"Don't make a sound," the pale boy hissed as my scream died in his palm. I bit my lip until it tasted of iron. His fingers were cold and strangely clean, like someone who had washed in river water that morning. He pressed my head down into the tall grass and pulled the hood of my coat over my hair. "You're bleeding," he said low, and his voice had no pity in it. "I didn't mean to," I whispered. My words were useless. The glade smelled of damp oak and pressed earth. A laugh drifted from the trail, high and cruel. "That's them," someone called. A cluster of voices answered. Wooden clapping of footsteps. The path below the glade filled with people moving like a single thing. Men with work shirts, women with kerchiefs, a couple of boys swinging a broken shovel. Someone banged a tin pan. "Come on! Show yourselves!" an old woman shouted. I could see the lovers now; two teenagers hunched against a tree, the girl's blouse half untucked, the boy's shirt dirty at the collar. They looked caught, small and ashamed and fierce all at once. Their hands were intertwined like they'd been trying to keep each other from falling. "Shame," another voice hissed. "Bring them out." The pale boy—Bai, his name a slip of sound someone had used once, but I hadn't known which—moved like a shadow between me and the edge. He blocked the