“Wait,” said the old woman again. “I know you.”

“Who…who are you?” said the Nameless Girl.

The old woman frowned. “You’re the girl who lived here, yes?” she said. “You grew up in this house?”

The Nameless Girl nodded. “But who are you?” she said.

“I was your great-grandmother,” said the gray lady. “Your alte-bubbe.”

In a flash, it all made sense. “Bubbe’s mother?” said the Nameless Girl. She could see it clearly now: those were her bubbe’s lips—her bubbe’s and, once upon a time, her own. “How did you know me?” said the Nameless Girl.

“Oh,” said her alte-bubbe. “You never forget the smell of your baby. Or your baby’s baby’s baby, I suppose.”

A wistful look stole into the old woman’s eye, and the Nameless Girl was surprised to see that she had shed a tear.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About your daughter.”

“Oh,” said her alte-bubbe. “Me too. You’d think it wouldn’t be quite as bad once you’ve gone yourself. But it is.”

“Well,” said the Nameless Girl, uncomfortable in the silence, “it’s nice to finally meet you, I suppose. We’ve lived in the same house all these years—”

But her alte-bubbe cut quickly in. “Not lived. Not me.”

“Oh?” said the Nameless Girl.

“Loitered, really,” she said.

“What’s the difference?” said the Nameless Girl.

“Everything,” said her alte-bubbe. “The living can change things—the world around them, even themselves, if they work hard. If you manage to linger after your death, you find quickly that your influence fades.”

“But you’re still here.”

“I am,” said the old woman with a heavy sigh. “But I shouldn’t be. I died not long before my daughter moved to this place. She had a baby to look after, no money, no husband—no one to take care of her. So I followed her. Just to worry in the shadows. But now she’s gone, and I have no one to worry about. Somehow that’s what makes me saddest.”

“Are you,” said the Nameless Girl, gesturing with her chin to the white tigress in the snow, “one of hers?”

At this, the old lady gave a single hooting laugh. “Ha!” she said. “Lilith? Not anymore. She makes a very compelling case when you first come into the Far Country—all about how you were deprived of opportunity in your life, how it makes sense for you to be angry, how you should decide not to move on, stay with her, join her Sisterhood. I bought it for a little while, but it’s all a lie. If you pay close enough attention, you’ll see: Lilith isn’t interested in anything but herself. She’s never changed by her Sisters, and little by little, they all become like her. There is no Sisterhood, really—it’s all just different phases of Lilith.”