“She’s like the glass, break her and you’re the one who’s bleeding.” Mr. Terach Naftali was known for his tall tales and aims to fool everyone in his path for his own benefit. It seemed like the whole land of Kleyn knew about the time that he’d tricked the bartender, Gal, into giving him all the gin that she’d been saving up to sell for thousands of tin koins. And word was, he drank all of it, too. Gal wasn’t easily fooled, but in a Territory this big, heists were easy to pull off.
Gal rolled her eyes. “Just because there is no one here today doesn’t mean I’ll listen to you again, you old fool. If only I could throw you out.”
Terach shook his head. “No ma’am. No ma’am. No, no, no, no. I saw her. I really saw her. With my own eyes. Please listen.”
“That’s what you said last time. You’re nothing but a deceitful idiot, Terach. Now please, go annoy someone else.” Gal was right. She was so, so right.
But this time, sitting on the stool next to me, pale as a ghost, Terach looked as truthful as the purest rabbi in town.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Terach slid off the stool and lumbered out of the bar. He might have been just a con artist, but that one tear sliding slowly down his wrinkled cheek seemed very, very real. I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. That description… of that woman… was eerily similar to something my mother had once told me…
I shook my thoughts away. Who believed a town basket case? Besides, I was only here for a few days. Just enough to grab the small amount of things that my mother and father had left for me. Tatte and Mamme were always good at hiding things, and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it took the authorities years to find their will.
“Dara!” Ada sang out from the door. The wind chimes that sounded every time someone walked into the bar tinkled their lovely little lilt from the black-haired beauty known as Ada bursting inside. “Vee geit es?”
“Ada!” I jumped down from the spot I always sat at while waiting for a late appearance from my best friend. “You know I only know how to say ‘baren ir’ in Yiddish.”
‘Vee geit es?’ basically means ‘how’s it going?’ and I knew that quite well from a class I took in college. But… after what happened to my dad, Yiddish was a language I liked to stay away from. However, the words ‘baren ir’ summed up what I wanted to tell everyone in this hell hole. I longed to see what they said behind my back now that I was a scholar. Now that I’d gathered all the information I could about the myths and legends in the Kabbalah and came back with all my diplomas, all my wisdom, and all my hate, I wondered if they would still make fun of me. Just because I liked math and reading didn’t mean I was crazy, contrary to the housewives of Kleyn’s popular belief. It just meant they were stupid.
And yes, ‘baren ir’ means ‘fuck you’.
Ada laughed, a sound similar to the tinkling of a bell, but then became serious. She had a Ruslan face, the face that the most beautiful Ruslan queens harbored. “God would not like that, Dar. Be careful what you say.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what? I don’t necessarily care.” Religion was cool, and I respected it, but it wasn’t for me.
Ada shook her head. Those lovely black waves swayed to the rhythm of the way she moved her head. “Oh, Dara. Dara, Dara, Dara. I’ve missed you more than anything! Life has been so boring without you!”
“Ada, seeing you is the one thing that really made me want to come back to this segment of Kleyn. Too many memories around here for my taste. And not memories of the good kind.” I looked around with a shudder. “I just wish I could go back to that day. The day I was about to leave, the day before everything happened. Maybe if I had just told Mamme--”
Ada’s eyes flashed. I was lost in them for a second; her eyes were the strangest, most beautiful color I had ever seen. They were blue, but they blended to green, and then to gray, depending on how you looked at them. And when Ada was angry… they seemed to almost come alive, like a stormy day at sea.
“Listen to me, Dara.” Ada was saying. “Nothing that happened that day could have been prevented. Never dwell on the past. You are the most amazing person I have ever met. Nothing could have possibly saved them. There is no use in hurting yourself journeying back into that hole of what could have been.”
“Thank you, Ada,” I whispered. “You’re right. There’s no use in wishing the past could be changed. Let’s have a drink and… talk about the future.”
We found our way to a table and chatted for a long while.
And I thought.
Ada was right. I could never change the past or save anyone from a time before. But I could save people now. I could study the legends and myths my people made for many, many lifetimes, and I could learn. And that was what I intended to do. Pay off my debt to my grandmother back in Rusla, leave Kleyn forever, and go to the land of Aoyfklern. The land where all of the scholars lived, the land where no one could ever get hurt.
And for the rest of my life, I would research and research, and then I would find out what happened to my dad. The force that killed him, whatever it was.
The monster from the Kabbalah that ended Tatte, which left him reduced into nothing but skin and bone and blood.
What my mother couldn’t bring herself to explain to me because of the terrible sights that she witnessed.
What drove Mamme insane and left her dead in her bed with a knife in her hand.
What people told stories about, what people were haunted by.
And when I found that, I would end it. Just like it ended my happiness.
If only I had known the terrible truth of that moment. The terrible truth that the Woman of Glass, that terrible monster, she was my own rage.
My own rage that had been bottled up inside for so long, that when it finally broke out, it had killed everyone that ever dared to cross my path or tell me I was wrong in my lifetime.
And it was coming for me next.
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