You stop to let the honey-sweet sunlight warm your skin, and as the fragrance of the grass reaches you, you find that you are desperate to feel it between your toes. You bend to unlace your boots, just as everyone who came before you has done, just as everyone who comes after will do.

The grass is warm, the earth soft and supple beneath your feet.

The only sound you can hear is the light stirring of the breeze.

You are alone now, though there may be hundreds, thousands who come into the estate in the very same moment as you. Even Yehuda Leib and the Nameless Girl, who came in quick succession through the very same door, who stood in precisely the same position at precisely the same time, were entirely alone.

This is the peculiar perspective of Death:

Each of us crosses the threshold of the House of Death, and each of us goes alone.

—

The Nameless Girl stepped out of her boots and stockings and into the grass. She gave a heavy sigh.

It felt like forever since she’d seen the sun.

Part of her wanted to lean back against the warm rock, to allow the sunlight to flow over her, baking her into the stone.

But the stillness was too sweet, too persuasive. She had come for a reason, and it wouldn’t do to rest before she had accomplished it:

She must either reclaim her name and face or else give the rest of herself away.

And until this very moment, she’d thought she knew which she meant to do.

On either side of her, familiar mottled gravestone walls rose up into the sky, their particular names and dates washed away with age. The passage was narrow enough for the Nameless Girl to reach her arms out and touch the stone with both sets of fingertips, and yet, despite the interminable height of the stone walls, the sun always seemed directly overhead: there were no shadows.

This came to seem even more peculiar as she made her way forward to the first forking of the path.

Two branching ways presented themselves, each equally sunny and warm.

Which should she take?

Peering first down the right-hand path and then down the left, she found them practically identical: curves, forks, branches. Lush green grass, thick golden sunlight.

Slowly, the Nameless Girl began to gnaw on her lower lip.

How was she to make the choice?

—

Yehuda Leib stepped out of his boots and socks and into the grass. He gave a heavy sigh.

It felt like forever since he’d seen the sun.

Part of him wanted nothing more than to lie down and bask in the sweet warmth until the grass grew up over him, drew him down into the soft earth.

But somewhere within, the Angel of Death was holding his father, and Yehuda Leib couldn’t rest until he had taken him back.