She took a turn and found herself on a long, strange path.

Something didn’t feel right. Of all the paths in the garden, this one alone seemed to drive straight and unswerving toward the center, and though she thought this ought to feel right and good, she found the walls of the passage narrowing in on her as she went.

Little by little, the stone seemed to squeeze.

Little by little, the light seemed to dim.

Here alone, the walls grew so close together that even the magnanimous sun above could not penetrate their leaning gloom.

Farther and farther the Nameless Girl made her way down the narrowing passage. Soon it was so tight that she could not comfortably fit the span of her shoulders.

Was this right? Behind her she could see the path she had come down widening back out until the sun managed to light its aperture.

Perhaps she ought to turn back.

But no: ahead, through the deepening dim, she could see a brighter light still.

This was the way. The center of the garden lay ahead.

And so, turning sideways, she began to shimmy down the path.

Farther and farther, narrower and narrower.

Now the stone walls were so close to one another that she was afraid her head might not fit. Still she shoved, pushed, but it was no use—all she did was wedge herself in.

Suddenly, the Nameless Girl felt motion on her leg, and she let out a sharp, bright scream that echoed far and wide through the garden of forking paths.

But nothing had taken hold of her.

It was only the spoon.

The spoon, spinning in the pocket of her apron.

With care and difficulty, the Nameless Girl drew it out.

It was somehow very different.

Where before, outside Death’s estate, her reflection had dawdled, tarried, arriving late in the face of the spoon, here within, it raced ahead, and by the time the spoon was before her eyes, she found that her furtive reflection had already arrived.

But this was the least surprising thing she saw.

Behind her, in the looking glass of the spoon, she saw not a narrowing passage, not a dim stone path, but a small wooden house, sun-bleached and ancient, nestled in the grass.

The Nameless Girl was astounded.

Turning sharply back over her shoulder, she looked, and sure enough, there it was.

She felt the sun on her face.

The cold, squeezing passageway was gone.

In fact, she could not see any walls of stone anywhere. There was only this: a small wooden house sitting in the grass at the center of the world.

And the door was ajar.

—

It was with one living eye and one of cold metal that Yehuda Leib pushed his way into the House of Death.

This helped to determine what he saw there, for Death, mercifully, has a way of looking in the manner most understandable to you.