Nekomeh scowled at the golem, half lit by the moon. “Strange that it turned out female,” she said when Judith finished explaining. “I’ve never heard of that before.”
“It looks like you, Judith,” said Moireh.
Judith was too tired to analyze her bizarre handiwork. “I think she looks like Reva.”
The three of them sat together in the thicket in the freezing dark, too frightened of being seen to build a fire. The golem sat by itself, arms across its knees, unaffected by the night or the temperature.
“How far to Leva?” Judith asked after a while.
“Four days.” Nekomeh shifted next to her. “On the road it’s four days, anyway. It could take a week if we stay by the river.” She put a foot over one knee and rubbed her ankle.
“We’ll starve before we get there,” said Moireh.
Judith stared into the night and found herself looking into the golem’s dark eyes. Did the golem have to eat, too? Who could they beg — or steal — a potato from? Or a turnip? She was too tired to think through all the answers and her head was swimming. She would fall asleep between Nekomeh and Moireh, and for all their fears and nighttime terrors, the two of them would hold her up until morning. She let her eyes close. Perhaps Motle would come in a dream and give her an answer. In the density she thought was the beginning of sleep, she heard a crashing in the dried leaves of the thicket and then a man’s voice.
“Down here.”
Nekomeh’s fingers dug into Judith’s arm hard enough to make her gasp. On the other side, Moireh held her breath.
The golem turned its head toward the sound, wakeful and dangerously alert in the moonlight.
The crashing in the underbrush came closer.
“Hey,” said a second voice. “are you sure you saw—”
The first man told him to shut up.
Judith took a breath. It came out again as a thin trail of steam. “You,” she hissed at the golem, and the creature turned its glittering, animal eyes on her. What did the rabbis say to their earthen servants in every unlikely story?
“Protect us,” whispered Judith.
The golem rose to its feet. The noise stopped and for a hopeful second Judith thought the men would go somewhere else. Perhaps they were on their way to the river for a particularly wily, nocturnal fish. But that was wrong and she knew it. A twig snapped under a heavy foot, close enough for her to touch.
“I see ’em—”
Two men in coarse, ragged clothing came out of the scrub trees. One had a rifle. The other had a club.
The man with the gun stared at the golem, its black hair flowing over its shoulders, its head uncovered. He took a step toward it and touched its arm as if to make sure it was really there.
Judith’s heart pounded high up in her throat. “Now!”
The golem drove its fingers into the man’s eyes without a cry or warning, or any change in its face. The man reeled backward, howling. His companion raised his club and swung it against the golem’s hip with a sound like a stone hitting packed dirt. The golem didn’t flinch. It lunged at him, wrapping slender fingers around his neck, shaking him until his spine snapped. It dropped him and turned to the blinded man who was trying to crawl away, whimpering in the dirt.
“Stop!” shrieked Judith, and the golem obeyed.
In the blackness there was a huge silence. Then Nekomeh opened her mouth, dry lips over dry teeth, a rasp of understanding rushing out of her. “Let it,” she said. “Let it kill them. Let’s take it home and let it kill them all.”
“Stop,” said Judith, the way Motle might have, stop with his arms flung out to stop the murder and the murderers, now and forever.
They traveled on the road for the rest of the night and into the morning, too tired to be afraid. When daylight came, they walked along the edge of the dirt highway, passed now and then by non-Jews in donkey carts, or on foot. No one paid them any attention. Judith stared after every passing wagon, feeling alternately lucky and then invisible. Years of violence and hatred were somehow blocked off by something so entirely new she couldn’t find a name for it.
“Look at it,” said Moireh, and she nodded at the golem. “Why does it walk like that?”
“What do you mean?” said Nekomeh.
“I mean it just …” Moireh held her arms out from her body and made wider steps until she was swaggering. “What kind of woman walks like that?” She pulled her arms in again, hunching in the cold sun.
Nekomeh bent herself over and hobbled, imitating Moireh. “You’re ten years younger than me or Judith, and you walk like some old crone.”
“It’s my bones,” replied Moireh. “You know he broke my arm. And my knee hasn’t been right since …” She shrugged, but she sounded almost proud of the things her husband had done in his nights of drunken fury. Because she had survived them, Judith thought.
“If you’d had a golem in your house,” said Nekomeh, “your husband would never have hurt you.”
“Maybe you should have had one,” Moireh snapped back. “In all the stories I’ve ever heard, the rabbis make the golem clean until there’s trouble. You could have used one.” She turned to Judith. “Do you think it can do chores?”
Judith tried to picture the golem, trapped in the shtetl with a mop and a bucket, its back bent by housework. “No,” she said. “I don’t think it can.”
Moireh studied the creature. “It’s supposed to be a servant.” Her mouth twisted in confused disgust. “Not a … a wild animal. Or whatever it is.”
“It isn’t wild,” said Nekomeh. “It just doesn’t know how to be afraid.”
“I don’t understand where that came from,” said Judith. “Since I’m the one who made it.”
Moireh glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
Judith shrugged. “I was down by the river when the shooting started. I was too afraid to go back, even when I knew what was happening.” She made a weak gesture at the golem. “It would have dashed in and killed everyone. I could hardly move.”
“The golem is invulnerable,” said Nekomeh. “It’s made of mud and can’t be hurt.” She studied the creature as it walked along. “We should have made one years ago.”
“You could have been killed,” said Moireh. “Why wouldn’t you be afraid?”
“Motle wasn’t.”
Moireh took Judith’s hand. “Motle is dead,” she said. “All of them are dead, afraid or not.”
By nightfall the road was deserted. Along the hillsides campfires flickered among the leafless trees where other travelers had retreated for the night. Cooking smells drifted in the cold air.
Judith huddled next to the fire. The golem had gathered the wood and she had lit it, but the blaze warmed only one side of her, leaving her back and her shoulders as cold as ever. Moireh and Nekomeh had curled up together on a pile of damp leaves and had fallen asleep even before the fire was much more than smoke. Now their faces were caught in the warm light, slack and pale.
Judith looked past the golem where it squatted on the opposite side of the fire. Down the hill, just visible through the leafless woods, she could see the next campsite. There was a wagon, a mule in silhouette against another fire and a woman crouched next to it with a pan. The smell of frying meat wafted in the night.
Judith’s stomach clenched, either in hunger or fear. She stood up on stiff legs, brushing off her dress, shuffling her feet to get the blood moving, not being too quiet in the rustling leaves, but Nekomeh and Moireh didn’t stir. Judith patted at her hair. She found herself wanting to wake Nekomeh and tell her what she was about to do, but she knew Nekomeh’s face would tighten with doubts, and that would be the end of this spurt of courage. The breeze brushed her cheek. This time it carried the scent of bread.