The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  And then, in the midst of the detritus, as if it were no more important than any other thing, there it was:

  A small glass bottle containing the unmistakable light of Yehuda Leib’s father.

  It could’ve been nothing else.

  With a thrill, Yehuda Leib stole a glance over his shoulder. The anxious man was busy pacing, the thin woman facing away. The rattling snore of the third fellow filled the air.

  No one was paying attention.

  Slowly, Yehuda Leib reached out his hand. It was strange—as if he were meeting his father for the very first time. He felt awkward, abashed, but as soon as his fingers closed around the little bottle, all of that melted away.

  It was warm. He had thought that the glass would be cool to the touch, but it was warm. And not just on his fingertips—the warmth seemed to seep into his bones, traveling up his arm, through his shoulder, branching into his clavicle and ribs until Yehuda Leib was filled with an impossible radiant warmth.

  His eyes began to fill with tears.

  It was as if there had been within him a chill so long-standing and insidious that he had never taken notice of it before.

  It was very beautiful, this light.

  And yet it was waning.

  Yehuda Leib gave a little sniff, which echoed loudly in the silence of the throne room.

  The light was waning. But he had it now. And he would find a way to bring it back to its full brightness.

  Softly, swiftly, he slipped the small bottle into the pocket of his coat.

  But something was wrong.

  The throne room was silent.

  Too silent.

  What had happened to the snoring?

  Turning, he found the little round-headed demon wide awake, his beady eyes fixed on Yehuda Leib.

  He was smirking.

  Yehuda Leib did not understand.

  Slowly, the smirk grew into a smile, and then into a grin.

  His teeth were very, very sharp.

  Loud and shrill, the demon shrieked, “Steward!”

  The round, pacing demon jumped in surprise.

  For a long moment, there was a tense silence in the throne room, and then the door opened wide.

  A tall demon in velvet breeches stepped inside. “My lord?” he said.

  “What,” said the little round-headed demon with glee, “is the penalty for burglary in our realms?”

  The steward bowed his head slightly and spoke as if reciting: “The burglar abdicates ownership of everything he carries, including but not limited to his possessions, his clothing, his body, his past, and the sum of his eternal potential, my lord.”

  “Splendid.”

  Everyone in the room was staring at Yehuda Leib, who was barely able to keep up.

  “But,” said Yehuda Leib. “But—”

  “Now, now,” said the little demon. “You cannot ask me to tolerate thievery within my own throne room.”

  And suddenly, Yehuda Leib realized to whom he was speaking.

  “Take him,” said Lord Mammon.

  It happened without Bluma noticing: one moment, she was walking well behind Lilith, caught up in a loose constellation of cats, and the next, she was alone at the lady’s side.

  “Bluma,” said Lilith softly, without looking.

  Immediately Bluma was disarmed. Had she given her name?

  “Have you ever been to a wedding?”

  Bluma stuttered senselessly, though the answer ought to have been a simple no.

  “I think,” said Lilith, “that you will find it very interesting. It is quite powerful sorcery.”

  “S-sorcery?” said Bluma.

  “Oh yes,” said Lilith. “Two cannot become one and both remain without a little bit of magic. Of course, these days, it is rare for the operation to succeed—one or the other inevitably perishes somewhere along the way—but if executed properly…”

  Here Lilith trailed off, bending to chart their path by the angle of a moonlit shadow.

  When she spoke again, she didn’t even bother to look back.

  “Bluma,” she said into the darkness, “what have you got in your pocket?”

  Bluma felt a warm blush spill across her face. The spoon hung low and heavy in her apron.

  “I—I’m sorry,” said Bluma.

  Now, for the first time since Bluma had joined her company, Lilith turned the full force of her unblinking gaze on her, and the world seemed to drop away.

  “Whatever for?” said Lilith.

  Bluma had no answer for this question.

  Slowly, her eyes never shifting from Bluma’s own, Lilith crossed the snow between them, raised the fingers of one thin hand, and dipped them down into Bluma’s apron.

  Bluma felt disinclined to breathe.

  Lilith smiled as she drew the spoon from Bluma’s pocket. There was something right, almost symmetrical, about the sight of it between her fingers—they seemed to catch the moonlight in the same way.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is very beautiful.”

  Perhaps this was the answer. Perhaps the spoon would leave Bluma and go to Lilith instead.

  But as right as it felt to Bluma to see the spoon in Lilith’s hand, it felt just as wrong that it was not in hers.

  Something dark and confusing began to blossom in Bluma’s chest.

  Something like jealousy.

  “I do not generally relish the feeling of cold metal on my skin,” said Lilith. “But this is different: metal and not metal all at once.”

  Lilith lifted the spoon to examine it more closely, and Bluma saw her eyebrows rise.

  “The reflection,” said Bluma.

  “Yes,” said Lilith. She held the spoon up to Bluma’s face like a looking glass. “What do you see?”

  At first the reflection showed what Bluma expected—the empty moonlit cemetery and, before long, Bluma tramping up, surrounded by a corralling knot of cats.

  But Bluma’s blood ran cold.

  There was someone else in the reflection too.

  An old woman in black, hunched, shrunken, empty, looming up behind her.

  She was reaching out, as if to seize Bluma by the hair.

  Swiftly, Bluma wheeled about.

  There was no one behind her but the cats.

  Turning back, she had just enough time to catch sight of herself startling and wheeling in the reflection of the spoon. But already she could see there was no one behind her. Or at least no one who meant to be seen.

  “It is an altogether uncommon object,” said Lilith, withdrawing the spoon. “Very old. In truth, I do not believe it to be a spoon at all.”

  Bluma swallowed hard, trying to calm her pounding heart.

  “Why do you think that?”

  Lilith fixed Bluma with her eyes.

  “I wonder…” Now she cast about, left and right, her gaze eventually settling on a small, smooth stone atop a grave marker. This her long fingers plucked from its place, and, light on her feet, she made her way behind Bluma.

  “Here,” said Lilith softly into her ear.

  Carefully, she threaded the cold spoon between Bluma’s fingers. Then, having deposited the little stone in its basin, Lilith wrapped Bluma in her arms, hands atop Bluma’s own. Bluma could feel the mound of Lilith’s dark curls brush against her cheek, and for a moment she herself felt like the small, dark stone there, nestled in the cold basin of Lilith’s arms.

  And then, with a deft motion of her fingers, firmly, gently, Lilith inverted the spoon, swung it all the way around the top of the stone, and brought it swiftly back down again. Bluma could feel a kind of friction through the handle, but all the same she was shocked to see what had happened:

  The stone was nowhere to be seen—neither in the basin of the spoon nor in the clean white snow beneath.r />
  But the empty spoon felt just as heavy as it had earlier.

  “Never before,” said Lilith’s soft voice, “have I encountered a spoon that eats.”

  Lilith moved smoothly away, leaving the cold spoon between Bluma’s fingers.

  “You are very warm, Bluma,” said Lilith.

  This surprised Bluma; she certainly didn’t feel it. “I am?”

  “Your arms, your hands, your body—far warmer than mine. And far warmer than any of my Sisters have been in a long time.”

  Bluma’s heart was beating quickly.

  “You are still living.”

  Bluma’s stomach lurched.

  Lilith raised an eyebrow. “Are you not?”

  Bluma swallowed hard.

  Lilith was walking away.

  * * *

  —

  “What benefit,” said Lord Mammon, “could I possibly derive from slumming around the Zubinsk cemetery with a bunch of tiresome little imps and devils?”

  Mammon was seated before his altar, taking up only a small portion of the throne’s wide golden seat. His feet dangled, unable to reach the floor, and he wore three pairs of spectacles in various positions—on his nose, beneath his chin, atop his bald head—which he switched rapidly as he scrutinized his new acquisitions.

  Yehuda Leib—the newest of these—had been compelled to join the rest, sitting on the edge of the small table at the foot of the dais. There the velvet-breeched steward had given him something to drink that—to all appearances—seemed to be rich, warm milk.

  Soon Yehuda Leib’s belly began to grumble. When was the last time he’d had anything to eat or drink? His throat felt suddenly parched, and the aroma seemed impossibly sweet.

  One little sip couldn’t hurt him, could it?

  Just one little sip.

  But he was revolted to find that what had seemed warm and rich was, in fact, tepid and fusty, like ancient green pond water, and it neither filled his belly nor soothed his throat.

  And yet, time after time, he found himself going back for more. The aroma was unbelievably tempting.

  Gradually, his head began to swim.

  What was happening?

  Where was he?

  What was all this?

  “But the swarming in the cemetery is hardly the reason to go, my lord,” said the steward. “Just think of what might be accomplished if one managed to capture the Rebbe! Why, if you could corrupt him in place, he could spread your avarice among all his followers. You might even be able to accumulate property in the living lands. Or you could choose to hold him as a commodity, my lord! I needn’t tell you how many others desire the advantage of the Rebbe. What price might he command?”

  Lord Mammon held up the palm of one clammy hand as if to say, Spare me.

  At just that moment, he was half occupied with the small, squirming leather sack that only moments ago had lain on the table. This turned out to contain a tiny, protesting Englishman in a neat frock coat and top hat. How he had come to be here—or come to be this size, for that matter, no larger than a chicken drumstick—was unclear.

  What was abundantly clear, however, was that he was rather displeased.

  He said so as Lord Mammon knocked the hat from his hand and absently seated it on his thumb like a thimble; he said so as Lord Mammon pinned him to the altar like a captive butterfly; he said so as Lord Mammon took the gentleman’s intricate measure (from circumference, head all the way down to width, shoe); and he was still saying so—albeit significantly more frantically—as Lord Mammon dangled him by the leg high above his toothy maw, dropped him in, and began to munch.

  This accomplished, he turned his attention back to his steward.

  “Of course the swarming is not the reason to go,” said Mammon, his mouth full of Englishman. “But in order to get to the Rebbe of Zubinsk, it is necessary to make one’s way through all the accumulated scum in the cemetery. And once the day of the wedding dawns, it shall be, what, a footrace to reach the old man first? I am no good in a footrace, Steward, and I don’t like losing.”

  The steward gave his head a tight little shake. “No, my lord.”

  “This tastes awful.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The Rebbe of Zubinsk. Yehuda Leib had heard him spoken of many times before—a great miracle worker. If only he could manage to make it out of Tupik and through the woods, perhaps the Rebbe could help him stoke the dwindling fire of his father back to life.

  But Yehuda Leib wasn’t in Tupik.

  Where was he?

  What had happened?

  Idly, he sipped from the cup of warm milk in his hand and was disgusted to find that it tasted like algae and muck.

  “And all this is to say nothing,” said Mammon, still chewing with mild displeasure, “of the expense involved in mounting a suitable procession to convey me to Zubinsk in the first place. I tell you, I won’t be seen in public without the appropriate display.”

  “Why, no, my lord,” said the steward. “But isn’t the pageantry reward enough in itself? To be seen?”

  Mammon sighed. “You are a fool, Steward—a terrible fool. It is advantageous to be seen in glory, to be sure, but without some rich acquisition to balance out the expense, why, it is hardly worth the effort. No, I shall stay at home, and that is my final word in the matter.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said the steward.

  With a loud, phlegmy crackle, Mammon cleared his throat. “What remains, Steward?”

  The steward looked down at the table beside him, empty now but for Yehuda Leib.

  “The boy,” he said. “And the point of light.”

  “Ah, splendid! Bring them here,” said Mammon, sucking a shard of skull from his molars.

  “Would my lord care to see the boy and the point of light separately or together?”

  Mammon rolled his eyes and gave a demonstrative groan. “You are such a tiresome fool, Steward. If you separate the thief from what he has stolen, then the set is incomplete. Would I have you separate the wine from the goblet before I drink it?”

  “No, my lord,” said the steward, as if he were very, very tired. “Of course not.”

  “Of course not,” said Mammon, and with a florid gesture he beckoned Yehuda Leib up.

  The steward led Yehuda Leib, dizzy, stumbling, to the stairs. They were steeper than they seemed from below, requiring him to lift his foot up to almost hip height with each successive step.

  Roughly, Yehuda Leib was made to sit down on the marble altar. His vision couldn’t seem to hold focus, but Mammon’s beady little eyes cornered him through the haze like a pair of pistols.

  “Splendid,” said Lord Mammon, and, licking the sharp points of his little teeth—still lightly pink with Englishman—he moved his eyes from the brim of Yehuda Leib’s cap to the toes of his boots and then slowly back up again.

  Yehuda Leib swallowed hard.

  Mammon began his measurements with circumference, head.

  Yehuda Leib’s heart began to pound. Mammon had measured the little Englishman as well. Was he, too, destined for the demon’s maw?

  Sharply, Mammon looked up. He had been busy working a tiny pair of calipers in the measurement of Yehuda Leib’s fingernails, but now his eyes narrowed, and, cocking his head to the side, he frowned, listening intently.

  “Steward,” said Mammon. “Do you hear that?”

  The steward raised one eyebrow. “Hear what, my lord?”

  “Like a drum,” said Mammon. “Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum.”

  Yehuda Leib cast his eyes quickly downward to avoid Mammon’s gaze.

  The steward shook his head. “I hear nothing, my lord.”

  “Never mind,” said Mammon, turning his attention back to the calipers.

  But then he stopped.

  “Huh,” h
e said. “That’s strange.”

  “My lord?” said the steward.

  “Only by the barest increment, but…” Mammon switched spectacles and peered down at his calipers. “Why, yes: this nail is longer now than it was just a moment ago.”

  Mammon’s eyes began to widen.

  “Longer?” said the steward. “I don’t understand.”

  But Mammon did.

  “Steward?” called Mammon, a sharp smirk on his lips.

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “We’ve had a change in plans.”

  “Oh?” said the steward.

  Mammon stretched his smile wide, showing more teeth in one place than Yehuda Leib had ever seen.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “This boy is alive.”

  * * *

  —

  It is often repeated that the night is darkest before the dawn. This is plainly false. The night is darkest in its precise midst.

  What is true, however, is that it is hardest to breathe just before one surfaces from the deep, and in the same way, it is hardest to bear the cemetery as one draws closest to the territory of the living.

  Zubinsk was near, and the demons were swarming.

  The first came up slowly, heavily, from behind: a looming thing, a shadow shaped like a man, dark and ragged, three times as high as the tallest tree Bluma had ever seen, and as it came striding over them with its long legs, it peered down and stared at her with eyes like drowning stars.

  A stooped old lady with hairy, twitching spiders instead of hands moved to the side of the road when she saw Lilith approaching, curtsied, and lowered her eyes, but as the Lileen went by, she lifted them up again—glossy, perfectly black—to peer at Bluma.

  Bluma couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to her that the lady was hiding a smirk.

  Now more came, and more: a flock of bat-winged creatures cackling and diving, a huge serpent slithering languidly beneath the accumulated snow, the figure of a man so covered in sores and boils that he cracked and oozed with every little movement of his body.

  Every one of them turned back to gaze at Bluma’s face.

  Slowly, nervously, Bluma began to chew on her lower lip.