Chapter 25: The Cost

"Then wet it," said Mei. She was holding the blank gray page out to him across the nets, in the last of the light. The lake was ten steps down the slope. She could have walked down to the landing and dipped the page in the shallows and watched whatever was on it come up out of the paper like a fish out of the dark. She couldn't read it. She knew that. But she could read numbers. And dates were numbers. Fish didn't take it. "Please don't," he said. She looked at him. He was sitting on the warm nets with his bound hands in his lap, and his mouth was still a little red from hers and the rest of his face wasn't, and he wasn't looking at the page. He was looking at her. "It's the Hong line," said Mei. "Isn't it. The one you read the…