Outside the tower, the night was cold, crisp, and clear, the snow trickling down from above in small, lazy flakes. But inside, the summer sun shone out bright and warm over a thick carpet of lush green grass, its golden light falling through the open gravestone door onto the thick accumulation of snow outside. Yehuda Leib could feel the warmth bleeding out into the night, and immediately he dropped his knapsack and began to remove his coat.

His red woolen scarf, however, he left in place.

Beside him, the Nameless Girl was motionless.

“Are you coming?” said Yehuda Leib.

The Nameless Girl’s eyebrows fell. “It’s not my door,” she said.

“Well,” said Yehuda Leib, opening his knapsack wide to fit his coat inside. “Where’s yours?”

But before the Nameless Girl could answer, there was a roar, a yell, and the sound of flying feet and hooves in the snow.

Two lithe panthers were racing across the little emptiness of the valley that stood between the battle and the tower, and horsemen followed in hot pursuit. Quickly, his coat in one hand, his knapsack in the other, Yehuda Leib darted through the open gravestone door.

“Hurry!” he said. “Find your name!”

There was panic in the Nameless Girl’s face—the panthers were drawing nearer with every moment.

“I can’t!” she said. “I don’t have one!”

“What?” said Yehuda Leib.

But there was no time to explain. The gravestone door had begun to swing shut.

The last thing that the Nameless Girl saw before the door closed was Yehuda Leib, gasping, shoving his knapsack forward with all his might, managing, just barely, to slot it into the doorway as the stone swung shut.

And it worked. The door was jammed open—just a hair. Just wide enough for the Nameless Girl to fit her fingernails in.

As it happened, it was not the knapsack itself that kept the door from closing. When the Nameless Girl managed to pry the door back and dart through, one-half of the knapsack fell outside the tower, and the other half, neatly shorn, fell inside. The same could be said for all the items within: one-half of a battered old cup, of a sprouted potato, of an extra cap was inside; one-half, neatly shorn, without.

In fact, the only item in the knapsack that had not been cut cleanly in half by the great force of the closing door was something that had gone long forgotten at the bottom of the bag all the while:

The loaf of challah that the Nameless Girl had given to Yehuda Leib.

And in truth, most of the challah had been shorn as well. Only one very thin, sparkling layer remained uncut, blocking the way open for the Nameless Girl to follow:

The salt in the bread.