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screeches. “Leave the boy alone!”
    â€œStand down,” I say, raising up my hands. “I brought the kid back, understand? Now I’ll be on my way.”
    Little Face finishes the choxbar and prances around by the fire, grinning and spoofing without saying a word. No one comes forward to claim him, but he seems to know the people there.
    Then as I turn to go, a voice pipes up. “Who you going to bustdown this time, Banger? Another old gummy?”
    I figure, don’t even turn around. Just keep going, before the darkness gives them courage and they decide to charge me with their rusty old chetty blades.
    â€œLook at him go, the big bad Bully Banger!” crows the taunting voice. “He ain’t so brave at night, is he? None of his gang to help him now, is there?”
    I can hear them moving behind me but I don’t look back. I’m thinking, you blew it, you mope, you ripped them off and then came back alone, in the dark, what did you expect?
    â€œGet him!” somebody yells. “Cut his red!”
    Most days I can outrun just about anybody, but this isn’t most days, it’s the darkest part of the night and the ground is strange under my feet. Almost before I get going something trips me hard, and suddenly I’m flat on my face, surrounded.
    â€œDon’t let him get away!”
    â€œBust him down and see how he likes it!”
    They’re all around me but keeping their distance, as if afraid that I’ll strike back. Maybe they think I’ve got a splat gun hidden in my carrybag, or a stunstik or something. If they knew all I had was an old microflash and a few edibles, they’d swarm over me in an instant.
    â€œCut his red! Cut his red!” shouts the ’boxer who started it. He’s hanging back, this scrawny mope with a scraggly beard and crazy burning eyes. Even in the dark I can see the spit flying out of his mouth as he screams for them to cut me.
    â€œGet up!” another of them shouts.
    I get slowly to my feet, holding my hands to show I haven’t any weapons. I’m trying to think of what to say that will make them let me go when a terrible feeling starts to come over me.
    â€œNo,” I say to myself. “Please, not now.”
    But I can’t keep it from happening, no matter how hard I try. It always begins this way. First the smell of lightning fills my nose, the clean electric smell of the air after a thunderstorm, and then the blackness rises up and takes me down.
    Â 
    When I come out of it, Ryter is there, holding a damp cloth to my forehead. I’m in his stackbox. They must have carried me here — I certainly didn’t walk.
    â€œYou’re okay,” he tells me. “It’s over.”
    Like always I’m exhausted and weak and ashamed. I hate it when someone sees me like this.
    â€œA grand mal seizure,” Ryter says. “Very impressive. I tried to put a stick between your teeth, and you bit it in half.”
    That explains my sore teeth. I have that familiar dreamy feeling that always comes afterward, and more than anything I want to sleep and forget. But then it comes back to me, like a splash of cold water on my brain, and I sit up and say, “I’ve got to go. What hour is it?”
    â€œThe hour before dawn,” Ryter says. “What’s your hurry?”
    I’m trying to stand up but my legs are too weak to make it.
    â€œRest,” he says and, old as he is, Ryter easily holds me down. He doesn’t understand why I can’t stay, so I tell him about Bean and how I have to leave before Billy Bizmo reaches out and stops me.
    Ryter listens, and his ancient eyes go soft. Then he nods and says, “Ah. Now it all makes sense.”
    I’m not sure that anything makes sense, but I haven’t got the strength to argue. Tired, so tired.
    â€œSleep,” he urges me. “We leave at dawn.”
    I fight to stay awake but my eyes close on their own