The Fox Knows Many Things: An Athena Fox Adventure

by Mike Sweeney

  In general we communicated well. We hashed things out. There had to be some doubt there still, though. One of those late-night doubts you get when you look back on how you raised your kid and hoped you’d made the right choices.

  Heck, I looked back on being a kid and I sure wasn’t sure I’d made the right choices. In all honest truth, I’d left the violin because it bored me. Not because music bored me. Not even because I didn’t like playing that instrument.

  It was because it took a year to get used to the ridiculous grip, the twisted arm and the precarious balance even with chin scrunched over and the hardware of the tailpiece digging into the side of your neck.

  A year of scratching away trying to cross strings and trying to switch bow direction quietly and wondering if you’d ever get vibrato when even shifting was yanking the thing off your shoulder. It might have been one of the toughest things I’d ever tried to learn. It certainly was the most frustrating.

  After a year I had the basics down. I could actually play. The next part was learning how to play, well, better. And that’s when it struck you. Well, it struck me. After a second year of practice I was marginally better than when I’d started. I realized then the fun part was over. The real sense of accomplishment, of learning how to get a sound out of the damned thing, was behind me. Now it was all about getting better in increments that got smaller and smaller, year after year after year.

  I paddled around in a circle again, looking to see if anything was going to pass near enough for me to scream for help. Nothing. I might as well be alone in the water.

  I threw myself into challenges. I loved learning new things. But I didn’t have the patience to stick with them long enough to actually get good. It had been the same with acting. Again, it could be a lifetime project. I was all the way a Theatre Person. Opening weekend tickets to Hamilton, Tony Night drinking parties. Debating Ibsen versus Williams, Ken Ludwig versus Noel Coward, and if anyone actually liked Chekov or just suffered through him.

  I got to the point where I was being given bit parts. And that was it. I wasn’t going to stick around for more years, working my way slowly up the food chain. The freight train of been there, done that had already sounded its mournful whistle and I’d already hopped on the next baggage car.

  And that metaphor went nowhere fast.

  My legs were getting tired. The water was colder down where my feet were, and the weight of my boots kept dragging down at them. I was still keeping my head above water, but I was starting to be conscious of how much effort I was having to put in to do it. The Moon had yet to reach the zenith. There might be a lot more hours to go.

  I could always sing to keep my spirits up. I’d only done a couple of musicals, but that was the sort of thing that engraved every lyric in your brain. All that popped into my head at the moment were spoof lyrics, though. Like, I’d been doing required hours at the shop when they put on Peter Pan and one of the other people in the program shared their version of “I’m Flying,” to wit, “I’m tired; look at me, falling down, fast asleep, on the ground — I’m tired!”

  Um, also probably not the best song to sing. But I was in a Disney mood, I guess. Of all the terrible things a Sondheim fan could admit to. Although I couldn’t remember the full lyrics to anything. Just some of those catchy Disney choruses. And you had to admit they had that over Stephen. Seriously, what did the man have against returning to the tonic?

  Getting colder. Sure, the water was warm, but it was cooler than body temperature and water is a great conductor. I had reserves of endurance but this was eating into them fast. I really wasn’t sure how much longer I could tread water.

  I didn’t want to end it here. It bugged the heck out of me that I might never find out what had actually been going on.

  Nobody would find out what had been going on. My folks wouldn’t know for weeks that I was even missing. My folks. Out of all the people I didn’t want to leave without a goodbye, it would be them.

  Head up. Keep stirring the water. Not going to give up yet.

  Despite giving up everything in the past. Despite going from interest to interest, never staying long enough. I learned too well, was the problem. I got too used to early gratification, early success. It spoiled me for putting in the real work of actually getting good.

  I’d dropped violin when I realized how many years there were between playing one and playing one well. I’d dropped theatre when I’d realized I had no interest in paying dues in ensemble roles and off-off-off Broadway.

  But now I’d discovered history. That was an endlessly fascinating subject. I don’t know why, but this was the first thing I felt was really mine. The first thing I could really stick with and not move on. Even if I did have to pay for it by leveraging those old acting and media arts skills.

  The first shivers. Not good. Not at all good. That meant my core temperature had started to fall. I could swim more vigorously, sing more loudly, to warm up, but that was a nasty, circular trap. How many hours left until dawn? And would anyone be there to see me when it was light again?

  I thought about the boots again. I might be able to drop them after all. A couple yanks on the ends of the laces, and if I was lucky and they didn’t snarl it might do it. But, oddly, I didn’t want to. It seemed a strange choice, if it came to that. Boots went to the bottom or I went to the bottom.

  However deep the damned Aegean was at this point. Funny. All that reading from Homer, but this wasn’t how I expected to encounter it.

  Gods rot it. Wrong sea. I was trying to survive in the Adriatic. The Aegean was on the other side of Greece. Named after the former king of Athens who threw himself in it. Aegis? No. Aegisthus, Aesculapius, Aegyptopithecus..?

  Wait. Roll that back.

  Aw, hell no. The universe was really, really fucking with me now.

  I felt for the medallion hanging around my neck. The medallion given to me by Margarita Dupond. The medallion with a Medusa head.

  The Aegis was the shield of Athena. Which may have had and was often depicted with the head of a gorgon on it. Which Medusa was. Okay, Margarita had said it was a traditional Greek thing and for all I knew that’s exactly what it was; a symbolic protection by Athena.

  Athena who liked to hang out in disguise. Athena Glaukopis, as Homer liked to put it. Which might mean bright-eyed or might mean gray-eyed, depending on whom you asked. Gray eyes like Dame Dupond, who was just too good to be truly as befuddled as she pretended. Or like on the little Athenian girl who had appeared to me on the bloody Acropolis itself. Acting strangely because you had to hit the idiot foreigner with a clue bat.

  No. No freaking way. I was not going to believe in actual Greek gods wandering around the modern world. And I was no Odysseus to be offered protection by one.

  Even if it was Athena herself on the sherd. Of course it was. Standard depictions be damned. Well, it wasn’t like I actually knew the standards. Like Xander had pointed out, I’d never studied seriation.

  Well, fine. I was exhausted and cold and tired enough to already start getting silly. I’d been trying to sing songs from The Little Mermaid and that was enough of a sign that my mind was going. So, sure, I’d make a Grecian Wager.

  “You want this? Seriously?” I called up to the clouds. “Okay, Athena. You help me, I’ll help you. But on my terms. I’ll find your calyx. I’ll bring it back to the Athenian people. But I’m keeping the damn boots. You don’t get to ask that I change, not for you, not for anyone. I do this my way or you can find another mortal to toy with.”

  Well, didn’t that feel stupid. “I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City...!” As long as I was shouting nonsense at the sky.

  Toes getting numb. No choice. I paddled harder, thrashing the water in an effort to stay warm. Started singing again, any nonsense, anything I could think of. Survive. That’s all I could do. That was the least I would do. Gods or monsters or men I was not giving up, not this time. This time I was going to see it through.

  “Under
the sea!” I sung into the rolling darkness. “Under the sea…under the sea…!”

  The fog had lifted, but it was still deep into the night when a boat came up so swiftly I hadn’t even noticed it in my delirium. A long, racing craft with engines burbling with barely suppressed power. I shouldn’t have been able to see the name painted on it, but my eyes had gone weird and they fixated on it anyhow.

  Hermes. The universe was laughing itself sick.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I WAS TOO weak to help as they pulled me from the water. Shivering under a stack of blankets, I tried to babble out some thanks to my rescuers.

  An eloquent shrug from the man who seemed most in charge. “We heard singing,” he said.

  Good thing they hadn’t treated me like the mythical sirens and fled the other way.

  “Here,” he said. He was offering me a cigarette. I started to wave it away when I caught something. They were all looking at me. Of course they were all looking at me. I was a stranger. I was someone they’d just rescued from the sea. It was all honest sympathy for my suffering and care for my survival.

  And some strange focus on the cigarette.

  So I took it thankfully. I didn’t smoke. But I’d learned how. Method acting would be the death of you. What was it Olivier had said to famously method actor Dustin Hoffman? “Why not try acting, dear boy. It’s so much easier!”

  And the warmth of the smoke did feel good. I pulled in a full lung full of it, held it. A subtle relaxation around me. Weird.

  I glanced at the pack now in my hand. Cleopatra? Last of the Ptolemies?

  “You can call me Jack,” the man, probably the captain, said then. His crew groaned.

  “Roller,” another man volunteered. “That’s Noisy back there.”

  “Boston,” the last said quickly, before one of his buddies could pick a name for him.

  The boat was, what, forty feet long? Semi-enclosed, with a cabin space forward. There was one of those fancy swiveling fishing chairs set up on deck. Three outboard engines, massive-looking ones, at the stern.

  It was long and narrow and the prow was sharply pointed and it looked fast as hell and nothing like a fishing boat and oh shit. You didn’t always have to go at me with a clue bat.

  They were looking at me expectantly. Moment of truth. Tell them I was a tourist, tell them I’d fallen. Play innocent and say nothing about how totally unlikely it was they just happened to be in the middle of the Adriatic in the middle of the night in a boat that was way too fast and overpowered to fish and way too under-equipped to be for pleasure.

  Play dumb, in other words. Because there was real danger here.

  But I was damned tired of downplaying my own experiences, pretending they didn’t happen. I was tired of being chased and threatened and being made the victim.

  No more.

  “My name,” I said, “Is Athena Fox.”

  Alea iacta goddamn est.

  “I’m an archaeologist and I need your help. I was thrown from the Venice to Patras ferry.”

  I stood, letting the blankets fall away. Not quite the hero’s stance. I was too cold for that. “There’s an artifact in my cabin that I can’t let fall into the wrong hands. Now, this looks like a fast boat. You think you could beat the ferry back to port?”

  “That’s a bit of fuel,” the captain said doubtfully.

  “I assume this will help.” I pulled out Ariadne’s envelope.

  Captain “Jack” grinned. “We’ll do it, Athena Fox.” He shared the grin with his crew. “I knew it was you,” he added.

  He knew…what? I had fans? Well, I knew I had fans, but among a bunch of smugglers in a cigarette boat out of Corfu?

  “Hold on.” He gave the signal and Roller pushed the throttles forward. The boat leapt into the swell, spray flying high, the motors roaring.

  I held on. Standing upright, in the forward part of the exposed deck, facing into the wind of our passage with my hair whipping about my face. The die was cast. The universe wanted Athena Fox? Well, it was damn well going to get Athena Fox.

  This needed heroic music. A proper theme song. Wait. I heard music. Noisy was strumming on a dreadnaught guitar. That sounded…familiar. And now he was speak-singing. Was that a Trinidad accent? I knew that music. I knew I knew that music.

  The other fin dropped. Or claw, if you like. Sebastian. He was singing Sebastian’s intro. I caught the Captain’s eye. He shrugged again.

  None of us remembered the lyrics. But we all knew the chorus. The speedboat hurtled into the moonlight night, the ripping lion roar of the engines almost but not quite masking the sound of four smugglers and a very confused young woman singing, “Under the Sea.”

  They were Albanian. Nominally. Roller was of the sizable Macedonian minority. I didn’t know what Boston was. They weren’t actually skafist. No, they were just four friends from around Librazhd who happened to like fast boats. Totally innocent, yes, sir. But they knew a guy who knew a guy…

  I’d only been able to keep up my hero-at-the-prow pose for so long. I was still soaked to the skin and I ducked down out of the wind and then, on Jack’s urging, into the cabin to warm up. It was going to take at least four hours, maybe more, fighting that same northerly wind that helped to pile up the waters into the Venice lagoon.

  They all spoke English, although only Jack and Noisy seemed really comfortable with it. Jack seemed a little in awe of me. Noisy apparently thought that was cute. Not that he said anything. Just lots of eye rolling.

  I didn't think any of the crew had the slightest idea what an Athena Fox was. But they were playing along anyhow, as best they could.

  “The cigarette transit is back but it is a different game today,” Jack was telling me over cold Tavë Kosi and thick black coffee from a thermos. “Freighters with Chinese crews unload at Crete. Then the cartons make it to Libya. No more small operators.”

  “Sometimes they are even legal,” Noisy grinned. He noodled the opening riff of “Money” on his guitar.

  “Used to be, you could make a week’s wages with one run from Montenegro to Zelenika. Back before the mobs took over. Said a friend of mine!” he added hastily.

  “Back before the Italians got all health conscious and cut back,” Noisy snarked.

  “So now my brother does…other things.” Jack did another of his shrugs.

  “He means his friend.”

  I wasn’t going to ask. But he guessed at the question in my mind. “Not people,” Jack said. “It is not a good business.” He frowned, curly brows lowering as if to meet the trim black beard. “A nasty business. Back in oh-sixteen they had it down to a routine. They’d run a boat filled with refugees just short of where the Guardia Costeira patrolled. Then the NGOs got involved. The Italians were confiscating the boats and destroying the engines anyhow, so the traffickers started putting the people on the cheapest thing that would float and towing it to where the NGO’s would pick it up for them.”

  “And that’s when you started to hear about it on the news,” I said. I shuddered. I had a lot of sympathy right now for anyone who found themselves floundering in these waters without a solid deck under them.

  “A terrible business. It only got worse when those Italian bastards chased off the NGOs. Because the traffickers didn’t stop. They just kept dumping desperate people out on the open sea without even an engine to save themselves.”

  “So we keep an ear out,” Noisy said. “We are just one ship, but maybe sometime we might find someone in the water and be able to help.”

  “Which you very much did.” I stood up to shake his hand. And the Captain’s.

  “You are warmer now?” he asked after Noisy had left to return to the deck.

  “I’m good,” I said. “I miss my jacket, though.”

  “Your jacket? That jacket? The one you wore when you found the Rod of Taru? When you were on the zeppelin?”

  “Um…” I wasn’t sure what to say. He did know the character was fictional, right? “I had to get out of it
. It’s probably on the bottom by now.” What strange sea change would come to the leather, I mused. Barnacles for rhinestones?

  “It isn’t right,” Jack said. “Athena Fox needs a jacket.” He pondered. “I know a guy…” he said. “Let me have another hundred euro.”

  “Sure.” I wasn’t even reluctant. It was bad money anyhow. I was getting more and more sure that someone at Atlantis was involved in antiquities trafficking. It only made sense to pay off another smuggler with it.

  Noisy poked his head back in. “Here comes the sun,” he said. Well, at least he didn’t sing it.

  We all piled out on deck to watch the rosy fingers of dawn reach through the gaps in the hills ahead of us as the sun came up over Greece.

  I had made it. After all the struggle and setbacks, I had made it.

  Penny…hadn't.

  “Patras,” Jack said.

  The sun had yet to touch the port, leaving it mysterious shapes looming in shadow. The Venice to Patras ferry brooded in the water like a cart horse waiting for his feed as the last cars and campers lurched down the metal ramp.

  “I can’t say enough thanks for saving my life,” I addressed all of them. “I’m going to remember you guys forever. Just,” I added with an impish grin, “not your names, descriptions, kind of boat, hull number, or any of that unimportant stuff. Just in case someone were to, you know, ask.”

  “Who is to ask?” Jack replied with the same grin. “We’re just four friends in a pleasure boat. Look at us, pulling right up to the fuel point!”

  “There is nothing to start the asking,” Noisy volunteered. “Ask anyone in the cruise industry. People do not fall from those ships. Sometimes a passenger jumps, who knows why, they just went crazy. But fall? Never.”

  “I was pushed. But I take your point. Best not to even mention it.”

  Noisy grinned wide enough to bare gums. “Exactly. Flash your boarding pass, tell them you had to go back for your purse.”