Barbara Michaels: The Sea King’s Daughter

Elizabeth Peters writing as Barbara Michaels

DON’T CALL ME ARIADNE. THAT’S NOT MY NAME ANYmore.

I changed it legally a few years ago. Not that anyone had ever used it, even Mother. She called me Sandy, like everyone else, even when she was mad at me.

I must have been about ten years old before it really hit me that Sandy wasn’t my real name. That was the day the package arrived-a fascinating package, big and battered and plastered all over with bright foreign stamps. The package itself looked foreign, with its thin shiny paper and unusual string. It was addressed to Miss Ariadne Frederick.

I was disappointed. I had hoped it was for me. I didn’t know any Ariadne Frederick. My last name was Bishop.

I knew it wasn’t really-at least I knew Jim Bishop was my stepfather. Mother had left my other father when I was a baby, not because he didn’t love us, but because he loved something else more. I couldn’t get it into my juvenile brain precisely what it was he loved-some strange, hard-to-pronounce word that was my father’s job. That was incomprehensible to me. How could a person love his work more than he loved a person? Mother tried to explain; I remember her soft, anxious voice going on and on, while I fidgeted, picking at the scab on my knee and wishing she would stop talking so I could go back to the baseball game down the street.

It may seem strange that I had forgotten my own name. A psychiatrist wouldn’t find it strange; he would say I wanted to forget it. Maybe so. But I think the explanation is simpler. Children have a culture of their own; they are no more interested in adult values than an Australian aborigine is interested in the rules of Emily Post. I wasn’t interested in the name, or in the forgotten father who had given it to me.

I remember thinking it was a weird name, not one I’d have wanted to claim. People didn’t have names like that, except in the boring stories we had to read for English. My friends had sensible names, like Debby and Jan and Penny.

Mother arrived while I was inspecting the package. She always tried to be there when I got home from school, but the lines at the grocery store had been longer than usual that day. I went to help her carry in the bags, and then I saw that she was standing quite still, staring down at the big battered parcel. She had the most peculiar look on her face. I know now that what I saw was a struggle, internal but intense, and when I said casually, “Hey, I guess the mailman made a mistake,” the struggle showed in a facial contortion so extreme that I mistook it for physical pain. I asked her what was the matter.

It was several seconds before she answered.

“He didn’t make a mistake. It’s for you. Have you forgotten?”

If I felt chagrin at being reminded that the weird name was my own, it was quickly forgotten in delight. The package was for me, that was the important thing.

I dismembered it there in the garage, too excited to notice Mother’s silence. She stood watching while I tore the wrappings off and removed the lid. The interior of the box was filled with scraps of newspaper. Even in my anxiety to reach the object buried within, I realized that the paper was unusual. The language wasn’t English. Even the writing was funny, not like English print.

My groping hands found a hard surface among the shreds of paper. I pulled out the object and held it up. My first thought was that someone had played a mean trick on me. This wasn’t a present. It was a joke, a piece of junk.

The object was a statue, about a foot high, made of white stone. The arms were missing and so was the nose. The stone was stained and chipped and worn. At first I couldn’t even decide whether it was supposed to be a man or a woman. It wore a long robe, carved in stiff pleats; but I knew that men used to wear long robes, and this object had an air of extreme age. Yet as I continued to stare, disgusted and disappointed, some quality of the small, marred face got through to me, and I felt sure that the subject was female.

Not that I cared. I was about to set the thing down, with a decided thump, when Mother’s hand caught mine.

“Be careful. It is probably valuable.”

“Valuable! This dirty, beat-up, old-”

“Very old. Over two thousand years old.”

I sat back on my heels and looked at the statue again. I felt more respect for it; the difference between ten and two thousand has to command a certain awe. The more I looked, the more the thing got to me. Even the disfigurement of the nose could not destroy the haunting quality of the face. The mouth was curved in an odd, disquieting little smile, and the sunken eye sockets seemed to stare directly into my eyes.

Mother was on her knees, digging with both hands among the crumpled papers. She leaned back with a short, high-pitched laugh.

“Not even a note,” she said, as if to herself. “How typical.”

I paid no attention to the comment, which was obviously not addressed to me. I couldn’t rid myself of the notion that this was some kind of practical joke. I turned the statue upside down, thinking there might be a note, or a rude remark, on the base. Sure enough, something was written there in black ink. It wasn’t a word; the shapes looked more like code than letters of the alphabet.

I showed it to Mother. She gave another of those funny little laughs.

“Ariadne,” she said. “Just like him! How could he know? It might be anyone-Aphrodite or Hera, or an anonymous worshiper.”

“Ariadne? This is supposed to be me?”

This time Mother’s laugh sounded more like her own. She was wearing jeans-she had a nice trim figure in those days-and she sat down on the garage floor with her legs crossed and the statue on her lap.

“The writing is in Greek,” she explained. “It’s a Greek statue-archaic Greek, about five hundred B.C. Ariadne was a princess who lived on an island near Greece, even earlier than that-a thousand years earlier. She was like a fairytale princess to those ancient Greeks. They told stories about her, and I suppose they did make statues of her. But no one can tell who this statue is supposed to represent. It must be his idea of-no, not a joke, he never jokes-of an appropriate gift for a little girl. I wonder what reminded him of your existence.”

I had lost her again. She said “you,” but she wasn’t talking to me.

I joggled her elbow. “Who?” I asked. “Who sent it?”

“Your father,” she said. “Now, Sandy, don’t look so blank. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten about him too; I told you the whole story years ago, you must remember-”

Her voice was getting high and shrill. I couldn’t figure out why she was upset-I thought I was the one who should be mad, getting such a dumb present-but I didn’t want her to be upset, so I said quickly,

“Oh, sure. I remember. It was silly of me not to think of him right away.”

She put her arm around me and pulled me against her. It was an uncomfortable position; my face was squashed against her shoulder, so I couldn’t see her face. I could see the statue, though. She was holding it against her breast with the other hand, holding it pressed against her as she was holding me.

“Why should you remember?” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I had no right to snap at you. I was angry for you, not at you.”

“You were mad at him,” I said intelligently.