“We’re going to try a facemask on him,” said Umbo.

“I think that’s wise,” said Auntie Wind.

“And if it destroys him, Umbo will go back and prevent it,” said Loaf.

“It will go well,” said Auntie Wind. “Even in their original state, the mantles and facemasks are gentler on babies. Babies have little control over their bodies—but their will is terrifyingly strong. They get control over the parasite right along with getting control over the body. You’ll see.”

I hope you’re right, thought Umbo.

And, in the flyer, Loaf echoed the thought. “I hope she’s right.”

“If she isn’t,” said Umbo, “we’ll try something else.”

And then, because he thought of it, and because it was Loaf that he was with, he added, “Square is alive because strangers have cared for him when it was inconvenient. Dangerous. I think Garden wants this boy to live. And with a facemask, and the body you and Leaky made for him, he’ll be a force to reckon with.”

Loaf heard this in silence.

After a while, though, Loaf said, “If this works, I think I’ll seek out some adults and invite them to wear facemasks. You can go back and prevent the ones who fail. Then you can take a colony of successful facemaskers a few hundred years into the past and let them be the citizens of Vadeshfold. Let the colony grow. Far from the city where we first arrived there, but . . . a colony of facemaskers would be the true heirs of the wallfold, don’t you think?”

“No mice,” said Umbo.

“Wouldn’t matter,” said Loaf. “With facemasks, the Vadesh­folders could see all the mice, and catch them if they want. Use the mice to sing lullabies to their children. And squish their little mousy heads if they got out of line.”

“Once the mice get into the millions,” said Umbo, “it would be time-consuming to catch them all. Especially if they developed a disease that weakens facemaskers or slows them down. Or kills the facemask.”

“All right,” said Loaf. “No mice.”

“What about timeshapers?” asked Umbo.

“Rigg already has a facemask.”

“But maybe he should be the only one,” said Umbo. “Facemasks are one kind of power, timeshaping another. I’m thinking we should keep timeshaping out of the Vadeshfold gene pool.”

“Can’t be done,” said Loaf. “Timeshaping is already in the Ramfold gene pool, and we have no way to screen it out. It’s going to crop up eventually among the facemaskers.”

“What we timeshapers do is already so dangerous,” said Umbo. “Undoing vast swaths of history just because we decide to. With facemasks, there’d be no stopping us. We’ve got no guarantee that other timeshaping facemaskers would be as nice as Rigg.”