The Homeward Bounders

The Homeward Bounders
Diana Wynne Jones

You are now a discard. We have no further use for you in play. You are free to walk the Bounds, but it will be against the rules for you to enter play in any world. If you succeed in returning Home, then you may enter play again in the normal manner.When Jamie unwittingly discovers the scary, dark-cloaked Them playing games with human’s lives, he is cast out to the boundaries of the worlds. Only then does he discover that there are a vast number of parallel worlds, all linked by the bounds, and these sinister creatures are using them all as a massive gamesboard.Clinging to Their promise that if he can get Home he is free, he becomes the unwilling Random Factor in an endless game of chance.Irresistible Diana Wynne Jones fantasy adventure, featuring an insect-loving shapeshifter, an apprentice demon hunter and a whole host of exotic characters clinging to the hope that one day they will return Home.

THE

HOMEWARD

BOUNDERS

Diana Wynne Jones

ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID WYATT

Copyright (#ulink_15d7d8f4-4da9-5dfb-8f63-0634c7676014)

First published by Macmillan Children’s Books Ltd 1981

This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2010

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

THE HOMEWARD BOUNDERS. Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1981. Illustrations by David Wyatt 2000.

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Source ISBN 9780006755258

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780007499991

Version: 2014–09–08

Dedication (#ulink_4558c001-5684-5751-8cb0-5890e5bf8cb5)

To Thomas Tuckett,with thanks for advice about War Gaming

Contents

Cover (#u3466cbb7-9e5a-5b20-b551-46c8f8f31df3)

Title Page (#u6d007d3a-222b-5fc1-b8b1-b622decf05ee)

Copyright (#ulink_4ade579b-f962-5818-9981-4e28e8895e25)

Dedication (#ulink_63c2f41a-df5e-5a53-a02e-4fab8e1ab635)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

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Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7f330b65-604d-55eb-890b-b475232eca7c)

Have you heard of the Flying Dutchman? No? Nor of the Wandering Jew? Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you about them in the right place; and about Helen and Joris, Adam and Konstam, and Vanessa, the sister Adam wanted to sell as a slave. They were all Homeward Bounders like me. And I’ll tell about Them too, who made us that way.

All in good time. I’ll tell about this machine I’m talking into first. It’s one of Theirs. They have everything. It has a high piece in front that comes to a neat square with a net over it. You talk into that. As soon as you talk, a little black piece at the back starts hopping and jabbering up and down like an excited idiot, and paper starts rolling over a roller from somewhere underneath. The hopping bit jabbers along the paper, printing out exactly the words you say as fast as you can say them. And it puts in commas and full stops and things of its own accord. It doesn’t seem to worry it what you say. I called it some rude words when I was trying it out, just to see, and it wrote them all down, with exclamation marks after them.

When it’s written about a foot of talk, it cuts that off and shoots it out into a tray in front, so that you can read it over, or take it away if you want. And it does this without ever stopping jabbering. If you stop talking, it goes on hopping up and down for a while, in an expectant sort of way, waiting for you to go on. If you don’t go on, it slows down and stops, looking sad and disappointed. It put me off at first, doing that. I had to practise with it. I don’t like it to stop. The silence creeps in then. I’m the only one in the Place now. Everyone has gone, even him – the one whose name I don’t know.

My name is Jamie Hamilton and I was a perfectly ordinary boy once. I am still, in a way. I look about thirteen. But you wouldn’t believe how old I am. I was twelve when this happened to me. A year is an awful long time to a Homeward Bounder.

I really enjoyed my twelve years of ordinary life. Home to me is a big city, and always will be. We lived in a really big, dirty, slummy city. The back of our house looked out on to a lovely cosy courtyard, where everyone came out and talked in fine weather, and everyone knew everyone else. The front of our house was our grocery shop, and all the neighbours shopped there. We were open every day, including Sunday. My mother was a bit of a sharp woman. She was always having rows in the courtyard, usually about credit. She used to say the neighbours expected to buy things for nothing just because they lived in the court, and she told them so to their faces. But no one could have been kinder than my mother when a neighbour’s daughter was run over by a brewer’s waggon. I often hope they were as kind to her over me.