“Then let’s do it,” said Ram Odin. “These valleys are secure enough that they don’t have any habit of killing strangers. The worst that can happen is that they’ll escort us to a pass and encourage us to move on to another valley.”

“Well, then, human nature is not the same here as everywhere else.”

“You’ll see,” said Ram Odin. “They don’t have to kill us, because expulsion, to them, is worse than death. To be alive, but have no home, no village, no people you belong to—booting out strangers is, to them, worse than killing them, but also kinder.”

“There have to be exceptions,” said Rigg.

“There are,” said Ram Odin. “But we’re not going to those places.”

“Those,” said Rigg, “are precisely the places where I want to go.”

“Because you like being depressed and angry,” said Ram Odin.

“Because if the Wall comes down, the danger to other wallfolds is likely to come from the people who aren’t happy and nice and kind to all living things.”

“Well, then,” said Ram Odin. “Let’s by all means find a bitter, suspicious village and invite them to prove me wrong about how they only exile the people who annoy them.”

In their own language, their name for the valley and the village was the same: “Good People’s Home.” Of course this rolled off the wallwalkers’ tongues as if it were in their native speech: Woox-taka-exu. This meant that simply speaking the name was praise and nostalgia and affection, even for people who had never lived there.

At Rigg’s insistence, they joined in with the work that was going on, which at present was beginning to move indoors, as the winds rose, the sky was slate, and snow flurries came often and unpredictably. Not hard winter yet, because the snow could pile up to rooftop level in those storms. But the promise of winter, the warning of it. Get your flocks in from the hills, make sure your hay is stored up high in the barn, slaughter the excess geese and sheep and goats, smoke or dry or salt or sausage away the meat, grind bones into fertilizer.

Gather fallen wood for fires—it took less than Rigg might have thought, because the fires were never very hot or bright. With houses insulated by snow and no one going outside most of the winter, body heat and small, steady fires kept people as warm as they needed or wanted to be. But woe to the family that ran out, because no one else would have very much to spare. Usually, instead of sharing their firewood, the neighbors would take in this or that family member for the rest of the winter, and then mock the householders mercilessly when spring came.