“No!” said Ram Odin sharply. “You have this godlike power to force other people not to do evil, but to choose not to use it doesn’t make you evil. It says that you respect other people’s freedom enough to allow them to choose to do terrible things. To reveal who they are by the choices they actually make, the things they actually do. If you didn’t have this godlike power, if you had lived in this village and realized what the murderer was going to do, and you came and saw what he was doing and decided to let it happen, then you’d be complicit. But you have a godlike power to compel people to be better—or at least less awful—than they wish to be. How many people can you keep from being moral monsters? You children are going to try to stop the destruction of a world—but even then, there are limits to how you’ll go about doing it. There are limits! The only reason you can be trusted with this power is that there are limits.”

“So you stopping me from doing something, that’s all right, but I—”

“I’m not stopping you, foolish boy. I’m trying to persuade you. But I know perfectly well that at any second you could leap back in time, go prevent the murder, and come back here to rejoin this conversation right where we left off.”

“I actually can’t. I’d have to slice my way back.”

“You’d get back here. If you wanted. You could also leave me behind whenever you want. But you don’t do those things.”

“Maybe I should.”

“But you haven’t and I think you won’t. You sat here and listened to my arguments for one reason and one reason only.”

“I know.”

“Tell me the reason.”

“You’re not my father. You don’t have the right to quiz me.”

“You listened to me because you know I’m right. No, more than that. You already knew I was right, and you let me talk you out of it because you already mistrusted your decision to save the girl. You just needed me to help you do the right thing.”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “You nailed it. And now I’m going to sleep.”

He lay down in the hay, his coat under his head to keep bits of straw out of his nostrils while he slept. But he did not sleep until he had exhausted himself with weeping. For the beautiful dead girl whose path was still present even when he shut his eyes, whose face was always before him because he could not stop himself from examining her path.