The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  “Hello,” said Lilith, and she beckoned from the far end of the alley. “Come.”

  The way was long and narrow, its squared corners rounded in with snow, and it took Bluma far longer to traverse its length than she had expected.

  “Bluma,” said Lilith. “What are you doing here?”

  Bluma found herself shivering to hear her name spoken aloud, as if it were a piece of cold metal held against the back of her neck.

  “You called my name,” she said. “And I came.”

  At this, Lilith frowned. “I did not call your name.”

  Bluma wanted to argue, wanted to yell that of course Lilith had called to her, but she stopped herself; if Lilith denied it again, Bluma would have to ask herself who—or what—else might have done the calling.

  And that was a question she didn’t want to consider at all.

  “You are troubled,” said Lilith. “What is the matter?”

  This question seemed unutterably stupid, and Bluma brushed past Lilith as if she were nothing more than an annoyance.

  “Bluma?”

  Idly, Bluma cast her eyes around the empty plot of land on which they found themselves. High brick walls loomed in on all sides. Here and there, she could see stalks of uncut grass rising through the thick blanket of snow.

  What was this place?

  “Bluma,” said Lilith from behind her, and Bluma flinched. She had begun to hate that word, to hate the inescapable sound of it.

  It was like a trap, and she wanted to be rid of it.

  “What troubles you?”

  Now Bluma felt a hot spike of anger surging up in her chest. “Where did you go?” she said. “You made me think that I was safe and then you just left.”

  Now Lilith’s brows fell, and her jaw set hard. “What happened?”

  She wanted to tell Lilith, wanted to say what had happened, but Bluma was afraid that speaking it would bring them back again, the sharp eyes and long fingers, touching her, grabbing her, holding her back, and…

  Lilith’s eyes were cold and hard. “I understand.”

  This both comforted and angered Bluma: she desperately wanted someone to understand, but she didn’t see how anyone possibly could.

  Wheeling about, Bluma held out her hand. “The spoon,” she said. “Give me the spoon.”

  Lilith raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  It took a long moment for Bluma to collect herself. All she wanted was to be left alone—by the people in Tupik, by the demons in the graveyard, and, most of all, by the Darkness that Prowls at the End of Everything. “It was my name,” she said. “Someone called me by my name.”

  “Ah,” said Lilith.

  “I want to cut it away,” said Bluma. “Give me the spoon.”

  With a sigh, Lilith ran her long hand into the pocket of her shift.

  But then she hesitated.

  Bluma felt the anger stabbing up through her chest once more. “What are you waiting for? It’s mine! Give it to me!”

  “Very well,” said Lilith, producing the spoon. “But I must admit, I am not certain how you mean to accomplish this thing.”

  Bluma’s lips folded into a light, tight frown. “I’ll do just what I did with my face.”

  Bluma took the spoon from Lilith’s fingers and gazed into its basin. There was no one there.

  “Yes,” said Lilith. “But how do you intend to put your name into the spoon?”

  The reflection above was cold: only snowflakes and the thick sheet of cloud that smothered back the stars.

  “Maybe…,” said Bluma, and, bringing the spoon up to her lips, she whispered a puff of steaming breath. “Bluma.”

  But even before she flipped the handle of the spoon, she knew it hadn’t worked.

  “No,” said Lilith. “What you wish to shed is not simply a sound—it is something beneath, is it not? A handle, a bellpull?”

  Bluma nodded. This was correct.

  “Here,” said Lilith, placing a hand on the small of Bluma’s back. “Come and stand where I am.” Lilith’s hand was so cold that Bluma could feel it there, frigid through the thick fabric of her coat.

  “Now raise the spoon and watch over your shoulder,” said Lilith. “Shortly, you shall see yourself coming down the alleyway, and when you recognize yourself…”

  “Then I can call out my name,” said Bluma.

  “Just so,” said Lilith with a smile. “You are very clever.”

  But with a lurch, gazing up at Lilith above her, Bluma realized something.

  “Wait,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Oh?” said Lilith.

  “I thought you couldn’t cross into the town.”

  “Ah.” Lilith nodded. “Shrewd as ever, Bluma. And you are correct, of course. I cannot pass into mortal territory uninvited. But, as I am sure you know by now, there are places that belong to both the living and the dead.”

  Bluma’s eyebrows fell. There were no headstones or graves here, no crypts or markers to be seen.

  “This is a graveyard?”

  Lilith’s jaw twitched, once, twice. “There are deaths that occur in secret, Bluma,” she said, “and burials attended by one alone. Not every grave is marked.”

  Slowly, languidly, like a wooden spoon in a pot of cold soup, the wind stirred the air within the four brick walls of the second cemetery of Zubinsk.

  Bluma swallowed. “A secret cemetery,” she said.

  “Forgotten,” said Lilith. And then, with more than a little bitterness: “Men have a way of forgetting.”

  “You are clever too,” said Bluma, and Lilith began to smirk.

  “Is that so?” she said.

  “This cemetery is closer to the center of town,” said Bluma. “Nearer to the Rebbe.”

  “Oh,” said Lilith with a wave of her hand. “I have no interest in the Rebbe.”

  This was a surprise. “Really?” said Bluma. “All the others seem to want him.”

  “I am not,” said Lilith, “like all the others.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Now Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “You saw them, Bluma—all grasping for advantage, desperate to be the richest, the strongest, the most powerful. They clamor for the Rebbe, but only because the others desire him. No, I have no time for such nonsense.”

  “But you are here,” said Bluma. “In Zubinsk.”

  Lilith nodded. “We are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a great soul is about to perish,” said Lilith. “And we wish to save her.”

  Bluma’s heart began to beat faster. Was Lilith speaking of her?

  “Who?” said Bluma. “Who is she?”

  And at just this moment, in the reflection of the spoon, Bluma saw the dark silhouette of a girl stumble into the thin frame of the alley’s entryway. Out of habit, she turned, looking over her shoulder to see the girl in the flesh.

  But there was no one there.

  “Carefully, now,” said Lilith. “Wait until you recognize yourself. Only then can you call out and catch your name in the basin of the spoon.”

  Slowly, the silhouetted girl began to come nearer, closer and closer down the alleyway. Bluma was prepared, ready to speak her name as soon as she recognized the girl in the reflection.

  The word was on the tip of her tongue.

  And this is why it was such a shock to Bluma when she found, as the girl stumbled out of the shadowy alley, that she did not recognize herself at all.

  “What is it?” said Lilith.

  “Her face…,” said Bluma. “I don’t know her.”

  “No,” said Lilith with a sigh. “No, of course not.”

  Bluma dropped her arm. “Then what can I do?”

  Lilith’s brows fell. “We must put your name into the spoon. Wh
ich I suppose means that we must find your name somewhere.”

  “But where?” said Bluma.

  “It is a difficult question. Perhaps, once we have whom we have come for, we should return to the Far Country and consult Lord Dantalion….”

  “Who have you come for?” said Bluma, her hope rising.

  Now Lilith raised her eyes to the end of the alleyway—odd, almost hungry eyes.

  “We have come for Rokhl,” said Lilith. “The Rebbe’s granddaughter. Hers is a very great soul, Bluma—very great indeed. Why, if she were a grandson instead of a granddaughter, she would be in line to replace the Rebbe already. But as it is, in the morning, they mean to bind her to some blundering fool of a groom for all eternity. It is a crime, Bluma, a waste, like binding a soaring eagle to a plodding rhinoceros. I will not permit it. Even now my Sisters are inviting her here to speak with me.”

  “But,” said Bluma, “what if she wants to get married?”

  “She will join our Sisterhood, one way or another,” said Lilith.

  This surprised Bluma.

  “But,” said Bluma, “she’s a living girl, isn’t she? Not a…Not…”

  “Not a demon?”

  Bluma blushed.

  “None of my Sisters are,” said Lilith. “And I do not care for that word.”

  “Then,” said Bluma, “what are they? Your Sisters.”

  “What they were,” said Lilith, “was mortal women. Just like you. And when their time came to die, they looked back on their lives and saw how they had been compelled to live: subservient, second, Sisterless. And so, one by one, they joined me, in the hope that things might change. Now, for the first time, we mean to enlist a living Sister—for nothing changes in the realm of the dead. But once we are bound into Sisterhood with the living…”

  This was all very exciting to Bluma. It meant that she, too, might join the Sisterhood.

  But something nagged at her.

  Why couldn’t she be the first of Lilith’s living Sisters? Surely her soul was great enough.

  Wasn’t it?

  “But,” said Bluma, “what if the Rebbe’s granddaughter really does want to get married? If she—”

  Bluma was just about to offer herself as a replacement when Lilith cut in.

  “She will join our Sisterhood,” said Lilith again. “One way or another.”

  And at precisely this moment, out of the corner of her eye, Bluma saw a hungry gray cat alight upon the far wall of the second cemetery.

  “Ah,” said Lilith. “She comes.”

  Swiftly, the Lileen assembled, crouching, perched, gazing down from the high brick walls: one, two, three, four, five Sisters, spread out about the second cemetery like the fingers of a fist, waiting to snap shut.

  But six of Lilith’s Sisters had come along to Zubinsk.

  Where was the final cat?

  Lilith’s eyes were fixed on the alleyway. “Yes,” she breathed, so tightly and so soft that Bluma thought it must’ve been an accident.

  And turning to look over her shoulder, Bluma saw why.

  The sixth Sister, tail upraised, was there at the far end of the alley, and as she began to stalk her way into the second cemetery, the Rebbe’s granddaughter appeared, silhouetted in the road behind her. She was skinny, shivering in her nightgown, nervous, and she hesitated at the end of the long alleyway.

  The sixth Sister of the Lileen arrived in the second cemetery and sat softly down at Lilith’s feet.

  All was still. The snow had begun to thicken, but in the absence of any hint of wind, the flakes crowded the sky, taking their time swirling down to the ground.

  It felt to Bluma as if all the world were holding its breath.

  Lilith raised a long finger and beckoned. Somewhere nearby, the wind began to stir.

  “Come,” said Lilith.

  Bluma could see the Rebbe’s granddaughter stiffen.

  In a spasm of light, behind the clouds, behind the veil of shimmering snow, sharp blue lightning split the sky.

  And then, from the street beyond the alley, a deep, round voice rang out. Bluma had never heard or even seen the man before, but instantly and without doubt she knew the voice of the Rebbe of Zubinsk.

  “Rokhl!” Sharply, the Rebbe’s granddaughter turned her head toward the sound of her grandfather’s voice. “Run!”

  Thunder rolled through the sky, low and round, as if in echo of the Rebbe.

  “No,” said Lilith, in a voice so sharp and cold that Bluma wanted to check her ears for blood.

  Again, the girl at the end of the alleyway stiffened.

  And then she turned and ran.

  “No!” called Lilith again, like a screeching gale. Bluma looked up. Lilith’s face was terrible and furious and beautiful.

  “Go!” cried Lilith. “Bring her back to me!” And with a lurch, Bluma was running again, her feet falling hard and fast against the packed snow, and, all around her, the bounding shadows of six gray cats tore into the town of Zubinsk.

  Yehuda Leib was exhausted. Round and round the streets of Zubinsk they had gone, Mammon growing more and more impatient, Yehuda Leib growing sweatier and sweatier. His hands in their mittens were swamped, and he hated sweating under woolens—nothing made him feel more constrained.

  “Faster, boy,” snapped Mammon. “If I fail to secure this Rebbe after having made such a show of crossing over…”

  Yehuda Leib stopped listening as soon as possible.

  He had to think.

  If there was anyone who could help him bring back his father, it was the Rebbe of Zubinsk. But how could he manage to consult the holy Rebbe with this little lump of a demon in his hands?

  He had to ditch the demon. But how?

  He wished his hands weren’t so sweaty—it was just one more distraction, and time was running short.

  If he could only remember how they had made the wheelchair grow from him, perhaps he could figure out how to rid himself of it. But his memory was still so hazy, and every time he began to think back, he found himself remembering further than he meant to:

  The road in the forest. The smell of pipe smoke. His father’s empty face. The blood in the snow.

  This wasn’t helping. His hands were so sweaty. He just wanted to wipe them, just once against his coat. And to make matters worse, there seemed to be some grit in his mittens, sand or gravel, that had begun to cling to his sweaty fingers.

  “Wait,” said Mammon. “Haven’t I seen that shop before?”

  Swiftly, Yehuda Leib turned the wheelchair up a steep hill.

  He had to concentrate.

  He had to think.

  The forest road. A donkey cart. Issur Frumkin.

  Here was something useful: Issur had told him three ways to ward off demons.

  What had they been?

  “Ugh,” said Mammon. “Can’t you go any faster? We’re hardly moving at all.”

  And it was true: Yehuda Leib was making barely any headway, and the heavy load in the wheelchair pressed backward painfully against his fingernails.

  He had to think.

  Three protections against the demons, Issur had said. What had they been?

  Red thread—that had been one. If only his scarf hadn’t been torn from his neck…

  But that wasn’t a useful thought.

  What were the other two protections?

  Cold metal. But even had Yehuda Leib carried any metal with him, how could he have accessed it with his hands bound up in the wheelchair?

  No, there was no help there.

  What was the third?

  Cold metal, red thread…

  “Come on, boy,” said Mammon. “Put forth a little effort!”

  They had stalled, a raised cobble in the steep road presenting a nearly insuperable obstacle to Yehuda Leib a
nd the fingernail wheelchair. Once, twice, he shoved against it, but he couldn’t pick up enough momentum.

  “Don’t make me use the whip, boy.”

  Yehuda Leib’s fingernails ached painfully with the weight of the wheelchair they had formed. Inside his mittens, the grit had begun to sting, abrading his fingers.

  Why on earth had he put on these mittens?

  “Move, boy! Move!”

  With a great shove, Yehuda Leib forced the wheelchair up and over the cobble.

  And the oddest thing happened.

  Inside his right mitten, one of his fingernails—the third—snapped.

  It was free. He could bend the finger alone. And when he did, he felt quite a bit more grit in his mitten than he had anticipated.

  What was this in his mittens?

  And in a rush of illumination, it all came flooding back:

  Salt. The demons’ magic can’t pass beyond boundaries of salt.

  He had filled his mittens in Tupik, a lifetime ago—before his fight with Issur, before he met his father—in order to replenish the saltcellar at home. That explained why he was wearing them in the first place. He must’ve remembered just in time.

  Yehuda Leib swerved wildly to drive the wheelchair over another protruding cobble, and, just as he’d hoped, a second nail broke—this time in his left mitten.

  The salt was eating away at his magically grown nails.

  “Careful, boy!”

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” muttered Yehuda Leib through a wide grin.

  Far above, behind the snow and the clouds, an arc of blue lightning split the sky.

  “My,” said Mammon. “What a night.”

  And then, as if in anticipation of the thunder, the sound of a deep, obscure voice called out through the streets below.

  They could not hear the words, but its tone was clear: commanding, dire, almost frightened.

  Mammon turned his head sharply, and before he even spoke, Yehuda Leib knew.

  “That,” said the demon, “is the Rebbe.”

  Thunder rolled through the sky, low and round, as if in echo.

  “Go,” said Mammon. “Go!”

  * * *

  —

  Bluma burst from the alleyway, her legs pounding, and just when she thought she had exhausted her reserves of strength, she was bolstered by the Lileen leaping and bounding all around her.