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

enigma was surrounded, just as his solitary dreams had shown him, by dark curls like those on Vivian’s head. Oh God oh God. And she was still intent on painting.

   He couldn’t approach her while she was naked, he couldn’t let her know he was here watching. He couldn’t turn and leave. One thing he could do, would do, must do now. In desperate haste he stripped down his trunks, letting them fall around his ankles, then pulling one foot free of them to keep his awkward balance on the slope. Now he would go to it hard and quick. But he had no more than touched himself when Vivian suddenly stood up. Simon crouched, agonizing in fear of discovery, bending his body in a contortion to seek all the concealment possible. The world would end if she should see him now, the way he was. But she had turned away. Stones had printed faint red marks on her rump. Ignoring her discarded swimsuit, she reached for the red robe or jacket. She’d seen him after all, and was about to go tell everyone. No, that was unthinkable. And turned out to be a false alarm. It was still her painting that absorbed her attention. She frowned at it unhappily as she tied the cloth belt of her jacket, covering herself loosely from neck to mid-thigh. Then a moment later she turned and strode impatiently away, heading for the single path where Simon had come up a few moments ago.

   Again he crouched low, limbs tangled in an aborted effort to get his trunks pulled up again. But Vivian never looked in his direction. When she reached the main path she walked up it briskly toward the castle. Simon could easily mark the passage of the red jacket behind screens of green growth. Then Vivian was gone.

   Simon stood up, feeling more than half insane. He was dripping sweat all over, his nerves totally shot. What next? If she was clothed at all, he could approach her; he’d follow her up to the house, say he’d just come up from the landing. He got his trunks pulled up, his congested maleness, reeling like -dull toothache, more or less housed again. Through bushes whose little scrapes and pricks he now could feel, he worked his way out onto the sunwarmed stone pavement of the court. He stared at the table; that very stone, right there at the edge, had been pressed moments ago by Vivian’s warm ass. The easel and the paints were there, the small brush, tip wet, just where she’d thrown it down. Speaking of wet tips… he ached. And there were the two parts of her bikini. She’d worn them this hot day, and they would smell of her. He imagined himself raping her bikini now. But the possibility paled before one infinitely better if still discouragingly faint; he’d catch up with her, up at the castle.

   Crossing the stone-paved court toward the path, Simon passed beside the abandoned easel. His eye was caught by the painting, and he paused momentarily in surprise. Even at the age of fifteen, even in his present state, he could see that the painting wasn’t very good. This was a surprise in itself, because Vivian always gave such an impression of overwhelming competence. But the main thing that stopped Simon was the painted face. Clumsily as it was done, he could see it wasn’t supposed to be the same face that the statue had. And for just a moment of wild conceit he thought that the face depicted might be modeled on his own; but no, that was supposed to be a short beard under the chin, not just a shadow.

   The pathway brought him through the tall, thick hedge, into the half-tended back lawn of the castle. He stood beside the weed-grown tennis courts, with the great brownish stone face of the reconstructed keep rising broodingly before him. Afternoon shadows were lengthening. That didn’t matter. Saul had gone off somewhere with the canoe, probably. That didn’t matter a whole lot either, it would be easy enough for Simon to wade and swim his way back across the river, in the dark if he should stay on this shore that long. There was no rational reason for the sudden urge he felt to turn and hurry away.

   He moved to stand beside the disused, empty swimming pool, looking up at the face of the keep shaded by tall trees and by its own west wing. Just ahead of him, at ground level, one of a pair of French doors stood slightly open. Otherwise the whole building appeared unoccupied, deserted.

   Everything was silent, but he knew that she was in there, somewhere.

   “Vivian!” It came out as a booming, grown-man’s shout.

   Only silence answered it. And then a cicada in a tree somewhere, keening loudly, as if in a mocking pretense of amazement.

   Simon went to the French doors and entered. It was dim inside the castle; at night it would be pitch black. He supposed Gregory must have electricity turned on in some of the rooms at least. He paced silently from one unfurnished ground floor room to another. They looked just as they had when Simon had seen them briefly in summers past, when he and his cousins had run through them in play, sometimes taunting, daring Gregory to chase them out. Which the caretaker had done, effectively enough, without seeming to try very hard. He had a way about him, that seemingly could turn on fear like an electric light in the cavernous dim rooms. The game did not last long, nor had it been frequently repeated.

   “Viv?” He still said it loudly, but this time it was not a shout.

   But this time his calling got response—of a kind. So faint that Simon wasn’t even really sure it was a physical voice, or of what it said. But he was sure that it came from Vivian. He was standing