THE SEA HAG(58)

"Oh!" he gasped. Arms enfolded him to keep him from falling—the resilient metal of Chester's tentacles and Aria's soft, warm flesh. She'd dropped the sponge she was using to clean and cool his torso—

Pain—genuine, all-embracing pain—shot through Dennis like a thunderbolt striking him in the side of the ribs. He gasped and fainted and revived so suddenly that the hot buzzing and disorientation were like those from a blow on the head.

But he was alive again, not cold and consigned by his own mind to death.

"Oh," Dennis repeated.

His brain was staggering back to the fight with Malduanan because he wasn't able to understand his present surroundings just yet. He looked down at his bare knees, because if he looked up he'd see Aria; and he said, "I made a mistake, Chester, rushing in like that. I could've... I thought I'd been..."

"The youth who learns from punishment," Chester quoted proudly, "need not be punished again."

Aria held a cup to Dennis' lips. "It's milk," she said. "From the cows."

They were in Rakastava. Dennis lay in a brown room, on a slab that was perhaps not so bare as it seemed because there were hair-fine pricklings when his skin pulled away from the surface. He looked down at it doubtfully, but the two of them, Chester and Aria, wouldn't have brought him here if it weren't for his benefit.

Dennis drank the warm, sweet milk with care.

The cut in his side was a bad one, and even the slightest shift sent shards of pain quivering away from his ribs. Chester's touch steadied him, though Aria had moved back a trifle. He thought he could still feel the warmth of her.

He met Aria's eyes and smiled. "The herd's all right, too, then?" he asked.

He thought he was blushing. They'd draped a blue cloth over his midsection after they stripped him, but the sight of his own bare legs reminded Dennis of watching the girl undress in the mirror.

Watching the woman undress. Her pendant, a relic from the age before men landed on Earth, spun to draw his eyes and memories.

She looked away; embarrassment hardened her tone unexpectedly. "You didn't have to do that. None of us knew about the—other one. Nobody had..."

She met his eyes and pursed her lips in a grimace, but still she couldn't finish the thought aloud: none of the visitors we sent out had ever lived that long before.

"I didn't mean that," Dennis protested. "I just—"

He couldn't finish his sentence either, because the thought was so clearly I just wanted to talk about something harmless, so that I didn't tell you how beautiful your breasts are when the pendant plays its soft light over their inner curves...

"I told you that whatever you did out there was your own choice," she said hotly. "I didn't send you out to, to be hurt!"

And she hadn't, but the look in her eyes showed that she thought she had. Dennis knew he'd tramped out to the pasture the second time from only his own stiff-necked pride.

He finished the milk, letting the cup hide his face and give him time to think of what to say. "Can I get up, now?" he asked quietly, studying the faintly iridescent film which the fluid left in the bottom of the cup.

"Clothing!" Aria directed the wall brusquely. A suit of silver-patterned red fell in obedience to the slab beside the youth.

Aria turned her back courteously, though Dennis knew she wasn't modest in the mincing, fearful sense. She was as firm and willing to do whatever was necessary as the women of Emath Village, fishermen's wives and tradesfolk who took jostling and occasional disaster as mere incidents of life.

The only problem was that here in Rakastava, life proceeded without incident.

Or it had, until Dennis arrived.

"Aria," he said as he pulled on the fresh garments. The movement still brought flashes of giddiness, but he was in much better shape than he'd expected from the amount of blood he'd lost. "Princess, I went outside the, the city here because it—I wouldn't like to be here all the time. But..."

She turned to him, sidelong, when his voice trailed off.

Dennis was fitting his feet into the new slippers and wondering how to say what he meant without... "But I'm glad to be here where you are, too. And the milk was very good."

Aria smiled like the sun on a calm sea. "Chester taught me to milk a cow," she said with coy pride. "He thought you might like that instead of—"

Her face lost its joy. "It isn't the food that makes us—what we are in Rakastava," she said harshly. "It's us. I knew that before you came."

"I—" Dennis said. "I think I could use a proper meal, Aria. There's nothing wrong with the food here, I know."

"You can eat alone in your room, if you like," she said. The tone of self-loathing in her voice hurt Dennis as much as if the dissatisfaction had been directed toward him.