The World That We Knew(78)

“You acted wisely,” he told Ava. “Your daughter’s alive because of it.”

Ava didn’t bother to correct him. Her hands still burned from taking hold of Azriel’s coat. It was her fault; she had done what was forbidden. She had left the girl and thought of her own needs. “She’s too pale,” Ava told the doctor, her voice unsteady. “Her breathing isn’t right.”

“She’ll be more stable in the morning,” the doctor promised. “Rest is the best medicine.”

He’d noticed letters on the woman’s arm that he recognized to be Hebrew. When she caught him staring, Ava quickly pulled down her sleeve. Still, it was in his nature, as it is in every doctor’s nature, to be curious. He had not asked many questions about who they were. He assumed they were Jews from Berlin, for in her delirium Lea had murmured Wo ist meine Mutter?

Where is my mother?

Later that evening Girard took a Hebrew book that had belonged to Sarah from the volumes he had hidden in his filing cabinet, for any books relating to Jews were no longer legal to own. He thumbed through the alphabet, writing down the letters he’d seen. They spelled out truth. He sat at his desk, pleased.

He could not imagine a more beautiful word for a woman to carry.



That evening, Girard offered Ava his room, but she declined, insisting she would prefer to keep vigil from the bedroom chair. She wasn’t about to let the girl out of her sight, especially after the doctor said there was another guest in the barn.

In the early hours of the morning, Lea became conscious. When she opened her eyes she thought she was in a bird’s nest. She had spied the heron out in the orchard. He’d managed to find them. He always did, and that comforted Lea. The casing of clay and honey she had been covered with had fallen away, leaving a gray and yellow powder on the sheets. Now that the light had broken, Ava was stunned to see how the girl had changed. Overnight, her hair had turned white as snow. Such things could happen when mortals saw Azriel yet continued to live, when they had come so close to the World to Come that he had become visible in all of his blinding brilliance.

It was shock that had caused it, Dr. Girard told Ava when he came in to check on Lea’s progress. It was possible for a person’s hair to turn white overnight after a traumatic event, certainly he’d heard of such cases. But it was a small price to pay for what had been accomplished. Another girl would not have survived the bees’ attack. Ava took Lea’s hand in hers. Human lives were like quicksilver; let go and they vanished. But not this time. Not now.

“More rest,” the doctor declared. “That’s all she needs. Together we’ve brought her to life.”





CHAPTER THIRTY


THE MAKER AND THE MADE




ARDèCHE, JULY 1944

SHE MIGHT NOT HAVE RECOGNIZED Ava if not for her father’s boots. Those she would never forget, for the morning after the golem was created the rabbi noticed they were missing from the wardrobe. He had the children search the house, but it was a pointless pursuit and Ettie hadn’t bothered to look. She knew she was leaving that night so she ignored her father’s shouts. Had there been a thief in the house? Had someone borrowed his boots without asking? Ettie had stood in the kitchen and memorized it all, down to the spoons and the forks. She’d memorized his voice and the voices of her brothers and sisters.

“Are you too good to look for your father’s boots?” her mother had said when she found Ettie dreaming in the kitchen. She’d been shocked when in response Ettie threw her arms around her and held her tight. Their family did not do such things. Raw emotion was ignored and love went unspoken, and sometimes unknown.

“I was your worst child,” Ettie said thoughtfully, as if she was already gone.

Her mother could not bring herself to say anything. Whether or not that was true there was one thing that was certain. Ettie was her favorite child.

All this time later, the boots looked no worse for wear. Perhaps they had been enchanted, or perhaps the rabbi had chosen the strongest leather available. But Ava had changed. She now resembled a woman more than she did a creature made of clay. Her black hair shone, and she lacked the pallor she’d had when she was made, and now possessed a rosy complexion. More than anything, what was different was the expression in her eyes. If Ettie wasn’t mistaken they had changed color. She remembered them as gray as stone, but now they glinted with light.

They walked toward one another, each measuring the other.

“Do not get to your knees,” Ettie warned the golem when they met.

Ava smiled. She hadn’t intended to. She was not the same foolish creature she had been on the train. “I can still thank you.”

“For bringing you into this wretched place?” Ettie felt a wave of guilt for her selfish actions in creating life in exchange for a price. “I should get on my knees and beg you to forgive me.”

It was a heartless world, but there were the swifts, soaring above them in the half-light.

“No. I’m grateful to you,” Ava said.

“You realize that you were born to do our bidding? To serve us and nothing more?”

Ava knew that her maker was wrong. She was born to walk through the reeds and dance with the heron, she was made to watch Lea sleep safely through the night and to feel the sun on her skin and to stand here in the rabbi’s boots beneath a bower of green leaves.