Visitors

Chapter 6 Undoings

Umbo listened to Loaf and Leaky as they planned the journey to get Leaky a facemask of her very own. He had misgivings, but there was no point in arguing with them. They were going to go, and they needed Umbo because the way Rigg set up the rules, they could only go through the Wall if two of them were together. Two, that is, of the original party, which had included Umbo and Loaf, but not Leaky.

“The good thing about a journey to the Wall right now,” said Loaf, “is that nobody’s looking for us yet.”

“I’m still not used to this,” said Leaky. “You say half the kingdom is looking for you, because you escaped from this General Citizen and then helped the queen’s daughter and Rigg escape from the People’s Revolutionary Council, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

It was only then that Umbo realized that their journey might not be such an easy thing. “I know another thing that hasn’t happened yet,” said Umbo.

“Your beard?” said Loaf.

“Rigg hasn’t taken command of the ships yet. That won’t happen for a year, almost. So if we go to the Wall now, the ships’ computers won’t know to let up on the Wall.”

“What’s a computer?” asked Leaky.

“If I understood it,” said Loaf, “I’d tell you. Whatever it is, it talks but the voice comes out of nowhere, and if it feels like it, it tells you things you need to know. But not enough things you need to know.”

“Did you hear me?” asked Umbo.

“I’m thinking about that,” said Loaf. “And I think what we’ll do is go to the Wall, and then you take us into the future, after the queen and General Citizen have left, and you’ll take us through then. That’s after Rigg’s order, isn’t it?”

“But I can’t do that,” said Umbo. “Go into the future.”

“You do it all the time,” said Loaf. “When we all went back to watch the battle between the bare humans and the facemasks, you took us all into the future.”

“No,” said Umbo. “I stayed in the future and brought you all back to me. I was the anchor.”

“But when you went to the Visitors’ ship, that was years in the future.”

“And I didn’t do that,” said Umbo. “Param did. When she slices time, she can take us into the future very quickly. By thousands of tiny little skips. Then I brought us back to the past in one big leap. That’s just what each of us can do.”

“Rigg skips into the future, doesn’t he?” asked Loaf.

“Noxon is trying to learn how,” said Umbo. “And Rigg and Noxon have facemasks. So maybe they can do it, but I can’t. And I think they can’t, either, because Rigg has always gone into the past by connecting with somebody’s path, and the paths are only in the past.”

“So we can’t go?” asked Leaky.

“I think we can,” said Loaf. “I think Umbo just doesn’t know all that he can do yet. I think where his time-shifting is concerned, he’s like a baby who’s become really good at crawling, but he still hasn’t tried to get up on his hind legs and walk.”

“I wish you were right,” said Umbo.

“I think you should try it,” said Loaf. “Go into the past, and then come right back to now, while now is still fresh in your mind. I’m not talking about going a year into the past or even a day. Go a minute into the past, then take two steps away and try to pop right back.”

“Then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo.

“Only for a minute,” said Loaf.

“But even if you couldn’t jump back to the present, you’d only have a minute to wait,” said Leaky. “It makes so much sense.”

“I have a better idea,” said Umbo. “I have an errand to run that’s only a few weeks ago. I’ll go do that, and then either I’ll live through those weeks and come back, or I’ll jump back, but no matter how much time I spend, I’ll be back before you know it.”

Loaf looked at him suspiciously. “What errand? You’re not going to go dig up the jewels again, are you?”

“It’s not a prank. But I have some unfinished business back in Fall Ford.” The moment he mentioned his hometown, he knew it was a mistake.

“If you’re planning to settle accounts with your father,” said Loaf. “He’s still bigger than you are. Well, maybe not. But leave well enough alone.”

“Loaf,” said Leaky. “He isn’t going back to get even.”

Umbo didn’t want to discuss this anymore. “See you within a few hours.”

As he said this, he heard Leaky finish her thought. “He’s going back to save his brother’s life after all.”

Then Umbo was gone, so he didn’t have to hear Loaf shout at him about how dangerous it was to try to do that. He knew it was dangerous. But he had to try.

Ironic that it was Leaky who remembered Kyokay’s death, though she hardly knew Umbo, while Loaf, who had traveled with him for years, thought Umbo would go home for revenge. But maybe it wasn’t about who knew Umbo better. Maybe it was just that Loaf was thinking of the kind of thing he himself might do—punish someone who had done wrong—while Leaky was better at remembering personal things, like how Kyokay had died right before Umbo’s eyes.

Umbo jumped back easily enough to a time before he had left Fall Ford with Rigg. The real problem was that he was still in Leaky’s Landing, and he had to get upriver. It had been a long hike to here, and that was with Rigg, a skilled trapper, providing food along the way.

On the other hand, Umbo had a little money now. Compared to then, in fact, he had a lot of money.

He was in the kitchen yard of Loaf’s and Leaky’s roadhouse and he took a moment to inspect his coins to make sure none of them were new—so new that they wouldn’t even be minted for a few more years. He didn’t need someone to accuse him of counter­feiting.

Then he heard the kitchen door open and he realized that Leaky would have no idea who he was. And if she saw his face and took him for a thief, she’d remember him when he and Rigg showed up a few months from now, and would never let them in.

Fortunately, he wasn’t far from the fence, and it was no problem to vault over it. He didn’t even drop his moneypurse or snag it on anything. All she could possibly have seen was his back. And since he was now at least a hand taller than he had been when Leaky first met him, she’d never connect the boy Umbo with the thief she surprised in the kitchen garden.

If it was Leaky. For all he knew, it was a patron staggering to the privy to void himself. But it would have been stupid to turn and look to see who it was, showing his face.

He walked between a couple of buildings to come out on the road, and as he did, he jumped another day back in time, so he could walk right past Loaf’s and Leaky’s roadhouse without fear of her seeing him and calling him a thief.

There were two boats docked at Leaky’s Landing, but they were both heading downriver. That was all right. Umbo knew he had plenty of time to get upriver. He could wait.

As he waited, he thought through the dangers Loaf would surely have warned him of. Saving Kyokay would not be easy. If Umbo saved him by bodily preventing him from going up to the top of the falls, then Rigg wouldn’t have needed to drop all his pelts to try to save the boy from falling, and therefore Umbo—younger Umbo—wouldn’t have “seen” him push Kyokay from the cliff, and so Rigg wouldn’t have been forced to leave town in a hurry, and Umbo certainly wouldn’t have felt any need to go with him to make amends for having nearly gotten him mobbed, and…

A part of his mind insisted that none of that could possibly change, because—well, because it hadn’t. But they had made plenty of changes before, and as best they understood the rules of how this sort of thing worked, whoever made the change continued to exist, even if his own past was obliterated. But this change would be Umbo’s alone, so he was the only one who would be preserved.

It wasn’t till the next day—only a few hours before Leaky, or someone else, would catch a glimpse of Umbo jumping over the fence—that a boat came upriver and tied up.

“Not going all the way to Fall Ford,” said the pilot.

“How far then?” asked Umbo.

“Bear’s Den Crossing,” he said.

“Never heard of it,” said Umbo.

“I have,” said the pilot, looking irritated.

“Left bank or right?” asked Umbo.

“It’s Bear’s Den Crossing,” said the pilot. “If you don’t like which side of the river I tie up on, you can cross to the other side.”

“Oh, you mean like you can ford the river at Fall Ford?” asked Umbo.

The pilot did know the river top to bottom, so he got the snide joke. Fall Ford hadn’t had a usable ford in centuries, but nobody bothered to change the name. The pilot glowered. “Every smart remark just raises the price.”

“Then I’ll try to make it up to you by being useful on the trip,” said Umbo.

The pilot looked him up and down, sizing him up. “Slender arms.”

“I sure couldn’t pole the boat alone,” said Umbo. “But I know how to poke and push and lift a stick, and I also know how to sit the prow and watch for debris coming down and call a warning in plenty of time.”

“So you’ve made the voyage before.”

“Only once. Not enough to be an expert like you, sir,” said Umbo, “but there were many days of work, and I worked hard all those days.”

The pilot named a price, then, and promised some of it back if Umbo worked as he claimed. And that was that.

Except that for some reason, Umbo was reluctant to give his right name. “Ram Odin,” he said, when the man asked. And there was a case to be made that whatever was done in this world, Ram Odin had a hand in it.

Umbo worked hard. It was a pleasure, and it kept his mind off of brooding about the impossibility of what he meant to try. Somehow he had to let Kyokay do everything he had done that got him killed, up to and including his fall off the cliff. There was no way that time-shifting could allow Umbo to catch him partway down. But there were some things he might try.

The key was to find a path to the foot of the falls without passing through Fall Ford itself, where, even though he was taller, he was bound to be recognized, to the confusion of all. But the road was on the right bank, along with Fall Ford. Umbo had never heard of any kind of road on the left bank, not paralleling the river. If he had Rigg’s ability to see paths, then he could easily find paths through the thick forest. But he couldn’t see paths. Couldn’t fly, either. He might have a knife with the ship-controlling jewels in the hilt, but the Ramfold starship was a long way beyond Upsheer Cliff, and he didn’t think that if he called for the flyer he’d get much of a response.

By the time they got to Bear’s Den Crossing, he had earned the respect of the pilot and the other boatmen. He had eaten what they ate, and worked as hard as anyone, and made no mistakes. He even fended, by himself, one big water-soaked log that didn’t become visible through the morning mist until it was almost too late to avoid a collision. Nobody would have blamed him for not seeing it, the mist was that thick. Instead they thanked him well for quick action and a perfect placement of the ten-foot fending pole.

So when it was time to settle up with the pilot, the man was better than his word. He gave him back his entire fare. “I was planning to hold back only the cost of what you ate,” said the pilot, “but the morning you saved my boat, you earned your board. The only reason I’m not paying you a wage is that the owner only authorized me for three boatmen besides myself, and you make the fourth.”

“I meant to pay and didn’t expect anything back, sir,” said Umbo. “I might have saved the boat, but that was my duty that morning, I think, and along with you and your crew and cargo, I also saved myself. But I thank you for being an upright man, and I take back anything I might have said disparaging about Bear’s Den Crossing.”

“You can disparage it all you like,” said the pilot, smiling. “Won’t make it any better or worse than it is. And as to your wish to get to Fall Ford, I can’t say we’re exactly close, but come morning, if you happen to be in the middle of the river, you’ll catch a glimpse of Upsheer Cliff afar off to the south. It’s still two days on the water, and a good deal more than that afoot, I dare say. But within sight of the cliff is not very far, I think.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” said Umbo. “And now will you let me give you back this fenten, not as fare, but for you to buy a few rounds of ale for my crewmates, at a time you think it won’t interfere with their duty?”

“I will let you do that indeed, and tonight is that night, and they’ll raise a mug in your honor. I take it you don’t mean to be there yourself, or you’d do the buying.”

“My journey is long, and I’ll be setting out today, there still being many hours of light. And you see why you shouldn’t have paid me—I wasn’t there for the loading, and I won’t be here for the unloading either.”

“Now I see that you are a slacker,” said the pilot. “Now be off before I call you a generous man and other such names.”

Umbo left the small wharf with a light heart and a brisk foot, though it was strange to be walking on solid ground again. He had been so long in the company of Rigg or Loaf—or Param, who had spent the whole time before she proposed marriage disparaging him—that he hadn’t really known that he knew how to talk to a good man and be taken for a good man himself. His height explained them taking him for a man now, but as for the “good,” Umbo had earned that himself. He had been so long treated like nothing that he had started half-believing it himself.

Well, no. He knew, in some rational part of his mind, that he fully believed he was nothing without anyone having to treat him very badly at all. And he knew why. If he hadn’t fallen hopelessly in love with a princess, and spent hours noticing all the ways he was beneath her, he might not have been so prickly and taken offense at everything that could possibly be construed as looking down on him. Now he understood that. But he also knew himself well enough to be pretty sure that when and if he got back with Rigg and Param, he’d still be prickly, even if he tried not to show how easily offended he was.

He did stop for a quick meal and some provender for the journey. He’d be doing no trapping. As often as he had watched Rigg set traps, Umbo still had no idea where to set them. Rigg knew the paths the animals used. Umbo would just be setting a trap in some random place, and he was sure that animals would only stumble on his traps out of pity, they’d be so ill-situated.

The travel was not as hard as he feared, but harder than he hoped. There were tracks and traces in the woods, and once a fair reach of fields that the farmers consented to let him walk through—half a day’s journey, passing through open ground without brambles and branches trying to leave scars all over his body.

He got to the base of Upsheer not far from the falls, and he was pretty sure that Kyokay had not fallen yet. The trouble was, it might happen tomorrow, and it might happen next week, and if he let his attention wander, the whole thing could happen while he was peeing or napping or eating.

Of course, if he missed it, he could always go back again. But then he’d have to deal with his own lazy self, sitting around getting in the way. Or he could just appear to himself at the right moment, telling himself to get a move on, it was about to happen.

Instead, he picked his way to a stand of trees with a good view across the river, and when a bunch of boys came to the river to swim, despite the cold water and the stiff breeze, he saw Kyokay among them.

Not so much among them as all around them, doing five stunts for every one that another boy tried. Why Kyokay didn’t die long before that fall from the cliff, Umbo couldn’t understand. He climbed everything, jumped off of everything, swam under or into or through any obstacle in the water, dove deepest and held his breath the longest. He leapt into the water backward, or deliberately splatted in a belly flop, or tried to turn multiple somersaults in the air when he jumped from the highest part of the bank. And it’s not as if he was particularly adroit. Kyokay must have hit his head half a dozen times, and one time he yelled for help when he got his arm caught in a floating log that he himself had just pushed free from its entanglement with the bank. Nothing taught him a lesson. Nothing made him more careful.

What will I be saving him for? thought Umbo. That boy is doomed to get himself killed.

But not on a day when I was charged with his safety. Especially when I now know that I probably helped to kill him. Or, to be more accurate, made it harder for Rigg to save him. Rigg had risked his life to get out to the perilous rock at the brim of the cliff, but Umbo had slowed time, and included Rigg in it, which was why the path of a long-since-fallen man turned into that very man, blocking Rigg from getting to Kyokay in time to save him. It was the first time Rigg had any notion that paths were really people or animals, and that when Umbo was slowing time for him, the past became solid, and Rigg could touch a man, and push him, or steal a knife from him…

And Kyokay had fallen while Umbo prevented Rigg from helping him, though he thought he was preventing Rigg from killing him. I judged too quickly, when I couldn’t really see what was happening. And not only did Kyokay die, I also came this close to getting Rigg killed by a mob in Fall Ford.

Then Umbo knew his whole plan, all at once. Bits of it had been nibbling at him during the whole voyage. Maybe Kyokay hadn’t been killed in the fall, maybe he only drowned in the turbulence of the water. So maybe Umbo could swim to him and help pull him out.

Or maybe Umbo would get drowned, too, and put an end to his miserable stupid life.

But now Umbo realized that he could do more than just swim out to drag whatever was left of his brother to safety. The very thing he had done to slow down time for Rigg, he could do to Kyokay as he fell. Slow down time so that Kyokay had time to think, to twist around in the air, to get ready for his collision with the water. It might make all the difference.

Once Umbo had learned how to shift time the way Rigg did, only without having a path to latch on to, he and everyone else had pretty much forgotten this much feebler ability that he had started with. But it might be just what he needed. And it was something Rigg couldn’t do, not even with the facemask: He couldn’t project his power to someone else that he wasn’t even touching.

If only Umbo could slow down Kyokay himself, so that he settled like a leaf to the water’s surface. But no, Kyokay would fall as fast as ever, and hit with the same momentum. The only difference was that the time of the fall would seem slower to Kyokay, giving him time to think.

Not that Kyokay was famous for thinking. But he was fearless. And maybe as he fell that fearlessness would allow him to prepare like a cat for the impact. Maybe.

Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt for Umbo to use the time he had to practice swimming in the dangerous water at the base of the falls. Of course there was no swimming right under them—the bones would be pounded right out of his skin. But he could see just how close he might get. And he’d know how cold the water was, and where was the nearest bank, and…

And so off came the clothes, as soon as he was up by the base of the falls, and down into the water he went. He was no Kyokay—he didn’t just dive in. Good thing, too, because in the roiling water he could not see where there were submerged rocks. After he got to where he could open his eyes underwater, he realized: There are submerged rocks everywhere, and Kyokay is going to die.

No he isn’t. I will get him out of this water alive.

Because to Umbo’s surprise, it didn’t take him long to adapt to swimming there. The water was icy, but Umbo didn’t stay in it very long at a time, and he took care to dry off and warm up thoroughly before going back in.

What he learned was that if he slowed the perception of time for himself, he had plenty of time to orient himself under the water and sense the currents. If Kyokay was alive after he fell, then Umbo had a fair chance of getting him out of the water before he drowned.

Umbo would not enter the water, though, until Kyokay was in it. That’s because he had to be up on a good vantage point so he could see where Kyokay went into the water.

Three days later, Umbo wasn’t napping, eating, or peeing when he saw Kyokay running along the road to the great stair that climbed up through the rock to the top of Upsheer. And sure enough, after him—too far behind him—came Umbo, looking young and stupid and angry and helpless. What a privick I was, thought Umbo. What a privick I am.

But he wasn’t there to criticize himself as a boy. He was there to bring his brother back from the dead.

He watched the whole thing unfold. He was so close to the base of the falls that he couldn’t see anything that happened up top until Kyokay slipped and clung, and then there was Rigg, pounding at something—but not at Kyokay’s hand, as Umbo had thought. No, Rigg was pounding at a man that he could see but Umbo could not, because younger Umbo had made the path visible to him.

And then Kyokay slipped, starting his tumble. That’s when Umbo’s work began in earnest. With all his concentration he slowed time for his brother as he fell. He was farther from him than his younger self had been from Rigg that day so long ago—today—but all the other things he had done with time-shifting had also strengthened and sharpened this half-forgotten skill. He knew that he was slowing time for Kyokay far more than he had ever been able to do as a lad. And he saw that Kyokay was using his quickened perceptions well.

Kyokay did not land among the rocks closest to the surface. He was in an arms-first diving position by then, and there was water for him to plunge into. Was it deep enough? From above the water, Umbo could not tell, and besides, it was now time for him to be in the water.

He dove from his perch—he had ascertained that it was safe enough to dive at that spot—and swam swiftly and surely toward a spot downstream from where Kyokay had hit the water. Umbo was slowing his own perception of the passage of time—which meant he was speeding up his own reactions and processes—even more powerfully than he had slowed Kyokay’s. He quickly saw his mistake: Kyokay was not being carried downstream, he was caught in the roiling water, getting tumbled over and over in the same place.

Umbo instantly changed the direction of his swimming, cursing himself for not having guessed this would happen, because now he had to swim upstream instead of across the current. A few seconds longer for Kyokay to roll around under the water.

As he drew closer, Umbo saw why Kyokay couldn’t swim himself free. The boy was conscious—he was trying to kick—but both arms seemed to have way too many elbows. Those extended arms had saved Kyokay from the certain death of smashing his head into a rock—but the arms had broken in the process.

He couldn’t worry about how much pain Kyokay felt. The only thing Umbo could grab was one of those broken arms, and so he did. In water this cold, and with so much terror, Kyokay probably wouldn’t notice the pain.

The trouble was that Kyokay couldn’t grip him back, couldn’t help at all.

No, he could. Once Umbo had stopped his spinning and pushed off from a rock to push himself and pull Kyokay out of the turbulence that held him, Kyokay’s kicking began to have a purpose. He couldn’t hold on to Umbo, but he could join his kicking with Umbo’s, and then they were free of the unpredictable cross-currents and into the main stream of the river.

Umbo had left his clothes—and his blankets—at the place where he was pretty sure he’d have to fetch up on the bank, and yes, he was able to get there. He dragged Kyokay out of the water and checked to see if he was breathing. It had all happened quickly enough that Kyokay had not drowned at all. He coughed and sputtered, but there was no water in his lungs.

In moments Kyokay was whimpering, because now he felt his arms. Three breaks in the right arm, four in the left. But all clean and honest breaks—nothing sticking out of the skin. These could be set and splinted, Umbo was reasonably sure.

In Odinfold, they had the doctors and the tools and the drugs to fix him up without any pain at all. But they weren’t in Odinfold.

Umbo worked to dry himself first—he needed to get back the full use of his fingers and he couldn’t afford to be shivering much as he worked on getting Kyokay dry and warm.

By the time Umbo was able to get his own clothes on, and was wrapping Kyokay in a blanket, Kyokay was capable of speech. “Did you jump after me? How did you get down there so quick?”

Umbo didn’t bother trying to explain.

He found that he was large enough now, and strong enough, especially after a couple of weeks of boatwork, to pick Kyokay up like the child he was and carry him down to the ferry.

It wasn’t an attended ferry—just a boat attached by an iron ring to a hawser that stretched across the river where once a ford had been. There was another boat on the other side. Umbo laid Kyokay in the bottom of the boat and then took the oars. The rope strained to keep the ring from moving forward, but it had been well-greased during the summer and whenever it snagged, on the next pull of the oars it broke loose and slid further out into the stream, and then out of the stream as it came closer to shore, and then the bottom scraped on gravel and Umbo was out of the boat, lifting Kyokay and carrying him toward his family’s house.

Mother could nurse him, and there were those in town who had a knowledge of bone-setting and splints. If it left Kyokay just a little bit weaker, then maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed next week or next month. Maybe all this would be worth it, if Kyokay had learned something from his terror in the fall.

Unless he thought that his perception that time had slowed was some kind of magic that proved that a kind saint or spirit was watching over him. Then he’d be more of a dares-all than ever.

Umbo knew he couldn’t let the family see him. He laid Kyokay on the ground within easy earshot of the house and then jumped back in time a few minutes. Long enough to run out of the way, into a brushy patch where he could watch. In moments, there was himself, carrying Kyokay, laying him down roughly and abruptly.

No, I was careful.

But careful did not mean gentle, he could see now. He saw himself wink out of existence. Yes, that is disturbing, he thought. Good thing we try not to let other people see that too often.

Kyokay called out as Umbo had told him to do, and in moments Mother appeared, and soon Kyokay was surrounded by her and the other kids—whom Umbo now realized he missed more than he would have supposed possible. One of them was sent running for help, of course.

Umbo was about to jump back in time even farther, to make his getaway, when he saw Father rushing up, dragging young Umbo by his upper arm and making it almost impossible for the boy to walk or run alongside. “Does that look dead to you!” shouted Father.

“I saw him fall!” said young Umbo, terrified. “How could he live?”

“But you saved me from the water,” said Kyokay.

“His arms are broken,” said Mother. “Deal with Umbo later, we have to get his arms set.”

“We can set Umbo’s arms too, while we’re at it. We were going to kill Rigg because you said he killed Kyokay, do you know that, you lying little demon!” Father cuffed young Umbo so hard he sprawled out facedown on the ground. But Father wasn’t done. He ran into the house and came back, not with a strap as Umbo had expected, but with the heavy knife he used for cutting leather.

“No!” Mother screamed, and rushed to stop him, but Father flung her aside and stood straddling young Umbo. He pulled him up by the hair and Umbo thought he was about to witness his own murder, the knife drawn across his throat like a pig being slaughtered. But no, Father began striking him with the flat of the blade, hitting him on the shoulders and the side of his head, until young Umbo hung limp and unconscious.

By then some men were rushing from town, including Sellet the barber, who was the second-best bonesetter in town. They began shouting at Father to put down the knife, put down the boy, be glad that Kyokay was alive, there should be no killing, and after brandishing the knife a while to keep them back, Father finally gave in to Sellet’s obvious point that if Father kept him away, he couldn’t set Kyokay’s bones, which he could see from there were broken in many places.

“I need splints and leather thongs to tie them,” said Sellet. “Be a good father and fetch me what I need!”

“Don’t tell me how to be a good father!” roared Father, and it might have started up again except now there were six strong men looming around him, making it clear that they would tolerate no more nonsense from him. Two of them went into the house with him.

Sellet went to Kyokay all right, but the others went to young Umbo, who was now being held by his mother. Father might have struck with the flat, but the blade was still there, and it had cut willy-nilly all over young Umbo’s head and shoulders and arms.

“Nothing’s bleeding hard,” one of the men said. “But I think the skull is broken here. Look how it’s swelling, but it looks dented anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Enene,” said one man. “But I don’t like the look of his head.”

“Umbo saved me,” said Kyokay feebly, and then cried out in agony as Sellet pushed one of his bones into place. Father came out with thongs and bracing sticks that Umbo recognized as dismantled frames for stretching leather. He was still angry and Umbo could see that he wanted to kick young Umbo again.

“What are you doing?” said a man. Umbo couldn’t remember his name, though once he had known it. “One son all broken up, and this boy saved him, and you already broke his head. He may never be right again, you fool.”

“He was never right! He was never my son! I say it out loud—does he look like me? All the others do, but not him! And now he tried to get us to commit murder by his false accusation! That’s no son to me!”

They got the splints and thongs out of his hands and then he was roughly walked far from the scene. Mother continued to weep over young Umbo.

Only then did Umbo himself jump back in time just enough to allow him to arrive at the riverbank only moments after he had carried Kyokay up from the boat. With two boats on this side, it was easy enough to hop into the one he had just left and row urgently back to the other side.

Though there was no urgency. Only in his own heart and mind. He had all the time in the world, because he was not going to let this happen.

Umbo was coming up out of the water for the last time on his second day of swimming, when he saw a vision of himself standing on the shore only a few feet away.

“I’m not here! I’m not going to make two fools where one will do. You can’t do it. It’s a disaster.”

“What’s a disaster? You’re all right,” said Umbo.

The vision of future Umbo seemed distraught, about to cry, but also angry and ashamed and… urgent.

“I’m such a fool—and so are you!” cried the vision of Umbo. “It all works, you save him, his bones are broken, you take him home and leave him, but then he says that Umbo saved him, and so it makes me—us—young Umbo, it makes him look like a liar, like he knew Kyokay was alive and he lied to try to get them to kill Rigg and Father beat him—us—”

“Young Umbo,” prompted Umbo. “Beat him, of course.”

“Broke his skull,” said vision Umbo. “Maybe he’ll die. Maybe he’ll live and be… simple. Or crippled. But he’s sure not going on any trips with Rigg. It’s all undone. We just—I just ruined everything. You can’t do it! Don’t do it! Undo this future, you fool! Let him die!”

And then he was gone.

What could Umbo do but dry himself off and think about what his future self had said? Yes, that was a disaster. Of course Kyokay would know that it was Umbo who saved him. He wouldn’t be in any shape to notice how much taller and stronger he was. But Umbo couldn’t blame himself for rushing Kyokay home. It’s what they always did when Kyokay injured himself. Rush him home, take him to Mother, then let Father yell and beat on somebody for not watching Kyokay, even though everybody else knew that you couldn’t watch Kyokay because he would do what he wanted no matter what.

Future Umbo was wrong, though. In the rush of emotion after saving Kyokay, he had hurried home to Mother and that was the disastrous mistake. Not saving Kyokay, but taking him home.

Now that Umbo knew he could save Kyokay, he wasn’t going to unsave him because future Umbo was a hysterical mess. He had just watched Father beat his younger self. It made Umbo sick with fury even now. He hated that man—not his real father at all. Just Tegay, master cobbler, wife beater, child beater, and evil fool.

But I didn’t see it. I didn’t just save my brother from the water. I can think more clearly, and I’m going to save Kyokay and leave the future unchanged.

It meant he would skip a bit of practice swimming to make a few more preparations. He would need more blankets. He would need a much heavier knife than his everyday knife, or the jeweled knife that he rarely used and feared to break. But that was a simple matter, to swim across the river in the night and steal the heavy leather-cutting knife from Father’s—Tegay’s—workbench. Sharp. Yes, Tegay was kind and caring to his tools. Anything it touched, it would cut.

It might also rust, since it got plenty of underwater time as Umbo swam back across. When he stole blankets, though, he had to use the boat to ferry them, then use the pulley line to haul it back across to the far side. Couldn’t have wet blankets for this.

He cached everything near the ferry, then went back to swimming and watching.

He saw the tale unfold—Kyokay running to the stone stair, Umbo following after, but too far away. Kyokay laughing, knowing he was doing something stupid and wrong, but delighting in it.

But there was now an added complication. Umbo knew that when he had done this the first time, everything had worked out well enough—broken bones, but alive, not drowned. Now, though, besides trying to concentrate on the things he had planned to do, he had this nagging doubt: Am I doing it exactly as I did it before? Or slower? Or wrong somehow? Will I fail now, though I succeeded before?

Kyokay fell. Umbo slowed him so much he was afraid he might exhaust himself so he’d have nothing left to slow time for himself as he swam. But how could he do less than his strongest, fiercest effort? What good would it do to save strength for later, if he didn’t keep Kyokay alive now?

Kyokay twisted himself in midair so his legs would enter the water first. Smart boy, thought Umbo. Don’t get your head anywhere near those rocks.

Umbo plunged into the water and swam directly to where Kyokay was being churned by the water. His legs were broken, feebly waving around with extra bendings. And a dark patch spreading from one leg made it clear that a bone had broken the skin. Can’t worry about infection now.

He got to Kyokay and the boy was able to grip his hand, then cling to his shoulders as Umbo swam strongly to shore. He dragged him up out of the water and realized at once that he couldn’t leave that bone sticking out. He used the jeweled knife to slice open Kyokay’s trouser and then he gripped the boy strongly and pulled the bottom of his leg away far enough to put the jutting bone back in place. Then he tied strips of Kyokay’s own trouser leg around the wound to keep the leg from moving and to keep the wound closed. It was a ragged job and if it wasn’t fixed soon, if the bones knit back together as Umbo had left them, Kyokay would never walk right again. But he was alive.

Kyokay bore the pain well, but the reason was clear. He was trembling, then shaking with cold. The numbness helped him bear the crude bone-setting without screaming. But now Umbo had to get him warm and dry.

As for himself, he was used to the cold water, after all that practice, and the exertions involved in setting and binding the leg had kept him warm. So he worked on getting Kyokay as warm as possible.

Some of the shivering probably came from shock. But Umbo couldn’t do anything about that. If he was going to get help for Kyokay, he’d have to move fast.

He carried the boy swiftly, knowing that every stop caused him pain. But he had to get away before anybody from Fall Ford started searching for the body of the boy who had fallen.

He laid Kyokay on the gravel landing area at the ferry, then went for the cache of blankets and leather-cutting knife. With the blankets he made a kind of bed and then lifted Kyokay and put him back down in the bottom of the boat. With Kyokay’s weight, the boat was now firm on the gravel, though the current tugged at the other end. The rope connecting the boat to the iron ring was slack. So he could cut it without the boat getting away from him.

When the rope was cut—and it took only two swipes with the leather-cutter—Umbo thought of throwing the knife into the middle of the river, so Tegay could never again use it to beat a child. But no, that was one of the tools with which Tegay provided for the family. And in this world, Tegay had not beaten Umbo’s brains out. If this worked, would never beat young Umbo again. So Umbo laid the knife in plain sight in the middle of the gravel, where anyone using the ferry would stumble across it. It would get back to Tegay’s bench.

Then Umbo pushed the boat out into the water. The current took it so swiftly that Umbo had a few moments of fright as he struggled to climb up and over the side to get in it. Nothing deft about that operation. But he finally got into the boat and then laid the rower’s plank across the middle and sat with his legs straddling Kyokay, who wasn’t shivering as badly now, so maybe it had been only the cold and not the shock of the wound that had him shaking so much before.

“How did you get down into the water so fast?” Kyokay asked.

“You fell very slowly,” said Umbo.

“Yes,” said Kyokay in wonderment. “I did. But I still hit very hard.”

And then he closed his eyes. With all that pain, he couldn’t be asleep. Unconscious, then. Exhausted. Maybe in shock after all.

But all Umbo could do was row like a demon. The current was fast—Umbo wanted to go faster. What would have been several days’ journey upstream might be only a couple of hours going down. He had to get to Bear’s Den Crossing before dark, or he’d float right past it and then Kyokay really would be in a dangerous position.

It took till the last light of dusk, but Umbo saw the wharf and tied up at it. The boat he had come up on was gone—of course it was gone, the owner had to keep the boat moving. But when Umbo carried Kyokay into the tavern where he had bought his provisions for the journey to Upsheer, whom should he see at one of the tables but the pilot he had parted with so warmly.

At once the pilot was on his feet, clearing away dishes to let Umbo lay Kyokay on his own table. A bonesetter was called for, and a stitcher too, once they saw the blood-soaked rags binding the wound. The pilot asked no more questions after Umbo said, “I saw him fall, and I knew nowhere to take him but here.”

“What about Fall Ford?” asked the pilot.

“We were already downstream of it,” said Umbo. “And you—your boat is gone.”

“My brother took it back. I’m here waiting for my wife to deliver my firstborn. If she doesn’t hurry, I’ll take the boat you came in and catch up with my brother.”

Umbo didn’t want to lie to this good man, but he knew he had to, for the future’s sake. “This poor boy thinks I’m his brother. Kept calling me by his name. Bobo or something like that.”

“Whereas you’re ‘Ram Odin.’” The pilot’s tone made it clear that he didn’t believe that was Umbo’s name, and probably never had.

“On the river, sir, a man is what he does, don’t you think?”

The pilot only grinned at him and kept working on warming up the boy’s arms and legs.

Next morning, Umbo left a good deal of money with the taverner with instructions to send someone upriver to tell the folk in Fall Ford that they should come fetch one of their children. Umbo knew it would insult the pilot to offer payment to him, and that the man would look in on Kyokay as if he were his own nephew, if not son.

When Umbo got to his little boat, he saw that it had been provisioned for a downriver voyage. A long one. And someone had untied the rope that had once connected the boat to the ring. So it was no longer obvious that it was a stolen ferryboat.

The man didn’t know whether my business was fair or foul, but he abetted me in trust that it wouldn’t bring him harm.

I already repaid him by not undoing the course of events that brought me and Rigg together, and Param, and Loaf and Olivenko. Now it’s their job to go ahead and save the world. I saved my brother’s life, and that’s all I can do, and more than I should have attempted, but now it’s done.