Ettie marveled at what she had wrought. The mystery of creation hung in the air, a thick, deep curtain that carried the odor of blood and of the future and of all the lives that had come before this one. The creature’s eyes were closed.

Hanni was in knots, terrified they had failed and that her daughter would have no protector. Perhaps the creature had been stillborn. Without thinking, Hanni reached out. Its skin was warm beneath her touch, but it had no reaction. “Why isn’t it moving?”

“It has to be activated,” Ettie told her. “That is the last step.”

She rushed upstairs to her father’s study to search for his pen and a vial of ink that had been sanctified for the use of creating sacred scrolls. She had never been allowed to enter this room, and now grew light-headed at the thought of all she had done. She could hear the youngest of the children rustling under their blankets, and her father groaning as he began to wake. The day was moving too fast, like a spoke in a wheel that would not stop spinning. What was done was done, and so it must be completed. Ettie returned to the cellar, taking the steps two at a time. She had peered through the keyhole during the making of her father’s golem, and she knew the last step. Her father had written the word emet on the creature’s arm. Now she carefully did the same. The word meant truth.

She put down the pen and took the golem’s hand, which tightened in her grasp. It was then its eyes flew open. They were deep gray, the color of the river at the hour when they had assembled on the bank to dig for clay.

“Is it alive?” Marta asked, her voice hoarse from fear.

Ettie hushed her sister. “You can walk among us,” she told the golem. “Sit up.”

As the creature did so, Hanni was overcome with tears when she saw the expression of mute trust in its eyes.

Ettie sat back on her heels, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was an intense connection, as if the four were one. The very air was smoky and foul.

“She should have a name,” Marta whispered, for the clay was now clearly alive.

“Don’t be silly. The other one wasn’t named.” The men had called it “you” and “it” before they had destroyed it. Ettie doubted that a naming was proper.

But Marta was unyielding. Her blood had helped bring it to life. They could not treat it like a slave with no identity. “She must be named.”