The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  And it was in this capacity that, years and years after his death, Pasternak would emerge from the gates of the cemetery of Zubinsk, still wearing the tawny overcoat and black spiked helmet in which he had died, the wound that had killed him still leaking turbid brown blood.

  Beside Pasternak were two other dead soldiers—a small detachment of scouts with very specific orders:

  To find, and at all costs to obtain, the girl named Bluma.

  Unless you were looking very closely, you wouldn’t have seen her.

  The cat had come to rest at the very peak of the roof, her ragged gray coat blending in with the dull sheet of heavy cloud above. She would not normally have allowed herself to sit out in the open like this, but everyone’s eyes were cast low this morning.

  There was an atmosphere of despair weighing on the heads of the Zubinskers. No one would be looking to the rooftops today.

  It did not precisely please her, this despairing; that would not have been right to say. After all, last night’s events had been nearly as disastrous for the Lileen as they’d been for the Hasidim. But there was something she appreciated in seeing the shock on the faces of the living.

  They were always so surprised when things didn’t go their way.

  She’d had to get used to that feeling long, long ago.

  The cat tightened her crouched legs, preparing to jump—Bluma was moving fast—and she leapt down from the roof, landing lightly in the snowy street below. She was bounding quickly, determined to keep sight of Bluma as she made her way around a corner, when the darkness fell.

  Immediately her claws were bared, and she yowled and spat, her teeth lashing out in whatever direction they could, but the heavy burlap sack was cinched tight.

  She’d been caught.

  Presently, a voice spoke, and she stilled her thrashing rage just long enough to listen.

  “Now, now,” said the voice. “Don’t worry. All we want is a little information, and then we’ll happily send you back to Aunty Lilith.”

  With a scream, the cat bit out at the hand that held the burlap, and she fell awkwardly, dropped hard onto the frozen ground.

  “Well, that wasn’t very nice,” said the voice above, and with a swift kick, one of the soldiers sent the sack, cat and all, glancing hard against a brick wall.

  “Let me out!” screeched the cat.

  “Answer one question for us, and we’ll be happy to.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Oh,” said the soldier’s voice. “I’d reconsider if I were you. Lord High General Dumah of the Army of the Dead is always very grateful for useful information.”

  “Your general is a cadaverous hooligan bastard, and the Sisterhood of the Lileen want nothing that he has to offer.”

  One of the soldiers gave a long, disappointed sigh.

  “That,” said the voice, “doesn’t seem like a wise position to take under these circumstances.” And he lifted the burlap sack from the cold ground and flung it against the wall with all his might.

  “Now tell me,” said the voice of the soldier to the dazed cat in the bag. “Where is the Bluma girl?”

  * * *

  —

  “You,” said Mammon, his beady black eyes ablaze with reflected firelight. “I ought to rip your throat out with my teeth. I ought to bury you beneath an outhouse. I ought to skin you alive and sell you for rat food.”

  Despite his threats, Mammon had shied back into the wide arms of his chair.

  The salt must’ve made quite an impression.

  “Yes,” said Yehuda Leib. “Yes.”

  “What do you mean, yes?” spat Mammon.

  “I mean,” said Yehuda Leib, “that I can understand why you feel that way.”

  “You can understand?” said Mammon incredulously. “You assaulted me!”

  Yehuda Leib sighed. “I think you’ll find, my lord, that it was you who assaulted me. I defended myself.” It was just like making excuses for brawling back home in Tupik: He started it. “And, in fairness, if I hadn’t fought back, you likely would’ve killed me.”

  Mammon snorted derisively. “You can’t prove that.”

  “No,” said Yehuda Leib. “But I don’t need to, because you know it’s true.”

  “What are you doing here?” said Mammon.

  “I think the more interesting question,” said Yehuda Leib, “is what you’re doing here.”

  Mammon snorted again and rolled his eyes.

  “No,” said Yehuda Leib. “Truly. If it were me, I would’ve made my way back home by now. Why haven’t you?”

  “Perhaps I’m just biding my time,” snapped Mammon.

  Yehuda Leib nodded. “Perhaps.”

  “There’s a lot of plunder to be had here,” said Mammon. “Good things. Worth having.”

  “That’s certainly true,” said Yehuda Leib. “And you seem to have dealt with the shopkeeper and his wife nicely. Why don’t you take what you’d like and head back to your Treasure House?”

  “Maybe I will,” said Mammon.

  Yehuda Leib nodded. “Maybe. But I think you’d have done it by now if you’d been able.”

  “Oh, I’m able,” said Mammon. “I’m able.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Yehuda Leib. “I was standing outside waiting for you to make your move for quite some time. But now I don’t think you’re planning to make a move. Now I think you’re just hiding out.”

  “I am not hiding out,” said Mammon swiftly.

  “No?” said Yehuda Leib. “There’s an awful lot of money in the safe down there, and you seem to think it’s more useful occupying your host, the shopkeeper, than it would be lining your pockets.”

  “Money,” said Mammon dismissively. “Paper, you mean.”

  “Paper money, yes,” said Yehuda Leib. “But the jewelry on your hostess is hardly paper.”

  At the thought of the jeweled lady, Mammon couldn’t stop his eyes from glittering.

  “What’s your point?” said Mammon.

  “My point,” said Yehuda Leib, “is that either you can’t get home on your own or, for some reason, you don’t want to.”

  Mammon huffed dismissively.

  But he was still listening.

  “Actually,” said Yehuda Leib, “I think it’s both.”

  “Oh?” said Mammon. “You know me so well, do you?”

  “I was standing out there a long time,” said Yehuda Leib. “Eventually I started asking myself why you weren’t moving—what might be stopping you.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the most obvious reason is all the Hasidim out in the street: psalms as thick as rain in a storm. That can’t be pleasant for a demon.”

  “It isn’t unpleasant,” said Mammon. “It’s incredibly dangerous—like a forest fire, not a rainstorm.”

  Yehuda Leib shrugged. “To you, perhaps. But not to me.”

  Mammon was beginning to connect the dots—behind his cracked spectacles and beady eyes, a desire was beginning to brew.

  “I wonder…,” said Yehuda Leib. “You were able to use me as a vehicle to cross into town. Could I take you safely through the psalms, too?”

  “Why would you want to do that?” said Mammon.

  Yehuda Leib hopped over this question as if it were a muddy puddle in the road.

  “I really was out there some time, though,” he said. “Long enough to think twice, and I thought: Even if there were no psalms, how could Lord Mammon possibly go back now? After the commotion he made at the party? After boasting that he’d take the Rebbe so easily? You never even got close enough to speak to him, even with a head start. That’s a failure. That’s a humiliation. I’d probably hide out and lick my wounds too.”

  “I am not licking my wounds.”

  “I’m sure that smooth dem
on will love hearing all about it—what was his name? Belial?”

  This shot hit home: “Belial,” Mammon muttered to himself.

  “But it occurred to me,” said Yehuda Leib, barely even pausing. “Maybe we can be of use to one another.”

  “Oh, what a shock,” said Mammon.

  “You,” said Yehuda Leib, “can’t get through the crowd without me. And even if you could, you’d be embarrassed to return home like this. Or at least you should be.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mammon, “enough already. You’ve made your point. What’s your offer?”

  “The Rebbe was a rich prize,” said Yehuda Leib. “But I’m planning on aiming even higher. And if you help me, there will be spoils for the taking like you’ve never even imagined.”

  At this, Lord Mammon laughed. “I’ve got quite an imagination,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Yehuda Leib, “I know.”

  “Very well, then,” said Mammon. “Who’s the target?”

  Now Yehuda Leib took a strong step forward. “The Dark One,” he said. “The Angel of Death.”

  Slowly, Mammon began to smile.

  “My,” he said. “You are ambitious.”

  “Yes,” said Yehuda Leib, “I am. And with your resources, I can defeat him. We can raise an army and storm his house and overthrow him. And everything he has will be yours.”

  “Everything?” said Mammon.

  “All I want is my father back,” said Yehuda Leib. “The rest is for you.”

  Mammon raised an eyebrow. There was a throbbing, greedy excitement behind his eyes.

  “That’s quite an offer,” said Mammon. “But it’s very risky.”

  Yehuda Leib shrugged. “What is it they say? Nothing ventured…?”

  Mammon tsked his tongue in annoyance. “Don’t quote my own scriptures at me. What I mean to say is that I’m not certain it’s even possible to accomplish what you suggest.”

  “Well, I’m going to try,” said Yehuda Leib. “With you or without you. If you’d prefer, I suppose, you can just hide out here until your failure’s blown over, but I feel I should warn you: They’ll be saying psalms as long as the Rebbe’s in bed across the street. And if he should die, God forbid, the mourning prayers will be even worse.”

  At even this innocuous mention of a Holy Name, Mammon flinched.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Mammon. “You needn’t lay it on so thick. I know my situation.”

  Yehuda Leib folded his arms and nodded. “Then partner with me.”

  Mammon shook his head tightly. “I really don’t know. It’s a big risk. Why don’t you just take me through the crowd, and then…”

  But Yehuda Leib was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No. It’s all or nothing. I won’t take you through unless you agree to support my campaign.”

  “Easy now,” said Mammon. “Don’t draw lines in the sand you’ll just have to back over. I’m not signing on to a venture as risky as this one without some assurance of the possibility of success. You’re a fine negotiator, boy, and you can fight well enough, but in the end, you need my support, so here’s what we’ll do: You’ll conduct me through the crowd, which you’re right that I need you to do, and I’ll take you back into the Far Country, which you know as well as I do that you can’t manage alone. Once we’re through, I’ll take you to Lord Dantalion, Master of Whispers. We have very old and very strong treaties, the two of us, and if there’s any possibility of success in what you propose, he’ll know of it.”

  “And then?” said Yehuda Leib.

  “Well,” said Mammon, “it depends on what Dantalion has to say. But if you truly plan to make the attempt one way or the other, then I’ll already have assumed much of the risk of supporting you just by bringing you through.”

  Yehuda Leib clenched his jaw.

  This was not the outcome he’d wanted.

  But it was hard to argue with Mammon’s logic.

  “So,” said the smiling demon, extending a small, clammy hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  * * *

  —

  It was undignified, but there was no better option. Yehuda Leib had to be the one to move Mammon through the crowd, and so, with bare minutes remaining in the hour, Yehuda Leib pushed Lord Mammon out into the street in a baby carriage.

  There he was, the great evil one, swaddled in blankets, his ears stopped up with wadded cotton, bouncing along over the snowy cobbles.

  He was just about the right size for the pram, too.

  It was a little bit perfect.

  But Yehuda Leib’s amusement fell away quickly. People did their best to move aside, but there was so little space in the crowded street that moving aside rarely made way, and he had to angle and nudge and excuse me for all he was worth. And, to make matters worse, Mammon had started to moan slightly. Yehuda Leib couldn’t be sure if it was nerves or if the roiling psalms had started to affect him, but either way, Yehuda Leib wanted to get through the crowd as quickly as he could—he needed Mammon, and what was more, he needed Mammon’s goodwill.

  And then, cutting through the sound of the psalms like a heavy cleaver through bloody meat, he heard it.

  “That’s the boy,” said a rough voice. “Long hair, cap too small, old knapsack—just like she said.”

  Yehuda Leib swung his head back over his shoulder, and his gut knotted up tight in fear.

  Three mismatched soldiers, ragged and war-stained, were making their way through the crowd. The Hasidim were parting, giving them a wide berth, and though none of them seemed to notice, it was clear as day to Yehuda Leib:

  They were long dead.

  Yehuda Leib turned away. He was near the end of the street now, near enough that he thought he just might make it out before they got to him.

  But it was going to take some doing.

  With a deep breath, Yehuda Leib bent low over the pram and said, “I’m sorry about this.”

  The bundle of Mammon stirred uneasily.

  And in a flash Yehuda Leib was going, dashing, jostling and bumping and pushing people aside with the bumper of the baby carriage. Behind him, he heard one of the soldiers curse roughly. A commotion and then a panic sprang up as the soldiers began to push and throw Hasidim aside, and before Yehuda Leib was halfway to the end of the street, there was a full-blown stampede under way, people shoving and running in order to get as far away from the angry soldiers as they could.

  The confusion bought Yehuda Leib valuable seconds. By the time he was through the thickest part of the crowd, the soldiers had been swallowed up behind him, and he turned a corner and charged ahead, racing down the long street. He wasn’t far from the meeting point now—just another turn and it would be in sight.

  Mammon threw back his blankets and sat up, reeling, in his pram.

  “What’s happening?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Soldiers,” panted Yehuda Leib. “But I think we lost them.”

  Mammon’s gaze was fixed over Yehuda Leib’s shoulder, and his beady eyes were growing wide. “No,” he said. “No, you didn’t.”

  Yehuda Leib turned back just long enough to glimpse the three dead soldiers pounding around the corner behind him.

  “No, no, no,” said Mammon. “Don’t look—go! Run!”

  Yehuda Leib tore around the corner as quickly as he could. There, down in the distance, he could see the figure of a girl waiting for him at the entrance to a narrow alleyway, and he flew toward her as quickly as he could go, feet slipping in the slushy snow.

  The girl called out as soon as he was near enough to hear. “What’s going on?” she said. “What happened?”

  It was a long moment before Yehuda Leib remembered that he wouldn’t be able to recognize her, his eyes adjusting to her vague features as if to the darkness in a cellar.

  “No time!” he
said. “Go!”

  They had just piled into the long alleyway when the heavy footfalls of their pursuers came crashing around the corner into the street behind them, drawing nearer and nearer with every moment.

  Bluma turned back, her eyebrows high. “What’s going on?”

  The alley was narrow, so narrow that they were forced to go in single file, and Bluma was stopping up their progress.

  Yehuda Leib lifted a finger to his lips and frantically waved her forward.

  Cursing rang out in the street, and then angry voices.

  “Where is he?”

  “Little bastard.”

  “Shut up! Keep moving!”

  Bluma had nearly made it to the end of the alley when the soldiers clattered by in the street, and their racket was just beginning to fade away into the snowy distance when Bluma’s sharp scream split the air.

  A man had loomed up at the end of the alley, blocking the way.

  Bluma stumbled backward, hand clapped over her mortified mouth, and sure enough, out in the street behind them, they heard a soldier call out:

  “What was that?”

  The man at the end of the alley staggered forward with a growl.

  They were trapped.

  “What are you waiting for?” hissed Mammon from his pram. “Pay the man!”

  Bluma’s face crinkled in fear and confusion. “Who is that?” she whispered.

  Yehuda Leib shook his head impatiently. “Lord Mammon the Avaricious,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What?” said Bluma.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Again, the man at the end of the alleyway moaned. He smelled terrible.

  “What do we do?” said Bluma.

  “This way!” called the voices in the street, and the clattering footsteps began to grow louder again.

  “I told you!” said Mammon. “Pay him!”

  It was in this moment that Yehuda Leib identified the stench of the man at the end of the alleyway. It was Mottke the drunken ferryman. From back home. From Tupik.

  “Mottke?” he said.

  And Bluma stifled a little gasp. “How did you get here, Mottke?”