The Homeward Bounders

The pouring was really near now, from the other side of a lump of crag. I crawled my way round it. It was a great rock sticking up at the top of the hill, and there was a ledge on the other side about eight feet wide, if that. And there I had to stop short again, because there was a man chained to the crag, between me and the water.

He looked to be dead or dying. He was sort of collapsed back on the rock with his eyes shut. His face was tipped back from me – I was still crouching down, weak as a kitten – but I could see his face was near on as hollow as the Flying Dutchman’s, and it looked worse, because this man hadn’t a beard, only reddish stubble. His hair was reddish too, but it was soaking wet with him being out in the fog and the rain like this, and you could hardly tell it from the granite. His clothes, such as there was left of them, were soaking too, of course, greyish and fluttering in strips in the sneaking chilly wind there was up there. I could see a lot of his skin. It was white, corpse white, and it shone out against the rock and fog almost as if it were luminous.

The chains he was locked up in – they were luminous. They were really queer. They shone. They were almost transparent, like glass, but whiter and stonier-seeming. A big link of the chain between his right arm and leg was lying on the rock just in front of me. I could see the grains of rock magnified through it, pink and black and grey and white, bigger through the middle of the link than at the edges, and with a milky look. It was like looking through a teardrop.

He didn’t move. My strength came back a little, and I couldn’t see him harming me in that state, so I got up and started to edge my way along the ledge in front of him to get at the water. When I was standing up, I was surprised to find how big he was. He was about half as big again as an ordinary man. And he wasn’t quite dead. The white skin was up in goose pimples all over him, with little shivers chasing across it. That was why I said what I did about Art, earlier on. He must have been frozen. But I could tell he was pretty far gone. He had a serious wound round on his left side, a bit below his heart. I hadn’t seen it till then, and I didn’t want to look at it when I did see it. It was a real mess, gaping and bleeding, with bits of his torn shirt fluttering across it and getting mixed up in it. No wonder he seemed to be dying.

I was almost right in front of him, trying not to look, when he moved his head and looked at me. “Be careful not to touch the chains,” he said.

I jumped, and stared up at him. He didn’t speak at all like someone who was dying. There was a bit of a shiver caught at him as he said it, but that was not surprising, considering how cold he must have been. But his voice was quite strong and he was looking at me like someone with sense. “Why mustn’t I touch them?” I said.

“Because they’re made to act like the Bounds,” he said. “You won’t get your drink if you do touch them.”

I shuffled backwards an inch or so. I didn’t dare go further, for fear of falling off the ledge. “What are they made of?” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“Adamant,” he said.

That is a sort of diamond – adamant – the hardest thing there is. Granite must be almost the next hardest. I could see the big transparent staples driven into the granite on either side of him, holding him spread out. “You must be awfully strong, if it takes that to hold you,” I said.

He sort of smiled. “Yes. But there was meant to be no mistake.”

It looked that way to me too. I couldn’t think why he was so much alive. “You’re not a Homeward Bounder, are you?” I asked doubtfully.

“No,” he said.

I went on staring at him, trying to keep from looking at that wound of his, and watching him shiver. I was cold myself, but then I could move about to keep warm. He was chained so that he could hardly move a foot in any direction. And all the while I stared, that water ran and poured, away to one side, with a long hollow poppling which had me licking my lips. And he was chained so he could hear it and not get to it.

“Are you thirsty?” I said. “Like me to get you a drink?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d welcome a drink.”

“I’ll have to get it in my hands,” I said. “I wish I’d got something to hold it in.”

I went edging and shuffling round him, keeping well away from the chains. I could see the stream by then, pouring down a groove in the rock, just beyond the reddish spiked thing that all the chains were hooked into. The ledge got narrower there. I was thinking that it was going to be difficult to climb over that spike on the slippery rock without touching a chain, when I realised what the spike was. I went close and leant over it to make sure. Yes it was. An anchor. One spoke was buried deep in the granite and all of it was orange wet rust, but there was no mistaking it. And all the chains led through the ring on the end of the shank.

I spun round so fast then that I never knew how I missed the chains. “They did this to you!” I said to him. “How did They do it? Why?”

He was turned to look at me. I could see he was thinking about water more than anything. I went climbing over the anchor to show him I hadn’t forgotten. “Yes, it was They,” he said.

I put my hands under the little pouring waterfall and filled them as full as I could with water. But I was so furious for him that my hands shook, and most of the water had trickled away by the time I’d climbed back over the anchor. Even more had gone by the time I managed to stretch my hands up to him among the chains, without touching one. He was so tall and chained so close that it was quite a struggle for him to get his mouth down. I don’t think he got more than a taste the first time. But I went back and forwards, back and forwards, to the stream. I got quite nimble after a while. I even took a drink myself, after his sixth handful. He was so thirsty it was awful, and I kept thinking how he would feel if I happened to touch a chain and got twitched away just as he’d got his mouth down to the water.

“You should have asked me straight off,” I said. “Why didn’t you? Have They forbidden you to, or something?”

“No,” he said. “They don’t have that kind of power over me. But I could see how thirsty you were, and I’m more used to it than you.”

“How long have you been here like this?” I said. We were talking this way as I went to and fro. “As long as the Flying Dutchman? Do you know him?”

He smiled. He was getting more cheerful as he drank, in spite of his situation. I just wished I’d had some food I could have given him too. “From long before the Dutchman,” he said. “Long before Ahasuerus too. Almost from the beginning of the worlds.”

I nearly said “I don’t know how you stand it!” but there was no point in saying that. He had to. “How did They get you?” I said. “Why?”

“It was my own fault,” he said. “In a way. I thought They were friends of mine. I discovered about the Bounds, and all the ways of the worlds, and I made the bad mistake of telling Them. I’d no idea what use They would make of the discovery. When it was too late, I saw the only safeguard was to tell mankind too, but They caught up with me before I’d gone very far.”

“Isn’t that just like Them!” I said. “Why aren’t you hating Them? I do.”

He even laughed then. “Oh I did,” he said. “I hated Them for aeons, make no mistake. But it wore out. You’ll find that. Things wear out, specially feelings.” He didn’t seem sad about it at all. He acted as if it was a relief, not hating Them any more.

Somehow that made me hate Them all the worse. “See here,” I said, reaching up with the tenth handful or so of water, “isn’t there any way I can get you out of this? Can’t I find an adamant saw somewhere? Or do the chains unlock anywhere?”

He stopped before he drank and looked at me, really laughing, but trying not to, to spare my feelings. “You’re very generous,” he said. “But They don’t do things like that. If there’s any key at all to these chains, it’s over there.” And he nodded over at the anchor before he bent to drink.

“That anchor?” I said. “When it’s rusted away, you mean?”

“That will be at the ends of the worlds,” he said.

I saw that he was trying to tell me kindly not to be a fool. I felt very dejected as I shuffled off for the next handful of water. What could I do? I wanted to do something, on my own account as well as his. I wanted to break up his chains and tear the worlds apart. Then I wanted to get my hands on a few of Their throats. But I was simply a helpless discard, and only a boy at that.

“One thing I can do,” I said when I came climbing back, “is to stay and keep you company and bring you water and things.”

“I don’t advise that,” he said. “They can control you still, to some extent, and there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

He had had enough to drink by then. He said I should go. But I sat down defiantly on the wet rock, shivering. Both of us shivered. The fog was blowing round us like the cold breath of giants. I looked up at him. He had his head leant back again and that look on his face that was like peace but nearer death.

“Tell me the rules,” I said. “You must know every rule there is, if you found out about them.”

At that, his head came up and he looked almost angry.

“There are no rules,” he said. “Only principles and natural laws. The rules were made by Them. They are caught inside Their own rules now, but there’s no need for you to be caught too. Stay outside. If you’re lucky, you might catch Them up in Their own rules.”

“But there is that rule that nobody can interfere with a Homeward Bounder,” I said. I was thinking about the boy and the waggon. It still made me feel bad.

“Yes,” he said. “There is, isn’t there?”

Then neither of us said anything much for quite a long while. That’s the trouble with misery, or cold. It absorbs you. I still wonder how he could manage to be so human under it. Except, I think, he wasn’t human. Eventually, I put my shivering face up and asked if he’d like another drink.

He was looking off into the fog, rather intently, and shook his head slightly. “Not now, thank you. I think it’s time for the vulture to come.”

I don’t know why, but I got the point at once. I suppose I had been wondering, deep down, what made that new-looking wound of his. I found I was standing up, looking from the wound to his face and feeling ill. “Can’t I beat it off for you?”

“No,” he said, quite severely. “You can’t do things like that against Them, and you mustn’t try. Why don’t you go?”

I wanted to say that I’d stay – stay and hold his hand as it were – but I felt weak with horror. I couldn’t say a thing.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. But do go. It’s nearly here.”

I looked up where he was looking. And sure enough, moving among the moving mist, were the shadowy wings of a huge bird. It was quite near, flapping overhead, and I could see its beak and its naked pink head. I still meant to stay. I know I did. But I was so horrified to see the bird so near that I went crouching away sideways with one hand over my head, and fell over the anchor, with the other hand on the chains.

It was nothing like the twitch that takes you through a Boundary in the normal way. It was ten times more violent. Those chains were so cold they burnt. But instead of sticking to me, the way freezing things usually seem to do, these flung me off themselves. I felt a sort of sizzling. Then I was crashing away backwards and finishing the fall I’d started, only much harder, on to a hard floor strewn with dead grass.

I lay there, winded, for a bit. I may have cried, I felt so sad. I could see I was in a big barn, a nice warm place smelling comfortably of hay. There was a great grey pile of hay to one side of me, almost up to the wooden rafters. I was a bit annoyed that I’d missed it and landed on the floor. I went on lying there, staring up at the sun flooding in through chinks in the roof and listening to mice or rats scuttling, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something was wrong. I knew it was. This barn ought to have been a peaceful place, but somehow it wasn’t.

I got to my knees and turned to the door. And stuck there. The door was a big square of sunlight. Outlined in it, but standing in the shadows, much nearer to me than was pleasant, was someone in a long grey cloak. This one had the hood up, but it made no difference. I knew one of Them when I saw Them. My heart knocked.

“Get up,” said the outline. “Come here.”

Now, this was a funny thing – I needn’t have done what he said. I knew I needn’t. But I was too scared not to. I got up and went over. At first the cloaked outline seemed to shimmer against the sun, but, as I got closer, it was more wavery still, as if I’d had my knuckles pressed to my eyes before I looked at it.

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