Think hello!

Comment and I'll get back to you -- voicemail, videomail, textmail, telepathic messages, they're all good.

Email: eeb1@pobox.com
AIM: booksbeth

I check email more often than I log into AIM, so that's usually the best way to reach me, but feel free to say hello if you see me on AIM, and I can chat there at length if we meet up by prearrangement or happy coincidence.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We're in an entirely different time and space from wherever you left. According to everyone who has been returned and then brought back to tell the tale, if you're returned, you'll be returned to the same place and time you were taken from.

That said, you are on Siren's Port, which is an island off the west coast of Canada. Since I don't recognize the terms "The Old Kingdom" or "Ancelstierre", I suspect those names won't mean anything to you. So for now, the island is Siren's Port, the city is Siren's Port, we can't leave, and there's a little bit of trade with people who can come and go but not that much; if we didn't have a lot of fancy technology and/or appropriate powers, the island would starve. Fortunately, we have both. Food is more expensive than I'm used to, but what I'm used to is incredibly cheap compared to most of human history; it's quite manageable.

[Sabriel takes a moment to silently mouth the words "Canada" and "Siren's Port." Emma is right; these words don't mean anything to her.]

So...we're all sort of prisoners or something? Why can't we leave?

We're confined to the island and the water near it.

The thing which brought us here, which we call the Core, starts hurting people as they get more than a mile offshore. If your pain tolerance is good, you can make it several miles, but then it starts actually harming you, and if you get far enough away anyone will pass out and die.

Also ... this place isn't connected to your home in any normal fashion. You could sail around the world and not see your home. If the Core released you without sending you here, someone would have to send you across the dimensions.

[Sabriel digests all of this, not responding for a few moments as she lets the implications sink in.
Can't go home. Can't leave.
What would happen to the Old Kingdom then without an Abhorsen? Who would be the one to stop the Dead from preying on the people who lived there? If there were no Abhorsen, necromancers could wreak havoc unchallenged, enslaving hundreds...
And Touchstone...what would he do? He was the rightful King. There was no way he could repair the Great Charter Stones alone, or much else without her help. How would he restore order?]

Has anyone ever made it back to their homes?

[She can't really accept that there's absolutely no way out. She just *can't*.]

Yes. Some people are returned. Some of those are brought back again.

And when several people are brought from the same universe at different times, no one has ever noticed a disappearance. My friends Jubilation and Michael are here from my future, and Teddy Altman is from our world from their future, and there's no indication that we were gone for any time in our home world.

It's not that there's no way home, it's that we're totally helpless as to whether or not we return.

[Have a very confused teenager.]

We get pulled here, yet no one notices back in our..."worlds" or whatever?

[Her head has unconsciously tilted to the side as she said this, trying very, very hard to see if she's got this right.]

How is that possible? So I'm "me" here, but I'm "me" in Ancelstierre as well?

[Gah! Space time paradox WTF?]

This is a completely different place and time from Ancelstierre. It's not that you're there as well, it's that no time there passes while you're here. In fact, when in Ancelstierre doesn't matter here - the Core could Pull someone from your past, or your future.

[Emma sighs.] Can you envision time in Ancelstierre as a line from past to future?

Well, time here is a completely independant line floating above or below it and marching along at a ninety degree angle. There's no connection between the two lines except when the Core makes one, and when it does it can make a connection to different points along the Ancelstierre line. Now, you're connected to a specific point on the Ancelstierre line, so if the Core puts you back on Ancelstierre it'll put you back exactly then.

Again, I have friends from my future here. They never noticed I was gone.

[Emma's explanation is helping a bit. Sabriel correlates it with the only thing she knows to be similar to this; Death. Time worked in strange ways in Death. She could be there for hours and yet when she returned to her physical body, she'd come to find out that only a few minutes had passed.
Hmmm...]

I think I understand. So, this place is a sort of limbo? It's like a different realm?

Yes, exactly. This is a different realm from your home, and the Newcomers are drawn from a collection of yet more realms. Each of these realms has its own timeline and none of the timelines are connected to the timeline of Siren's Port.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

IC Contact for Siren's Pull

Think hello!

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.

Re: Returning your call.