Dominion by Fred Saberhagen (spiritual books to read TXT) 📗

   The dark glasses made it impossible to tell whether the couple had taken notice of him or not. He decided to delay approaching them until after his first good plunge; on a day like this cold water might be a tonic to clear the mind. The diving board was new and resilient. Simon’s first dive took him deep, and he prolonged it into an underwater swim across almost the full diagonal of the pool.

   As he came up, shaking water from his long hair, his eye fell on a small group of young workers, dressed in antique garb like Gregory’s, who were unloading something from a van parked at the edge of the drive. Among them Simon could recognize the teenaged girl from the antique shop. His dream came back to him, but distantly, without impact. She and her brother were probably distant relatives of some kind, his own as well as his hosts’, Collines or Littlewoods or Picards; people living in or near Frenchman’s Bend were more likely than not to be some kind of kin to each other. The two kids might well be talking about their boating customers of the day. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. And Simon had bigger things to worry about, like being unable to remember the return boat trip at all.

   Right now he had to think about being a guest, which was evidently one of the things for which he was being paid. He pulled himself up out of the water, retrieved his towel, and approached the gray-haired couple in their poolside chair, meanwhile determinedly sticking out his hand.  “Hello, I’m Simon Hill.”

   The man jumped up at once, obviously glad to have the ice broken.  “My name’s Jim Wallis—spelled with an eye-ess on the end. And this’s Emily.”

   Emily, somehow conveying an impression of bright friendly eyes without removing her glasses, lifted herself halfway out of her chair to shake Simon’s hand.  “Pleased to meet another guest. I bet you’re the fella who’s going to do the tricks tonight.”

   “That’s me.”

   And, having said that, Simon forgot that he was supposed to be having a conversation. Even Marge in her hidden passageway was for the moment forgotten, as was the act.

   A female figure in a bikini had just appeared, framed in the French doors on the far side of the pool. It was Vivian, and she was still only fifteen years old.

   For half a breath the illusion was utterly convincing. Vivian was no imaginative vision, but solid reality, and looked not a bit older than she had fifteen years ago. And then she moved, stepping to one side of the doors to speak quietly for a moment with one of the servants. When she moved, changes in her were immediately apparent, in her expression and manner if nothing else, and Simon could see that she was after all a very youthful thirty. In the same moment it passed through his mind, on some level devoted to irrelevancies, that her bikini today was yellow, not green as it had been on that day when he saw her last.

   Now, finished with her instructions to the worker, and ready to enjoy her own party, Vivian moved to the edge of the pool prepared to dive.

   At that moment a shrill scream sounded. It came from somewhere in the distance, down the bluff perhaps, in what sounded like a young girl’s voice. Kids horsing around somewhere, thought Simon absently. He couldn’t take his eyes or his thoughts from Vivian.

   As if she too had been momentarily distracted by the sound, Vivian hesitated briefly on the brink of her dive. A faint smile crossed her face, and her eyes looked to one side. Then she plunged in smoothly, swimming straight across to him.

   Simon, as if by prearrangement, bent to give her a hand out. There was electricity in the touch of her hand. Pulling her from the water was surprisingly easy, as if she hadn’t gained a pound in fifteen years.

   “Thank you,” Vivian said brightly, bounding up lightly to her feet. Her voice was different, more mature. Her fingers retained a grip on Simon’s. “And you’re Simon the Great, of course. Sorry I wasn’t on hand to greet you when you arrived. I’m Vivian Littlewood.” And then, before Simon could find the words he was groping for, she added: “I’ve watched you perform, you know.” There was no faintest hint in Vivian’s eyes or in her voice that she knew who Simon really was, who he had been. No trace of acknowledgment of the fact that a hundred and eighty months ago, or thereabouts, she had once held his straining body clamped between those finely muscled thighs…

   “And where was that?” asked Simon, with what he felt was a good imitation of cool detachment. He had wondered how strongly the old magic would work on him again. He needn’t have wondered. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from the small breasts inside the little strip of yellow fabric. For a moment the dream he had just had, a very strange dream indeed, echoed in his mind.

   Vivian named a dinner theater in one of the more fashionable northern suburbs. No reason why she couldn’t have seen him there, he’d worked the place a couple of times. He could remember quite well his last time there, in the preceding fall; it had been something of a disappointment, like most of the rest of his career to date. Every time he seemed to be on his way, some setback came. Now magic was gaining popularity again, and he still couldn’t make a breakthrough. He found himself yearning to tell Vivian his troubles.

   But before he could speak again, she said “Excuse me,” and turned and plunged back into the pool. On the far side, Gregory, brown-garbed seneschal, knelt at the edge with a worried