He wouldn’t think it so funny, Coba said, your putting her up for stakes. But then, you know, my luck’s been bad.
They looked around once more and then back at him with dull leaden eyes. They crouched in the light of the fire.
They whispered, Deal.
Ten minutes later Coba explained One’s luck changes. He had before him a very large pile of money and a Crowd of decidedly nonplussed former gamblers. The fire seemed to burn low very quickly. Coba put the cards away in his pocket. That’s the way of luck, he said smiling. The men glowered and he scooped up the winnings into his chest, which just happened to be a few feet away, out of view of the others. It had all the appearances of someone planning to leave soon.
The boat, he said. The boat and the girl.
Later it would strike him that he had saved the day by insisting on the girl. Later it would strike him that the men of the Crowd had very well determined it was worth giving the sailor a boat and returning his nest egg to have him transport the witch from their village. But there was the matter of Catherine’s family, so the men were careful about it. We gambled the witch, they said to him, because your luck has been so bad.
One’s luck changes, Coba said.
Yes, you’ve explained that to us, said the men. But the girl, there’s her father and family to deal with, they said.
But I won the wager, Coba said.
You have fairly won her in our eyes, answered the men, and we’ll do nothing to stop you from taking her. But the taking is up to you.
Coba glanced across the slough with some anxiety; Catherine was nowhere to be seen. He quickly pulled together his chest and his few belongings and went down to the banks where a boat was now waiting for him. It wasn’t the best boat in the village, as had been agreed upon, but it was a solid enough boat, and Coba decided he’d get while the getting was good. But the getting wasn’t finished. He looked back over to the other side of the water and pushed the boat to the other bank. He stepped up on shore and turned to see the men watching him. He pointed in the direction of the trees and they pointed in the same direction, and he inhaled and nodded.
He went into the trees, where the mouth of the sea flooded the roots and the low thick branches formed a mass of walkways. He came to the sheIter where Catherine lived with her family. Catherine was lying on her bed in the back of the hut, where she’d been the night of the storm when her father wept in his hand. Coba walked right up to her, took one wrist in one hand and another in the other hand, and pulled the girl to her feet before she was aware of what was happening. He drew Catherine out among the trees and pulled her along the branches to the land; they were halfway to the boat before she’d figured out enough to wrap his hair around her hand and give it a very earnest yank. He responded by bringing his fist not across her face, ever aware as he was of his investment, but into her belly. She went stone-white. At this moment her father could be heard yelling from the thicket and nearing the slough. Coba threw Catherine into the bottom of the boat as her father came running out of the trees.
He shouted to the men that the sailor had his daughter, as though the men of the Crowd, standing there on the banks of the river, didn’t know this. He shouted to them to stop the boat. The men didn’t move. Coba in the boat pushed away with the oar. The father kept screaming to no avail. Behind him ran Catherine’s mother, also crying, and the brothers. Their tumuIt was utterly isolated, a smudge of action and noise in the midst of the silent still jungle, before the silent still witness of the Crowd.
Catherine’s father ran into the water, reaching the edge of the boat.
Catherine, enveloped in nausea and a hush in her ears, caught her breath enough to raise her head and her eyes to the shore. She saw her father in the river, and her mother and brothers emerging from the trees.
She had to blink twice, then again, then many times when Coba, in a way that reminded her remorsefully of her attempts to kill the watercreature, took the huge wooden oar and brought it whistling down from the sky squarely into her father’s skull.
She kept blinking many times at it, a funny befuddled expression on her face. If she could not convince herself of what she saw, she could not mistake, she knew there was no mistaking the sound of the crack, the sound of her mother, and then her own sound, a wail that was reeled from the pit of her, as though it was on the end of a string.
They entered the maze of the river. They slid their boat into one of the river’s green and blue boxes, expecting to trigger secret panels and swiveling walls. She wouldn’t have expected anyone could find his way, when she had been so unable to find her own way. The sailor inched along carefully, his eyes watching everything and his ears hearing everything, feeling his way. It grew dark and they continued. He’s a good sailor, she thought, this bastard who’s murdered my father.
Of course I’ll kill you, she explained to him in her language which he’d come to understand better. He laughed back at her but bound her hands. He put her in the cargo hold. Night came and he lit a candle and peered into the hold at her. He touched his fingers to her face and she snarled at him, Don’t even think of it. It’s not even a possibility. When he was not dissuaded by this advice she carefully aimed and delivered her foot straight between his legs. He howled in agony, and when the pain subsided and the water had cleared from his eyes, he saw she was no longer in the cargo hold but at the front of the boat on the edge. I will sleep on the bed of this stinking river, she told him in her language, which he now understood with startling clarity, before you’ll touch me again. He rubbed his chin and his pants aIternately. It’s better this way, he said, nodding. Nothing gets complicated this way. He wanted her less than the fortune her face would bring him.
By the end of the following day she saw the end of the maze before them, opening up in a white glare. It was then she noticed the watercreature guiding them out. Traitor, she whispered to her face, don’t think you do this for me. If you were a friend to me you would have guided us back to the village the way you did the night I tried to escape. If you’d been a friend to me I would have gone and my father would be alive. Your treachery is no less terrible simply because you might have thought it was all a joke. Someday I’ll kill you too, she said to herself, as I will kill him.
When they emerged from the maze of the river, there hovered above them a mining town built into the side of a hill, small windows blinking out of the black earth. Those who lived in the town had spent ten years searching for gold. At every point that they decided the venture was futile and considered deserting the town for good, someone would strike it rich and the promise of a new lode made the town come alive again. Coba and Catherine happened into port in the aftermath of one of these discoveries, so that the air of the town was charged with frenzy. In the evenings the miners came trudging back to town exhausted in body but not hope. A small saloon and brothel operated, the liquor of the one and the favors of the other flourishing only in a dearth of competitive attractions.