Katerina's Song

It was August fifteenth, the name day of the Virgin Mary. The whole village had gathered at Hormos beach to rejoice and feast. Food spread on red tablecloths across the sand: round loaves of bread, stuffed grapeleaves, roasted lamb, feta cheese and shiny black olives. The women sat with their dresses pulled just above the knees, sunning; boys, bare chested, played ball at the shore’s edge; and girls in their swimming suits rushed to the sea–the sea that was icy cold even in August. Overhead, the sky, like a mantle shielding us, was a glimmering pale blue.

I, happy to be on Hormos beach, sat next to Maritsa, watching Katerina swim. She seemed like a goddess. Rising and falling, carried by the waves, ethereal, elusive, an image of light, an apparition of beauty and love. She was nineteen then.

“Annoula, come,” she called to me.

“You know I can’t swim,” I said.

“I’ll teach you,” she said.

I was tempted to wade straight into her arms but I didn’t because in the distance I saw Sophia and I was more interested in Sophia’s stories than learning to swim.

Anxious to find out if Sophia had seen the Gorgona, I jumped up and ran across the beach. Sophia, wearing a chalk-white dress, was sitting all alone, perched on a rock like an oracle. And even though she was fourteen, she looked ten. Her bruised legs dangled down the bleached stone. Her hair, the color of the sand, was plastered around her gaunt face. “Sophia,” I said, looking into her oyster-colored eyes, “have you seen the Gorgona?”

Sophia sniffed and gazed imperiously at the sea.

And then she looked at me and said, “I saw her last night at Tourkiko beach.”

“And what did the Gorgona say, Sophia?”

“She said, ‘My Kingdom is the dark sea and any young man, child, or vessel I see will be whipped and devoured by me. Because I am Gorgona, Queen of the Sea!’”

“And how did the Gorgona look, Sophia?” She’d told me many times before, but I wanted to hear it again.

“She has two tails and three heads. One head looks at St. Nicholas chapel, the other at the fortress, and the middle at the coastline.”

My heart pounded with fear and excitement. “And how many eyes does the Gorgona have, Sophia?”

“Seven,” she said, “and all of them spit fire, lighting up the sky...” Before Sophia could finish her story, mother shouted: “Anna, get away from crazy Sophia!”

“Go,” Sophia said.

Maritsa was waiting for me. She had just finished shaping a pile of sand into a monster. A monster with a big head and eyeballs covering half of its face. And for hair she’d used seaweed, making it look like snakes. “What did Sophia say about the Gorgona?” she asked.

“She said that she was at Tourkiko beach last night.”

Maritsa’s eyes popped. “Anna, come,” she said, “let’s dig a hole and bury ourselves, so the Gorgona won’t find us.”

With a sweep of her hand, she leveled the monster and we started digging and digging a big hole in the sand, and just when we were about to try it, Maritsa’s mother came over, reached down and grabbed Maritsa and dragged her across the sand. “It’s time I teach you to swim,” Koula Drossos said, dumping Maritsa into the freezing sea.

Maritsa’s screams filled my head. I curled myself into a ball as I watched her struggle to rise over the water. She flapped her arms and kicked her legs. She coughed and spat out water. Koula didn’t seem to care. She kept pushing Maritsa’s face back into the sea, again and again.

I could not look anymore. I pressed my eyes shut. Katerina rushed to my side to comfort me. “Annoula, you’re trembling.” She wrapped her arms around my body, her breath warm on my cold face.

“I’ll never learn to swim,” I said, as Koula’s shrill voice