(Untitled)
(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.
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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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.
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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.
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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.
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She claps her hands, loud and efficient, and says "Go away!"
In a shadowy, seething mass, the snakes do.
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"Is that your gift?"
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Jamie can recognize snakes when he sees them, thanks.
"I didn't care to be stung."
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Clearly he can't.
"Shall I show you my gift?"
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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.
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. . . . 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!
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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.
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"Eeurgh!"
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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.
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"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.
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