"What is it, Mama?" Eric asked, still half asleep.

"You kids gotta get dressed right away. Some men are here who want to see you."

"Why?"

"There's trouble, dear. They've searched all over town for young Erin Rogers and they haven't been able to find him. No one's seen him for hours and now they think he deliberately ran away from his bride-to-be to avoid the wedding. They're talking to all the kids in town."

If Mama had been suspicious of us, the guilty glances we shot at each other would have exposed us both, but she'd already turned toward the dresser and opened it, searching for some clothes for us.

"We don't know anything, Mama," Eric said.

"I know you don't, dear, but you're gonna have to talk to them all the same. Here, now." She returned to the bed carrying two sets of overalls. She set them down at our feet and started toward the door. "You kids get dressed and scurry downstairs. Lord, but they're in no mood to be waiting for you. They even called an Old One into town."

We lay in bed for a moment without speaking. We had no cause to feel guilty, at least none we were aware of, but we knew; we'd seen Erin leave with the stranger. Erin pulled his half-naked body from the bed and grabbed one set of overalls.

"What are we going to do, Eric?" I whined nervously.

"Nothing," he said, stepping into the legs and pulling them up his body. "Just don't tell them anything. They don't know if we saw anything that night or not." He pulled the straps of the overalls over his shoulders, and his soft brown chest pressed gently out at the front panel. I crawled out of the bed and did as he had done, slipping into the overalls and putting them on without a shirt underneath. Eric looked cute with his smooth skin partially covered, but I was too frightened to spend much time appreciating him. As soon as I had the straps over my thin shoulders and had sat down to roll the pant legs from my feet, Eric urged me out the door.

We walked nervously down the stairs as I held onto the belt loop of the older boy's pants and pressed my cheek against the smooth warmth of his back, between the straps of the overalls. I couldn't see where we were going as I followed the young boy, but I felt his slender body tighten, and could imagine the faces on the men below us.

"Ah, here they are now." It was Master Thorne's voice and it sounded oddly comforting and reassuring. "Step out here, girl," he told me as we came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. I felt his hand grasp my little shoulder as his fingers poked into the small, hairless crotch of my armpit to pull me from the shield of Eric's soft body. There were a half dozen men standing there staring at us.

"This that Kovz Girl from the orphanage?" one of them asked.

"Yes," Master Thorne said. "She's Eric's."

"Mighty pretty girl for an orphan," one of the other men said......(cont)