“He did what he had to do.”
“But you never felt you had to do such a thing. Hurt and angry, over and over, you never once harmed anyone with your power.”
“I damaged the mice,” said Umbo, thinking of the way he and Param had warned the Visitors.
“You acted to save the human race on Earth from extinction, or so you thought. You really can’t get away from being labeled as a person who can be trusted.”
Umbo felt these words as praise. As honor. He hadn’t understood how hungry he was for such open signs of respect; the emotion of relief and gratitude that filled him threatened to bring him to sudden tears. To deflect it, he turned to his old standby—resentfulness. “I’m not sure if that means I’m good or merely weak,” said Umbo.
“We all know that you’re good,” said Olivenko. “Annoying, but good. That’s my lesson for today. It’s really the only thing you had to learn before you leave with Loaf to take him home.”
“And that means there’s really only one thing I have to do,” said Umbo.
“Then go and do it.”
“Only I should have done it yesterday,” said Umbo.
“If there’s anyone on Garden who never has to say such a thing, it’s you,” said Olivenko, “since you still can do it yesterday. But if I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” asked Umbo.
Olivenko made a twirling gesture with his finger. Turn it around. Answer your own question.
“Because she’d know that I hadn’t thought of it till later, and only went back in time so she wouldn’t worry about it, but it would still be dishonest. I only realized I needed to answer when you told me, and I should be able to admit that to her, if we’re really going to be husband and wife someday.”
“Pretty soon you won’t even need me to tell you to answer your own questions yourself,” said Olivenko. “Though I’m always happy to provide that service.”
Umbo found Param sitting in the grass by the riverbank, leaning against a sapling, with Rigg only about a meter away. They both looked despondent. Only it wasn’t Rigg, Umbo remembered. It was Noxon. Though Noxon had as many memories of their friendship together as the one who was still called Rigg.
“Before you ask,” said Noxon, “I’m not getting the hang of this at all. I should have her teach you first. Only I’d hate it when you picked it right up.”
Umbo had an instant answer. Several of them, actually. But he remembered that he wasn’t here to talk to his friend. He was here to talk to the woman he loved—the woman who had asked him to marry her, and had heard no response from him at all, and now wasn’t even looking at him.
So Umbo ignored Rigg completely. He knelt in the grass in front of Param—and, because he was Umbo, and not the hero of a great story, he knelt on a root and yelped in pain and had to catch himself to keep from falling over and Param couldn’t help but get a little smile on her face and Umbo felt a stab of embarrassment and he realized that a year ago—a week ago—yesterday—he would have resented her for it and it would have deflected him from what he came here to do.
But he refused to be that version of himself. There are two Umbos as surely as there are two Riggs, but in my case, only one of them can be visible at a time. From now on, I decide which one it’s going to be.
So he accepted her smile because it wasn’t mocking, it was honest—it really was funny that in trying to be serious, he had knelt on a root and wrecked it. Only it hadn’t wrecked anything, if he decided not to let it.
He pulled his shirt off over his head, shook it open, and held it between them. “Param, I’ve loved you since I first came to know you. At first it was the princess, the idea of a princess, but that was long ago, and now it’s you that I love, so far as I know you, and you that I want to marry, if you’ll have me.” He held out the shirt to her.
She took the shoulders of his shirt in her hands, and pulled the cloth over her head to make a tent. Umbo leaned closer and drew the bottom of the shirt over his own head, so it was only the two of them, face to face, under that small tent. He lightly kissed her cheek. She kissed his lips, just as lightly.
Then she pulled the shirt off her head and handed it back to him. “Next time you propose to a girl, you might bring a nice shawl or even a towel instead of a shirt you’ve already been wearing for hours.”
“If you can’t stand the way I smell,” said Umbo, “this whole marriage thing isn’t going to work.”
“So this wasn’t just a proposal,” she said. “It was your first test of my love.”
She had said the word “love.” He wanted to dance with happiness. Instead, he pulled the shirt back on over his head. “At least you don’t have to wear it,” he said. He got to his feet. “You two still have work to do, and I’m going to go take Loaf home to Leaky.”
He took a few steps away before Param said, “Hurry home.”
Umbo stopped and half-turned back to her. “Oh, I’ll be home before you even notice I was gone.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. Then she made a shooing-away gesture and slid a little closer to Noxon. Umbo could hear the two of them getting back to trying to teach each other unteachable skills as he walked away.
A royal marriage—the personal part could never be allowed to keep them from their duty.
Chapter 4
Homecoming
Even though Leaky had known right from the start that Loaf would go off with Umbo on a mad mission to save Rigg from the People’s Collection of Twits, and had even urged him to go, it still made her angry that he had done it; and she didn’t try very hard to be civil when she saw her husband and that strange time-traveling boy out the door. She threw a lettuce at them as they left, then made a point of closing the door, rather loudly, long before they were out of earshot. There’d be no backward glances to see her standing in the doorway gazing wistfully after her man.
She couldn’t help it that Loaf was a good man—that was part of why she married him and, in her weaker moments, admitted she loved him. She only wished he could be more selectively good—good for her, then good for the inn, and maybe even good for himself. After that, other people could suck on Ram’s left elbow before she thought Loaf should sacrifice anything for them.
Nice and hopelessly naive as those boys were, they were worth a bit of washing, stitching, and some food for the journey—and nothing more. Instead, Loaf had gone off with them to O, gotten himself arrested, and made his way home with Umbo. Well, wasn’t that enough? But no, Umbo had to go and teach himself how to do something he had only been able to do in combination with Rigg—send messages into the past. And now, armed with this dubious “weapon,” Loaf and Umbo thought they could take on the People’s Revolutionary Cushion-squatters.
So after shutting the door firmly—not slamming, since when she slammed a door it usually needed repairs—she had a bumptious half hour, deliberately doing everything with too much force, which terrified the customers eating or drinking at such an early hour. Most of them gulped down whatever they were eating or drinking, paid without arguing the price, and hightailed it through the still-functioning front door.
Once everyone was gone, Leaky realized how foolish it was to go on handling everything so roughly. For one thing, she would have to pay for anything she broke—which included two eggs, a lettuce, and a clay pot. For another thing, there was nobody there to see, not the customers and certainly not the people she was actually annoyed at—Umbo for being so sweet and needy, Rigg for getting himself arrested as a royal, and most of all Loaf for being so abominably fatherly.