The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones

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.
    â€œNo,” 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.
    â€œAre you thirsty?” I said. “Like me to get you a drink?”
    â€œYes,” he said. “I’d welcome a drink.”
    â€œI’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 realized what the spike was. I went close and leaned over it to make sure. Yes it was. An anchor. One spike 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.
    â€œYou should have asked me straight off,” I said. “Why didn’t you? Have They forbidden you to, or something?”
    â€œNo,” 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.”
    â€œHow 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?”
    â€œIt 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