“Didn’t you notice how my facemask is so much prettier than Rigg’s?”

“Oh, of course you say that now that he’s off on his expedition, so nobody can actually compare.”

During this banter, Noxon had picked a nearby path—without slowing it down to see who it was. It was at least a century old, but that made it far newer than the few other paths in the vicinity. The Larfolders didn’t feel at home in the woods, so few of their paths ever came here.

“So is there any noise here?”

“There’s always some noise,” said Param.

“But I mean, are there any particular noises?”

“A few. Nothing very loud.”

“Is there one that’s louder than any of the others?”

“Yes,” she said instantly. “But it’s not loud loud.”

“Do you know where it’s coming from?”

Param thought. “Well, yes. I think I always know. That’s how I can avoid them when I just want some peace. It’s over this way.”

But she closed her eyes when she said this, and her eyes were still closed when she pointed.

She pointed at that newest path.

“Let me see if I can hear it too,” said Noxon. “Let’s go stand right in the middle of this particular tune.” He led her to the path.

“You’re seeing a path and you think they’re the same.”

“No, I’m positive they’re not the same at all,” said Noxon, “so I’m going to get you to confirm that by telling me we’re not standing in the middle of it right now.”

“Well we are,” said Param. And then she began to gasp. For a moment he thought she was feeling faint. And then he realized she was laughing. No, crying.

“It is not possible,” she finally said.

“Let’s go to one of those fainter tunes,” said Noxon.

“They’re not really musical.”

“And my paths aren’t really colorful. But I call the differences among them colors. And you called them tunes, didn’t you?”

“That’s how I think of them. And yes, we’re standing in another of them now.”

“It’s a very old path,” said Noxon. “But you hear it.”

“It’s not loud, but yes.”

“I think it’s safe to say that you and I are both pathfinders.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I wish Umbo had ever done his slowing-down trick on me!”

“Every time he dragged you around in time, he was doing it,” said Rigg. “You just weren’t expecting it to turn your tunes into anything, so you didn’t notice.”

“I wish he were here to do it now!” said Param.

“He’ll be back, sooner or later,” said Noxon. “But maybe we can do something ourselves. Let’s stand here—beside this path. This tune. Look at my hand. Where I’m placing it. The tune is right there, isn’t it?”

Param looked at his hand, which he was holding out from his body. “I never realized how precisely I knew where they were. You don’t expect to know where sounds are, but yes, I always knew which way to go to get away from a particular noise, or the noisiest ones, anyway.”

“I’m going to use the facemask to help me see the actual person. I always see the people now, a little. But I’m going to see her clearly.”

“Her?”

“Some things are pretty obvious, the way I see paths now. General size and body shape. I’d say it’s an old woman. And I want to pick a moment when she’s already past this point. Say nothing, do nothing, so we don’t alert her and make her turn around and see us.”

“There’s nobody there.”

“I haven’t done it yet. But look toward where you know that tune is. Where it passes between those trees.”

“I’m looking.”

“I can see her now, very clearly, taking a single step. And now I’m bringing us into resonance with her, very precisely, so she’s frozen in midstep. You’re not going to do something stupid like letting go of my hand, are you?”

“Unless I feel like it.”

“No more talking now. We’re going to jump to her time.”

And with that, Noxon fixed himself on the woman and made the jump into the past.

Param must not have been able to help it. Her gasp was of pure startlement. The woman stopped and started to turn. In fact, she was whirling around to see what was so close behind her. But Noxon had facemask reflexes now, so he saw what she was doing and jumped back a little farther in time, before she could have caught even a glimpse of them. She would think she was startled at nothing, some random forest sound, and laugh at herself for thinking someone was there.

Noxon pulled Param away from the woman’s path. “You couldn’t have been that surprised,” said Noxon. “I told you that you’d see an old woman’s back. And she’s a Larfolder, so you can hardly have been surprised at her mantle.”

“No, no, that’s not why I gasped. I’m so sorry I did that, I couldn’t help it.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because I realized that she was the tune. The tune was streaming back from behind her. She was making the tune.”

“Making the path, you mean.”

“How could I live all these years without noticing that the tunes were streaming along behind people?” Param sank to the ground. “But I did know. I did realize it. As a little girl, I told Mother, ‘I don’t like his noise, he has a bad noise,’ and she told me to hush and never talk like that again, so I didn’t. ‘He’s not making a noise, don’t be rude,’ that’s what she taught me. So I stopped noticing. Or stopped admitting that I noticed. But there were noises that I definitely associated with people. The noise of Flacommo was all over the house. And I knew Mother’s tune by heart, I knew where she had been. But I never thought it was this specific. That she passed by this place or that place at a certain time.”

“But she did. You’re not stupid for not realizing all this. Do you think I knew what I was seeing? Father helped me understand it. He didn’t know that I could jump to those times—Umbo and I discovered that—but he helped me understand that I was seeing—no, that I perceived—different people and different animals, and that some were more recent than others. I think of the recent ones as being brighter, but for you they’re—”

“Louder,” said Param.

“You’re such a pathfinder,” said Noxon, with mock contempt.

“I need me an Umbo!” she cried out in joking frustration.

“When we jumped, though. Could you feel what we were doing?”

“Not really. I knew when we jumped, I know that we jumped. But I don’t know what you’re doing when you do it.”

“Just like I didn’t know what you were doing as you sliced time. So let’s start picking paths and jumping to them, and you see if you can start to get what I’m doing. Because there’s no reason to think you don’t have the same ability to hold on to a particular point in the path. A particular moment in the tune.”

“I see one problem,” said Param. “We’re going to practice by going back and back, to ever older tunes. Paths. But we don’t have Umbo as an anchor, to bring us back.”

“We need us an Umbo,” he said, echoing her joke. Then he caught himself. “It’s not funny. We always needed Umbo. How did we ever make him feel that we didn’t?”

“Because I told him we didn’t,” said Param. “And he believed every nasty thing I ever said. How could he still want to marry me, the way I treated him?”

“Because love forgives much. Not all, but a lot.”

“I like him now. I’m used to him and I like him. And now I see that I need him.”

“If he were here, it would be easier. But remember who you are and who I am. So what if we go a few centuries into the past? We’ll just slice our way forward again.”

“We’re already a century in the past,” she said.

“How do you know that?” asked Noxon.

“You said.”

“Did I? I don’t remember. I thought maybe you just knew.”

“Maybe I did. I just remember how long it took Umbo and me to slice forward to when the Visitors’ ship was here.”

“And don’t you and I slice ten times faster?”