I had reached the sea unexpectedly, but the sea is unexpected in any event to one who has never known it. You think it land at first, or sky, and penultimately mist. Then you realize a vast azure mass of water lies like a dragon in the sun’s last rays, breathing and shifting on the beaches.

Like a sort of madness itself it seemed to complement my own bewildered wandering. When I saw the girl, she, too, was like an oblique figment or expression of my mental process.

A striking wench, black as a coal, with a black satin mane, born demonstrably of the black marsh tribes, except that when you came near, you saw she had some mixed blood, for out of that delicate ebony face (the black women do not wear the shireen) stared a pair of wild eyes, the pale blue-gray of the sea behind her.

She had on a dark shift, plain krarl women’s garb, and a bracelet of greenish smooth stones, and gold studs in her ears. Around her neck was what I took for an orange-red fur hood, but it was a foxy cat, with a fierce glare.

Both their heads went up when they saw me and both their eyes flashed so that I smiled at it.

“Well,” she said, “I have summoned you, and you have come. Are you specter or man or conjuring?”

“Man,” I said. “Shall I prove it to you?”

Then she smiled also, a different, woman’s smile, and turned her face. Her profile was chiseled, aquiline and almost flat, like a carving, save for her full mouth, the lower lip indented like a plum, but the color of mulberries.

“You are too tall,” she said, “and too white, but you are handsome for all that. Maybe I will lie with you, but not yet.”

“Lady,” I said, “you should not play games alone with a man, and no one within call to help you.”

“Oh, I am not alone. I can draw spirits to help me at a need. I am a witch, I am Uasti.”

That name checked me for sure, though I had been pleasantly considering other things, for generally, when a woman talks in this way, “maybe” means “certainly” and “not yet” means “why are you so slow?”

“Uasti?” I stupidly repeated. Although she spoke it differently, less soft and fewer letters, it was the name of the Ezlann cat-goddess, my bitch mother’s name.

“Thus I am known,” the black girl said. “I am witch and healer, and women who learn cure-craft from the priests of my people are called Uasti. It has always been the custom. My cat, too, is the mark of my calling.”

“Uasti is a city name,” I said, stupid still, “and the cat the symbol of a dead goddess there.”

“Perhaps. In our tongue are many old words, borrowed from the Ancient Golden Books of the priests, or so they say. Uasti is one, meaning healing and wisdom, and its symbol is the cat, for who does not know that the cat is wise? Are you not, beloved?” she added to the fierce red creature about her neck, which responded with an alarming howl that might indicate a variety of attributes, wisdom being the least of them.