To Each This World Julie E Czerneda by Julie E. Czerneda 9780756415426, 075641542X instant download after payment.

Doublet

BETH Seeker cupped her hands to shade her eyes. Seared brown desert stretched to wavering distant lines that might have been hills, but you didn’t use Human words for things in the Split.

Human words didn’t belong here.

Technically, neither did she. The thought made Beth chuckle as she resumed her task, pulling close another piece of ropy purple vine, careful not to lose any leaves as she wove it around the others she’d selected from her stash.

Wasn’t a vine. Weren’t leaves. Did have little mouths along the rib you didn’t touch if you were fond of your fingers and because it didn’t belong here either?

Well, nothing fooled what divided the world better than putting its halves back together. Good thing, because those weren’t hills in the distance, north and to the south, dividing the land, but huge round pots filled with melted rock pulled from deep below and kept boiling. How was a mystery. Why, not as much. Try to cross using a machine and lightning shot from the nearest magma pots to toast you in place.

Ancestors named the phenomenon a Sweep, maybe to lessen the terror. Name stuck. So did the fear of it.

Walking was allowed, if you did it smart, moving fast and alone, picking time and place to suit. Problem was, without something from Away, you couldn’t stop walking, or make a sound, or drop a thing—

Doublet, they’d called their new home, being old Earth for a pair of words that started the same but came to be different; the meaning suited a planet with its sole land mass split in two. Giving it a name helped some, Beth’s forebears confused not to wake where they’d been aimed to go.

A nip warned Beth to shift her thumb.