Yet all he managed was a shrug. “Everything,” he said.

“But, Yehuda Leib,” said Bluma. “It’s different when the Dark One is coming for you. Do you know what that feels like?”

Now Yehuda Leib thought of the dead end in Zubinsk, of the smell of rot and vodka.

“I think so,” he said.

“Don’t you want to do anything you can to avoid it happening again?”

Yehuda Leib nodded. “That’s what I’m doing.”

Bluma let out a deep sigh. “Me too.”

And all of a sudden, Yehuda Leib remembered the two sides of the cold coin in his pocket: on one, an eye stretched open; on the other, the same eye squeezed shut.

“Well,” said Yehuda Leib. “I hope one of us succeeds.”

But now a violent shushing split the air.

“Shhhhhhh!”

Mammon was sitting up in his pram.

There was a sound stirring nearby—like a million clocks ticking at uneven intervals.

“What is it?” said Bluma, her obscure eyes wide.

Mammon’s grin grew broad and toothy. “You’ve led us well,” he said. “That is the song of the Gallows.”

Bluma swallowed hard.

“Listen carefully,” said Mammon. “You must make no sound whatsoever within the Gallows Grove. You must remain absolutely silent. Do you understand?”

Bluma and Yehuda Leib nodded together.

“Splendid,” said Mammon. “Then let’s go.”

—

At first the Gallows seemed to be no more than a small copse, each tree bearing one of the hanging dead.

But this was only the beginning.

Before long, the trees and their occupants began to grow thicker, trunks as densely grouped as in a forest, hanged men, women, children, four, five, six to a bough. The nooses here were not of knotted rope, but grew instead like stems from the very stuff of the leafless trees.

There were empty nooses too, hanging and hungry. Yehuda Leib couldn’t quite help thinking one of them might rightfully belong to him.

It was while staring up at just one such loop of knobby vine that, with a sick lurch in his stomach, Yehuda Leib realized:

The eyes of the hanged man above him were open.

And they were watching.

Yehuda Leib wanted to back away, wanted to turn and flee, but beside him Bluma caught his attention, her own eyes set and determined.

Yehuda Leib put his head down and pushed the carriage forward.

The hanged were hung so thick that he had to shove his way bodily between them, shifting their bony limbs aside with every move he made. The blowing snow could not make its way in; even the starlight was unable.

Thin fingers with skin like fraying paper twitched and clutched on every side.

He had to turn back. This was going on too long.

But at least he had the cold handle of the pram to hold on to, something outside himself to remind him that he’d had an existence before he entered the Gallows Grove.