The Sea King’s Daughter

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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.

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