The young man was yelling at the old man. “Yah yah yah! Yah yah yah!”

The old one shouted back. “Yah yah yah! Yah yah yah!”

The wagon shifted as the young man clambered up and tugged at her felt jacket, then grabbed the waistband of her trousers and yanked.

She kicked. The old man connected with the whip, and the crack made her wheeze with fear and pain, only it hadn’t hit her. The young one shrieked, gabbling, and the old man yahhed furiously. The curtain dropped, cutting off the painful light, and she was left alone. Her head throbbed so badly. Men yelled in the distance, echoing and buzzing.

The wagon lurched forward. She coughed and spat, and her insides clenched. Bile spewed. Ashamed of her weakness, she wept.

SHE SLIPPED OUT of sleep in a drowsy half-awareness. A wagon rocked beneath her with the comforting rhythm of home. Except the air smelled wrong, too dusty, too bitter. Iron braces shackled her wrists. Tugging, she came up short like a hobbled horse. What nightmare was this?

When she opened her eyes, a sea of cloth billowed around her. Her stomach roiled. Dizzy, she retched until nothing was left to bring up, and then kept retching because her body would not stop trying to cast up its leavings. Or its heart. Or its soul.

She was trapped in demon land.

SHE SMELLED THE place before they reached it. The air stank of manure and urine, of an overhanging mildew and the rotting sweet corruption of garbage left in the sun. The dust tasted as if it had been crushed too many times beneath the haunches of dogs and the thighs of dirt-stained women who never were allowed to wash.

She heard such a clamor beyond the accustomed tromping and scraping of the caravan that she wondered what battle they had wandered into, but from within her cage she could see through only a slit in the canvas that widened and narrowed as the wagon jounced. A tent wall. A child’s dirty face. More tents, oddly textured and aligned, not proper tents at all. A woman walking with a basket balanced atop her head. A flowering tree splendidly clothed in stark white blooms, a thing of rare beauty that made her close her eyes because it hurt to see beautiful things in demon land.

They rattled to a stop. Men shouted in tough, argumentative voices. A whip cracked. She flinched, but no cord struck her.

She tested the limits of her chains, pushing with her feet, pulling and tugging while careful not to make the sores at her wrists worse than they already were, for they were raw and weeping. The peg fixing one chain shifted, like a breath let out. She jerked with all her might.

The wagon lurched forward, pitching her onto the floorboards. She tasted blood on her lip, licked it, savoring the flavor. What lives, bleeds. As long as she bled, she had not lost her soul.