(no subject)

[uquars_gadget]

(from here) 

Helen, chin held stiffly out and hair covering her face, is crossing the mud plains towards the inexorable come here tug that is leading her to the holy place.

She is trying to walk as if the wounds from her stoning are not paining her.

She is angry enough to pull it off.

Comments

[walksthebounds]

Jamie's only been on this swine of a world for a week, and it's fair to say that he's been cursing for most of it. It's certainly fair to say that he's never, ever been so happy to feel the call of the Bounds.

(Now he just has to reach it without being ambushed by one of the beastly bloody inhabitants of this beastly bloody world. Which is easier said than done.)

He's about half a mile away when the rain stops, for the first time since he's been there, and the sun comes out.

. . . of course, the mud dries right up and leaves the place a blinding, miserable desert. Of course.

Jamie says some more bad words, and then he can't even summon up the energy to do that. The call of the bounds is twisting sickeningly away at his insides, and the sun is beating down on his head so hot it hurts, and he can't walk through this bloody shifting sand, and he scrunches his eyes shut and stumbles into a sort of heap.

[uquars_gadget]

As the breath of the water clears away, Helen can see a boy ahead--burnt, and brown-blond, the sort of person she's seen no where except Milliways.

He's an exile too, not from her world, and probably knows more about the travelling than she does. A plan is forming in her mind when he stumbles, and falls, as if he doesn't know how to walk.

She's catching up on him quick, the feel of the tugging, twisting command making her even angrier.

"What are you waiting for?" Helen asks, as she passes him. "It's got to the hurry-hurry part."

[walksthebounds]

As soon as Jamie hears someone coming up behind him, he pushes himself around - you don't let anyone sneak up on you, in this world. Not that he can see very well, with the sun beating furiously down into his eyes, but enough to make out what seems to be the blue-black back of somebody's head going the other direction.

And then the back of the person's head snaps and marches on past him, and Jamie rubs his eyes and turns around, staring. The back of the head goes all the way around.

The person doesn't have a face.


. . . but face or not, whoever it is is no bigger than Jamie, and they're moving through the sand like it's a nice paved road. That, combined with the irritatingly superior tone in the other person's voice, is enough to get Jamie up and ploughing and hastening after them.

"You don't have to hurry when it says," he pants.

[uquars_gadget]

"I know I don't," she tells him. What does he think she is, completely unlearned?

She walks quicker, all the same.

[walksthebounds]

Both of Jamie's shoes are full of sand.

You wouldn't think you would notice this, what with everything else, but you do.

"Then what - how do you manage to walk so fast in this sand anyways?" he gasps.

[uquars_gadget]

"Because I'm used to it," she snaps again, at the obvious question. "I live here."

She stops and waits for him to make his sliding, stumbling way to her. When he finally does Helen says, "I am Haras-uquara," though it is unlikely such an inobservant transient knows what that means. "My name is Helen in the language of the wider times."

[walksthebounds]

"Mine's Jamie."

She's got to have a real face, Jamie decides, studying her as he approaches. He can sort of see her nose poking through the sheets of black hair - though with the sun, it's hard to tell much of anything for sure.

One thing he's fairly certain of, though, is that she's a Homeward Bounder. Whatever she says about living here, there's a look you get to recognize, and she's got it.

Besides, she's not wearing the armor and helmet and mirror attachment everyone else on this arsehole of a world wears to keep from being snuck up on, and besides that - "You can't come from here," Jamie says, having worked it out this far in his mind. "You're speaking English."

[uquars_gadget]

He says it as if he is some sort of learned scholar declaring a well-known rule of existence.

Helen thinks, privately, that it is unlikely he could be more dense, and doubts the plan that she's been considering. But, then, a guide is better than no guide. And she can always leave him again.

"Of course. I saw you were a stranger and I spoke to you in the language of the wider times."

They've started moving to the holy place, again, and the inability to resist it makes her want to scream with rage.

[walksthebounds]

You really have to go when they call. Jamie's used to this. He's getting a little better at shuffling through the sand, too - mostly because he's not thinking about it so much, caught up in the necessity of keeping up with Helen and making it to the Bound.

"And you're a Homeward Bounder too?"

[uquars_gadget]

"Is that what you call it?" She asks, with some disgust. "I'm an exile, condemned by the mouth of Uquar. They turned me out of the house of Uquar, and of course I got stoned."

And doesn't that burn? Stoned by the Hands (acolytes, farmers, warriors, workers, her teachers, Pani), her f--no, she hates them.

"I am angry."

[walksthebounds]

Considering the kind of world that this is, Jamie's a bit surprised that she's only been stoned.

Not that that doesn't look bad enough - he can see, now that his eyes are adjusting a little, the places where her all-black outfit is marred with muddy sand or holes or blood.

"Why were you turned out?" he asks. Normally you don't ask Homeward Bounders too much about themselves, but Helen doesn't seem to mind telling her story so far. Besides, he's curious.

[uquars_gadget]

"Because of Them," she replies, not hiding her hatred.

[walksthebounds]

The hatred is fresh. And Helen doesn't even hesitate to talk about Them.

Only someone new to the Bounds would talk like that. There are rules. Best she learn them now; she'll have to learn them sooner or later anyways, Jamie figures. Probably the hard way.

"They don't like you to talk about Them," he tells her. It's meant helpfully. It comes out patronizing.

[uquars_gadget]

"It's what I like, not what They like that matters," she replies heatedly. "I'm not Their slave! I am going freely into honourable exile. So there!"

It's all but yelled.

[walksthebounds]

Uh-huh.

Wait a few years, Jamie thinks, and we'll see about honourable exile; but all he says, mildly enough, is "Why?"

[uquars_gadget]

"Because of my gift," Helen replies, acidly, and speeds her walk across the sands again.

[walksthebounds]

She's not exactly friendly company.

Jamie is tempted to just let her go - but it's really narking him how fast she's moving ahead of him while he flails in the sand. Besides, that would be like letting her get the last word. Permanently, since after this Bound they'll never see each other again.

So he flounders as energetically as he can through the sand, and manages to reach the top of the hill where the Bound is at the same time as she does.

It's perfectly typical of this world that it's marked out with bones.

[uquars_gadget]

Large bones, of the monsters that plague this world, in the air and on the ground.

Helen is easier, here, though Jamie doesn't know her well enough to tell.

"On holy days, we bring a bone and plant it here," she tells him, quiet.

[walksthebounds]

How charming.

Jamie grunts - after all that sand-shuffling, he doesn't have the energy to do much more - and pushes past her into the ring of bones.

Or starts to, when he sees what looks like the sand squiggling in front of him, and abruptly stops.

A mirage? Jamie bends down, under the pretense of emptying out his shoe (if he's seeing things, he doesn't want Helen to know it) to check.

. . . it's not a mirage.

[uquars_gadget]

Helen walks in after him, with a tired sort of disgust at his cowardice.

She claps her hands, loud and efficient, and says "Go away!"

In a shadowy, seething mass, the snakes do.

[walksthebounds]

"Thanks," Jamie says, straightening again once it looks like the coast is clear.

"Is that your gift?"

[uquars_gadget]

"Great Uquar, no!" Helen exclaims, taken aback. "Those were only snakes."

[walksthebounds]

"I know."

Jamie can recognize snakes when he sees them, thanks.

"I didn't care to be stung."

[uquars_gadget]

"They don't sting, they bite."

Clearly he can't.

"Shall I show you my gift?"

[walksthebounds]

"If you want."

By this point, Jamie doesn't care much one way or the other. He just wants to be off this world and away from this mad girl and her snakes. Talking to other Homeward Bounders is nice and all, but enough is enough.

He takes another step into the circle of the bones; in a second he'll be off.

[uquars_gadget]

"As a great favor," she says, with growing irritation as she rolls back her right sleeve, "look."

[walksthebounds]

When someone says look, you look. So Jamie looks.


. . . . it's Helen's arm. Which is, as far as Jamie can tell, a perfectly ordinary arm.

"Snap!" he says, and raises his own arm, with a cheesy fake smile. "Only mine's pinker."

They're gift buddies!

[uquars_gadget]

Helen laughs from behind her sheet of hair, and her arm goes gray. It starts at the tips of her fingers and creeps to her shoulder. Every inch or so it grows a deep wrinkle, and in the end her flesh is leathery and dry, covered in sparse bristle-y hair, two pink holes in the fleshy tip where her hand had been.

Helen swings it, bonelessly, and curls it up. She really doesn't regret the fright she's going to give him, not given how much of an idiot he is.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie jumps backwards.

"Eeurgh!"

[uquars_gadget]

Helen doesn't know where the traverse to the other worlds is, and she can't let him be split from her.

And given the day, that horrible long awful day, she can't help but begin to laugh even more at his reaction as her arm straightens to twice its length and grasps him around the neck.

[walksthebounds]

Oh, she thinks it's ever so funny, choking him with a boneless magic hand. Jamie knew he should have gotten out of there when he could have.

"Stop that!" he snaps, reaching up with his hands and trying to untwist the gray snakelike arm from around his neck, but it's too strong for him - so he shouts at her more, as he squirms further and further backwards, pulling Helen along with him.



Backwards into the Bounds.

Where there is a familiar twitch - and then they are, both of them, somewhere else.