The Homeward Bounders

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “This is going to take a good bit of money,” Joris said, looking it over.

  Konstam smiled merrily and felt inside his leather jerkin. He seemed to have more things in there even than Joris. “I’ve thought of that,” he said, and brought out a big coiled fistful of shining yellow wire. “I came prepared.”

  “Demon wire?” said Joris, as if this was an awful waste.

  “Yes, I know,” said Konstam. “But gold is gold. I thought I might have to buy you back from someone. Do you have such things as pawnbrokers in this world?” he asked Vanessa.

  “I—think so,” said Vanessa. “But any jeweler will give you a good price for gold at the moment.”

  You should have seen Adam’s face when he realized Konstam was holding a fistful of solid gold! Now he knew Konstam was rich. I began to get quite worried about Vanessa. Konstam was pretty struck with her anyway. I had been noticing that from the start. And he obviously didn’t see anything wrong with owning slaves or he wouldn’t have bought Joris.

  It was me who went out with Konstam to sell the gold. I had sold gold on several other worlds. Konstam was quite ready to take my advice. He put on an old raincoat belonging to Adam’s father to disguise his demon hunter’s uniform. Unlike Joris, he didn’t seem to value it at all. But in spite of that we ran into trouble.

  “Where did you get this, sir?” the jeweler asked when Konstam showed him the wire.

  “I use it in my work,” Konstam explained.

  Oh, the rules and strictness of that blessed world! If the gold had been in any other shape but wire, it seems there would have been no trouble. But because it was wire, the dealer was sure it couldn’t belong to Konstam. And Konstam, who had twice the sense of Joris, knew better than to explain about demons. In the end, the jeweler made Konstam sign a paper to say the wire was his, and we had to leave our names and Adam’s address. Fuss, fuss! But he gave us quite a bit of money for it.

  We bought some of the things we needed on the way back, but not all. I spent the rest of the day being sent out for other things. Back in the house, it was like a workshop. You couldn’t buy demon equipment in that world at all. They had demons, Adam said, but they didn’t believe in them, so they weren’t a problem. This meant that Konstam and Joris had to make most of the things on the list themselves, out of metal and leather and wood and plastic, and any other material I could buy. Don’t ask me what the things they made were. I didn’t know what a trisp, or a nallete, or a conceptor was, any more than you do, and I still don’t. I was just the errand boy.

  Konstam and Joris did most of the making, because they knew what they were supposed to be doing, but they soon had Adam hard at it too, because he was so good at making things. Vanessa did the unskilled work. Helen came with me at first. When the various things were done, they hung them on Fred the skeleton. Konstam said Fred was a very good place to hang them, being human bones.

  I didn’t mind doing the shopping at all. It took my mind off Home and off Them. But I was nervous about what was going on while I was away. I was darn sure that, sooner or later, Joris would blurt out to Konstam about Helen’s arm and that Konstam would decide Helen needed hunting too. And I was just as sure that, while my back was turned, Adam would offer to sell Vanessa to Konstam for sixty thousand, five hundred crowns. And I was quite right.

  I came into the kitchen with a bundle of assorted knives and a paper bag of aluminium blocks. It must have been exactly one second after Adam made his offer. Joris and Vanessa were off ransacking Dr. Macready’s surgery again—Konstam was using everything there that was any use: he said he’d pay for anything he took—and that had left Adam alone with Konstam. The moment I came into the kitchen was the moment Konstam seized Adam. He slung Adam on the table and started to try and beat the pants off him. Konstam did it in such a cool and professional way that I couldn’t help wondering how often he had done it before.

  I backed delicately out of the kitchen, with the pounding ringing in my ears, and ran into Joris in the hall. “Er—does Konstam do this often?” I said.

  Joris shook his head. He was horribly ashamed. “I think Adam was asking seventy thousand,” he said.

  A second later, Adam shot away upstairs, carrying the two halves of his glasses. Konstam shot to the door after him, really angry. He was going to shout something after Adam, when he saw Joris and me. “Oh good,” he said. “You got some knives.”

  So we never did know how much Adam had tried to sell Vanessa for. Konstam was not saying—and not buying either, evidently. Adam stayed upstairs sulking until Joris and I went up and mended his glasses for him. We did it with a scrap of gold demon wire Joris happened to have, to console Adam a little. But Adam was not saying what he’d said to Konstam either. All he said was, “Joris, you have my hearty sympathy, belonging to that brute Konstam.” Which offended Joris. Joris was very touchy all day anyway. Vanessa said she thought Joris was dreading going after Them. He probably was. He knew what They were like even better than I did.

  When I came downstairs again, the other disaster had struck. Helen came racing into the hall, and Konstam came leaping after her.

  “No—wait!” Konstam was saying.

  “Don’t you dare come near me!” Helen shouted. And she took hold of me and swung me round so that I was between her and Konstam. “Jamie, Joris told him!”

  Well, I knew he would. “Leave her alone,” I said to Konstam. “She’s not even half a demon. If you touch her, I’ll set Them on you!”

  He stood looking at me as if he was exasperated. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” he said. “I just wanted to look at her arm.”

  That sounded pretty sinister to me. I suppose it was because we were in a doctor’s house. “With a view to amputation?” I said. “You try!”

  Konstam folded his arms and took a glance at the ceiling, and then at Fred hung with queer objects. He tapped with his white boot. “Jamie,” he said patiently, “you’ve been in many more worlds than I have. Haven’t you learned to judge people better than this?”

  “I’ve learned enough to know you put demon hunting in front of anything else,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. That’s why—Listen, I think Helen is our means to get in at Them. You’ve seen her arm. Read this and see if you think so.” He fetched a little floppy book out of his jerkin and passed it to me. “Page thirty-four.”

  The book was called Mim’s List 1692. 1692 was this year’s date in Konstam’s world. When Vanessa saw the book later, she laughed, because in her world they have a book with the same name, which is a list of medicines. This Mim’s List was a list of anti-demon devices. It had been read so much that it was practically falling to pieces. I put page twenty-eight back when it fell out and found page thirty-four. Weapons in order of effectiveness. Engraved knife, demon knife, spirit knife, engraved gun—and so on, with notes and drawings after each, right down to sharpened stake. The one at the top of the list was

  LIVING BLADE—deadly to demons of any

  strength on any plane. Said to be a blade

  composed of human spirit. Known only in

  legend, where it is stated that a living blade

  can carve its way through to the Otherworld.

  See Koris Khanssaga 11. 1039–44.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I don’t know if she can do knives.”

  “Ask her!” Konstam said feverishly.

  So I asked Helen, but she wouldn’t even talk to me by then. She just went away and sat in the living room.

  Konstam nearly went mad with frustration. He was quite, quite sure, from what Joris had told him, that Helen could carve up that triangular fort, and Them inside it, if she wanted. He said that if Helen had been born a Khan, she would have been the most famous demon hunter of all time. I explained that Helen had been quite highly thought of in the House of Uquar too, but her father had called her arm a deformity. Konstam cursed Helen’s father. He cursed demon-fashion, which is a very startling kind of cursing. Helen probably heard
him—he was raging round and round the hall—but she wouldn’t speak. Not even the tip of her nose would come out of her hair.

  Vanessa went and coaxed Helen. That did no good. So Konstam rounded on me and told me to do something.

  I had to spend the rest of the afternoon collecting critters. I knew it was the only thing to do. I found a toad and a slug and half a hundred earwigs, and I put them on the living-room carpet in front of Helen. Vanessa said her mother would have fits if she knew. A waste of fits, since Helen didn’t even look at them. Then Adam came out of his sulk—he was beginning to be able to sit down by then—and told me there were rats in the shed where Vanessa kept her unpoetic car. They used to be his, he said, but they got out.

  So I took a handful of cheese to the shed and stalked rats for an hour. I got one too. A fat black beauty, which bit like a demon. I carried it wriggling and twisting into the living room and held it out to Helen. Her hands came out and clasped it lovingly. She put it on her knee, and the rat went all woffly and cuddly and obliging. Its whiskers shimmered happily. A small noise came from behind Helen’s hair.

  “What’s that?” I said unwisely.

  Helen’s hair flung back. I got the full ready-to-bite treatment. “I said thank you!” Helen yelled. She was furious. I got out quick.

  Vanessa was just putting stuff on my rat bites when there was a crisis in the kitchen again. The knives I’d bought were no ruddy good. The idea had been to sharpen them up and turn them into demon weapons by engraving the right signs on the blades and hilts. But it turned out that the things knives were made of in this world were not strong enough to stand the signs. Plastic handles melted under Shen. They got Shen to go on most of the blades, but any other signs just crumbled the metal away.

  “Jamie!” Konstam shouted. The errand boy came running.

  I was to go with Joris, Konstam said, because Joris knew good demon steel when he saw it, and we were to get the best knives we could of that kind, with handles of wood only, or pure bone. So off we trotted.

  Well, I said Joris was touchy. He was worse than that. He made such a fuss over those knives that I would have hit him if he hadn’t been twice as strong as me. I got really annoyed, because he drew so much attention to us in the shops. He’d consented to put on Dr. Macready’s old raincoat over his demon hunter’s outfit—because Konstam told him to—but he would wear it open. People noticed him because of all the fuss he made. Then they stared at the black sign on his chest and asked him if he was a judo expert. Someone else said did he swallow swords?

  “Joris,” I said, when we finally came away with a bundle of knives, “I’ve had a hard day. And I don’t think you’re quite your old sunny self. In fact, I warn you, you’ll have Them deciding you’ve entered play here, if you go on at this rate. Remember you’re still a Homeward Bounder until you get Home.”

  Joris stopped walking. He kicked a tin can that happened to be lying there. The clatter made quite a lot of people turn round and stare. Since it was late on a Saturday afternoon, there were crowds of people about. I swear Joris waited until as many people as possible were turned to look at us. Then he shouted out, “I hate being a slave!”

  Luckily, nobody thought he meant just that. They didn’t have such things in that world. A lot of people turned away in embarrassment. I tried to make Joris move on. “But I thought you liked Konstam.”

  “Oh yes, I like Konstam.” Joris consented to shamble gloomily on. “I love demon hunting. I’d never want to do anything else, or work with anyone but Konstam. It’s just being a slave I hate.”

  “Oh,” I said. “How long have you hated it?” It seemed to me that it could only have been half an hour at the longest. But no.

  “Ever since I was first sold,” Joris said miserably. “Only you don’t think about it. It doesn’t do any good. I suppose I started to think about hating it when I thought I wasn’t going to see Konstam again. Then Adam wanted to sell Vanessa. That made me feel terrible.” Then he stood still again and shouted. “I hate it!” And we had an audience again.

  “Do keep walking,” I said. “Look, if you hate it that much, why don’t you tell Konstam? He doesn’t seem the kind of man who—”

  “What good would that do?” Joris demanded, in a sort of half-shout. “The only way to stop being a slave is to buy my freedom, and slaves aren’t allowed to earn money. And even if I could earn money, where am I going to get anything like twenty thousand crowns from?”

  “Um,” I said. “I see your problem. Wait a moment! You demon hunters are the only people I know who can get into other worlds. What’s—”

  Someone called out, “Can’t you find somewhere else to rehearse your play?”

  That made Joris move on fast.

  “What’s to stop you,” I panted, as I pattered along beside him, “putting money away in a bank somewhere like this world, where they don’t have slaves?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Joris said, striding along. “But I’d have to tell Konstam—Oh no! I’d just never earn all that money. It’s hopeless.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything I could say to cheer him up, either.

  We got back to the house. There was Helen, and there was Konstam with her. They were standing in the hall, just in front of Fred, both looking delighted. Helen’s face was all pink through the brown, just like Konstam’s. Helen had her sleeve rolled up and her arm was—well, it almost wasn’t. It was like an arm-shaped bar of light. I could see the carpet and Fred through it. But the odd thing about it—the really creepy thing—was that in the arm, in the middle of the bar of light, I could see the faint, faint outline of another arm, a much smaller arm, all drawn up and withered. That was the arm Helen had been born with. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to show anyone.

  Konstam looked up at us like the cat that had the cream. “Look! We have our living blade!”

  You know, I almost stormed off in a sulk. I do all the work, and Konstam reaps the benefit! But that would have been behaving like Adam. Adam had the cheek to come up to me in the kitchen, looking injured.

  “I don’t know why Konstam had to be like that when I said I’d sell him Vanessa. It was only a joke.”

  “Oh yes?” I said. I knew it wasn’t a joke. He knew I knew.

  I made him help me get supper after that. I felt like Cinderella, but I didn’t feel like being on my own. I kept thinking, I’ve put off going Home for these people, and none of them have even noticed, let alone thanked me! I thought a good supper might cheer me up. I could cook better than Vanessa, anyway, but, then, almost anyone could.

  Adam drifted off, in the most natural, absent-minded way, as soon as I got cooking, and everyone else disappeared as well. Usually people drift back when food is ready. The human race is born with an instinct, I think. But this lot didn’t. I had to go and find them. Helen and Adam were poring over the rule books in the basement. The rest of them were in the living room. Joris was shouting in there. I sort of hovered in the doorway, not knowing if I was interrupting or not.

  Konstam had his arm round Vanessa. He was a quick worker, was Konstam. Joris was standing in front of them, shouting. He had his most hurt, freckled look. “So now you know how much I hate it!” he yelled.

  “Then why didn’t you say so?” Konstam said. “Listen—”

  Konstam kept saying “Listen,” but Joris was too worked up to attend. “There’s no point in telling people, least of all you!” Joris said. “There’s no way I could earn any money, is there? There’s no way—”

  “Joris, listen to him!” shouted Vanessa.

  She made it a real scream. That got through to Joris. He came to and blinked at her.

  “I keep trying to tell you,” Konstam said. “I’d have explained years ago if I’d known you were this worried. As far as I’m concerned, you’re as free as I am, in this world or any other, except our own. You’re only a slave there because the law doesn’t allow you to be freed until you’re eighteen. But Elsa Khan has the manumission papers all drawn
up ready, and she’ll register them the day you’re eighteen. Does that make you feel better?”

  “No,” said Joris. “You’ve spent a lot of money for nothing.”

  Konstam laughed. “Nothing, you say? Joris, since you’ve been my partner, we’ve earned what you cost twice a year, and sometimes more. Your share is in a special account, waiting until you’re eighteen—and before you say what you’ve opened your mouth to say, yes, you can pay me back if you want to. You’ll still be rich even when you have.”

  Since Joris was looking so flabbergasted, I thought the kindest thing to do was to come in like a butler and bow. “Sirs and madam, supper is served.”

  XIII

  My jabbering machine has decided this is Chapter Thirteen. Very appropriate. Now we come to our war against Them.

  It was to have been a dawn offensive, just as if it was a mud-brown war, but we overslept a bit. It was quite daft of us, considering the Bounds might have called us any time, but we forgot all about that.

  We were talking until late in the night. I’d stopped feeling like Cinderella hours before we went to bed. It was such fun, talking. Homeward Bounders are usually careful not to get too thick with people, but I got careless there. I was really fond of them all. I was even fond of Adam, which Vanessa said was quite difficult to do. But I admired Adam’s cool cheek. And I admired the way that he was still joining in the war, even though he couldn’t see Them. It was like a blind man going to war. I swore to him I’d keep beside him and tell him where They were.

  It was about the middle of the morning when we were all ready to go. By that time, I’d almost forgotten the Bounds. We had quite a lot of stuff to put on ourselves. It all seemed to me a bit silly—like the charms and amulets ignorant people wear in savage worlds—but Joris swore to me the things worked. I’d taken to believing Joris lately.

  For a start, we all wore white somewhere, even Helen, though her white was only the background to the black sign of Shen on her chest. She said, “The Hands of Uquar are always in black.” Konstam said he wasn’t going to alter that. Helen had her own power and must use it in her own way. But Adam had more nerve than the rest of us, and he asked her why they wore black. Instead of biting him, Helen said, “Didn’t I say? It’s in mourning for the terrible fate of Uquar.”