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.”