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“I’m supposed to keep the roadhouse closed up for hours, maybe?”
Umbo gulped. “I do it inside my head and I can’t tell time all that precisely so—”
“I’m teasing you, Umbo, you sweet stupid boy. I’d keep the roadhouse closed for the rest of my life if it’s the only way to get Loaf back to me.”
“Then I think I’ll go now because I don’t want future you to come out of the kitchen and . . .”
And he disappeared.
Umbo came up from the water, dripping and smiling.
“So this time it worked?” asked Loaf.
“I pretended I was you and yelled at her to shut up and listen,” said Umbo.
“That never works,” said Loaf.
“It worked when I told her that if she didn’t, she’d never see you again. She finally believes me and now she says to get you home, no matter what happened to you.”
“She believed you, then? That it’s really me behind this mask?”
Umbo told him what Leaky had said.
Loaf laughed. “She’s right. I’m still Loaf, but she’s still Leaky, and that means nobody bosses her around. Except, apparently, you.”
“She chopped wood for half an hour till she was calm enough to listen.”
“I bet it only took her five minutes.”
“It felt very long.”
“So do you think you can get me back home the same day we left?”
“Yes,” said Umbo. “Take my hand.”
“Yes, sir,” said Loaf.
“And cover your face.”
“I’ll cover my face when we get out on the road,” said Loaf.
“We’re going to make the jump at the edge of the road so we don’t accidentally materialize in a sapling.”
“If we’re not going to jump till we get to the road, why am I supposed to hold your hand?” demanded Loaf.
“Because it’s dark,” said Umbo, “and I can’t see in the dark the way you can.”
“A practical reason,” said Loaf. “Good thinking. Only . . . now I have to wonder. Is this really you?”
Leaky heard the loud banging at the front door. “Whoever you are, go away,” she muttered. “My husband and his idiot-child messenger are coming home and I don’t need company here.” She struggled to her feet—she really had exerted herself with the ax, swinging it too hard and moving too quickly. Now she was a little stiff and she was sure there’d be painful muscles tomorrow.
She made her way through the house and the banging at the door just kept on and on, not so loudly as to suggest damage to the door, but relentlessly, as if the person would never go away without being admitted to the house.
And when she thought of a guest that stubborn, she knew who it was before she even got to the door. My darling Loaf, that fool boy got you here almost before he left off talking to me. I didn’t even have time to get back into the house and unlock the door.
Now she did unlock it, and swung it open, and there he was, his face half-hidden in shadow by a cowl that hung low in front. But she could see at once that something was wrong with the face.
Not with anything else, though. Loaf stood at his full height. She knew those hands, knew that posture, and when he spoke, it was his true voice, only younger and stronger than he had sounded in years. “Hello, my love,” said Loaf. “Nice of you to lock folks out of a roadhouse.”
