The Nameless Girl found herself wishing this didn’t make quite so much sense.

“But you’re the real question,” said the Nameless Girl’s alte-bubbe. “What’s happened to you?”

“Oh…,” said the Nameless Girl.

What had happened to her? Death, slowly, incrementally, over the course of many fleeing steps.

How could she even begin?

The Nameless Girl opened her mouth to speak, but her chin crumpled, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh dear,” said her alte-bubbe. “Come, come.” And the Nameless Girl moved quickly across the bleary room to sit next to her alte-bubbe.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

And so the Nameless Girl began to talk. She talked about her bubbe—how angry she had been, how quiet and frightening, and how the Dark One had come for her and toppled her, the solid foundation stone upon which the Nameless Girl’s life had been built.

She talked about the cold, sharp spoon, about being chased from her bed, about seeing the face that Death keeps hidden beneath her cowl, about how she had to run, had to flee that face, how she would’ve done anything to escape from Death—about how she had done anything.

She talked about cutting her face away so that no one would know her, about cutting her name away so that no one could call her, about how it still hadn’t been enough, how at every turn someone found a way to recognize her.

And here her alte-bubbe stopped her.

“Yes,” she said. “You ought to be glad.”

“Glad?” said the Nameless Girl. “I just want to be left alone.”

Her alte-bubbe sighed. “There was once a candle that burned in a dark room,” she said. “The candle’s light was very beautiful, and though she loved to burn brightly, she was terribly afraid of being blown out. The people who lived in the room enjoyed her light and her warmth, drawing close to read beside her or to warm their fingertips, but every time they turned a page or withdrew their hands, her flame would flicker, and she would be afraid that she might go out. In order to avoid this fate, the candle did away first with her warmth, so that the people would not bring their hands near, and then with her light, so that their books would remain far away. This done, the candle’s flame became nothing more than a plume of rising smoke. Was she wise?”

The Nameless Girl found that she was becoming angry. “No,” she said. “No, the candle wasn’t wise. But I am not a candle. I’m a living person. And I can do with my own self what I would like.”

“Of course,” said her alte-bubbe. “Of course you can. I don’t mean to say that you can’t. What I mean to say is this: you wish to go unrecognized, uncalled for, unknown, in order to escape the coming of Death.”