THE SEA HAG(38)

"Oh, would you help me, my Dennis, my lover?" Cariad replied, giving him a sunbright smile that the barbed steel hook only quirked slightly.

Dennis shifted on the pavement without standing up. His garments felt gluey and uncomfortable. He started to shrug out of his tunic but looked at Chester first. The robot was as impassive as motionless silver could be.

Dennis blushed and left the garment on as he leaned toward the Cariad.

The hook was set firmly. Dennis tried to keep his eyes focused on the steel, instead of letting them drift down as they wanted to the girlish breasts. The water that beaded on Cariad's flesh gleamed prismatically clear, with no hint of the black depths of the pond from which it came.

He tugged tentatively. Cariad gasped and tears started from the corners of her eyes. Dennis flinched away.

"No, beloved," she said, hugging the youth back against her. "No, you must hurt me to save me, is it not so? Go ahead, then, my lover."

"I'm not your lover," Dennis muttered to her shimmering hair. The sharpness of his tone was meant as a reminder to his own body.

"Even a wise man can be harmed by desire for a woman," quoted Chester. His voice was slightly too distant to be called tart.

The Cariad lifted her face with another broad smile. "Come, my Dennis, you will love me forever, as I wish it," she said. "But first the hook."

Dennis felt the heat of his blush again. "There's no help for it but to push the hook through," he said firmly. "I'll cut the line and do that, though it will hurt for the time."

One of her delicate hands played with the back of Dennis' neck as he turned to find his sword, the only cutting tool he had. He kept his eyes down so that he didn't have to look at Chester—though the robot's metal carapace could have no expression.

The Cariad giggled.

The Founder's Sword was an awkward device at best for cutting fishline, and Dennis' muscles still quivered from being starved for oxygen as the girlish arms held his head under water. Dennis pinched the leader between his left thumb and forefinger, while the other three fingers momentarily steadied the cross-guard of the weapon he held point-up in his right. Then he cut the stout line.

The Cariad smiled and her hand shot out to snatch the ring Dennis had used as a lure. "Beloved..." she murmured as she slipped the little diamond onto her own fourth finger, the digit whose vein leads straight back to the heart with no branchings.

The swordblade was filmed with rust, especially where the sheath rubbed the chines that gave it a diamond cross-section for strength. Dennis slid the weapon back into the scabbard, embarrassed at its condition.

Embarrassed also at remembering that he'd drawn the sword to knock in the head of this luscious girl.

"I'm ready, little heart," said the Cariad, lifting her face as he gingerly reached for the hook with both hands. When she arched her chest, her nipples brushed his forearms.

With his face set in stony determination, Dennis' left index finger probed the inside of Cariad's lip. He could feel the point, but it hadn't penetrated the skin.

Well, he'd have to push it the rest of the way.

"This will hurt," he said forcefully as he spread the lip with one hand and twisted on the shank with the other. Her flesh resisted the barbed steel.

"Push, beloved," she murmured in a voice blurred by his hands. "I don't—"

The barbs poked clear. Dennis gripped them and pulled the shank the rest of the way out of the Cariad's lip.

"—mind."

Sweat was dripping from his face, making him look as though he'd been ducked again in the pond.

Dennis tried to give the hook to Chester, who had already gathered in the line and spindle before it could twirl away in the pond's slow current. His hand was shaking badly, but Chester wrapped the hook with the tip of one tentacle and wiped it clean on the side of the bag before starting to re-attach it to the leader.

Drops of blood from the cut brightened the Cariad's lips so that she smiled even more richly than before. "Now I've saved you from the water, beloved," she said, "and you've saved me from the hook... Come and kiss me, my dearest—"

"No!" Dennis said, shouting to quench his own desire. Standing, the Cariad's body curved, her hips to one side and her bosom to the other. He couldn't imagine how he'd ever thought that she was innocent.

He wanted to hold her so badly; but her ancient yellow eyes seemed to laugh as they looked into his soul.

"Only the once, little heart," whispered the Cariad's ripe, red lips. "An then you will go and I will stay, if you would have it so."

Dennis looked sidelong at his companion. "That can be no harm, can it, Chester?" he asked as if the question were an idle one and his heart and soul weren't fixed on hearing the proper response to it.