyes. I don’t ask to understand you, he said. She got up and went down to the riverside in the middle of the night. When she pulled the canoe up to the shore she looked at her father and said, Oh papa, and clutched at him angrily. He gently pushed her from him. She got in the boat and left.
She entered the maze of the river; on a continent in which every other river ran east, this one ran west. She slid her boat into one of the river’s green and blue boxes, expecting to trigger secret panels and swiveling walls; all that was constant was the sky above her, latticed by the coils of the trees. She pushed the boat along with the oar, letting it guide itself. She descended farther into the maze of the river as the dark turned to day and the day turned to dark. She followed what she supposed to be an unerring instinct, waiting to emerge from the other side, out beyond the edge of everything that had been her world.
After many hours, when the sun rose to its apex and glared down into the river’s maze, Catherine saw her watercreature swimming right before her. Remembering how it had failed to devour the sailor at her command, she took the oar and smacked it on the head. A moment later it was there again, nagging her. I don’t want you here, she said angrily, go back to the village. It insisted on trailing along at the front of the boat. She made the disastrous mistake of turning her boat away from the creature in order to lose it behind her. Soon she was sailing down passages that looked distressingly familiar. Every time she glanced behind her the damned watercreature was still there, and the faster she sailed from it, the more familiar the maze became around her. She realized soon she was crossing her own path. She got so turned around in the maze that by dusk she was completely lost. In fury she stood in the boat and slammed the oar down hard on the watercreature over and over until the sun had set and, on a dark night, the creature vanished. If nothing else, she whispered to the water, I’ve finally killed you. She sailed on a little farther and came out of the maze, only to desperately discover she had emerged at the point she’d entered. A few minutes later she drifted back into her village, with the Crowd standing by the banks watching her return, and none too pleased about it either. She saw her father at the end of the slough, his face in conflict between the part of him overjoyed to see her again—when he’d thought he never would—and the part of him that feared for her. He folded her in his arms. When they tied the boat in the torchlight of the harbor she saw the watercreature, unbloodied and very much alive. She cursed it and it cursed her back.
The men of the Crowd became increasingly consumed with two things: what they considered Catherine’s sorcerous inclinations, and gambling. They couldn’t have too little of the former or too much of the latter. Moreover, the sailor linked the two in their minds: the queen of clubs became the very emblem of Catherine in his games, and the very appearance of the queen turned the men of the Crowd black with hate. As time went by Coba continued to lose his nest egg bit by bit, one coin after another going the way of the men in the Crowd. Both the men and Coba enjoyed the spectacle of it more and more, with the Crowd’s passion becoming more frenzied. Soon Coba wouldn’t have many coins left.
Catherine’s father was beside himself with worry. He grew alarmed at the way the others looked at her; there wasn’t much doubt they considered her a witch. He spoke to his wife from whose long deep stoicism he hoped to gather reassurance. But his wife’s stoicism was founded on her own doubts. She’s my daughter, the girl’s mother said, but I don’t know her. The other children were estranged from their sister as well. It’s nature’s fault, said Catherine’s father, for giving her no voluptuous gifts, rendering her without value. It’s nature’s fault, said Catherine’s mother, for giving her the face of a spot in space or a place in the middle of the earth. When she was young I should never have let her hair grow, I should have sewn a mask to her skull. But we never noticed it before, the father said. No one ever noticed it before, said
