With a heave, the horseman returned Issur to his seat. “Good.”

“What’s yours?”

At this, the horseman began to laugh.

It wasn’t a friendly sort of laugh.

“Avimelekh,” answered the horseman. “You come from Tupik?”

Issur nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m looking for a boy there called Yehuda Leib. You know him?”

“Yes,” said Issur. “I do.”

Low in the bushes, Yehuda Leib stiffened, his muscles tightening in preparation to run.

Avimelekh was busy packing sticky black tobacco into a long, knobbled pipe. “Know where I might find him?”

Beneath its hulking rider, the dark horse snorted, stamped, tossed its head.

“Last I saw him,” said Issur, “he was down by the river. But that was hours ago.”

Yehuda Leib nearly jumped out of his skin.

Slowly, deliberately, the horseman leaned forward, thrusting a thin kindling taper into Issur’s lantern.

Issur swallowed. “And he’s always running around town down there. There’s no knowing.”

The horseman lit his pipe, puffing three or four times, and then blew out the taper in a long gout of smoke.

“Maybe at his mother’s house?”

“Issur,” said Avimelekh, and then, pulling his horse to attention, he looked Issur straight in the eye. “I’ll remember you.”

It was not until the rattle of his spurs had faded back down the path that Issur let himself exhale. “Well,” he said. “I guess you’d better get in, Yehuda Leib.”

—

In the glow of the lantern, the velvety darkness on either side of the path looked thicker, fuller than before.

How could the stillness feel so crowded?

Issur had demanded the payment he had been offered before letting Yehuda Leib up into the cart, and though Yehuda Leib couldn’t help but think this petty, he’d gladly yielded up one of his two cold coins.

He would’ve given almost anything to be in that cart, and he was more grateful than he could say not to be alone in the darkness anymore.

But he did wish the donkey could move a bit quicker.

And the ride was hardly luxurious—there was barely enough room for both boys at once, to say nothing of all the junk that had been piled beneath the tarpaulin in back: rusty tools, dented pots and pans. This was all intended for sale or trade in Zubinsk, Issur explained.

Issur had a lot of explaining he seemed to want to do—he babbled when he was nervous. Yehuda Leib had always taken it for showing off, throwing his knowledge around.

Maybe he was just nervous all the time.

Either way, he was certainly nervous now, and he’d chosen the single worst topic to babble about:

The demons in the darkness.

“They congregate in ruins, in cemeteries, in the wilderness,” said Issur, “because they can’t pass into areas of civilization except under very special circumstances. Which is why they’re so eager to get you when you’re in the forest.”