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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.
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.
(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.
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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."
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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.
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She walks quicker, all the same.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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"And you're a Homeward Bounder too?"
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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."
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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.
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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.
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It's all but yelled.
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Wait a few years, Jamie thinks, and we'll see about honourable exile; but all he says, mildly enough, is "Why?"
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