Slowly, Yehuda Leib stretched out his fingers.

Perhaps he would just hold them and then give them back. Perhaps just for a time. Carefully, Yehuda Leib took first one coin and then the other from the stranger’s hand.

“Good,” said the stranger.

The coins were odd: two of the same denomination, cold and heavy, battered, gray. On one face they bore the figure of an open eye, and on the obverse the same eye firmly shut.

“Until we meet again, Yehuda Leib,” said the stranger.

And by the time Yehuda Leib looked up, he was gone.

—

The front door of Bluma’s house bumped, jostled, and swung open.

The wind was stirring.

Someone stepped across the threshold.

A sudden gust of wind swept through the street and slammed the door shut behind the stranger. Feygush, slumped asleep across the front room, stirred, moaned, and rolled over.

Again, she did not wake.

But she was not the only one in the house.

On the second floor, Bluma’s eyelids flew open at the sound of the slamming door.

Bubbe, she thought.

Bubbe is home.

The house gave a groan as a pair of feet shifted from the floorboards to the staircase, and from her vantage point near the wall, Bluma was overjoyed to see the figure of a hunched old woman begin to rise heavily from the first floor.

It was not long, though, before her joy melted away.

The old woman was not her bubbe.

Bluma froze, her breath arrested in her throat.

Who was it?

Slowly, a dark stranger climbed the stairs. Her dress was black—blacker than the night, blacker than the darkness hidden inside your eyes—and over her head she wore a blanket, pulled forward, also black, forming a hood so deep and dark that it hid nearly all of her face.

Only her mouth could be seen.

The gait of the dark stranger was heavy, weary, and slow, and when she reached the top step, she stopped not six feet from where Bluma lay.

With a sigh, the dark stranger looked up the last flight of stairs toward Bluma’s bubbe’s bedroom. She reached a knobbly hand into the folds of her black blanket and produced an object—some sort of tool that gave a glint in the cold moonlight.

Bluma could not see what it was.

With effort, the old woman began to climb the final flight of stairs.

Who was this?

What was happening?

What did she have in her hand?

Above, Bluma heard her bubbe’s bedroom door yawn open and swing shut. Quickly and quietly, she laid her bare feet down on the rough wooden floorboards and crept up after the dark stranger.

She could hear voices.

—

“Dvorah Leah, daughter of Hindeh.” The stranger’s voice was husky and rough.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Bluma’s bubbe.

“What?”

Outside, the wind sauntered by with a low yowl.