It was a small hut, simple, nearly bare: a fire in the hearth, an old wooden table, a single worn chair. The floor was made of earth, packed down by years and years of crossing feet. In the corner, an ancient broom had gnarled, warped to fit the pattern of the two grasping hands that had held it day after day.

With his living eye, Yehuda Leib seemed to see the scene lit in the bright light of the sun.

But with his Death’s Eye, it looked very, very different: the darkness was thick, so thick it seemed almost substantial.

And with both eyes he saw that every surface—the table, the mantel, the floor, the chair—was covered in flickering candles: beeswax and paraffin, bayberry, tallow, tapers and pillars and votives of all kinds. Some were tall and thin, some short and squat. There were decorated candles with inlays of colored wax, and candles molded into the shapes of animals. Some bore many wicks, some only one. Some sat in small dishes, others in candelabras or candlesticks. A few had even been placed in holes dug into the solid earthen floor. In places, several had melted together in blobs of seeping wax. There were flames that leapt and jumped, huge, nearly as tall as the candles they topped, and flames that flickered and shrank, little more than a glowing ember at the end of a blackened wick.

The supply seemed endless.

As Yehuda Leib took in the assemblage—candle after candle, flame after flame—it became clear to him that there were far more lights in this house than its little area ought to be able to contain.

And yet here they were.

To his living eye, the candle flames seemed strange, redundant: their light paled in the face of the fire that blazed in the hearth, the sunlight that came streaming through the window.

But with his Death’s Eye, he saw another truth: there was nothing here but darkness and light. All he could see was the points of flickering flame. The wax, the candles, the table, the hut—all were choked back, hidden by the thick darkness. Only the bright fire of the hearth gave any illumination to the room.

Slowly, careful not to disturb any of the flames on the floor, Yehuda Leib began to tiptoe forward.

One simple candle on the rough wooden tabletop drew him in—sturdy and straight, neither too wide nor too tall. Its flame burned bright and constant, barely giving a flicker, and though Yehuda Leib could not see it with either eye, the wick that ran down the center of the candle was of blood-red thread.

It felt just like him.