Ahead of us, like a long low wall barring our way, was the causeway connecting Mexico with the small city of Tlacopan on the western shore of the lake. By the time we got there it would be thronging with traders, day laborers and artisans heading home for the night to their towns and villages on the mainland. Every so often they would stop the traffic to open the wooden bridges that pierced the causeway at intervals in order to let boats pass from one part of the lake to another. While the bridges were closed a mass of canoes would build up around them, drifting aimlessly about like reeds scattered over the water while they waited for them to open again. If we found ourselves in the middle of such a crowd, I thought hopefully, then anything might happen.
The nearer shore was all willows, sedges and rushes, with here and there a wooden landing stage or a little adobe house whose whitewashed walls glowed pink in the light of the setting Sun. Once or twice the flat summit of a pyramid appeared above the tops of the willows, with smoke drifting lazily from the temple that crowned it. The greatest city in the World lay just behind this quiet green verge, but here there was no one to be seen.
I heard a faint splash as the paddle was dipped into the water, and my view of the shoreline shifted abruptly as we turned toward it. With a sudden feeling of dread I realized we would not, after all, be crossing the causeway.
In an effort to see where we were going I twisted my head around too quickly and was rewarded with a sharp stinging at the side of my neck as the man behind me reminded me of the knife. He uttered a low, wordless growl as I turned hastily to face the youth again. The boy’s face had suddenly turned a little paler than before, and I saw strain in his narrow eyes and tightly compressed lips.
We were entering a little sheltered cove-probably nothing more than a gap between plots of reclaimed land. There was no one else about-nor would there be by now, I thought, with dusk falling-but we did not quite have the cove to ourselves. There was another boat here, tucked away among the sedges, although I caught only the briefest glimpse of it.
We must be close to our destination, I realized, and if I was going to get away now was the time to do something about it.
“Is this it? Have we arrived yet?” The only answer I got was a tense silence, broken only by the sound of water lapping against the side of the boat.
The boy stood up in the stern, with his paddle poised a hand or two above the water, but he did not dip it in. He was staring at something behind my head.
His lips moved but for a moment no sound came out.
From somewhere behind me, I heard a voice. It was strangely muffled and I could not make out the words, but it was surely a voice.
The man behind me turned toward it, unthinking. I felt the knife leave the side of my neck and I moved. I threw myself forward, launching myself at the boy: in the narrow space of the canoe it was the only way to go.
“Look out!” he shrieked, raising his paddle.
His father went for my hair again, but this time he was too late, because I was already moving. He seized a lock, bunching it in his fist, but my own weight tore it out by the roots. I heard it rip horribly over my own scream of pain but I was still moving. I hit the youth with my shoulder. He fell over backward and I landed on my knees on top of him, my arms flailing wildly at his face.
I must have hit the boy three or four times before his father dragged me off him. Yet again he had my hair, using it now to haul me backward onto my haunches as he bared my throat once more for the knife.
“No! No! No!” I heard Nimble’s urgent cries over my own howl of pain and the sounds from behind me, the loud splashing as of something heavy moving about in the water and that voice, clearer now but still unintelligible.
“I’ve got to kill him!” The voice behind was almost shrill. “Can’t you see what’s happening? We can’t deal with him as well! Get rid of him now! What else can we do?”
The youth was on his feet again. His face was bloody from my attack and his eyes were wide and wild and he had the paddle in his hand, raised much too high above the water.
“We can do this!” he shouted.
With my hair gripped in Curling Mist’s fist I had no chance of dodging the blow. I could only watch as the flat of the paddle’s blade swung in toward me, to smash into the side of my head.
After the boy hit me with the paddle I had no idea where I was or how I had got there. I could not hear anything over the roaring in my ears and I could not open my eyes. I tasted blood: it filled my nose and mouth and stopped my breathing. My scalp seemed to be on fire and someone was battering the side of my head with a flint axe and my bowels were churning.
I panicked. My arms and legs hit out and thrashed madly. One of my knuckles struck the wooden side of the canoe, yielding a jolt of acute agony that I noticed even over the pain in my head and my guts. The flat of my hand found the same surface again and felt its way to the top and clutched it spasmodically.
Clinging to the canoe’s side and hauling one-handed got me,somehow, onto my knees. My other hand batted at my face and came away wet. It rubbed some of the blood away from my eyes and out of my eyelashes, where it was fast congealing. I coughed and choked. I opened an eye, too briefly to see anything. I thought I heard someone shouting.
I tried to stand then, too quickly, because the world was rocking from side to side, and when I put an arm out to grab something to steady myself there was nothing there. Without uttering a sound, I toppled out of the violently pitching canoe into the freezing waters of the lake.
It was like falling through a sheet of ice, so cold I could not feel how cold it was, and as dark as a cave. I could not think. I could not move. My body was trying to swim, seemingly without any impulse from me, but all I could do was twist about, as helpless as a sick fish. For a horrible moment I thought some water monster had got me; then I found my cloak had wrapped itself around me and pinned my arms to my side.
I had another moment of unthinking panic while my arms strained against the heavy, wet cloth and my legs kicked uselessly. Then the sodden fibers of my cheap cloak finally gave way and I was able to move my arms.
With the last of my strength, I struck upward. The tattered remains of my cloak caught around my ankles and I kicked them angrily away. I looked up, opening my eyes for the first time in the cold fresh water.
I could not see the surface. A large dark shape loomed above me. Just as I realized what it was my head hit something hard.
I had come up under a boat.
I pushed against the rough, pitted wood with both hands, desperate to be free of it before the dizziness that was starting to come over me became too much and I forgot which way was up. I felt movement through my palms: the whole great mass stirring sluggishly and little tremors shooting through it, as if the vessel above me were full of people running from side to side. I was half drowned, I thought, and must be hallucinating: the canoe had not seemed so large.
Then the shadow over my head was gone, and I was on the surface, gulping air in great anguished whooping gasps.
At first I could hear nothing except my own breathing. I trod water,while I looked around me for the shore. I had to make for it as fast as I could, but my strength was almost gone and the cold was creeping deep into my bones, bringing with it a strange lethargy.
I became dimly aware that there was some sort of commotion going on. I heard shouts of anger or alarm. With my ears still full of water I could not make out any words and I was not listening anyway, but then, for all my growing indifference, came something that made me look up.