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

letting it take over now, as he lay on his back in the heat of the sun with his eyes half closed. He was thinking, as he so often did, about Vivian. He was concentrating, as he usually did when he thought of her, on that day last summer when Simon and her little brother Saul had tried to talk her, dare her, into going into the river naked while they watched.

   The effort had been a tantalizing near-success. Vivian had waded in her bikini—watching her play around in that was maddening enough, for Simon at fourteen—and then, once up to her shoulders in the opaque brown water, she’d slipped quickly out of the suit, holding up the two pieces of it for them to see, and laughing that she’d won the bet. Simon had rowed his boat toward her, but before he could get very close the suit was somehow on again.

   The whole business, of course, had really been Vivian’s idea from the start. No one ever talked or teased or bet her into doing anything but what she wanted to.

   Simon sunning in the bottom of the boat at age fifteen couldn’t let this memory dwell on that scene for more than about two seconds without a physical reaction starting. That was okay. Pretty soon he’d pull down his trunks and do something about it. But there was no rush.

   He’d closed his eyes now fully against the sun, and was letting his imagination work on the remembered image of Vivian laughing at him, shoulder-deep in water. It was coming clearer and clearer. She held up her suit, panties in one hand, bra in the other. Her smile in the image was becoming inviting, beckoning, not the taunting expression it had been in reality. And now she was starting to wade towards him.

   Simon sometimes felt a little frightened at the things his imagination could do for him. He’d never, for example, seen a real live girl completely unclothed. But when in a hundred hot deliberate dreams since last summer he’d brought Vivian out of the water naked, every detail of uncharted anatomy was as clear as something from a motion picture frame. And Simon couldn’t resist doing it that way, usually, seeing more and more detail, even if it did tend to get a little scary.

   Now he brought the image of Vivian wading into water only knee-deep, smiling at him, displaying herself. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his trunks, and then immediately worried that maybe he ought to row over to an island first, get among bushes where he could be absolutely sure of a few minutes’ privacy. Not that anyone was likely to see him where he was now, but—

   A high-pitched voice shattered his daydream, calling from some distance away. “Yeeoh, Simon!”

   Vivian vanished, reality returned with a rush. In confusion Simon sat up in the boat, tugging his trunks as straight as he could. A craft he recognized as Gregory’s white canoe was sixty yards or so downstream, being paddled up toward him by one person. In a moment Simon recognized Saul Littlewood.

   She’s here, was Simon’s first thought. If Vivian’s little brother is here in Frenchman’s Bend today, then so is she.

   Saul was waving a greeting. Simon waved back, then took up one of his oars. Using it like a paddle, he made slow headway to meet the canoe’s advance.

   “Yo,” Simon called back, when the canoe with the younger boy in it was closer. “I didn’t know you guys were here.”

   Now Saul with a delicate touch of paddle brought canoe sideways against boat; and Simon with his stronger hands gripped both gunwales, holding the two craft clamped together.

   Saul was wearing cutoff jeans, and a new expensive-looking T-shirt with an elaborate pattern. He was dark-haired, of average size and chunky build. As was to be expected for a twelve-year-old, he’d grown considerably in the nine months or so since Simon had seen him last.

   “We ain’t gonna be here long,” Saul said now. “We’re driving home again tomorrow morning.”

   “Oh.” Then I’ve got to see her today, before she leaves. Vivian and Saul lived most of the year with their parents in one of the far northern suburbs of Chicago, closer to Simon’s home in the city than either place was to Frenchman’s Bend. Yet Simon had never seen them anywhere but here. In fact he had never met them, had known only vaguely of their existence, until just last summer.

   Saul, watching Simon closely, said: “So why don’t you come up to the castle now? Vivian’s there. She was saying to me she wished you were around.”

   “Yeah?” Simon swallowed. “Okay, I will. Who else is there?”

   “Our parents were, but they had to go back into Blackhawk. Some kind of a meeting or something. They won’t be back till after dark.”

   “Is Gregory there?” Simon knew that the dignified-looking man intermittently lived in the castle, as part of his caretaker duties. For various reasons he didn’t like Gregory, and thought that Gregory felt the same way about him.

   Saul shook his head. “Vivian’s up there all by herself right now. She’s out by the grotto, you know? She’s painting a picture of one of those statues. She was telling me she thought it looked like you.”

   “Me? Jeez. Which statue?”

   Saul looked for a moment as if he thought that a dumb question, but he answered without comment. “The big naked guy standing there holding the stone and the slingshot. Well, he ain’t quite naked, he’s got a figleaf on.”

   “Jeez. I haven’t got muscles like that.”

   “You got a lot more muscles than you did last summer. Vivian was saying she bet you had.”

   “Jeez.” Simon couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He hoped that if he was blushing it didn’t show through his tan. And the uncomfortable bulge in the front of his trunks had eased abruptly when Saul