Year one
All across the world there are beaches, all different, all the same. This beach could best be described simply as a beach, sand, sea, people. It was somewhere it needed to be and everything it needed to be for its location. And on it was a woman. She sat staring into the distance as if she was trying to forget everything she had been, everything she was; everything that had happened to her over her long life. The reason she looked like this was because this was exactly what she was trying to do. No one knew exactly where she came from, all they knew was that one-day she wasn’t there and the next day she was. She hadn’t booked a place to stay; she hadn’t been seen on the local transport. She was simply there, sitting on the beach, staring out to see, crying. For most of that first year that was all she did. Some of the locals tried to talk to her, find out what was wrong, she never answered. She never gave a name or spoke a word for an entire year. She was called simply the Weeping Woman, and she was alone.

Year two
It was almost a year later that she said her first word. Occasionally people would sit beside her, just to keep her company or see the view, try to understand her. Some would talk to her, about themselves, their problems, their friends and enemies. It was said that she would eventually have learned everything there was to know about the town and the beach. And all through, doing nothing but sit and stare at the sea. And one day, after the local teacher had sat silently beside her on a cold winter’s day, when he stood up she turned round to him and said simply, “Thank you.”

Year three
She occasionally talked more. Sometimes even a whole sentence, but still she never talked about herself. She never said why she was there or what she was looking at. But eventually she told her name – Katsovo.

Year four
In this year she smiled briefly for the first time, at a dog that slipped on the wet sand. Then she cried for a further 6 months.

Year five
They held a birthday party for her to celebrate five years of her sitting on the beach. By this time she was being treated as if she was a permanent resident, if the most silent of the townspeople. But they liked her, liked the fact that out of all the people in that part of the world she was different to everybody else. There was food and decorations; there was music and dancing. Almost the whole town turned out for it. All Katsovo did was sit and watch, not saying a word, not having a single expression on her face. No one could say for sure what she thought about it all. But here is a secret about afterwards. After all the people had gone, after all the rubbish had been tidied up, after there was no-one watching she looked up to the moon, smiling and whispering her thanks to the night where nobody could hear.
Year six
She was still sitting there for the next year as people from outside the area started to realise that she was there. By ‘she was there’ I don’t mean that they recognised her personally but rather that it slowly became known that there was a woman and that she hadn’t moved from the beach for a long time. So slowly tourists arrived to see her. To these she said nothing, just avoided looking at them, and generally acted as if they were never there. All that year they came, some to meet her (although none ever really met her), some to talk to the townspeople, and some just sit and watch.

Year seven
Eventually a decision was taken. From now on no one would talk to outsiders about Katsovo, they would simply take their money, and advise them to leave. Many took the hint. For others a story was concocted and a lie was uttered about a hoax, a story that got out of control, that Katsovo was merely sitting there as a publicity stunt for the town. Everyone who came that year believed this. When she found out about this Katsovo was heard to say thank you.

Year eight
Nobody came back to see her this year, but still she sat there, in all this time she had done nothing other than sit there. Some people had asked her over the years what she was looking at but all she would ever say was “out there”. Nobody knew quite what she meant by this but many speculated that perhaps she meant she was waiting for something to come, some speculated that she meant that she didn’t want to look back, and others believed that she was simply saying something so that people would stop asking. No one ever really found out which it was but the conversations about it allowed him or her to spend many a winter’s night in a warm pub.

Year nine
She still sat there watching all around her but by now she had mostly stopped crying. But still she sits. Lonely in the crowd of everyone who now knew her and said hello as they passed. Lonely as she talked briefly with the people she had now known for a while. By now she was a fixture and people had stopped considering her as a stranger and she was now just a local.

Year ten
This year she had the visitor that knew her from before. A man came from nowhere like she had. He watched her for a while before going away. He kept coming back a few times before finally he went and sat down next to her. For the next week they sat together, occasionally they talked, but mostly they just sat. And one morning he was just gone.

Year eleven
It would be another year before Katsovo said another word.

Year twelve
In this year there was a storm and some local children were trapped in the sea, the only person watching for was Katsovo. She moved for the first time that year, slowly at first but gradually moving into the surf, she swam quietly, grabbed them and dragged them back to the beach. After assuring herself they were okay she sent them home and sat back down again. The next day a delegation came to thank her but she just looked at them as if to say,”what else could I do, let them die, I’ve done that too often.” All with a look.

Year Thirteen
Some people would consider thirteen to be an unlucky year but for Katsovo it was just another in an endless series of years that had gone on for far too long but could never end. Despite this, nobody could tell from Katsovo’s conversations; which were of a friendly, but still way too distant type.

Year Fourteen
This year was the closest anyone ever came to a reason as to why she was there. It occurred while she was listening to a prattling of a four-year-old who was talking about the funeral of her pet and how all her friends ‘put flowers (well, daisies) on the grave’ and her mother said a few words and ‘everyone was sad and then they had dinner and J_____ got it all over his new shirt and then we played with my dolls which I don’t really like but it keeps my mum happy’ when Katsovo uttered the words, “All your kind dies little one. Everyone.” She seemed to realise what she had said and covered it up by asking about the girl’s pet and whether she was getting a new one but the little girl never forgot and eventually told her children when they asked about Katsovo.

Year Fifteen
It was in this year that the local fair grew from being just a few people in the market square to a major event. People came from all over the area to see the carnival and the stalls, which were all over the town. It seemed that Katsovo spent that entire week talking to everybody for hours at a time about everything literally under the sun, but after the stalls had packed up and the performers had gone home, she reverted to just sitting on the beach. Why did she do this? It is believed that she simply didn’t want to be seen as bringing the celebrations down. She did something similar every year from then on proving to some people that she hadn’t always been the way she was now.

Year Sixteen
It was in this year that a gang tried to attack her as she sat there. They threatened and stomped around, she looked at them. They showed their weapons and tried to cut her, she looked at them. They rushed her and tried to kill her, she just looked at them. They tried everything they could but all she did was look at them. Eventually they went away and she stayed. Some people would say she won; Katsovo never said anything about it.

Year Seventeen
It was the year that a newcomer fell in Love with Katsovo, his name was L____ and he spent six months sitting next to her, talking to her, trying to get her to come home to meet his family, trying to make her feel something for him. But nothing worked. She talked to him but not in any kind of different way that she talked to everybody else. Eventually she was forced to play matchmaker and slowly over a fortnight push her friend H_____, who she had now know since H______ was a child, into his thoughts and into his heart. This was successful as a year; later L_____ and H_____ were married and named their first son K____.

Year Eighteen
And still she sat staring out at the nothingness of the sea.

Year Nineteen
In this year and against her will she was elected to the local council. She had never asked for this, never wanted it, never made any attempt to campaign for it and in the end only agreed if people came to her on the beach, which she stated she would not leave merely for business. By the end of the year she had become one of the most successful councilors the town had ever seen, and all from the beach where she sat.

Year Twenty
It had been twenty years since Katsovo had arrived at the beach and in all that time she had not changed in any way. She still looked the same, she still dressed the same; she was in all ways the same woman who had mysteriously arrived those many long years ago. She didn’t cry anymore and talked to people who talked to her but apart from that it was like the years had not changed her in any way, shape or form. This was “just one of those things,” said those villagers who could remember the time before she came.

Year Twenty-one
Some developers came and tried to buy up the beach but they ran into the problem that the villagers considered the beach to be owned by Katsovo, and told them that until she decided to leave no-one could sell it for it would mean removing their lucky charm. The developer came in his suit designed to impress the natives, but it failed to impress Katsovo who saw him for the little man he truly was and he went away again quietly after talking to her for an hour. He never told anyone what she said.

Year Twenty-two
For the first time cracks started to show in the villager’s tolerance, the new priest became convinced she was a demon and preached against her exclaiming that nothing even remotely human could be like her and that God would not have sent someone merely to sit on a beach. Eventually, after a few months of this, one of the children she had saved stood up and explained how he would not be alive if it wasn’t for Katsovo. Some of the people she had helped as a councilor made speeches about how she was the best arbitrator they had – by just listening and then explaining what they really meant. This continued until everyone had had a chance to talk about her. Eventually Katsovo met this priest and talked to him for almost a full day. A week later the priest left damning them all to hell, the new priest was more tolerant and kept his views on Katsovo’s soul to himself.

Year twenty-three
Katsovo ordered people not to vote for her as councilor and announced who she wanted her successor to be, it was the man who had first spoken up for her the previous year. At the beginning this was ignored but eventually she managed to persuade them that she meant it by passing her duties on to him. After he had won the election, the entire community thanked Katsovo for her service.

Year Twenty-four
Although she never showed it Katsovo enjoyed the free time she now had again; the time that had been taken up dealing with people’s problems was now taken up by thinking and watching as it had been in the beginning. And was what she had originally been looking for all those years ago.

Year twenty-five
Over the last quarter century, the village had changed in many ways. There were new people running various businesses, new places to go to for entertainment, new streets and houses. Some families had left, some families had come but throughout all that one thing never changed. There was a beach, and there was Katsovo sitting on a beach. Alone.

Year Twenty-six
A third of the way through this year there was an accident; L____ and H______ were killed, leaving Katsovo’s godson alone. For a time Katsovo was catatonic but the 9-year-old K______ spent all day hugging her and eventually she started hugging him back, eventually graduating to talking to him. By the end of the year she had unofficially adopted him.

Year Twenty-seven
At this point Katsovo started to come out of herself a lot further than she ever had before, maybe it was the fact that she was spending time watching over a child but in this year she started to show more personality than she ever had before.

Year Twenty-eight
She had started to leave her beach more regularly now, spending time eating lunch with Kosat, even cooking foods that had never been seen in that part of the world, or some whispered, for some would always whisper about Katsovo, in no part of the world.

Year Twenty-nine
Unknown to everyone in the village by this year Katsovo was starting to seriously consider leaving the village, but she changed her mind and decided to stay to watch over her friends and her adopted family.

Year Thirty
In this year Katsovo wrote a story, a story about the sea and its many moods, it was plotless, mostly, but was described by all that read it that it was the saddest and yet the most beautiful thing that had ever been written about the sea. In fact, it was the sort of story that could only have been written by someone who had sat and stared at the sea for thirty years. Six months after writing it Katsovo destroyed the only copy in existence.

Year Thirty-one
Katsovo knew in her heart that she should leave these people to get on with their lives but she still had not quite come to terms with the things that had caused her to come to her beach, so still she stayed, and watched the sea from her own private mind, on her own private beach.

Year Thirty-two
Her friend visited for the second time this year, they just sat on the beach watching a month of sunsets and sunrises, saying nothing and sharing everything, except, at the end “Thank you.” It was the turning point for Katsovo, after this she knew that, no matter what, she could leave, she had paid her penance for whatever unnamed sin. She had grieved for whatever unknown event had brought her here and she was happy.

Year Thirty-Three
This year she spent wandering around the town as if seeing every part of it for the first time and what might be the last. In later years many of the townspeople came to believe that, in some way, she knew what was about to happen and was preparing herself for it.

Year Thirty-Four
This was the year of the great storm, for almost a week the town and beach were devastated. Before, this had been a thriving town with a beautiful beach but after there was a broken town with buildings in rubble and the beach was gone. All that was left was Katsovo, sitting on a patch of sand, where she had sat throughout, crying for the town that was.

Year Thirty-Five
For most of this year the town was being rebuilt. The townspeople took this as an opportunity to create a new town for the needs and wishes of themselves rather than living in the houses that their fathers and grandfathers had lived in. Katsovo encouraged this and without, in many cases, saying a word she showed them how to be themselves and make their own choices for them and their children.

Year Thirty-Six
And then the town was rebuilt, better than it had been and a celebration was held to allow the townspeople to celebrate the survival of the town. Katsovo took on the duties of Hostess allowing the people to let themselves go, and afterwards she tidied up, took them all home and returned to her beach to sit.

Year Thirty-Seven
This year K______ returned to the town. He had left a few years before, after Katsovo had encouraged him to see the world. He returned to a new town and with someone that he wanted Katsovo to meet and approve of. He introduced her to his fiancée, S______. They talked and S______ learned exactly why K_____ respected Katsovo so much. By the end of the year Katsovo gave them her blessing.

Year Thirty-Eight
And so there was a wedding, and Katsovo gave K_______ away to his new bride, and Katsovo seemed to finally feel happy as she celebrated her ‘son’ and his new life.

Year Thirty-Nine
Katsovo was just waiting for one last thing before she could leave her beach.

Year Forty
Almost a year later S_______ gave birth to twins and Katsovo made a decision. She decided that it might almost be time to leave the town and her beach.

Year Forty-One
For the entire year Katsovo just sat on the beach smiling at everything.

Year Forty-Two
In this year a group of people came to visit Katsovo on her beach, like others that had come before, no-one saw them arrive and no-one would see them leave

Year Forty-Three
She started to say her goodbyes, she knew it might take some time. She needed to say so many goodbyes to so many people that it could take her years, but it was just time and what was time to Katsovo?

Year Forty-Four
There was an air of sadness as the villagers slowly came to terms with the fact that their most famous resident would soon be leaving them. Some were glad, some were sad, all would miss her.

Year Forty-Five
At the end of this year she held a party to end all parties, with friends, and wine, and food, and joy, and regrets. There were old friends and new lovers. There were smiles of sadness and tears of joy. If the world had ended then, nobody would have minded but eventually, like all parties, it was over.

Year Forty-six
And then she was gone. Nobody saw her leave. They just woke up and never saw her again. As the years of the future tumbled by, they talked about her and all she had done. They never found out who or what she was. Until the end she was just Katsovo, Katsovo on the beach.

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