She stood alone in the debris, trying not to panic. There was little she could do. He might stay here, in the river; he might double back, and return to the Asylum. Now her only connection to him was through Kreindel—and Kreindel was with Toby, on her way to the Amherst.
She could only keep going.
* * *
“Well,” Anna said, her arms folded, looking up at the Amherst’s insides, “it’s certainly big, whatever it is.”
The Jinni sighed, and scooped another bucket of wet ash from the forge. Sayeed had gone to help Maryam close the coffee-house; Anna, however, seemed intent on not letting the Jinni out of her sight. Toby will be here soon, she’d informed him, her clipped tone matter-of-fact—and he’d been momentarily baffled by the speed with which his solitude had crumbled. Was this what it was like, he wondered, to have neighbors, acquaintances? To allow oneself to be talked about and watched over? It felt . . . disconcerting. Sayeed had even left Maryam’s mixing bowl on the worktable nearby, full of kindling, in case you need it. The bowl was glazed in bands of white and yellow, with cheerful lemons painted about its middle; it felt utterly out of place on the scarred and pitted table, like a hack-saw in a bakery case. He wondered, would one of the Faddouls return for it? Or was he supposed to take it back on his own?
Anna watched as he cleaned out the forge. “So. Toby said you nearly died. Was he exaggerating?”
“Not at all. He saved my life.”
“Well. We’re all lucky, then.”
He put down the bucket. “Anna, I had no intention of involving your son in any of this. I didn’t even realize who he was.”
“Oh, I know. He told me everything. He delivered you a cable, and it all went downhill from there.”
“Then is there a specific reason you’re angry at me? Or is it merely on principle?”
She pressed her lips together, looked away stonily. Then she said, “You know, I never told him tales when he was little. No golems, no dybbuks, no old witches in chicken-leg huts. I didn’t want him believing in things that couldn’t exist.”
Confused, offended, he said, “Even though you knew we were real?”
She glared at him. “Let me tell you something, Ahmad. This is a cruel world for a boy like Toby. A good-hearted kid with no father, and a mother who’s never home, with barely two nickels to rub together—a boy like that has to grow up learning certain truths. And one of them is that if someone shows you magic, it’s a trick, and you’re the mark. But you people—you and Chava and God knows who else—look what you can do.” She pointed upward, at the shining steel. “You break all the rules and turn truth on its head, so now he starts to believe in the impossible. So what happens when he goes out into the world? Maybe he gets taken by the first confidence man he meets. And even if he doesn’t, what then? Do you think he’ll be satisfied working at some factory for the rest of his life? Or will he go running off after Mister Ahmad and Missus Chava—the woman I thought was going to—”
Her face tightened. Tears flooded her eyes. She turned away.
He stood there feeling helpless. “Anna. I’m sorry. You were trying to protect him.”
She sniffed angrily, whisked her tears away. “And now he’s uptown looking for a golem. Some job of it I did.”
“Ma?”
They turned. Toby was standing in the doorway. Beside him was a stranger, a startled-looking girl in a shapeless gray coat.
“Ma, Mister Ahmad,” Toby said, “this is Kreindel.”
Kreindel didn’t know where to look first.
She’d never seen a place so big, not even her father’s synagogue. She stared up in fascination at the platforms hanging in midair, the spiraling column, the branching arches in the upper shadows—all of it gigantic yet delicate-looking, like an enormous whirligig that might come to life on a puff of wind.
“Kreindel,” Toby whispered behind her, “tell them about Yossele.”
She tore her gaze from the towering sculpture, took in the woman who stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing Kreindel with suspicion and curiosity. And then the man behind her, who was . . .
“My God,” she whispered. “It’s you.”
It was the man from the tenement fire. Tall and striking, dark eyes, angular features. All this time, and not a day older, exactly the same as she’d dreamt him.
“You probably don’t remember me,” she said, her voice shaking. “But you were there when my building burned down. Your friend ran in after me, you were holding her cloak . . .” Her heart thudded as she realized. “Wait. Your friend. Was it Miss Levy? It was, wasn’t it?”
“You’re the girl from the fire,” the man said, wonder in his voice.
“Ahmad, what’s she talking about?” said Toby’s mother.
Tears of relief sprang to Kreindel’s eyes. “Oh, thank God. All this time I thought she’d died, that I’d killed her. I dreamt about you so often—”
She remembered, then. A portrait, sewn in golden thread. Give him this, when he wakes. She began to laugh, still crying. “I even dreamt that you’d sewn a picture of me, if you can believe it.”
“But I did,” the man said, puzzled. “I left it at her apartment, I’d forgotten all about it.” He peered at her. “How could you possibly dream that?”
She thought. “Because of Miss Levy,” she said. “And Yossele.”
At the bottom of the river, huddled beneath a rust-cankered gantry crane, Yossele sat listening to his master.
There’s another golem? said the mother of the boy on the bicycle, her tone wary.
He’s not like Miss Levy, Kreindel said. He’s . . . different. My father built him because of the pogroms. We were supposed to go to Lithuania . . . but then the fire happened.
