She had done as Ava said, and was about to leave with Julien, when she found the necklace in the pocket of Ava’s dress. She had Julien close the clasp around her throat. She spoke to her mother in the realm of the World to Come. Surely she would understand that you owe a debt to those who protect you.

When I join you in that other world, where we are free of terror and pain, and you embrace me, know that I acted as you would have done, with love and compassion and loyalty.

Reluctantly, she left Julien.

Reluctantly, he let her go.

To help her make her way through the deep overgrown forest, she took hold of a fallen branch, a perfect walking stick. It was what she used to strike the soldier. He cried out when he fell, but she hit him again. She didn’t stop because she could not stop. She thought of her mother, who had saved her life, and of those who had been herded onto trains, and of the wolves that had been hunted in these mountains, and of the golem in the blue dress hanging from the tree who would follow her to the end of the earth, and of the heron who would never fly again. She could hear a wailing come from within her that she had heard only once before, from behind the door of their apartment in Berlin when her mother sent her away.

She had taken Julien’s knife, and now the point hit its mark. As it did the soldier’s spirit left in a single breath of air, caught by the angel in the trees who had come to collect him. This was the death he had been waiting for. In the blue dusk, Lea saw Azriel. She was grateful to have seen him twice and to still be alive. All the same, she was shaking. She climbed the tree to cut the rope, sawing until her hands were bloody. Ava landed on the ground easily, in her bare feet, then took the knife from Lea and cut the second rope so that she might bring the heron to the ground.

She sobbed as she buried him. She was not made to mourn and cry. She was clay and water, a creature called into being in a cellar, so how could it be that she appeared to be a woman in tears? Still, she wept, with Lea beside her, their arms entwined. She continued to cry as she marked the heron’s grave with seven black stones. When she was done, she told Lea to shed her bloody clothes. It was bad fortune to wear another’s death. Ava gave her the blue dress, the one with ten thousand miraculous stitches, sewn in Berlin, in the light of a yellow lamp before the darkness fell. It was close to midnight, and Lea and Julien would have to hurry now.