Read Online The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online

me, in prickles, like your foot does when it stops being asleep. As I said, there are still times when I think he was a vision, but I try not to believe that, because I know They wanted me to. He was real. For that time, he was the only real thing I knew. It took days for the rest of my mind to come back. I had a terrible time too, because I had to start almost from scratch, as if I’d never been a Homeward Bounder before. And that was not an easy world to be a beginner in—believe you me! Thanks to Them , I never got to see the sign on the Boundary barn, but it didn’t matter. I knew what it was. It was UNFRIENDLY.
    After that, I traveled on. I was on near on a hundred worlds, wandering on and on. You wouldn’t believe how tired you get. You just get settled, and get to know some of the people and some of their ways, and you find a job you can do, or a school that will have you—if it’s that kind of strict world—and you’re just getting used to it, when bang ! up starts the dragging and the yearning, and you’re on your way again. In the end, you never do get settled, because it’s always at the back of your mind that you’re going to move on.
    I got to be past master at making my way in a world. I took pride in it. The knack is not to care too much. Treat it as a joke. I got so that I didn’t care what I said, or how much I stole, or what dirty work I did. I found out that if people upped and blamed me, I could get out of trouble best by making them laugh. The only time this didn’t work was when a solemn old priest tried to adopt me. Nothing would make him laugh. Nothing would make him believe I wasn’t going to grow up into a priest too. He said he was going to save my soul. I only managed to get out of that when the Bounds were calling so strongly that I was near screaming.
    Of course, the best way to get on in a new world would be to tell them you’re a Homeward Bounder and why. But you find you can’t do that. They don’t believe you. Most of the time they think you’re mad. Or they may believe that you’re condemned to wander forever, but they never believe that you have to do it on more than their own world. And nothing will make anyone believe in Them. They make sure of that. If you start talking of Them , people cut you short and ask you what sin you were condemned for. They’re always sure you’ve sinned if you talk about Them . And you find yourself inventing a suitable sin to satisfy them. On the few occasions I talked about it, my story was that I had spied on forbidden sacred mysteries. True enough, in a way.
    I didn’t talk about it much. I really didn’t dare. After the way the Flying Dutchman had carried on about things not being permitted, and Them doing that to my mind straight after it, I was scared to say much even to other Homeward Bounders.
    I met quite a lot of Homeward Bounders as time went on. You find the Bounds are quite crowded if you walk them long enough. Homeward Bounders always help one another. It stands to reason. We’re usually very friendly to one another in a quick, jolly, shallow sort of way. We tell one another the jokes from our latest world, and help one another get set up in a new world if we happen to meet coming through a Boundary. But I never saw much point in confiding in any of them. You never meet the same one more than once. And, though they were all sorts and conditions of people—I’ve met kings and queens, crooks and artists, several actors and a six-foot lady who wrote sermons—they were one and all grown-up, and they all rather looked down on me for being only a boy.
    It didn’t matter. As soon as the Bounds called and I got to the Boundary with whomever it was, that was the end of the acquaintance. We both got twitched to different worlds. That seemed to be another rule. I hadn’t known at first that a Boundary could send people to more than one place,