Three mismatched soldiers, ragged and war-stained, were making their way through the crowd. The Hasidim were parting, giving them a wide berth, and though none of them seemed to notice, it was clear as day to Yehuda Leib:

They were long dead.

Yehuda Leib turned away. He was near the end of the street now, near enough that he thought he just might make it out before they got to him.

But it was going to take some doing.

With a deep breath, Yehuda Leib bent low over the pram and said, “I’m sorry about this.”

The bundle of Mammon stirred uneasily.

And in a flash Yehuda Leib was going, dashing, jostling and bumping and pushing people aside with the bumper of the baby carriage. Behind him, he heard one of the soldiers curse roughly. A commotion and then a panic sprang up as the soldiers began to push and throw Hasidim aside, and before Yehuda Leib was halfway to the end of the street, there was a full-blown stampede under way, people shoving and running in order to get as far away from the angry soldiers as they could.

The confusion bought Yehuda Leib valuable seconds. By the time he was through the thickest part of the crowd, the soldiers had been swallowed up behind him, and he turned a corner and charged ahead, racing down the long street. He wasn’t far from the meeting point now—just another turn and it would be in sight.

Mammon threw back his blankets and sat up, reeling, in his pram.

“What’s happening?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Soldiers,” panted Yehuda Leib. “But I think we lost them.”

Mammon’s gaze was fixed over Yehuda Leib’s shoulder, and his beady eyes were growing wide. “No,” he said. “No, you didn’t.”

Yehuda Leib turned back just long enough to glimpse the three dead soldiers pounding around the corner behind him.

“No, no, no,” said Mammon. “Don’t look—go! Run!”

Yehuda Leib tore around the corner as quickly as he could. There, down in the distance, he could see the figure of a girl waiting for him at the entrance to a narrow alleyway, and he flew toward her as quickly as he could go, feet slipping in the slushy snow.

The girl called out as soon as he was near enough to hear. “What’s going on?” she said. “What happened?”

It was a long moment before Yehuda Leib remembered that he wouldn’t be able to recognize her, his eyes adjusting to her vague features as if to the darkness in a cellar.

“No time!” he said. “Go!”

They had just piled into the long alleyway when the heavy footfalls of their pursuers came crashing around the corner into the street behind them, drawing nearer and nearer with every moment.

Bluma turned back, her eyebrows high. “What’s going on?”