Barbara Michaels - The Sea King’s Daughter

“I’d like some coffee,” he said. “We’ll discuss the details. They can be worked out.”

I made him some instant on my hot plate. I didn’t want to go out to the coffee shop with him. I didn’t want to be seen with him. But I knew what was going to happen. I even knew why it was going to happen.

Breaking the law didn’t bother me, although I had made a big point of it to Frederick. As he said, I had no reputation to lose, and I didn’t consider that I was planning to commit a crime, merely bend a minor regulation. I doubted that they would put me in a Greek jail even if they caught me. I could always claim my revered parent had ordered me to do wrong.

That danger I could dismiss, but the other dangers were more serious. Diving is the greatest fun on earth, but it is not a game. You have to know what you’re doing, and you have to know the terrain. Thanks to Jim’s super coaching, I felt competent to take care of myself in home waters, but I didn’t know anything about the Mediterranean. For all I knew, they had man-eating plants down there. And my father didn’t strike me as the greatest person to have around if you got into trouble. I had a feeling I could drown ten feet away from Frederick if he happened to be thinking about something else.

Money was no problem, apparently. Somehow or other Frederick had conned some nutty foundation into sponsoring the dig. There are more of them-nutty foundations-than you might suppose, supported by millionaires with more money than sense, or by groups of earnest fanatics. They want to find the Fountain of Youth, or the secret of the Great Pyramid, or-in this case-Atlantis. The Atlantis bit suited Frederick ’s plans; that’s what he was really looking for, although he put the problem in more pompous terms. So I could get my fare and expenses out of Frederick. I might not be earning any money, but at least I wouldn’t be a drag on Mother and Dad.

Which brought me to the main problem.

I had no intention of telling my parents-my real parents-about Frederick. Mother would flip, and I wouldn’t blame her. It had taken me only half an hour to realize that my begetter was ruthless, unreliable, and incapable of feeling responsibility toward another human being. Mother had better reasons than anyone in the world to know these things. For the first time in my life I allowed myself to contemplate that marriage. It had lasted for three years… I shivered. Cold. Cold-it must have been like embracing a block of ice.

So what I had to do was think up a convincing story. I considered lying about my whereabouts, writing a dozen letters and arranging to have incoming letters forwarded by a confederate in some safe neutral town, or one of the state parks, where I might reasonably be expected to find a summer job. The idea didn’t appeal to me. If I got caught, it would destroy a relationship that had taken me twenty years to build up. I hated to risk it. And yet it was because of that relationship of trust that I could get away with what I planned to do that summer. Mother and Jim would believe me when I told them…anything. They trusted me that much.

I was already starting to talk away the difficulties. The decision wasn’t hard to make. It was a choice between Joe’s Pizza Parlor, with a lot of beer-drinking high-school big shots making grabs at me, and…Thera. Brilliant sunlight and cobalt-blue waters, olive groves and white beaches and bronzed Greek sponge divers with dazzling smiles… My ideas of Greece were pretty vague. But underlying the hazy tourists’ picture, motivating the decision that altered my life was the prospect of what might be waiting for me in the blue waters off Thera. Sunken treasure, cities under the sea. The columned halls of the sea kings. Gold ingots, piled in stacks. Crowns and diadems, jewels spilling out of rotted chests bound with silver. Pretty Sandy Bishop, the discoverer of the treasure…

I’m not ashamed to admit I was a fool. Even now, after all that happened, I’d rather be foolish than too dull to respond to a lure like that.

After Frederick had left I tried to get back to my term paper, but it was a lost cause. His aggressive presence still pervaded the room. After a while I put on my raincoat and went to the library. Instead of looking up references for my paper, I took out three books about ancient Greece.

Things worked out about the way I had expected. Lying to Mother and Jim left me with a nasty feeling. I hated to do it. But there was no other way.

So I set up a deal with Betsy, a friend of mine who was planning to spend the summer backpacking around Europe with a couple of other guys. She agreed to forward mail, read telegrams or anything that looked urgent, and telephone me right away if something came up. (That was before I found out about telephone service in remote parts of eastern Europe.) She was also supposed to scribble an unintelligible postcard from time to time.

Mother and Dad accepted my plans with a readiness that made me squirm inside. I had about two hundred dollars in the bank. I told them it was more. They believed me. And I felt like the A-I heel of the universe on graduation day when Jim handed me a check. He had to borrow the money, I was sure of it. I almost told them the truth then, they were so teary-eyed and proud and gullible. But I didn’t. I promised myself I would pay Jim back at the end of the summer, with interest. I could get the money from Frederick, and believe me, I had no qualms about doing just that.

I had seen him a couple of times since his first visit. Finally I told him not to come to the campus. He made me nervous. It was okay with him. We communicated by letter after that, and I must admit he was relaxing to deal with. He wasn’t like a parent at all. I mean, with parents-parents you love-you have to go through all kinds of contortions to keep from worrying them or hurting their feelings. I didn’t have to pretend with Frederick. He treated me like an equal-no, not like an equal, he didn’t think he had any; he treated me like a functioning adult, no more incompetent than the other adults he knew. Like, in making the arrangements for the trip. He just sent me a check. No reservations, no “I’ll meet you at three thirty-four at the customs desk, and for heaven’s sake, don’t miss the plane.” Love is fine. But it is also confining, it ties you down. My parents were the greatest, but even with them there were times when I felt like Gulliver, pinioned by a million tiny strings, and I wanted to leap up and yell and throw my arms wide and break loose.

I wanted to be free. And if that sounds corny, adolescent, immature-it’s the truth, and I’ve made up my mind to be as honest as I can. I know. Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose. I had plenty to lose and no intention of losing it. I didn’t want to be free of Mother and Dad, not permanently. But for a while… WithFrederick I was free. I didn’t give a damn about him and he didn’t give a damn about me. If I ever came into conflict with his precious work, then heaven help me. He would sacrifice me as quickly-and with less regret-than Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter to get favorable winds. (You see, I had been doing my homework on ancient Greece.)

I knew from the start I couldn’t live long in that arctic cold that was Frederick ’s emotional environment. But after twenty years of cozy warmth, it felt bracing. He was an interesting man. I was curious to find out more about him. And there were the sunken halls of the sea kings, waiting…

They weren’t such bad reasons. There was no way I could have anticipated what was going to happen.

I took my time about getting to Thera. Frederick was probably pacing up and down the volcano, looking at his watch and cursing me in several languages; but after all, it was my first trip abroad. Besides, I felt I had to establish my relationship with Frederick right from the start. If I wasn’t firm with him, he would walk all over me.