Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“A couple of weeks at most,” said Umbo. “The horses are gone. We haven’t gotten here yet.”

She helped him stand up. “Sorry that I landed on you. I’ve never done that before—a jump like that—I didn’t have time to plan ahead.”

“I can’t believe how fast you made them move. A day and a night in a mere second—we must have barely existed at all.”

Param laughed nervously and turned the subject from herself. “Mother is a nightmare, isn’t she? I hope I don’t grow up like her.”

Only now did Umbo realize how afraid Param must have been—falling downward into her mother’s relentless trap, where she could have seen no outcome but her own death. And now she was alive, and Umbo had saved her as surely as she had saved him.

“Let’s not wait for ourselves to arrive,” said Umbo. “Let’s get across the Wall. You can put us as deep into slow time as you want—we have weeks to get across.”

“It’ll still feel like an hour to us.”

“It’s only a little more than a mile.”

“And I’m not a fast walker,” said Param. “Let’s get started.”

He was still holding her hands from when she helped him stand; now they adjusted their hold, his left hand in her right, and strode forward toward the Wall. The fear came quickly on them, and the despair, and Umbo realized that nothing he had felt while on the rock and falling from it compared to the dread and hopelessness and uselessness that swept over him as he entered the Wall.

And then those feelings grew weak, and faded to a gnawing anxiety and a general need to weep. The sun moved briskly across the sky. He looked at Param. She was looking questioningly at him.

He guessed the question: Can you bear this?

He nodded and pressed forward, pulling her along with him. She quickened her pace a little but also pulled back on his hand. Not so fast, she was saying.

The degree of slow time that she settled on made the Wall bearable, but never easy. He felt miserable the whole time and wanted it only to end. She, too, plodded along as he did, and he saw that there were tears streaking her face. He wondered why she didn’t take them deeper into slow time, but then guessed why: She must want to reach the other side before Rigg and the men got there.

She might even be thinking of rescuing Rigg. But it seemed to him that the timing would be very hard. They would have to be right there at the spot where he fell; in slow time, if they were even five steps away from him they would never reach him to bring him into slow time before Olivenko and Loaf came back to fetch him. It wouldn’t work. They’d be completely useless. There was really no reason for them to bother crossing through the Wall at all. What need did Rigg and the men have for a runt like Umbo and a weakling like Param?

Umbo shuddered and plodded on. He knew that his feeling of uselessness and waste was merely the Wall talking inside his head. But knowing that did not ease the feelings at all. If there had been a way for sound to be produced and carried in slow time, he would have begged Param to slow them even further, to ease this sadness and despair and dread. But he also knew that to ask would be useless, because she was right, she had found the balance. This was bad but not so bad that he could not keep moving forward; he was not so fearful he would panic and let go of her; he was not so depressed that he would stop walking and wish to die. As long as he kept moving forward he would reach the end.

From the rising and the falling of the sun, nine days passed as they walked that mile-and-a-bit to the markers showing they were on the other side.

Umbo let go of Param’s hand.

At once the world changed. He could hear the sound of birds, his own footfalls in the stony grass. He turned to where he knew the invisible Param was and nodded to her. “It’s safe,” he said. And then nodded very slowly, so that she would be sure to see it.

Param appeared right where she was supposed to be. Her tear-stained face looked unspeakably sad, and then he saw relief come into her eyes, a smile come to her face. She sank to her knees, crying and laughing. “Oh, that was terrible,” she said. “It lasted forever.”

“Not even an hour,” said Umbo. He knelt in front of her.

“I’ve never felt so sad and frightened in my life,” she said. She reached out and smoothed the tears from his cheek with her hand. He did the same for her.

“I have,” said Umbo. “I felt as bad as that a lot of times, when I thought I would never get away from my father, when I knew he was going to beat me and I had no hope of avoiding it. Anything I did would make it worse. That’s how it felt.”

“Then I have lived a very happy life,” said Param, “and you a very sad one.”

“That part of my life ended when I left Fall Ford with Rigg,” said Umbo. “And just because you hadn’t tasted much of fear and despair didn’t make you happy all those years, living in your mother’s house.”

“But you see, I didn’t understand her yet as well as I do now,” Param replied. “So I felt no fear when I was with her. I felt safe and loved. Content to have no other company. She was my whole world and it was enough.”

“So you had the shock of finding out who she really was. While with my dad, I always knew. It was never a surprise. Which is worse?”

“I think it must have been worse for you,” said Param. “To live like that and think it was the only way. When Mother showed her true intentions back at Flacommo’s house, it was a shock, yes, but by the time I really understood just what I had lost, the fear was gone. I didn’t feel it all at once. The Wall is a terrible thing. Whoever made it must have evil in his heart.”

“I don’t know,” said Umbo, standing up, and helping her to stand. “The Wall’s makers didn’t require us to move all the way through it. Their only purpose was to keep us out, not torture us.”

Param turned and looked back the way they had come. “So now we have to wait for us to come.” She shuddered. “Language was designed for time to flow in one direction only. Everything we say is nonsense.”