The Sea King’s Daughter

Chapter 12

SOMETHING TOLD ME I HAD BETTER GET BACK TO BED as fast as I could. I closed the window and made a run for it. Then I lay back and willed my pounding heart to calm itself. There wasn’t time enough; I could still feel the furious beat when Kore slipped into the room. She came straight to the bed and stood looking down at me.

It seemed to me that she must see the betraying pulse in my bare throat. It felt like a hammer. So I muttered and rolled over, away from her. She said my name softly. I muttered again but didn’t move. After a while she went away.

I fell asleep. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, I had so much on my mind, but I guess some of the sleeping medicine had been absorbed into my system.

It was good medicine. I felt great the next morning, rested and not at all hung over. I decided I had better pretend to be groggy, though, just to be on the safe side.

Kore came in with breakfast, and the morning proceeded with its now ritual activity. First breakfast, then a formal visit from Keller, to check on the state of my health. He put on a fresh bandage, and I got a look at the cut. It was healing well. Then, after he left, we had the ritual bath. The maid gave me an expert massage, using some kind of scented oil. She dressed me in a pale-blue satin gown that was elegant enough for a party, and Kore did my hair and tied it up with blue satin ribbons.

All morning I had been biting my tongue to keep from dropping a hint about what I had seen the night before. It would have been interesting to hear what Kore had to say about the incident. I figured she would probably tell me I had been dreaming. I knew it had not been a dream. I had dreamed, later; I couldn’t remember what about, but I had vague memories of a voice talking, or maybe singing, like the priest performing the service in church.

When Jim appeared I hadn’t made up my mind whether to tell him or not, but one look at his face decided me. He had enough worries of his own. He produced an artificial smile when he saw me, but I could tell the smile had been a scowl seconds earlier.

After we had exchanged greetings-and I don’t mean just “hello”-I asked him what was bothering him.

“Sssh.” He looked over his shoulder like a stage villain. “I think your girl friend listens at doors.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “She would. So what?”

“Everything okay?” He looked at me a little oddly.

“Great. Now that I know how the other half lives, I think I’ll start looking for a millionaire. I could learn to like this kind of life.”

Before I knew what he was planning he reached over and tugged at one of my hair ribbons. A whole side section of hair came down.

“God damn it!” I grabbed at my head. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing to get that excited about,” Jim said.

“Well, damn it, Kore put in a lot of work on this, and I don’t think you ought to mess it up. Of all the dumb, childish-”

“What’s happened to my girl with the hair in her face?”

“Oh… Forget it. I guess it’s not important.”

“No,” Jim said. His eyes went over me, from my ribboned hair across my bare shoulders and down to where the sheet lay neatly folded back over my lap. His expression annoyed me. I was showing a lot of healthy-looking skin, and I expected some signs of interest and approval instead of that cold, appraising stare.

“I talked to Chris,” Jim said. “He agrees that you ought to leave. The transcontinental flights are pretty full this time of year, but he thinks he can get you on a flight from Athens this weekend. You could catch the boat from Phira on Thursday and be in Athens -”

“Wait just a bloody minute,” I said. “What gives your boss the idea he can run my life?”

“It was pretty decent of him to offer. He doesn’t like to use his influence-”

“Like hell he doesn’t. He adores being Sir Christopher. I bet he can hardly wait for the next title.”

When Jim got mad he forgot about eavesdroppers, common courtesy, and care of the wounded.

“God, you’re in a bitchy mood,” he shouted. “I don’t know why I should stick around here and be insulted.”

“So leave,” I said. My voice wasn’t exactly a whisper.

Jim stood up. Then he sat down. He took six deep breaths. I could see his lips move as he counted.

“We’ll try again,” he said. “If you give me any more lip, I’ll belt you one.”

“You and what army?” I snapped; and then, because it had sounded so silly, even to me, I laughed.

The door opened and Kore’s head came in.

“Ah,” she said, grinning. “You laugh. You are friends, that is nice.”

The door closed.

Jim stopped laughing. “Damn that woman,” he said.

“She’s all right,” I said tolerantly.

“She’s a menace,” Jim said. “ Sandy, I’m sorry I got off on the wrong foot. I ought to know better than to sound as if I’m trying to give you orders. May I respectfully inquire what your plans are?”

I shrugged. One shoulder strap slipped down. I let it hang. “What’s the hurry?”

“No room at the inn,” Jim said.

“What?”

“Sorry if I blaspheme. I mean I tried to get you a room at the hotel. Angelos says they’re full up.”

“Maybe they have a tour coming.”

“No. The place is half empty.”

“And you think that’s significant or something?”

“I know it is. I offered to move in with Chris and give you my room. Angelos practically gibbered trying to think of reasons why that couldn’t be done. You are persona non grata in town, love.”

“But why?” I asked in bewilderment. “I haven’t done anything.”

“The only thing I can think of is that you’ve gotten friendly with Kore.”

“What a bunch of superstitious peasants,” I said scornfully. “Who cares about the hotel? I’ll stay here.”

I shrugged again. The other strap started to slide. Jim pulled it up and adjusted the first strap too, scowling like Martin Luther admonishing a harlot. His hands still on my shoulders he shook me, none too gently.

“For God’s sake, Sandy, what’s happened to you? You’re acting like a-like-somebody else. You look like one of those dummies in store windows. Even your face is blanking out. Will you come with me, now? I’ll drive you to Phira this afternoon.”

“Why bother?” I asked coldly. “For a big blank-faced doll-”

Jim made an exasperated noise. He slid his arm behind my back and pulled me away from the pillows so that my head lay in the curve of his shoulder. His free hand ran roughshod through my carefully arranged hair, till it hung loose. I yelped with the pain and he stopped my mouth with his. I couldn’t help responding; but after the first moment or two I began to get angry, not because he was rough but because he didn’t seem to care whether I responded or not. I started to struggle. Finally I brought my hand up in a wild swing, and felt it connect.

Jim let me go. I fell back, gasping and disheveled, puzzled and furious. There was a patch of red on Jim’s cheek where I had slapped him. He was smiling.

“That’s my girl,” he said approvingly. “You don’t like it, do you-being treated like an inanimate object?”

“Was that the point of that little demonstration?”

“Yes.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, his breathing still uneven, his cheek flaming and his eyes anxious. But he didn’t say any more.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go. This weekend.”

I had forgotten about Kore. Maybe Jim had not; he didn’t look startled when the door burst open.

“Now,” said Kore, advancing like an infuriated duenna. “What is this? You have hurt her, Jim. Ha! She hit you. That is good, you deserve it. You go now.”

“Okay.” Jim stood up. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He grinned at Kore. The corners of her mouth quivered.

“Men; they are all the same.”

After lunch, when I was left alone, I did my exercises instead of sleeping. Kore had announced I had a big treat coming. I would be allowed to go downstairs for dinner.

Early in the afternoon she started getting me fancied up. She worked on my hair for an hour, and then produced one of her silk caftans for me to wear. It was pale green; apparently she had decided that was my color.

I went downstairs supported by Kore and the silent maid. I felt a little giddy at first, but the feeling soon passed away, and I studied my surroundings with interest. I had not seen the interior of the villa, except for my own room. It was a beautiful place. The floors were made of those smooth shiny tiles that are common in the Mediterranean countries, cool deep blues and soft greens-sea colors. The wide staircase had a handsome wrought-iron balustrade. The drawing room was a large, low-ceilinged chamber, with wide windows opening onto a courtyard; not the one I had seen from my window, but a small space, with a little fountain in the center and exotic trees in big pots. The furniture was a mixture of European antiques and local peasant work.

After I had been settled in an overstuffed chair, the maid left and another woman came in with a tray of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Her face gave me a start; it was so like the faces that had passed through my field of vision the night before. She was young, probably not much older than I; but it’s hard to tell people’s ages in the islands, they grow old so fast.

I said, “Efkaristos,” and took the glass that had been offered to me. Usually the islanders responded with big grins when I said anything. This girl didn’t respond, except to duck her head, as if she were bowing.

My start and my stare had not gone unnoticed by Kore.

“They are so shy, these people,” she said, after the girl had left. “Like animals, fearful and silent. Prosit!” and she lifted her glass.

The German word, which I always associate with enormous steins of beer, sounded unnatural coming from her. I said “Cheers,” or something, and drank. The liquid didn’t taste like anything I recognized. It was a sweet, thick substance that made me long for a glass of water. Kore saw my grimace.

“A true antique, this wine,” she said. “I have made it as the Greeks and Romans did. Our wines to them would be vinegar, too thin, too sour. Theirs were sweet, so always they mix with water, with honey and herbs. It is interesting, yes?”

The wine was too sweet, but it was potent. Kore kept refilling my glass and urging me to drink up. She continued to talk, at first about Greeks and Romans and antiquities; but then the topic changed. As I listened, I was reminded of some of the nature freaks I had known back at school. I believe in a lot of that sort of thing, actually: the unity of living creatures, the great underlying life force, life and death as part of an unending circle. For what is death but reabsorption into the universe? And if the body is absorbed, what happens to the soul-the spark of life that animates the body and makes it something more than a collection of molecules?

I had heard it all before, from different people. The Hare Krishnas and the back-to-nature types, and my roommate, who was reading Sybil Leek and studying to be a witch-you name it, you can find it on a college campus. I knew about reincarnation, too. That was what Kore was talking about, although she didn’t use the word, but kept referring to rebirth. When I was young I used to think the idea made a lot of sense. It explains so many things-the seeming waste of life, only a few short years of enjoyment before you get old and senile and sick; the queer memories of things you couldn’t have experienced in your present life; the sudden, unreasoning antipathies and affections you feel for people and food and other things. It’s an old, old idea; a lot of people have believed in it.

“I had a boyfriend once, named Joe,” I said.

“Yes?” Kore said softly.

“He believed in reincarnation. He used to tell me we had been lovers in medieval Italy.” I giggled. “Like Romeo and Juliet.”

“But why not?”

“He used to quote me things,” I went on dreamily. “From Nietzsche and other people who believed in it too. He made me read that book about Bridey Murphy. I didn’t really believe it, but I’ve had some queer experiences. A couple of weeks ago when I was in Crete…”

I stopped. The room was getting hazy as the sun sank lower. Broad streaks of light lay across the floor like a carpet of gold.

“I’m getting drunk,” I said distinctly. “What’s in this wine?”

“You are not drunk,” Kore murmured. “What happened in Crete?”

“Funny,” I said. “Funny dreams, about the Minotaur and Theseus. I was there, watching them. And when I went to Knossos… They callit déjà vu. I’ve read about it. Scientists can explain it-”

“Scientists know nothing,” Kore said scornfully. “You know Knossos? What is so strange about that? You have lived before, you will live again. Many lives. One of them in ancient Crete. You were Greek, like me. Perhaps we know each other, then. I feel this.”

“Ariadne wasn’t Greek,” I said grumpily. “She was a Minoan, Cretan.”

“No. She lived in the last great days of the palace, after the destruction, after the Greeks came from the mainland and made a new palace and new dynasty in the ruins. What you see now in Knossos is the remains of this dynasty-all Greek. It is the Greek Minos who has subjugated Athens; to him are sent the boys and girls for the sacrifice; it is his daughter who loves the stranger prince. Only now are scientists learning this is true. You read, in the books-it is true! But I have known. Always I have known. Why do you shiver? It is not cold here.”

“It was horrible,” I said. “That slimy, dark, stinking hole… Why did I let him go? Hecouldn’t have found the way if I hadn’t helped him.”

I had not been aware that Kore had risen, but she was now standing beside me. Her hand was on my forehead.

“The sin,” she whispered. “It haunts you, all these years, yes? You must expiate the sin. Soon-”

The door opened with a sound that echoed like a pistol shot. I jumped halfway out of the chair. Kore stepped back.

Keller stood in the doorway. His eyes moved from me to Kore.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“She is not feeling well,” said Kore calmly. “I have told you, it was not wise for her to come down.”

Keller crossed the room with long, angry-looking strides. He reached for my wineglass.

“Why do you give her this? No wonder the child is sick.” He turned to a tall cabinet and came back with a glassful of clear liquid. “Drink this.”

I drank it. It tasted foul. As soon as I had emptied the glass, Keller dragged me roughly to my feet.

“Come to the window. You need air.”

The window was of the French type. It stood half ajar. Keller kicked it open and pulled me out into the courtyard. I was feeling better, but I was still staggering. We stood by the fountain, his hand tight on my arm.

“Breathe,” he said harshly. “Deeply. Again. That is-”

The sound-a blend of crack and whine and crash-cut through the last word. The crash was that of broken glass from the window behind us. Keller went down, dragging me with him. I thought he was hit, and tried to get to my knees; his hand slammed into my back, knocking me down behind the low parapet of the fountain. A fusillade of shots rang out, but these, unlike the first, came from the house. Turning, I saw Kore standing amid a sparkle of broken glass. She was holding a rifle.

Keller shouted at her.

“I cover you,” she shouted back. “But I think he has gone.”

“Stay here,” Keller said to me. He stood up and ran a zigzag course toward the gate on the south wall. My skin crawled, but nothing happened.

I stayed there. Kore stood in the doorway, the rifle at her shoulder. After a few minutes the gate opened again and Keller came back.

“No one,” he said.

I stood up, very, very slowly. Kore dropped the gun with a clatter and ran to Keller.

“He has hit you!”

“It is only a scratch,” said Keller.

We went back in the house. Keller seemed unconcerned about the reddening slash that had slit his shirt sleeve; he waved Kore away impatiently when she tried to fuss over him. She was as white as a dark-skinned woman can be.

“I kill him,” she muttered.

“How do you know it was a man?” Keller asked dryly. “I am not so popular that a woman might not try to shoot at me. Kore, sit down and drink some wine. It is not the first time.”

“You mean people go around shooting at you all the time?” I asked curiously. The excitement had cleared my brain; I felt quite alert and inquisitive.

Keller shrugged. “When I first came here, there were a few incidents.”

“But not for years,” Kore said. “I thought…”

“You thought you had learned how to deal with these people,” Keller said. “It seems you were mistaken.”

“No,” Kore said slowly. “I think I was not mistaken.”

At Keller’s suggestion we had brandy all around. I barely sipped mine, figuring I needed to keep my head clear. And I was right. The fun and games weren’t over.

We hadn’t been sitting for long when there was a loud knock at the front door. Keller and Kore exchanged startled looks, and Kore reached for the rifle that was leaning hazardously against her chair.

Keller clucked disapprovingly. “You must not be so nervous,” he said. “Put the gun away. It was foolish, what you did. You might have been killed, standing in the open.”

The knock was repeated. I heard footsteps in the hall as one of the servants went to answer it, and then the sound of voices. I almost dropped my glass. I recognized one of the voices-the louder of the two. Keller stood up, but made no move to go to the door. It was opened by the young Greek girl who had served the wine. She was flushed and distraught. Twisting her hands nervously, she started to speak. Someone pushed her out of the way.

“She did try to keep me out,” Frederick said. “I take it you do not encourage visitors.”

He looked at each of us in turn, his face registering no particular emotion. I waited curiously to hear what he would say to these ghosts out of his past. In a movie it would have been something like, “So, Herr Kapitan, we meet again!” But Frederick, as I ought to have learned, never wasted his breath on meaningless speeches. Instead, he spoke to me.

“I’ve come to take you home,” he said.

He tossed me a bundle. Reflexively, my hands went out to catch it. It seemed to be a shirt and my sneakers, wrapped in a pair of jeans. One of the sneakers fell out as I caught it.

Keller laughed.

“Is that all you have to say?” he asked.

“What else is there to say? An emotional speech of thanks for saving the girl’s life? Consider it said. She has been here long enough. Go and change your clothes, Sandy. You look ridiculous in that-that thing.”

I let out my breath in a long sigh.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve missed our fights, Frederick. I can’t imagine how I’ve managed these past few days, living in peace and comfort with kind, civilized people who are trying to make me happy.”

Kore clapped her hands. “Very good,” she said, smiling broadly. “You know how to deal with him. He has not changed.”

Frederick looked her over. “You have,” he said brutally.

Kore’s face quivered, more in anger than in pain. Keller took a step forward. His face had lost its smile.

“That was unkind and unnecessary,” he said. “Sit down-Minos-and let us talk like adults.”

“Oh, very well,” Frederick said. “But if you want adult conversation, I suggest you avoid nicknames. They were childish in any case, and after all this time-”

“Over thirty years,” Keller interrupted. “Kore was right about you, Frederick; you are incredible. You don’t even ask me what I am doing here. Can it be that you know the answer?”

“Yes,” Frederick said. “There can only be one answer. As soon as I knew you were here, I knew why.”

“Then,” Keller said, “you have a question to ask me, I think. Ask it.”

He put his glass down on the table and straightened, his eyes fixed on Frederick. Arms at his sides, shoulders rigid, he looked like a man facing a firing squad.

“Yes,” Frederick said calmly. “I do have a question. What have you done about it?”

“About…it?” Keller’s mouth dropped open in a ludicrous expression of surprise. “You ask me what I have done? And that is all you-”

Kore sprang to her feet. She put her arms around Keller’s heaving shoulders. I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying.

“He has done nothing,” she cried, glaring at Frederick. “Oh, you have not changed, you are the same cold, unfeeling-”

“For God’s sake!” It was my turn to leap up. We stood there like four people in a room without chairs. “I can’t stand this oblique conversation any longer. What the hell are you all talking about?”

“None of your business,” said Frederick.

“Then I’ve got a question for you,” I said, snorting with rage. “Were you the one who shot at Mr. Keller a while ago?”

“No,” Frederick said. “Why should I shoot at him?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea,” I said wildly. “That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”

Keller gently detached himself from Kore’s clinging arms.

“Sit down, Liebchen, and calm yourself. I apologize for losing control. She is correct, Frederick. I have done nothing. Nothing at all, except to stay here quietly and watch. You are the one who initiates action. What will you do now?”

“Take my daughter home,” Frederick said. “ Sandy, go and change.”

“No,” I said.

“I had anticipated a refusal,” Frederick said calmly. “I therefore enlisted an ally, reluctant as I was to do so. In this matter, however, we agree. He should be here presently.”

So we sat and waited. I tried to start a conversation, but nobody gave me any help; my leading remarks fell heavily into an abyss of silence. The situation was so bizarre I couldn’t think coherently. I had been exaggerating when I said I didn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about. I did have an idea; but it seemed preposterous. Besides, I was preoccupied with the arrival of Frederick ’s ally, whose identity I thought I knew. Sure enough, before long there was another knock at the door, and the maid showed Jim into the living room. With him was Sir Christopher.

Talk about socially awkward situations. Offhand I can’t imagine anything worse than this one. Kore reacted with less than her usual savoir faire. She huddled in her chair, saying nothing and glaring impartially on the entire group. If looks could kill, all three outsiders would have dropped dead.

Men are amazing. Jim was the only one who looked embarrassed. The old enemies merely nodded at one another.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Jim began, glancing at his boss. “When I told him-”

“I thought I had better come along,” Sir Christopher said. “I confess that it was curiosity, in part. We never met, Herr Keller; but I saw you many times as you went about your duties.”

“I do not speak of those days,” said Keller softly.

Sir Christopher smiled. “Very wise. It would be better if we all forgot the past. I came primarily for another purpose: to offer my assistance to Sandy, whatever her plans may be.”

He wasn’t looking at me, though; he was staring at Keller as if trying to recognize a man he had once known. Keller couldn’t keep his eyes off Jim. Jim was looking at me, and I was trying to watch all of them at the same time. Frederick and Kore were the only ones not involved in the staring contest. Neither of them seemed at all interested in what was going on.

“ Sandy,” Jim said sharply.

“What? Oh. Are you all waiting for me to say something? How flattering. I haven’t made up my mind. Maybe I should take a poll. You all seem to have an opinion.”

“There is nothing to discuss,” Frederick said in a bored voice. “You promised to spend the summer helping me. I want you back at the house tonight, ready to work tomorrow morning.”

“One vote in favor of me leaving here, but staying on Thera,” I said brightly. “Jim? But I know what you think. You want me to go far, far away. Sir Christopher wants me to go too. Kore?”

“Stay,” said Kore, in a stifled voice. “You cannot go now. You cannot.”

“Three to one,” I said. “Mr. Keller?”

Keller didn’t answer. He was still staring at Jim. His eyes had a vacant glitter.

“I see now,” he said, as if to himself. “I see the meaning. Yes, it was meant; or why should you come, with his face, as I remember it? You are the one I have waited for, so that I could tell you.”

He advanced on Jim, who stood his ground. The rest of them moved as one man-or one person, including Kore. She made a dash at Keller and put her arms around him. Sir Christopher stepped in front of Jim. Frederick stood up.

“Wait,” he said. “Hold on-”

Somehow, I don’t know how, Kore got Keller turned around, and out of the room. He calmed down as soon as Jim was out of his sight and went with her like a big puzzled child. When the door had closed behind them, Jim let out a long whistle of relief.

“I’d better get out of here,” he said.

“You seem to affect the fellow adversely,” Sir Christopher agreed, studying his assistant curiously. “I would not have expected the resemblance to disturb Keller so much.”

“His conscience is disturbing him,” Jim said.

“No doubt. Well, my boy, I agree that we had better go. Frederick?”

“Not without Sandy,” said dear old Daddy, settling himself in his chair.

“Then I stay too,” said Sir Christopher grimly. “I’ll not have you harassing this girl, Frederick.”

“Whose girl is she?” demanded Frederick.

“Not yours,” I said. “ Frederick, whenever you suggest something, it makes me want to do the exact opposite. Leave. I may come tomorrow-if you get off my back. I certainly don’t intend to come now.”

“Oh, very well,” Frederick grumbled.

I went with them to the door. The maid seemed to have vanished.

Jim hung back. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“I would also like to talk to you,” I said.

“Can you sneak out of here?”

“Sneak? I’ll meet you tomorrow morning. Outside, if that’s what you want.”

“Make it one o’clock.”

Sir Christopher turned. I didn’t think he could overhear, but I was taking no chances. I nodded at Jim.

I stood in the doorway watching them as they walked away. Frederick was several paces ahead of the other two. It was getting dark; the soft grayish-blue air closed around the three forms, blurring their outlines. They might have been three young men walking in a Cretan evening in a far-gone year. If Kore’s crazy ideas had any foundation, the young man whose life had ended prematurely could find no more suitable place for rebirth than the body of his sister’s son.

Who are we, anyway? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random from some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply? Spiritual scrap bags-bits and pieces of everyone we have ever been, from the shambling apelike creatures of the Ice Age to the present?

The tiled floor under my feet swayed just a little. Nothing was stable, not even the solid ground. I closed the door and went back into the darkening room.

Dinner that night was an experience. I can’t remember what we ate, I was so interested in watching my host and hostess. To a casual observer they might have seemed normal enough, although Keller’s black tie and Kore’s glitter of jewels were a little overdone. I decided they must dress for dinner the way the Victorian empire builders did in remote outposts, to keep up their morale. They both talked fluently, but every now and then a silence would fall, and one of them would steal a sidelong glance at the other, as if searching for something he was hoping not to see.

The atmosphere was not lightened by the occasional quiver of the earth. You couldn’t even call them minor quakes, they were just enough to make the chandelier sway. Midway through the meal the movements stopped, and we finished dessert and coffee without further disturbances. Kore insisted on putting me to bed immediately afterward. I went without argument. I was tired. It was not so much physical fatigue as mental strain. I thought Kore felt it too. She looked old that night. She didn’t fuss over me the way she had before, and when I refused a sleeping pill, she merely shrugged.

“I put it here,” she said, and placed the tray, which also held a glass of water, on the table by the bed. “If you need…”

“I won’t. I’m tired.”

She left a light burning, as usual, when she went out.

I didn’t take the pill, but I drank the water. The sticky sweet wine had produced a thirst that was still with me. Though I was tired, I was not really sleepy, so I read for a while. The book was dull enough to put anybody to sleep; Keller’s English library consisted mostly of books on archaeology and related fields. This was a sober text on Stone Age religion; I remembered having heard Frederick mention it. There was a footnote on practically every word. I read on, my eyelids getting heavier and heavier, till I came across my own name.

The more I discovered about the origins of that name, the less I liked it. Ariadne was not only the daughter of Minos the sea king, she was also a goddess, a vegetation deity who died in the fall and was reborn in spring… There it was again, that reference to resurrection and reincarnation that was beginning to haunt me. Ariadne was a girl too; she was mentioned by Homer, when he spoke of “the dancing ground which Daedalus wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne.” No one had ever really figured out what the dancing ground was, or why the master craftsman of ancient Crete should have directed the construction of a simple dance floor. The author of the book I was reading suggested that the dancing ground was a maze, like the Cretan Labyrinth, and the dance was a twisting, circling survival of an old fertility ritual. The tributary youths and maidens of Athens performed the dance, under pressure, and met the bull-masked killer who was priest of the goddess. “Only Theseus penetrated to the center, to discover Ariadne…with the help of her own clue.”

The words blurred. I dropped the book and let my head fall back on the pillow. The night light was a dim golden haze somewhere off in the distance.

I had never read this book before. It wasn’t exactly my type of literature. How, then, had my subconscious mind come up with the idea that Ariadne herself waited in the center of the maze, the prize of the hero who killed the Minotaur? The dancing place… An innocuous term, suggesting harmless pleasures. How had I known that Ariadne’s dancing place was a labyrinthine web of stone, and that the function of the dance was to deliver a victim to sacrifice?

I fell asleep and dreamed.

There was a period of confused and fragmentary impressions-lights flickering, dank, cool air against my face, voices murmuring words I could not understand. Then the mists cleared. I awoke to darkness, but it was not the foul black of the Labyrinth. Stars blazed down out of a high night sky, and the air smelled of wild herbs and of the sea. A hard, gritty substance stung my bare feet as they moved, stumbling at first and then more surely, in a measured rhythm. The music was a thin, high piping. It was the strangest music, without a recognizable tune. Even the scale was unfamiliar. The notes had no ending, no resolution, they repeated endlessly, and my feet moved with them, moving faster as the beat picked up. I was spinning, moving in a narrow circle, with my arms outflung to keep my balance, and the stars were spinning too, so fast that they looked like coiling, luminous snakes. My moving feet made a pattern, a complex network of force like an invisible cat’s-cradle. When the pattern was complete, something would take shape. I could feel it hovering, waiting with a terrible eagerness, like a creature crouching behind a barrier waiting to spring out. The barrier was crumbling, inch by inch…

Then the night was dissected by a rising bar of fire. The ground shook under my moving feet; they stumbled and missed the beat. I lost my balance and grasped vainly at empty air; but as I fell I saw the thing that waited behind the barrier. It had my face, but the green eyes blazed like emeralds and the mouth was curved in the queer, disquieting smile I had first seen on the archaic statue Frederick had sent me. I toppled, screaming soundlessly, into a bottomless hole of darkness.

I awoke to clear morning light and a cool breeze from the open window. The sheet was twisted around my legs and the memory of the dream was still heavy on my mind. But as I came back to full consciousness, I was infinitely relieved to realize that for once I had had a nightmare whose origins could be explained. It was the book I had been reading that had set me off.

Relaxed, I lay on the soft bed and contemplated the day ahead of me. The meeting with Jim was not an unmixed pleasure to anticipate. I wanted to see him, but I knew he was going to lecture me. I was tired of people telling me what to do, as if I were a little child. I wanted to be left alone.

It was an effort to sit up. I was still tired, and my legs felt stiff; the sheet had been wound so tightly around them that red welts showed. Apparently I had done quite a bit of thrashing around in the throes of the dream. And then, as I bent my knees, preparatory to getting out of bed, I caught a glimpse of my feet.

The soles were spotlessly clean. There wasn’t even a trace of dust. But from heel to toe they were red and scraped, as if I had run, barefoot, across a rough, hard surface.