It was Yehuda Leib’s aim each day to position himself on the steps of the study hall opposite the synagogue’s front doors well before the morning service concluded. Once the worshippers began to mill about the threshold, the day’s schmoozing would start in earnest, and if he slung the brim of his cap low over his bright, keen eyes, huddling into the corner where the railing met the wall, their chat would flow freely: who had what errands to run, who was traveling, who sick in bed. This talk was indispensable to Yehuda Leib if he was to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention throughout the day, and if he was in his place on time, the talkers rarely took any notice of him.

This was why, today, it was so strange that they did.

Things started out normally enough, the droning hum of prayer within the synagogue dwindling and coming to an end. The doors were thrown open, and the most industrious of the worshippers squelched off to get their morning’s work under way, leaving the schmoozers to gather around Yankl, a lanky old schlepper who had gotten in late from Zubinsk the night before.

Zubinsk was the closest thing to a real place anywhere in the vicinity of Tupik. Nestled at the edge of the wide forest in which Tupik was located, it could be reached in the better part of a day’s travel, barring any complications on the road.

But as everyone knew, complications had a way of cropping up: wagon axles broke, donkeys sprained their ankles, men lost their way.

The grandmothers of Tupik had troves of tales hours deep about the malevolent demons of the forest: how they hid in the darkness between the overhanging boughs and dropped down upon your head when you stopped for a drink of water; how they tempted men off the path with the flicker of false fire and the aroma of roasting meat; how, if you were foolish enough to stop for a nap, they would sneak in through your ears and steal everything away—your thoughts, your memories, your very substance—until there was nothing left behind but the papery husk of you.

One could never be careful enough.

Men like Yankl, then, who made their living transporting goods between Tupik and Zubinsk, had a way of collecting charms and protections about them. Once, Yehuda Leib had heard Yankl cataloging his arsenal: the hunk of iron at the bottom of his heavy pack, the faded bracelet of thin red thread around his wrist, the amulets carefully inked onto small squares of parchment, rolled tight, and stashed in all the pockets of his clothing.

It was, in fact, about a new talisman that Yankl spoke as he came out of the synagogue door this morning: an old, hard slice of bread with a small bite taken out of one corner.