Sarah Tolmie: Two Travelers

Sarah Tolmie's latest book, Two Travelers, is a collection, just barely - it contains two separate works, a novelette, "The Dancer on the Stairs," and a novella, "The Burning Furrow." Both are stories of travellers, people caught between worlds, coming to terms with being out of place in the the place they find themselves.

"The Dancer on the Stairs" is about a woman, possibly from a world much like ours, who finds herself transported to a palace so vast and complex it is a world in itself. Confined at first by her lack of knowledge and status to the vast staircase that connects the various levels of the palace - where she finds many others, all exiles without the status or means to influence the doorkeeper stationed at each level to let them return - she slowly learns enough about the intricate and protocol-driven society beyond the stairs to gain entrance and place, though she is never truly one of them.

In "The Burning Furrow", a man called Eyo't finds himself moving between worlds - our own, modern world, and the world of his birth, where his people are oppressed and he is part of a resistance movement. He can bring other people with him, and so he has taken his family - wife, son and daughter - from his world to ours, where they own a restaurant and have access to education and medical care. Yet he continues to cross back and forth, bringing his family home with him at regular intervals for the rite that binds his people together. Events and new relationships formed in both worlds eventually force him, and the members of his family, to make choices about which world is theirs. At the same time, through her connection with Eyo't, the countess Ienne, a member of the ruling class on Eyo't's world, crosses the lines between class and culture.

Both stories are excellent, thoughtful pieces about making the best of changes one cannot control, adapting to new realities, learning to be at home despite being always the outsider.