She let go of Domingo without caring whether the crowd’s movements swept him away from her. She groped blindly for a space to fall down in. She did not find it, and could only fall to her knees.

At that level, the air was so foul it was almost unbreathable. Catalina was panting rapidly, which forced the rhythm of her pulse (already so tormented) to accelerate, and made her heart lurch. And still unconsciousness did not fully take her.

Catalina opened her eyes again. No one had paid the least attention to her pallor, her pained movements. But she was not alone. These people who were repudiating her today, who were ignoring her, were the same ones who once put on the shoes of pilgrimage to take the paths to the idols’ cave. They were the same ones who exalted the priestess into a trance with their chanting, who pleaded, day after day, for the favor of an audience. Because they needed to discharge their guilt or their punishment onto someone else. Or they wanted their hope to be revived. Or to share in the ilol’s power by touching the hem of her skirt, brushing the tips of her fingers.

The same ones. Yes, Catalina knew their names and their faces, remembered their sorrows. The taste of the promises she had uttered was still in her mouth. Why had they gone away? Had Catalina ever put her fatigue before the needs of her petitioners, even once? Had she ever refused, even once, to throw herself into the vortex in which revelation whirls? Had she ever tried, even once, not to share her discoveries? Catalina scrutinized her own conduct, prepared to be contrite, and found nothing to reproach herself with.

Catalina, the barren woman who knew more of motherhood than many mothers, had given of herself, as in childbirth, in every act of adoration, admonition, council. Her body (was it still her body?) had become a receptacle, meekly lodging the supernatural, transparent so the miracle could manifest itself. When Catalina felt herself to be overflowing with gifts she did not dare protect herself. Defenseless, she placed herself within everyone’s reach. Let those who are thirsty come and drink of the cool, clear water! Let those who are hungry devour the sustenance that will comfort them! And she burned to illuminate the darkness where those who are ignorant become lost. And she hardened herself so that those who vacillate would have something to hang on to. And she stood still, like a signpost, for those who cannot find their way.

These were the arduous sciences Catalina had practiced. One by one she untied the knots that bound her. First the knots of her own complacency. Then the attachments to others. She did not aspire to freedom, but to absolute slavery. To obey what came from far away and what went far away. To give. To give herself.