He did stop for a quick meal and some provender for the journey. He’d be doing no trapping. As often as he had watched Rigg set traps, Umbo still had no idea where to set them. Rigg knew the paths the animals used. Umbo would just be setting a trap in some random place, and he was sure that animals would only stumble on his traps out of pity, they’d be so ill-situated.

The travel was not as hard as he feared, but harder than he hoped. There were tracks and traces in the woods, and once a fair reach of fields that the farmers consented to let him walk through—half a day’s journey, passing through open ground without brambles and branches trying to leave scars all over his body.

He got to the base of Upsheer not far from the falls, and he was pretty sure that Kyokay had not fallen yet. The trouble was, it might happen tomorrow, and it might happen next week, and if he let his attention wander, the whole thing could happen while he was peeing or napping or eating.

Of course, if he missed it, he could always go back again. But then he’d have to deal with his own lazy self, sitting around getting in the way. Or he could just appear to himself at the right moment, telling himself to get a move on, it was about to happen.

Instead, he picked his way to a stand of trees with a good view across the river, and when a bunch of boys came to the river to swim, despite the cold water and the stiff breeze, he saw Kyokay among them.

Not so much among them as all around them, doing five stunts for every one that another boy tried. Why Kyokay didn’t die long before that fall from the cliff, Umbo couldn’t understand. He climbed everything, jumped off of everything, swam under or into or through any obstacle in the water, dove deepest and held his breath the longest. He leapt into the water backward, or deliberately splatted in a belly flop, or tried to turn multiple somersaults in the air when he jumped from the highest part of the bank. And it’s not as if he was particularly adroit. Kyokay must have hit his head half a dozen times, and one time he yelled for help when he got his arm caught in a floating log that he himself had just pushed free from its entanglement with the bank. Nothing taught him a lesson. Nothing made him more careful.

What will I be saving him for? thought Umbo. That boy is doomed to get himself killed.