“Well, when I overthrow him, he’ll need to be replaced.”

Dumah’s back was to Yehuda Leib now, and he leaned on his map table, one beefy fist on either side of his castrum.

He was thinking. But Yehuda Leib didn’t need him thinking. He needed him mad.

“You were an Angel once, weren’t you?”

Dumah turned around swiftly, something deep in his dark eyes flashing.

“Come with me, Dumah. Let me win your final promotion. Let me make you the Angel of Death.”

Now a long, still silence held the chamber, as absolute as the silence of the grave. Dumah leaned back on his map table, his eyes fixed and thoughtful, his arms folded across his broad chest. Yehuda Leib was tempted to say something more, to prod, to add to his counteroffer, but he held his tongue: there was nothing more to say.

Presently, Dumah stood and flexed his fingers. Slowly, he stalked back to his chair and lowered himself down to sit lightly on its edge. His eyes narrowed as he stared hard at the boy on the little stool in front of him.

Yehuda Leib didn’t move a muscle.

Dumah extended his hand.

—

On a cold, dark night in the middle of winter, an old woman found herself wandering through the forest in search of the small summer strawberries that grow in the shade.

The old woman was unsure how she had gotten to the forest—she couldn’t remember leaving home, couldn’t remember bundling into her warm clothes. All she knew was that there were berries around here somewhere, and that if she kept looking, she would find them.

These were the best kind of berries, tiny and soft. She remembered them well from her girlhood, when she’d crouched in the bushes, staining her lips and fingertips red: one for her mouth, one for her apron, and so on and on.

She could take them home. She could share them with her son, Zalman, and her granddaughter…

What was her name?

It seemed to have slipped her mind.

The old woman had just come upon the berries when she heard the sound, and at first she was sure that she must be imagining things.

But she was not.

The column burst out into the clearing like a ball from a musket: men in ragtag rows, stepping all out of time, their buttons and weapons and uniforms mismatched, and more and more and more men—the old woman had never seen so very many. Now horses came as well, and cackling creatures astride them. Mules, camels, chariots, even a pair of elephants, dead and decomposing, thundered by the old woman in the brambles.

She was not foolish; she kept hidden and did not draw attention to herself. But when one particular boy reached the clearing, she could not help but rise up to get a better look.