But someone had returned. Someone in a dress blacker than the night, blacker than the darkness hidden inside your eyes.

And where, ordinarily, the face of the Dark One remains hidden—inside the folds of her mantle, beneath the brim of his hat—Bluma happened to reach the top of the stairs just as the ascending Messenger passed through a falling beam of moonlight.

She saw the face.

She saw it very clearly.

Her insides squirmed into a twist of panic. It could’ve been no other face in the universe.

“You,” said the Messenger of Death.

And Bluma fled.

—

Tired as she was on that night, still the reach of Death was long.

It began with the water barrel in the corner, stolid and immovable in its spot for years, never once to wobble.

Until Bluma began to run.

And suddenly, the barrel tipped and fell. Water covered the floor, and if Bluma had not neglected to take off her boots before lying down on her bed that afternoon, then her feet would surely have slipped and slid; she would’ve broken her neck.

But Bluma splashed away, the water lapping at her ankles, and she fled in the only direction she could go as the Dark One’s slow, aching feet followed behind:

Up.

Up toward Bubbe’s bedroom.

And as she pounded up the stairs, her breath short and shallow, the sole of Bluma’s boot fell hard in the center of a step—a step that had never before shown any sign of weakness—and it splintered and cracked and gave way as if the rot had been eating at it for a century.

If Bluma had been just a moment slower, then she would have fallen; she would’ve cracked her head open on the workbench below.

Behind her, Bluma could hear the Dark One leaning against the wall to cross over the splintered gap where the stair had been, and Bluma pushed through the door of her bubbe’s room and slammed it so hard that several of the chimney stones shifted and fell in a sooty avalanche that strained the beams and rafters of the house below.

Surely, surely, her parents would wake at this racket, would come and save her, chase the Dark Lady away, make her safe.

But the sleep of the grieving is a heavy thing, and Death has a way of passing lightly where she wishes not to be seen.

Bluma pushed open the bedroom window.

Everything outside was terribly still.

The cold wind turned over in its sleep.

It was a long way down.

The fallen stones were blocking the bedroom door, and she could hear it shaking rhythmically at the shove-shove-shove of the Dark One.

There was no time.

Quickly, Bluma lifted herself up to sit on the windowsill and reached her foot out onto the ledge below. If she was careful, she might just be able to climb down….