He had always thought of shifting into the future as a leap off a cliff. Not knowing what the future felt like, what was happening there, to jump into it would be insane. What if he jumped ten years into the future? By then the Destroyers would have come, and the future he entered would be an uninhabitable wasteland. And if by ill luck he should jump into the exact moment in the future when they were burning Garden to a cinder, he would probably die before he could realize that he’d better jump out of there.

But no, not now. Because he had already lived through that time. He had stood on the beach in Larfold and watched the fires begin, before they all jumped back to a safer time.

That moment—the end of the world—was one of those markers in the future that he remembered with all the certainty of the most important times he had lived through or visited in the past.

And because his time map had nothing to do with place—it was a map of whens, not wheres—he could jump to any particular moment in the past, no matter where he was. He’d still be however many hundreds of leagues away that he had been before the time-shift, but he would be when he wanted, even if he wasn’t yet where he wanted. Just as he had done in jumping back to the time before Kyokay’s death.

Now Kyokay was alive again, but the day Umbo saved him was the same marker as the day he had failed to save him the first time around.

Maybe I can jump into the future. Not slice into it, a fraction of a second at a time, invisible to everyone, yet vulnerable to enemies. Jump to it.

Not while I’m out in the middle of the river. I don’t want to arrive at exactly the moment a boat is passing through this exact spot.

And what if for some reason the boat didn’t come with him? Even if he could shift into the future, there was no guarantee he could take anything with him in that direction. Umbo could swim, but he didn’t relish a soaking.

As he pulled the boat onto a firm landing place, it occurred to him that if he couldn’t take the boat, what about clothing? The jeweled knife?

No, no, these were foolish fears. Param jumped into the future all the time. A microsecond at a time, but she skipped forward with clothes and whatever she was carrying on her. I’ll have everything with me when I get there. If I get there. Won’t I?