It was the simplest, most beautiful thing to him—one foot and then the other. It could go on through everything.

It could go on even on the far side of death.

With a start, Yehuda Leib raised his eyes to the sky. He’d become so distracted by the trooping dead that he’d lost track of his father. A little panic began to gather in his gut.

Before long, though, his keen eyes picked out the muffled light, turning and wheeling far above. The crow was descending now, and as it came, its aim materialized in the gloaming:

A great, rambling, shrug-shouldered house, not five minutes’ march from where Yehuda Leib stood.

The Treasure House of Lord Mammon.

—

Bluma couldn’t get rid of the spoon.

No matter what she tried—throwing it away, placing it deliberately atop a grave marker, even digging a hole and burying it—as soon as her eyes left the dim glimmer of its surface, there it was again, back in her apron pocket.

Before long, Bluma grew discouraged. Her discouragement put forth buds of frustration that bloomed into fury, and one last time, Bluma flung the spoon away, so hard that it tore an echoing yell from her as it went. She heard it clang against a headstone some ways away, but as she fell to the cold, wet snow, sure enough, there it was, hard and sharp, in the crease of her hip.

Bluma’s eyes filled with tears. Her fingertips smarted. Droplets of blood flecked the snow beside her.

What could she do? What on earth could she do?

She was rising when her eye was drawn to a carving she had not noticed before—there, on top of a plain headstone, perhaps three or four rows away, an incredibly lifelike gray cat sat upright, staring at her.

Only when its tail began to twitch did Bluma see the captive moonlight in its eyes.

Carefully, she made her way in the opposite direction, but when she looked back, the cat was nowhere to be seen.

A knot was rising in Bluma’s throat.

It’s just a cat, she told herself. Just a stray cat.

But the eyes shone again out of the darkness, and there it was, high above, perched on the roof of a little crypt, staring down at her: a lurking gray cat.

Again, Bluma moved away, her feet beginning to step more quickly now, and, turning to look behind her, she saw the cat take a silent leap to the head of a nearby obelisk.

It was following her.

Bluma wheeled about, searching for a safe way to go, but here were two more cats, and a fourth hopping lithely up onto a gravestone.

Their eyes shone out like dead stars. Bluma tried not to notice the thin razor claws at their paw ends, the sharp needle teeth in their heads.

What did they want?