“But Nox wasn’t. She just grew there. Do you think every village has a Nox?”

Rigg thought about the woman he once believed, or at least hoped, was his mother. She kept a boardinghouse that took in the rare traveler. She cooked meals that people in Fall Ford praised and envied. She was kind and protective.

And she had the ability to create a mental field around her in which she could calm people down. It didn’t reach far, but it certainly was effective. You couldn’t be very angry or very afraid around Nox.

“She’s the mayor of Fall Ford,” said Rigg, realizing it for the first time. “Nobody knows it, but everybody knows it. It wasn’t just when they were coming after me. They always go to Nox.”

“She’s like a drug,” said Ram Odin. “When things made them upset, they’d go to Nox and she helped them feel better. When they were calmed down, they made better decisions. They all knew it, even if they didn’t know it.”

“You don’t know Nox.”

“But Ramex did. And he told me. She’s not the only one. She’s the other direction that human evolution took in Ramfold. We needed timeshapers so we paid more attention to you. But I had Ramex take you to a village that had Nox. A soother. Because you and Umbo were very likely to cause some crazy things to happen. And with Nox around, things couldn’t go too wrong.”

“And the other wallfolds—did they develop people like Nox?”

“I thought you wanted to form your own opinions.”

Rigg rolled his eyes. “So you’ll be my grandfather. That doesn’t explain my face.”

“It puts you under an old man’s protection. Instead of coming in as a lone monster, you come in as an old man’s strange grandson. That solves one problem, but not the big one.”

“That we’ll still be strangers wherever we go.” Rigg heard himself saying “we” and he knew in that moment that he had already decided to bring Ram Odin along. Because it really would be impossible to do this on his own. Oh, he could visit wallfolds alone, and observe people from a distance, but what would he really know about them without hearing them talk? Without seeing how they live? And with this mask on his head, he couldn’t get close enough. He hadn’t thought that through, and Ram Odin had, and so Ram Odin was going to get his way because his way was better.

“We have to have a reason for traveling,” said Ram Odin. “Or they’ll think we’re criminals, or escapees, or wild men, or refugees, or whatever else sets people to wandering. Where did you want to go first?”

“Yinfold,” said Rigg.

“Go to the farthest and work your way back. Makes sense.”

“When we’re traveling in Yinfold, what’s our story?”