Chapter 6

Eric ran too fast—so fast it was like he vanished on the spot.
Bo Li replayed the look in his eyes at the end and felt she’d probably convinced him to cooperate.
The stone in her chest finally dropped. Even her appetite came back; when the rank smell of meat pudding drifted over again, she didn’t feel quite so close to vomiting.
They called it “meat pudding,” but it was more like a steamed bun cooked until soft. She cut through the skin and found cubes of cooked rabbit and lamb kidney inside, brushed inside and out with a tallow sauce. The smell of animal fat was heavy. If there’d been vinegar, soy sauce, and chopped chili to dip it in, it might have tasted decent.
Unfortunately, all the table held was a single slab of butter that who knew how many hands had already dug into.
Near the end of the party, a man sidled up to Emily and tried to lift her skirts to see whether she had two—
He rolled the word around in his mouth, his tongue lingering on it, and laughed in a leering way.
Emily sat upright in her wheelchair, her face pale as sealed wax, silent.
The manager drank on. Only when things started to look ugly did he give a half-hearted scolding.
Bo Li watched the entire scene and couldn’t name what she felt.
Since crossing over, she’d been dressed as a boy, hair cut short, her chest bound tight under layers of cloth. No one looked at her the way you looked at an object.
But at the party, the way many men looked at women truly was the way you looked at objects.
Right now, this body was young and underfed, and she could still pass—barely. But given time?
A girl’s body changed by the day. Tomorrow she might already look different.
When that happened, how would they look at her?
Bo Li shivered and didn’t dare follow the thought any further.
Even in the modern world, not many men truly respected women—let alone men from more than a century ago.
She’d thought she still had time, that she could plan her escape slowly.
Now she couldn’t.
A cold gust swept through. Bo Li jolted, hair standing on end as a crucial thought slammed into her—
Her period.
She didn’t know how the original Polly handled menstruation. Maybe she’d been so malnourished she didn’t get it at all.
But hormones were complicated. What if, after Bo Li crossed over, this body’s hormone levels shifted in some subtle way and it started suddenly?
The more she thought about it, the more terrified she became. Her heart raced so hard it felt like it was beating against her ears.
She had to leave. Immediately.
No delay.
That night, she slept in fragments—waking either to her own pounding heartbeat or to the howls of coyotes in the woods.
She woke so many times that she even hallucinated, thinking she was still in her own bed at home, that she could just roll over and touch her phone on the charger.
But when she reached out, she felt nothing but damp, fishy mud under her fingers.
There was no point in wallowing.
Bo Li closed her eyes and told herself again and again: You’re strong. You’ll get out of here.
Right now, the only thing you need to do is sleep.
Someone who’s sleep-deprived can’t think—and can’t run.
With that thought, she finally forced herself to sleep.
Maybe because the party had gone on until dawn, everyone slept in the next day.
When Bo Li got up, she felt a dragging ache low in her abdomen.
She went rigid and prayed—please don’t let it be her period, please don’t let it be—
The answer was the opposite of what she prayed for. It had come.
Bo Li’s face didn’t change.
She wasn’t ashamed—just annoyed.
But it was already happening. She couldn’t exactly do a handstand and make it flow back.
She improvised with gauze from the first-aid kit, got dressed, and stepped out of the tent.
Fighting the cramps, Bo Li meant to find Eric and talk about escaping. But the entire morning, he never showed.
He was always like this—appearing and disappearing like a ghost. She could only put it aside for now and wait for him to make up his mind and show himself.
That night, the circus had two shows, but neither had anything to do with her. She, the little boy John, and a group of other half-grown kids weren’t qualified to go onstage.
Their job was to steal from the audience—steal anything: wallets, opera glasses, pocket watches, rings, thimbles, necklaces, coats, hats. Whatever they could get. Food too, if they could, as long as they didn’t get caught.
So before each show, Nanny would gather them and make them “warm up” by practicing on each other.
Even during the “warm-up,” Eric still didn’t appear.
Bo Li couldn’t help asking John, “Where’s Eric?”
“He’s injured,” John said absently. “The manager gave him a month off.”
He clicked his tongue. “Even if he wasn’t hurt, he wouldn’t hang around with people like us… We spend a month learning something and he learns it in one look. Nanny even lets him skip lessons with us.”
The other kids, hearing Eric’s name, all made disgusted shooing noises.
No wonder the most talented person in the circus was isolated and pushed away.
—Giving the top student special privileges doesn’t inspire everyone else to work harder. It just makes them gang up to exclude him.
Bo Li wanted to ask more, but John yanked hard on her sleeve—Nanny was coming.
She was a sharp-eyed middle-aged woman, gray at the temples, hair twisted into a small bun. She wore a long gray dress with a bustle that pushed an exaggerated curve out at her lower back, and she carried a long cane switch in her hand.
Her authority was overwhelming. As she walked in, whistles, chatter, humming— even breathing—seemed to vanish.
“Take out your tools,” Nanny swept her gaze over them and spoke calmly. “Let’s see whether your hands have improved.”
Then she started checking their pickpocketing techniques one by one.
Bo Li’s heart sank.
Even without ever having stolen anything, she knew this was like magic—something you only pulled off by drilling it again and again until you could fool the eye. There was no way to master it in a short time.
Sure enough, when it was her turn, her attempt at lifting a wallet was clumsy to the point of being laughable.
Bo Li swallowed. She was just about to stammer an excuse when Nanny had already raised the cane and ordered in a dark voice, “Hands. Out.”
“I’m sorry, Nanny…” She didn’t even finish before her palm was yanked forward. A sharp crack—*smack!*—and the cane lashed down hard across her hand.
Almost instantly, a swollen red welt rose across her palm.
It should have been five strikes. Because she talked back, she got five more.
Through all ten, the only word in Bo Li’s mind was *calm*—calm. Don’t scream. Don’t curse back. Don’t grab the cane and hit her with it. Calm—
When the tenth strike landed, even if she wanted to curse she couldn’t; it hurt too much to speak. Cold sweat drenched her back. Her palm was red and swollen as if scalded by boiling water, on the verge of bleeding.
Nanny put the cane away and tossed her a small jar of ointment. She punished Bo Li to stay in her tent, no dinner, no wandering around—“Don’t come out tonight and embarrass yourself.”
Bo Li took the ointment, swallowed her anger, muttered a thank-you, and turned back toward her tent.
The moment she got inside, she dug the first-aid kit out of the pile of filthy clothes, swallowed an ibuprofen, and dabbed iodine over the wound.
She didn’t have anything for swelling, and she didn’t dare use the ointment Nanny had given her. All she could do was lie there blankly, counting time and waiting for the painkillers to kick in.
…
She didn’t know how long had passed when a faint rustling sound woke her.
Someone was dragging something heavy into her tent.
The person had a limp—one foot light, one foot heavy—and whatever he was dragging wasn’t cooperating. It struggled and made muffled *mmph‑mmph* sounds.
Eric?
Bo Li went instantly wide awake.
She didn’t dare sit up in case she was wrong. Keeping her eyes half-shut, she peered through her lashes.
It was Eric.
And the “heavy thing” he was dragging…was Nanny.
A rag stuffed her mouth. Her hands were bound behind her back. She wasn’t slim—she was a sturdy, strong middle-aged woman. Otherwise, she couldn’t have kept so many half-grown kids in line.
Yet Eric held her by the collar with one hand and dragged her in as if she weighed nothing.
Not only did he heal like something inhuman—his strength was terrifying too.
It was straight out of a horror film.
Maybe he really was the horror film’s protagonist.
The air filled with sour sweat and the sharp stink of urine. Nanny was sweating in terror—and she’d wet herself.
Eric acted as if he had no sense of smell or hearing. He ignored the stench, ignored her muffled begging in her throat. He threw her onto a chair and cinched the ropes tight.
From Bo Li’s angle, she could only see his rough movements and the chair rocking with squeaks.
When he was done, he turned and walked toward her.
Bo Li’s thoughts were a mess. What was he doing—avenging her, or using this as an excuse to vent whatever violence he’d been holding inside?
His footsteps stopped.
Eric stood in front of her, seemingly studying the purple swelling across her palm.
He was young, and frighteningly thin, but his frame was tall and broad-boned. He blocked out the light from outside the tent completely.
His breathing sounded above her—
Heavy. Dull. Echoing inside the white mask.
Horror films always had breathing like that: slow, strong—the bell tolling closer as the killer’s animal nature approached.
But he didn’t mean to kill her.
He meant to protect her.
Why?
Bo Li listened to that breathing and didn’t dare move a muscle. From head to toe, she was carved into stone.
His gaze had more weight than his breath. It moved slowly across her palm, like a precise ruler measuring the length of the injury, judging its depth.
Seconds passed.
Bo Li’s heart pounded wildly. Under his stare, her whole body tingled and went numb.
After dozens of seconds, he seemed to finish his assessment. He turned, grabbed Nanny by the collar, and dragged her—chair and all—right up to Bo Li’s bed.
Bo Li couldn’t see exactly what happened; she could only piece it together from sound and stench: breathing, footsteps, cloth scraping, muffled pleading, and the intensifying sour sweat and urine.
Then—*bang*. And the thick stench of blood bloomed into the air.
Bo Li jolted. She couldn’t pretend anymore. She opened her eyes and sat up.
What she saw was even worse than what she’d imagined.
Eric stood in front of her with his back to her. He pinned Nanny down like an animal in a slaughterhouse. In his other hand was a dagger, which he drove without mercy into her palm.
When Bo Li woke, he turned to look at her. Behind the white mask, there was still a trace of cold, violent savagery in his eyes.
Nanny, as if seeing salvation, thrashed the chair frantically, begging for help.