A woman, run in after her? The man watched her, tense and unmoving, as though his own life hung upon her answer. She remembered, then, the faint voice in the hallway. “I heard her,” she whispered.
“Where? What floor?”
“The fourth. But—she—” The cracking noise, the hole at Yossele’s feet. The flames below. She sat down on the curb and began to cry.
The man stared down at her, then drew an agonized hand over his face. Cursing, he stood and sprinted around the corner, the way that Kreindel had come.
A little while later, a policeman found Kreindel sitting alone on the curb and carried her to an ambulance, where a man pressed two fingers to her wrist and asked her questions she couldn’t understand. She shook her head, crying. He went away, and brought back another man, one who spoke Yiddish. He asked after her mother and father, but she only cried harder. At last they made her lie down, and pulled a blanket over her; and the horses tugged the ambulance away.
The Golem lay on her back, trapped beneath a weight of wood and plaster.
She squirmed, trying to find her bearings, but she could barely move at all. Where had she landed? Dust and debris covered her face; the heat had dried her hands to claws. She tried to blink, realized her eyes were fixed open. The ground beneath her had the feel of packed dirt, not wood or carpet. Was it the cellar? Had she fallen all the way through the building?
She shook her head, clearing the dust from her eyes—and looked up at four looming stories of flames and wreckage. It was as though a giant had scooped a burning hole through the center of the tenement. Smoke poured upward through exposed apartments, around sofas and lamps. A kitchen table tipped crazily into the void as she watched, the wood shattering as it landed.
She twisted, trying to drag herself free—and flinched at a sickening pull in her hip. She batted at it with a stiff, clumsy hand, and found a spar of metal, inches thick, protruding from her body. She’d landed atop it, and now it pinned her to the ground like an insect.
She looked around wildly. How long, before the entire building collapsed? Would she survive intact? Or crumble apart, a thousand sentient pieces among the debris? The thought horrified her. She tried to call for help, but could barely draw breath.
There was nothing she could do. She hadn’t even managed to rescue the young girl. She thought of the Jinni, and how they’d fought. How awful, that it should end this way. She wished she could apologize, and say good-bye.
The Jinni ran into the deserted tenement yard. The stairwell door hung open, a yawning darkness beyond. Ash floated on the air-currents.
He set her cloak on the ground, and went in after her.
The heat soaked into him at once, sharpening his senses. Within moments he felt stronger, quicker. His clothing caught fire as he ran up the staircase, but he paid no notice, only called her name.
If Arbeely were here, he thought, he’d tell me to pray.
The fourth floor hallway was a carpet of flames. He ran inside the nearest apartment, searching through the haze of smoke, but it was empty. He tried another, and another, calling her name, hearing nothing.
The walls of the next apartment he tried were already alight, and in the parlor he found the body of a man, his bearded face pale and thin. A wooden suitcase lay nearby, old books spilling from its insides. Flames crept across the rug, reaching the books as he watched, the paper combusting eagerly. Something about the sight transfixed him: ancient books, vanishing to ash . . . He shook himself and turned to go—and caught a deeply familiar scent, of earth or clay.
“Chava?” he called.
He opened the door to a small bedroom, its far wall smoldering. The scent was stronger here, but she was nowhere to be seen, neither in the bed nor beneath it. He looked around, confused.
A jolt, beneath his feet: the joists snapping, one after another. The room pitched downward, furniture sliding across the floor and through the burning wall. He tried to brace, but lost his balance—
—And the Golem watched from below as he fell through the air and landed with a crash nearby.
“Ahmad!” It came out as a rattling croak. Had he heard? What if he was hurt?
“Chava! Where are you?”
She wanted to laugh with relief. “I’m over here—” She dug her elbows into the dirt floor, tried to swivel around the metal spar.
Footsteps—and then he was lifting the wreckage away, shoving wood and plaster aside. He seemed on fire himself; the air around him shimmered with heat. He pushed away the last of the debris—and then stopped, stood staring. Something had horrified him—
Oh. It was her. He was looking at her.
“I can’t move,” she whispered.
He jolted back to himself, found the spar and broke it, pulled it free from her body. He bent to lift her—and jumped back as she shrieked at his scalding touch.
A roar came from above. The roof, giving way at last.
“I’m sorry, Chava,” he said; and he grabbed her up and ran through the flames.
The tenement yard was still deserted. He carried her out and set her down beneath the clotheslines, as gently as possible. She said nothing, only lay there, as still as wood. He could see deep burns along her arm and on her hip, where he’d touched her. He had to get her home; the yard wouldn’t stay vacant for long.
He searched around until he found a water spigot, nailed to a post in the middle of the yard. He turned it to gushing, braced himself, and ducked beneath the spray.
The water exploded into steam. Pain stabbed through him; he shouted out and backed away, staggering. A moment later, he was dry
