Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

Umbo’s face suddenly changed. “No,” he said. “Your father wasn’t stupid. Or a liar.” He looked thoughtful.

“So I had to get past this man’s hand so I could save Kyokay. I pounded on his hand. Then he grabs my other arm and I can see he’s going to pull me over—I mean, he outweighed me by about twice, it’s not like he could have held on to me and dragged himself up on the rock. So I pried up his fingers. Two fingers. So he’d let go of me.”

“I knew I saw you trying to pry up Kyokay’s hand!” said Umbo, angry again.

“You did not!” cried Rigg. “You saw me making a prying motion but you never saw me holding on to Kyokay’s fingers because I never touched him. I couldn’t! The W.S. was in the way! It was his fingers I was prying—fingers that you couldn’t see because he was still trapped back there in the past.”

“You just don’t know when to stop, do you,” said Umbo.

“I’m telling the truth,” said Rigg. “Believe what you want to.”

“The W.S.—the Wandering Saint was three hundred years ago!” Umbo shouted at him.

“Father warned me not to tell anybody anything about what I do,” said Rigg. “And now I see why. Go home. I’m done with you.”

“No!” shouted Umbo. “Don’t do this!”

Rigg forced himself to calm down. “I’m not doing anything,” he said. “I told you a true story, you think I’m lying, and I don’t see how we can travel together after that.”

“What you said about your father,” said Umbo. “Warning you not to tell people about what you do.”

“Right, well, I don’t do anything.”

“Yes you do, and you have to tell me.”

“I don’t tell things to people who believe I’m a liar,” said Rigg. “It’s a waste of breath.”

“I’ll listen, I swear I will,” said Umbo.

Rigg couldn’t understand why Umbo had suddenly changed—why he was now so eager to hear. But Umbo seemed sincere. Almost pleading.

He could almost hear Father saying, “You don’t have to answer someone just because he asks you a question.” And so Rigg replied as Father had taught him to—with another question. “Why do you want me to tell you?”

“Because maybe you’re not the only one with a secret your father said never to tell anybody,” said Umbo softly.

“So are you going to tell me yours?” asked Rigg.

“Yes,” said Umbo.

Rigg waited.

“You first,” said Umbo, even more softly. Like he was suddenly very shy. Like Rigg was dangerous and Umbo didn’t want to offend him.

But Father had known a secret of Umbo’s, one that he had never told to Rigg. So maybe that meant Father would approve of Rigg trusting Umbo.

“I see paths,” said Rigg. “I see them wherever any person or animal has ever gone. And that’s not really it, either. I don’t see them, not with my eyes, I just know where they are. They can be on the other side of a bunch of trees or behind a hill or inside the walls of a house, and I can close my eyes and the paths are still there.”

“Like . . . a map?”

“No. Like . . . streams of dust, strings of dust, cobwebs in the air. Some of them are new, and some old. Human paths are different from animal paths, and there are colors, or something like colors, depending on how old they are. But it means that

I can see the whole history of a place, every path that a person has ever walked. I know it sounds crazy, or like magic, but Father said it had a perfectly rational explanation, only he would never tell me what such an explanation might be.”

Umbo’s eyes were wide, but he said nothing. No mockery now, no accusations.

“Up there at the top of Stashi falls, just as I was trying to get to your brother, everything changed. All of a sudden it was like the paths slowed down. I hadn’t ever realized they were moving, but when they slowed down I could see that the paths were not something the people left behind as they passed—they were the people, and I was seeing into the past. Only everything had always moved so fast that I didn’t realize it.”

“Everything slowed down,” said Umbo.