quick for Umbo to see. He felt a tickle in a couple of spots and wondered if that was what it felt like to have an arrow pass through him while he was invisible in Param’s slow time.
There were men climbing up the rock, carrying their metal bars; there were men upon the rock now, waving the bars around; they moved so quickly. But Param was already leaping from the rock, and Umbo leapt too-and in that moment Param must have vastly slowed them even more, for now the men scurried around faster than ants, faster than darting hummingbirds, waving the bars around. Suddenly it was dark and Umbo couldn’t see a thing. Then it was light again and they were still falling, twisting their bodies in midair so that when they landed, they would be upright.
The soldiers were still scurrying around waving metal bars. They did not know that Umbo and Param had jumped from the side of the rock instead of straight forward, so throughout this second day most of their scurrying was on the ground in front of the promontory. Then the queen scuttled like a bug among them and they were re- deployed, so that the second day ended with the dance of the men with metal bars now whirling around directly below them.
Still they were falling, and it was night again, and then it was day, and the scurrying did not stop. If anything it was more frantic, with the bars rising up into the air. Invisible now for two days-for two seconds-Param and Umbo were clearly in more danger than they were before, for the queen would not give up, would not let the men give up. In moments they would be down among them, where the bars could reach; they would die before they ever reached the ground.
And then Umbo realized that he had the power to save them, and as quickly as the thought he threw the shadow of time across himself and Param and thrust himself and her backward in time, only a couple of weeks.
The men were gone.
Another three days and three nights had passed before Param was able to make sense of what Umbo had done and bring them back up to speed.
They hit the ground, stumbled. Param was behind and above him; her weight came down upon him so that he could not catch himself, but landed full out, the air driven from his chest by the impact of her weight.
He lay there gasping as the world around him slowed down and the sun beat down and he could hear again. Hear his own panting. Feel the pain in his chest-had she broken his ribs?-and hear her talking to him.
“How did you do it?” she said. “You are the powerful one, to do that while we were in slow time, to do that in midair, in mid-jump.”
“I think my ribs are broken,” whispered Umbo between gasps. But then he realized that they could not be-it didn’t hurt more when he breathed. “No,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
“When are we?” asked Param. “How far back did you take us?”
“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
