The customs woman peered into my shoulder bag; she could have taken it, as far as I was concerned. But I couldn’t refuse the bag, which Max sent over from Beau Allaire, without someone in the family noticing and making a crisis over it. It was gorgeous, with pockets and zippers and pads and pens, and if anybody else had given it to me I’d have been ecstatic.
The customs woman pulled out one of my notebooks and glanced at it. What I wrote was obviously not in the Greek alphabet, so she couldn’t have got much out of it. She handed it back to me with a scowl, put a chalk mark on my suitcase, and waved me on.
I went through the doors, looking at all the people milling about, looking for Uncle Sandy and Aunt Rhea to be visible above the crowd. I saw a tall man with a curly blond beard and started to run toward him, but he was with a woman with red hair out of a bottle (why would anybody deliberately want that color hair?), and when I looked at his face he wasn’t like Sandy at all.
Aunt Rhea has black hair, shiny as a bird’s wing, long and lustrous. I have my hair cut short so there’ll be as little of it to show as possible. Daddy says it will turn dark, as his has done, the warm color of an Irish setter. I hope so.
Where were my uncle and aunt? I’d expected them to be right there, in the forefront of the crowd. I kept looking, moving through groups of people greeting, hugging, kissing, weeping. I even went out to the place where taxis and buses were waiting. They weren’t there, either. Back into the airport. If I was certain of anything in an uncertain world, it was that Sandy and Rhea would be right there, arms outstretched to welcome me.
And they weren’t. I mean, I simply had to accept that they were not there. And I wasn’t as sophisticated a traveler as I’d fooled myself into thinking I was. Someone else had always been with me before, doing the right things about passports, changing money, arranging transportation. I’d gone through passport control with no problem, but now what?
I looked at the various signs, but although I’d learned the Greek alphabet, my mind had gone blank. I could say thank you, epharisto, and please, parakalo. Kalamos means pen, and mathetes means student, and I’d gone over, several times, the phrase book for travelers Max had given me. I’m good at languages. I speak Portuguese and Spanish, and a good bit of French and German. I even know some Russian, but right now that was more of a liability than an asset, because when I looked at the airport signs I confused the Russian and Greek alphabets.
I walked more slowly, thought I saw Sandy and Rhea, started to run, then slowed down again in disappointment. It seemed the airport was full of big, blond-bearded men, and tall, black-haired women. At last I came upon a large board, white with pinned-up messages, and I read them slowly. Greek names, French, German, English, Chinese, Arabic names. Finally, P. O’Keefe.
I took the message off the board and made myself put the pin back in before opening it. My fingers were trembling.
DELAYED WILL CALL HOTEL SANDY RHEA
They had not abandoned me. Something had happened, but they had not forgotten me. I held the message in my hand and looked around the airport, where people were still milling about.
Well, I didn’t need someone to hold my hand, keep the tickets, tell me what to do. I found a place where I could get one of my traveler’s checks cashed into Greek money, and then got a bus which would take me to the hotel.
It was the King George Hotel, and Max had told me that it was old-fashioned and comfortable and where she stayed. If Max stayed there, then it was expensive as well as pleasant, and that made me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have minded my father paying for it, though marine biologists aren’t likely to be rolling in wealth. I wouldn’t even have minded Sandy and Rhea paying for it, because I knew Rhea had inherited pots of money. But it was Max. This whole trip was because of Max.
It was in August that Max had said to me, ‘Polly, I had a letter today from a friend of mine, Kumar Krhishna Ghose. Would you like to go to Cyprus?’
Non sequiturs were not uncommon with Max, whose thoughts ranged from subject to subject with lightning-like rapidity.
We were sitting on the screened verandah of her big Greek revival house, Beau Allaire. The ceiling fan was whirring; the sound of waves rolled through all our words. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But what’s Cyprus got to do with your Indian friend?’
‘Krhis is going to coordinate a conference there in late September. The delegates will be from all the underdeveloped and developing countries except those behind the Iron Curtain—Zimbabwe, New Guinea, Baki, Kenya, Brazil, Thailand, to name a few. They’re highly motivated people who want to learn everything they can about writing, about literature, and then take what they’ve learned back to their own countries.’
I looked curiously at Max, but said nothing.
‘The conference is being held in Osia Theola in Cyprus. Osia, as you may know, is the Greek word for holy, or blessed. Theola means, I believe, Divine Speech. We can check it with Rhea. In any case, a woman named Theola went to Cyprus early in the Christian era and saw a vision in a cave. The church that was built over the cave and the village around it are named after her, Osia Theola.’
I was evidently supposed to say something. ‘That’s a pretty name.’
At last Max, laughing, took pity on me. ‘My friend Krhis is going to need someone to run errands, do simple paperwork, be a general slave. I’ve offered you. Would you like that?’
Would I! ‘Sure, if it’s all right with my parents.’
‘I don’t think they’d want you to miss that kind of opportunity. Your mother can do without you for once. I’ll speak to your school principal if necessary and tell him what an incredible educational advantage three weeks on Osia Theola will be. It won’t be glamorous, Polly. You’ll have to do all the scut work, but you’re used to that at home, and I think it would be good experience for you. I’ve already called Krhis and he’d like to have you.’
DRAGONS IN THE WATERS. Copyright © 1976 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
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Originally published in the United States by Farrar Straus Giroux
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eISBN 9781466814110
First eBook Edition : February 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
L’Engle, Madeleine.
Dragons in the waters.
[1. Mystery and detective stories.
2. Venezuela—Fiction] I. Title.
PZ7.L5385Dr [Fic] 76-2477
First Square Fish Edition: December 2011
Dragons in the Waters Page 28
