In September she and Willa decided to pickle the extra tomatoes and Rachel went up to the attic to look for her father’s recipe. She found her old textbooks and her lecture notes. She pushed them back and closed the box because the lectures were Adam’s and the books were full of his margin notes. In another box she found her father’s recipes, all of her Jane Austen novels, and her old Shabbes school book.

She took it out, blew dust off the cover, and laid it flat on the floor in the light from the dormer window. Then she opened it and there in the centerfold, was the picture the clay had reminded her of. She saw a crooked, cobbled street and crooked, ugly houses with blank leaded windows that reflected nothing—she saw the old man in his rabbi’s hat. There was the twisting alley, and a shadow of something was coming up it. Something so huge its shadow blacked out the wall. The shadow was in the shape of a man, but too big to be a man.

Rachel read the first few paragraphs.

It wasn’t a man, but a monster shaped like a man. It was called a golem and it was made of clay. Clay.

That was the connection, Rachel thought. A child’s horror story that must’ve given her nightmares, and that came back to her when Ableson said clay. That simple.

She went back to the beginning and read the whole story . . .

An angel visited the great Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague late one night. The angel carried a glowing sword and wore a golden robe. He appeared against a backdrop of the ocean with waves rolling in on a lonely beach. As he came closer to the rabbi, the ocean disappeared. The rabbi saw his own bedroom wall behind the angel and he knew that he wasn’t dreaming. The angel came up to the rabbi’s bed and leaned close to him.

“On the first night of Passover, the Gentiles are going to attack the ghetto,” the angel told the rabbi. “Only you can save the Jews of Prague.”

“And how am I going to do that?” the rabbi asked gently.

The angel smiled and the whole room was filled with light. “You are going to build a golem.”