The World That We Knew

by Alice Hoffman

  He was fairly certain Ettie would not have agreed either. This is what happened with stubborn, principled people and so it was impossible to claim death’s attention. “To do so you have to accept a sacrifice.”

  Ava understood completely. To make such a trade you had to be willing to forsake your life.

  It was dusk when they left and the air was eggshell thin. The world was so green it swallowed every shadow. Before long a cold moon would rise into the sky. Julien walked ahead of them, his eyes on the compass the doctor had given him. There was enough starlight pricking through the sky so they would be able to see. Ava and Lea had Julien lead the way, even though Ava saw the world as a map. It was the last time she and Lea would be together and so they walked side by side, as they always had, their strides evenly matched.

  Julien turned and waved at Lea, a grin on his face. Lea waved back. Inside of him was the boy she had known, but she was the only one who could see him.

  “What will happen to him?” she asked Ava. She had worried about him for so long it was difficult to stop. No person should know what fortune would bring, but the nuns at the convent had gossiped, insisting that Ava could read the future, and all Lea wanted to know was whether Julien would continue to keep his promise to her.

  Lea and Ava both gazed at the young man ahead of them, the one who had given them plums on their first day in Paris, who had listened outside Lea’s door when she wept for her mother and grandmother, who had lost every member of his family.

  “He’ll be the man you trust.”

  That was all Ava would say, no matter how Lea begged for more, but in the end, it was enough.

  They planned to cross near midnight, when it was most difficult to see shapes moving through the woods, when invisibility was a virtue and a gift. Once they went across they would be arrested, then officially questioned by the Swiss guards before being turned over to the Red Cross. There was only one answer to any of the guards’ questions: I fled because I feared for my life.

  Lea wore the blue dress her mother had sewn. She felt naked without the locket she had lost before she reached the doctor’s house. She had nothing to take across with her except for Ahron Weitz’s painting of the sky. She had shown it to Julien. By then, he had realized he would not be a painter; he was a mathematician and had always been so. At night, when he regarded the stars, he often felt his father beside him. He viewed the world in shapes, for indeed, the universe was made up of pieces of a puzzle. He remembered his lessons in the library. His father had said there was a logic to the natural world and to life itself, it was simply that the plan hadn’t yet been understood.

  He and Lea had decided they would go to New York, where anything was possible. They wanted a new world, one where the future could be made by anyone who wished to do so, a country made by immigrants.

  “What if they separate us?” Lea asked.

  “That won’t happen. We go together.”

  They would cross the border at the Wolf’s Plain. They knew who they had been, but not who they would become. They would find that out as they lived the rest of their lives. The sky was black, but Lea could see what was inside of it now, and she wished she could tell Ahron Weitz that she finally understood how much more complicated things were than she’d ever imagined. Julien pointed out the constellations his father had named when they stood in their garden, and Lea leaned back to see the thousands of stars in the sky. When they crossed over they would carry everyone they had ever known or loved with them. They would close their eyes and still see it all.

  I remember when my mother would do anything for me, when we discovered we were not hunters, but wolves, when the world was taken away from us, when we hid in an attic, when the roses bloomed with silver petals, when a bird danced like a man, when I saw Paris for the first time, when I saw your face in the hallway as you turned to me, when they believed we were worth nothing, when we were sent away on trains, when my father bought my freedom, when the souls of our brothers and sisters rose into the trees, when we ran through the woods, when I loved you above all others and you loved me in return.

  “What of Ava?” Julien whispered. Ava had made a campfire. She’d brought along a cast-iron pan and was frying mushrooms she’d plucked in the woods so they would have a proper meal before crossing over. Her black hair shone in the firelight. “What happens to her?”

  “She’ll do as she pleases for once.”

  “Without you? All she knows is how to watch over you.”

  Lea stared at the golem. “She’ll learn. She’ll live her own life.”

  “She seems different than she was in Paris,” Julien noted.

  “Does she?”

  “Well, for one thing she doesn’t hate me.”

  They laughed, remembering her initial reaction to him.

  “She didn’t trust me for a minute.”

  “Well, neither did I. At first.”

  “Why would you? I was intolerable.”

  She grinned. “Not all of the time. Anyway, she trusts you now.”

  Julien shook his head, in disbelief.

  “She told me so herself,” Lea told him.

  His eyes were so dark. Those gold flecks were gone. Lea ran a hand through his long hair. She wanted to cry whenever she looked at him. She wanted to thank him for keeping his promise.

  “You never told me what she was,” Julien said. “You said you would.”

  “I will.” As Lea watched Ava she felt a catch in her throat. “But someday,” she said to Julien. “Not today.”

  Ava felt the angel in the heat of the firelight before she spied him. He had come to them again as she had feared he would. She had cheated him out of his rightful prize and now he had come for Lea once more. But he hadn’t taken her when the bees had swarmed and Ava most certainly would not allow him to take her now. That was when she knew. She would not take her maker’s advice. She would not run.

  Since their last encounter, Azriel could see her even though he was meant to only see mortals. Perhaps it was because she had grabbed hold of him and he now recognized her essence. Whatever the reason, he knew her and he knew what he wanted. She could not persuade him to change the course of what was meant to be, but she remembered what the doctor had told her. There was a trick mortals played, and now she would do the same.

  You must be willing to change places.

  She was willing.

  She called for Lea to follow her.

  Lea must be willing as well.

  If it was possible to trick an angel, it was possible to do the same to a mortal girl.

  “What could she want?” Julien asked.

  “Whatever it is, I owe it to her.”

  They went to a cave used by wolves when the mountains belonged to them.

  “Don’t ask any questions,” Ava said. “One last time, do exactly as I say.”

  They exchanged clothes. There was no reason for Ava to tell Lea why she now donned the blue dress and Lea wore the gray dress Hanni had made for the golem when she first decided she must send her daughter away. Ava wrapped a black scarf around her head to ensure that her even blacker hair didn’t show. She pulled off the rabbi’s boots and gave them to Lea, then slipped on Lea’s shoes even though they were two sizes too small.

  “Don’t leave this cave until you can no longer see me. Do you hear me? Then, once I’m gone, go to the border with Julien. He’ll find the way.”

  There was something unexpected in Ava’s tone. A sort of terror was folded inside the words.

  “Where will you be?” Lea asked, feeling Ava’s terror.

  “I will be doing what I was made to do,” Ava told her.

  When she led the angel away, he would assume he was following Lea into the dark woods, and by the time he realized his mistake, it would be too late. The moment to take her would have passed.

  Before Ava left, she and Lea threw their arms around each other. They didn’t need to speak.

  I beg you for one thing. Love her as if she were your own.


  This was how it had begun, and how it would end.

  Ava set out in mortal guise, the angel following. She made certain not to be too fast and went at a mortal’s pace. She forced herself to think like a mortal. This way or that? Over this rock or around it? Mortals hesitated. They stumbled. There he was, at her heels, in his black coat, carrying his book, ready to open its pages. She was so concentrated on the Angel of Death that she made a very human mistake. She could see a distance of a hundred miles and could inhale the sparks of fires burning in Paris, for the city was in chaos, and would be liberated in a matter of days. But she didn’t spy the shadow of a man lying in wait. A German soldier on his own was camped nearby. He had killed too many people to count or remember. He had one thing in mind, how to go on living. He spied Ava long before she took note of him, and when she was almost upon him, he lifted his rifle.

  Ava stopped in her tracks. In a way she was relieved. If meeting with the soldier was meant to have caused Lea’s death, it was a death she would have gladly taken on. But he would find out she wasn’t mortal soon enough. She would trick him as she’d tricked death.

  “Come here,” the soldier told her in German. “Do as I say and I won’t shoot.”

  He had no idea that a single letter was more lethal to her than any weapon, and so she went to him and lowered her eyes so he wouldn’t know she had no fear of him.

  “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know.

  Not wishing the Angel of Death to hear her voice, she didn’t answer.

  “Can’t you speak?”

  She pointed to her throat and shook her head.

  “So you’re dumb?” A smile curled at the young man’s lips.

  Ava felt the heat of compassion that radiated from Azriel as he sat above them. He was preparing himself. He was ready to take a mortal life into his arms.

  The soldier nudged her with his rifle. “Do you know the way to the border? Can you take me there?”

  She nodded. By now, Lea and Julien would be on their way. By now the stars were shining. The night was clear and cold. How strange that when one was pretending to be mortal, it was possible to shiver.

  “Good,” the soldier said. “You’ll take me there.”

  They ventured on, with Ava slowing her gait so he could keep pace with her. She led him around aimlessly, something he didn’t realize until they stumbled upon the place where he had made camp.

  “What sort of trick is this?” the soldier cried, hitting her with his rifle.

  She ignored his attack, horrified by what she saw. There was a makeshift tent and a fire pit. Beside them he’d set up traps to catch his dinner. There above them hanging from a rope was the heron, shot, with blood on his breast, gray feathers littering the forest floor. A howl escaped from her throat.

  “This miserable thing.” The soldier shrugged. “Not worth eating.”

  Ava’s fury burned hot inside her, her loss was immeasurable. This world that could be so heartless had stung her through and through. When she turned on the soldier it was as if the wind had caused his fall. Once he was on the ground, she climbed on top of him. Did he believe she was a mere woman? She was a monster, wasn’t she? She was made for witchery. She called to the angels of destruction and could hear them gathering above her. The wind drew near, summoned by her cries, and the birds above set up a racket of mourning that could be heard for miles. In their struggle Ava was so focused that she did not see another hidden trap, there under the leaves, carefully set to catch the first creature that passed by.

  Her foot was seized by the rope, which caught and held on, as if it were a snake. There was only one way to end her existence, to remove a single letter, and only one way to defeat her in battle. Once she was held ten cubits above the ground, her powers would cease.

  Before she could slip out of the rope, she was flung upward, exactly ten cubits above the earth. She had been fearless. She had been unbreakable. Until now.

  The soldier laughed and said he would not do her the favor of killing her. Instead, he would leave her there to die. It was impossible for her to get back to the ground no matter how she struggled; in the air she was only as strong as a woman, and could face a woman’s death. Azriel surely knew her for who she was now. Her scarf had fallen to reveal her black hair. Yet he was there in the tree. Still waiting for the mortal he’d been sent to claim.

  She pleaded with the soldier as a woman might, begging for mercy.

  “Oh, so now you can talk?” The soldier laughed, pleased with himself. He was laughing when Lea came up behind him. She was a thread of shadow that fit into the falling dusk. She was the wolf in the woods. She was the flower on a branch filled with thorns. She was the daughter of a woman who would defend whomever she loved.

  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.

  “You shouldn’t have saved me,” she told Lea. “You should already be on your way.”

  Lea had come to realize that she’d had a mother not once, but twice. This had been her mother’s gift and her blessing.

  “Do one thing for me before we part,” Ava asked.

  “Of course. Anything.”

  Ava refused to let this girl commit a sin for her. She must honor her mother and their covenant. “You are commanded to put an end to me. It will not be murder.”

  Lea took a step back, her face ashen. “It will be!”

  Ava’s arms were bare. It was easy enough to erase a single letter. She lay down in the grassy clearing. When she gazed into the trees she saw how alive they were. She felt her eyes burning. She felt a rush of emotions that were impossible for her to have, and yet there they were, tangled inside of her.

  “Do as you were told.”
r />   “My mother didn’t understand,” Lea protested.

  “It doesn’t matter. You know what I am. My kind are always destroyed.”

  “So are mine!”

  “But your life is in the hands of fate. My life is in your hands. And you must take it.”

  Lea let out a soft sob when she heard this. For all these years she had been unsure of what she would do, but now that the time had come she knew the answer. Her mother hadn’t told her that not only would Ava love her but she would love Ava in return, and that it would be a blessing, until it was a curse.

  “You must do as your mother instructed,” Ava told her.

  There was darkness pooling all around them. It was still a good hour to cross the border, but light came early in the mountains, and soon enough the sky would crack open.

  “It was meant to be,” Ava urged, her voice gentle. “Do what you must.”

  Even though she was water and clay, she was between worlds, more than her maker ever imagined she would be. Perhaps love had done this to her; she ached with love and was torn apart by it. She did not know what was logical, only what love made her do.

  “Do it because I love you,” she told the girl. “Because I value your life over mine. I cannot let you carry a sin.”

  Lea nodded, ignoring the tears running down her face. It was the end of something. She got down on her knees. She would never be a child again. She could not go back in time and put the pieces together of what had been broken. But it was the beginning of something. “You must close your eyes,” Lea whispered. “You can’t see what I do.”

  Ava did so, knowing she was to give up this world. She could hear the wind and the sound of the grass growing. She could hear the ants in the earth and the birds above them. Time passed and Lea was already crossing the border at the Wolf’s Plain, walking out of the forest with Julien. When she turned back, Lea saw everything that had happened in the years since she had been sent away, the door closing in Berlin, the train to Paris, the boy in the hallway, the heron in the trees, the village where snow lasted until April, the bees all around her, Ava.