“Sorry I don’t know how to do any of this,” said Olivenko. “In the city guard we didn’t have much need for loading and unloading animals.”

“As Rigg said, we are what we are,” said Loaf.

“All right, then,” said Rigg. “The four of us will go back into the past and push the carriage off the road. If we can get it rolling free down toward the stream, it’ll look like an ancient accident. Param can stay with the horses.”

“And I’ll stay with her,” said Umbo.

“You’re not very big, but you can still do your share,” said Loaf.

“I’m not going into the past with you,” said Umbo. “Not if we mean to get back to the present where Param will be waiting for us.”

Rigg was surprised. “Why would that be a problem?”

Umbo looked at Loaf. “Remember what happened when we dug up the stones? At O?”

Loaf nodded. “That’s right. When Umbo goes himself, and handles things in the past, he doesn’t go right back to where he was. He was a day off, a day early.”

“And that was after going back only a few months,” said Umbo. “Who knows how far off I’ll be if we go back a hundred years. Or two hundred. What if I miss by a month?”

“So you wait here with Param,” said Rigg. “But that raises another question. When I pushed Param into the past, I put her hand into the hands of people to whom that time was the present. Whom will we be giving the carriage to?”

“Can’t we just take it back there and then let go of it?” asked Loaf.

“This sounds so crazy,” said Olivenko. “Straight out of the Library of Nothing.”

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “I’m not even sure if we can ‘take’ something that’s bigger than we are. Why not put our hands on a mountain, go into the past, and then leave the mountain there? Why doesn’t the ground come with us every time we move through time?”

“Our clothes come with us—which I for one think is convenient,” said Param.

“I think the ground, and things attached to the ground, they stay in the present because time is tied to the world,” said Umbo. “Remember, Rigg? Otherwise time travel would mean dropping yourself into the middle of the space between stars, right?”

“So is the carriage attached to the ground?” asked Rigg. “Would we have to lift it up all at once?”

“Not likely,” said Loaf, “not if we have to hold hands with each other like we did when we were going back to join Olivenko in his time.”

“Let’s stop talking and try it,” said Rigg.

In a few moments, he and Olivenko and Loaf were tightly gripping the carriage at various points, using their right hands, while gripping each other’s left hands in a three-handed knot.

Rigg searched for a useful path, more than a hundred years old. He found one—a cow that had moved through the meadow across the road from where they meant to push the carriage. “All right, Umbo,” he said.

He felt the familiar change as the paths on the road started to become people—walking, riding horses. But he didn’t let himself get drawn into focusing on any of them. Instead, he kept his eyes on the path of the cow. It moved very differently, and was harder to get a hold on. Rigg had never done this with an animal before, and now he realized how difficult it was. It was as if the smarter brains of people made it easier for him to latch on to them. The cow was elusive. Just a little vague, though the image was always clear enough. Like trying to see through sleepy eyes at the first light of dawn.

But he locked in with the cow soon enough, and saw the world change around him. The cow was behind a fence now. There were fences on both sides of the road. Rigg hadn’t counted on that. This area used to be more populated, and what were now meadows had once been pastures. The road was also more trafficked—instead of being mostly grass, it was mostly dirt and stones.

“Are you seeing the fences?” asked Rigg.

“Yes,” replied both Loaf and Olivenko.

“Then we’re here. Don’t let go of the carriage. But one of you—Olivenko, all right?—let go of my hand.”

“Why?”

“To see if you pop back to the present with Umbo.”

“But Umbo is right there,” said Olivenko.

“That’s how it is. We see Umbo because he’s actually the one putting us back in time. Now let’s see if you go back to the present if you let go of me.”

Olivenko let go—but still gripped the carriage. He didn’t disappear.

“Now let me try something else,” said Rigg. He let go of Loaf now, too, and reached down and scooped up rocks from the road and tossed them into the carriage. They made a satisfying rattle as they fell to the floor and some of them bounced off the door on the other side. “Wherever we are,” said Rigg, “the carriage is here with us.”

“So it is,” said Loaf. “It’s a relief I’m not holding on to nothing.”

“If stones from the past can rattle around in the carriage, then the carriage is in the past.”

“Or you brought the stones into the future,” said Loaf.

“Let’s try moving it,” said Rigg.

“Meaning let’s me and Olivenko move it, since your weight against this thing won’t do much.”

“Sorry I didn’t get fatter in Flacommo’s house,” said Rigg.

“But you did,” said Loaf. “Taller, too. But not much.”

“Don’t ever let your hand leave the carriage,” said Rigg.

Loaf immediately let go of the carriage completely.

“Thanks for that,” said Rigg.

“You were being cautious,” said Loaf, “and that’s right, but I thought we should find out whether letting go of the carriage flips us back into the future. Or the present or whatever we call it. And it didn’t, I can still see the cow and the fences. Once we’re back here, we’re back here, as long as Umbo holds us here.”

“All right,” said Rigg. “But I was more worried about whether the carriage would stay.”

“So let’s all let go of it and go back to Umbo’s and Param’s time and see if the carriage stays.”

“But I don’t want it here by the road.”

“Then we’ll go back and move it. Let’s just see first,” said Loaf. “Before we go to all the trouble of pushing it down the hill and then finding out that it stays in the present and General Citizen’s spies will spot it instantly.”

“Smart,” said Rigg.

“You say that,” said Olivenko, “as if the fact that Sergeant Loaf here thought of it, and not you, must mean that you’re stupid.”

“Get used to it,” said Loaf. “Rigg is constantly surprised when somebody is smarter than he is.”

“We’ve all let go of the carriage,” said Rigg, ignoring their banter. “Umbo, bring us back to the present.”

The fences were gone. The cow was gone. The carriage was gone.

“Good job,” said Umbo. “You got rid of it.”

“We didn’t move it,” said Olivenko, “and it’s gone.”

Rigg looked among the paths on the road and found the answer. “Within a day after we left it there, a half dozen paths come up to the thing and stop. With a couple of horses—no, too small. Donkeys. Not ideal, but strong enough to move the thing. They took it—down to that barn.”

“What barn?” asked Olivenko.

“The rotting weathered shards of wood there,” said Umbo, pointing. “They used to be a barn.”

Rigg took off running, and Umbo was with him at once. “You stay there, Param!” That almost guaranteed that she would come walking down the slope with Olivenko and Loaf, picking her way over the uneven ground.

Inside the rectangle defined by a few scraps of standing wall, and amid the ruin of a fifty-years-fallen roof, the wheels of the carriage were still identifiable. As were the rusted and tarnished metal fittings.

“Well, ain’t that something,” said Loaf.

“Waste of a good carriage,” said Olivenko. “Those folks took it from the road, and never did another thing with it.”

“Good hiding place, though,” said Umbo.

“They took it out quite a few times at first,” said Rigg. “Got four horses to pull it. But not always the same people—it was like the neighborhood carriage. I count . . . five different groups that took it out at different times. But always the same horses.”