Dominion, Fred Saberhagen [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

toward the larger house, with Margie keeping at his side. Now he could see that the name on the rural mailbox a few yards from the house still said Colline. And when he squinted through the heat-shimmer of the concrete to the far side of the highway, it seemed to Simon that he could still make out faded letters on one of the mailboxes over there:Wedderburn. That house on the far side stood next to a building that had once been a farm equipment store, though even in Simon’s earliest childhood memories it had been generations out of date and closed. If Gregory should appear in one of those doorways or windows now, would Simon, seen once more in a familiar context, be recognized?

   But no one at all appeared. Simon led Margie on, toward the house-antique shop. Their feet made a sound that evoked memories for him, crunching lightly on an ancient detritus of broken clamshells, waste from the clam-fishing decades, pulverized by time and by now almost turned to soil.

   A few steps from the closed front door of the house, he halted Margie for a moment.  “My aunt and uncle used to run this place as an antique shop. For all I know they still do. I don’t know whether they’ll recognize me or not. If they don’t, I’d just as soon leave it at that.”

   Margie frowned at him—she liked to think sometimes that she was softhearted on family relationships—then shrugged, pretty shoulders moving in the light, longsleeved shirt.  “Whatever you say. It’s your town and your family, and you’re the boss on the job.”

   Simon felt like kissing her, and knew she would resent it at this moment. Without giving himself time to think about it any more, he turned to the old familar door and pulled it open. A moment later they were both stepping into the half-familiar semigloom of what had been—no, apparently still was—the antique shop’s main room. The place was crowded with dusty shapes that on a second glance turned out to be not junk for sale but only cases and mountings for displays. There was less actual merchandise on view than he remembered, but there was still some. Business appeared to be languishing even more now than it had been then, which he supposed was hardly surprising given the current absence of a sign out front.

   The antique bell that he remembered had tinkled when they came in. Now Simon watched the curtained doorway that led to the living quarters in back. He was bracing himself for the sight of his aunt or uncle. The curtain stirred as he watched it, and in the fraction of a second before it was whipped aside he knew that if his relatives didn’t recognize him he wasn’t going to tell them who he was, either before or after the performance.

   Except, of course, just possibly—Vivian. Had Miss Littlewood recognized Simon the Great when she saw him in performance, and had she sent Gregory with an invitation for that reason? Since the night in the chapel at TMU, Simon had tried a thousand times to picture what Vivian must be like now, at thirty. He had tried to analyze what he thought about her now, what his feelings were at the prospect of shortly seeing her again. The analysis had proved impossible. The thoughts and feelings would not fall into any ordinary category, except the inadequate one of curiosity.

   And now the curtain was moved aside, and the world, as it often did, surprised Simon. The teenaged girl who emerged into the shop was a stranger to Simon’s memory, looking like no one in particular that he remembered from Frenchman’s Bend, looking as commonplace as any kid he’d seen on the way out from Chicago. The girl had dark hair, but there ended the resemblance to Vivian or to any half-glimpsed water nymphs. Here instead we had a moderately dumpy, banally adolescent figure in denim shorts and loosely swaddling haltertop.

   “Can I help you?” the girl asked, in a voice as reassuringly ordinary as the rest of her. She had put her hands on the counter near the kerosene lamp. Whether that particular lamp had been in stock fifteen years ago Simon had no way of telling. There was fluid in its glass reservoir, and the wick was charred. The house had electricity, of course, but that lamp had been used recently.

   Simon smiled confidently. “I see you have a canoe down there. I’d like to rent it for a couple of hours.”

   “No,” said the girl, shaking her head. It was a surprisingly quick, definite answer, as if such requests came frequently and she had been trained how to respond to them. But then she added unexpectedly: “If you want to go over to the castle, my brother can paddle you over.”

   Simon blinked deliberately. “I didn’t say anything about a castle. You mean the huge house on the other side of the river?”

   The girl surveyed them calmly. “You don’t look like you’re going fishing, or on a picnic.” Simon exchanged glances with Marge; they were both dressed casually, in practical jeans and long-sleeved shirts against expected mosquitoes. Marge had on light white gym shoes, Simon brown suede loafers. But they weren’t dressed for fishing, and apart from Margie’s large shoulder bag they were carrying nothing.

   Tuning up his smile to about its second most charming level, Simon told the girl: “We’re not waterskiing, either. All right, then, we’ll hire the canoe and your brother too for a couple of hours. Does he have a regular rate?”

   “Talk to him,” the girl advised. “I’ll go get him.” She came out from behind the counter and scuffed on bare feet toward a side door.

   In the dim light Simon looked around at tawdry, scanty merchandise, at junk, at dust. Marge’s eyes were alert and expectant but he had nothing to communicate to her at the moment. Listening carefully he could hear the girl’s