Dusk was descending on Tupik, and between the late hour and the quickly worsening weather, they found themselves climbing the muddy streets alone. By the time they were halfway into town, they’d begun to notice the differences wrought by passing time: a certain run-down cart that had finally broken, a certain outhouse mended and improved. In Tupik’s front rooms they saw familiar faces lined just a bit further with worry, familiar heads chased just a bit thicker with gray.

They had passed an entire year backing away from Death, and the year had left its mark.

Now the darkness was falling as insistently as the rain, and, one by one, bright lights began to jump up in the windows of the town.

It didn’t take them long to realize what night it was.

In the front window of every house, a Chanukah menorah was set to burn, eight strong, straight candles, raising their warm light up against the darkness outside, and beside each octet a ninth light: the helper candle. Yehuda Leib could not stop himself from thinking of this lone candle—separated, removed—as a sort of herding dog: keeping the others together, keeping the others alight.

From house after house, light shone forth into the street, and as Bluma and Yehuda Leib made their way farther and farther toward their end of town, the anticipation began to grow. How sweet it would be to come back to their own houses, to see the bright lights shining out from their own front windows, to be finally home.

But when they arrived at the house of Yehuda Leib’s mother, the window was dark.

Nonetheless, Yehuda Leib pushed eagerly through the front door, tracking wet boot prints across the dusty floorboards, calling for his mother.

But she was not there. Neither were most of her things.

The house had been empty for some time.

They had been gone for a year; Death moves as swiftly as the ticking clock.

Bluma tried to hold back her tears at least until Yehuda Leib showed his own sorrow, and if he hadn’t been so dogged, so hopeful, perhaps she would’ve managed it.

“Here,” he said, taking down the rusty old Chanukah menorah from its place at the top of the bookcase. “She wouldn’t want us to wait.”

With some scrounging, Yehuda Leib managed to find nine mismatched candle ends among the oddments left in the house and fit them into the heavy candelabra. Softly, he chanted the blessings and lit each one in turn.

For a short time, they stood in the empty front room of the dusty gray house, watching the light of the candles blaze and flicker and jump, listening to the pounding of the rainfall on the roof, until: “All right,” said Yehuda Leib. “Let’s go.”

The tremble in Bluma’s voice was audible, though she fought to keep it still. “Are you sure?”

Yehuda Leib smiled sadly.