Alone, I am nothing. But I am not alone.

—Scrawled on the wall of an empty Zaskelen prison cell.

Chapter 1: I Won’t Forget This

You only get a mouth as jagged as mine by knowing magic like a rabbi knows his Talmud. That's to say, as much as you can, since there's too much for any human to know everything. But I faced the Puppeteer, the Masked One, and the Wrecker before I turned twenty, with words I invented myself. And I have it in mind to bring up my past—the glory, the scandal, the doom, the so-much-more—and tell you where your world came from, and who shaped it besides me.

It was late spring of 1910, and I'd spent nine nights on the steamship bound for America. My two new friends—both wizards like me—had gotten teasing-curious about my beloved goblin glove puppets.

"Start talking or we'll start guessing." Hode winked at me, pushing a stray wisp of black hair out of her face. Yes, that Hode.

"And we'll make our guesses so boring, you'll tell us just to shut us up." Levine tossed his cap in the air, caught it, and put it back on. Yes, that Levine. "We know how much you hate being bored." He leaned on the railing.

Lucky man, to get that close to the deck's edge. I couldn't have—since we'd left Hamburg in Germany, I'd fought seasickness day and night. But I grinned anyway, basking in the attention Hode and Levine gave my goblin glove puppets. I mostly got raised eyebrows and gossip, and the local matchmaker had turned my parents away, saying there were no husbands for mad girls. That had…stung.

"The puppets aren't sure they want to meet you two," I informed my new friends. "Isaiah is worried you'll guess his secrets, Hode. And Levine, Ruth doesn't want you throwing her in the air like you throw your cap. She'll bite you if you do."

"I wouldn't tell his secrets even if I did guess them," Hode said gravely. "I'm no gossip."

"And I will respect your Ruth puppet as I respect the Torah," Levine added. "Though Mother does always tell me to be careful on Simchat Torah. She thinks I'll fidget at the wrong time and drop it."

"You're not helping." I rolled my eyes. On our holiday of Simchat Torah, we passed around the Torah in the synagogue, and to drop it? Such bad luck… Levine was religious like the rest of us, but Mrs. Levine was right to worry. I'd never seen Levine stand still—he was always twitching his fingers, or tapping his toes, or pacing. Nerves? Hardly. The more Levine moved, the more happy he seemed to be.

"Come on, Alte." It was proper for Hode to call me by my first name, since she was my friend and a woman. Levine, as a man, always called me Miss Sokolsky and called Hode Miss Katz. "We won't make fun of you, we promise."

So fond of them I was, even then. My brother and sister had been my only friends back in my shtetl, my village. But I'd crossed the Russian border with Hode, who knew right away that the first smuggler who offered to take us over was going to cheat us, and we'd have had our luggage stolen if not for Levine and his mother. Bless them all. And though new friends didn't replace my brother and sister, they made me hope I would not be lonely in New York.

"Alright, I'll introduce you," I agreed. I removed the hand with Ruth, my green goblin glove puppet, made of wool with embroidered black spots, from my pocket. My puppets were no treyani—they had no magic in their making, and their voices were my disguised voice. "These are your new friends, Alte?" I made Ruth squawk. "That one is too short; how can she reach high shelves? And the other one should mend that rip in his sleeve if he wants to get women." I made her look at them. "I'm Ruth. Not Ruth of the Book of Ruth. She was too nice."

Both Hode and Levine laughed. "Do you see good in anyone?" Hode asked Ruth.

"Who wants to see good? You'll be disappointed too often. I've got to protect Alte from being let down." Admit the real reason I used my puppets? No.

"I think I'll go on seeing good," Levine said. "If I saw bad everywhere I looked, I'd be disappointed from the start. But I should mend that tear in my sleeve, women or not. You have two puppets, though. Is that other one still frightened of Hode's secret-seeking eyes?"

I got the hand with my purple, black-spotted puppet out of my pocket and made him address Hode and Levine. "I'm Isaiah. Not the Prophet Isaiah. Hearing G-d sounds scary." I turned him to talk to me. "Excellent choices, Alte! Perhaps you'll be friends with them forever! You can enjoy looking at them, at the very least."

Hode and Levine laughed again. I was grateful. I didn't want them to realize that thoughts of us being friends forever really had sneaked into my mind. Nor how handsome I thought Levine was, nor how pretty I thought Hode was. I liked men, but they had never liked me—not the self-taught wizard with a talent for hexes, who adored words as much as kisses. And most ordinary women shied away when they realized I found them pretty the way a traditional man would. Some wizards were different, but they all came from Zaskele, the land-beyond-the-veil, and I knew Hode and Levine were both Russian like me.

"I'd like to be half so optimistic as Not-the-Prophet Isaiah." Hode sighed. "There's so much we don't know about where we're going, and I hate not knowing things. Do either of you have any idea how easy it is to get a job creating treyani in New York?"

"The gossip in my shtetl said it's difficult," I said. "But I don't really know." Treyani weren't the way they are now. Back then, they were just objects enchanted by a wizard to improve their function. A treyani axe might never miss the wood it split, a treyani stove might require half as much coal and give out the same heat, and a treyani gilt necklace might look like real gold. Rarely, wizards had made treyani from houses and synagogues. I would have loved to try such experiments, but had no idea how to start and nobody to teach me. And although many wizards had tried to make intelligent treyani, all had failed, though since the art of treyani-making was very new, I did know it was possible we simply hadn't discovered how to do it.

Hode made a face. "I wish I could have brought some more of the treyani pots and pans and watches I made at home with me. But most of them belonged to other people." Even the treyani we had then, we could only create from objects a person treasured, and so they were rarely sold.

"Mother and I considered it," Levine said. "But all we had were two chairs, and we couldn't see a good way to transport them all the way to America."

I held up Isaiah. "You'll find customers in America, for certain! Even if you don't have the capital for your own shop, the ones there can't all be insular. People with your talents will surely find jobs!"

Hode and Levine both brightened, as I had hoped they might. The art of making treyani had spread to our world from Zaskele only in the past five years. New wizards like us could still get in on the market, especially since treyani could not easily be made in a factory.

We made treyani by gradually storing strong memories inside a treasured object, sealing them with words we loved or hated. The first treyani had been made by a wizard who had escaped Zaskele and come to Earth and married, and had prayed every night not to be taken back as she thought of her wedding ring. That ring had been the first treyani, and it had protected her from those who tried to separate her from her husband. I had hoped and prayed—so much—that making treyani would protect my family and me too. Would it would earn us enough money and respect to keep us safe from those who took out their anger on Jews?

No.

"Teatime," Hode said dryly as some of the crew emerged from the galley. Meals on the steamship had all the charm of rotten liver, but this time I hurried up eagerly anyway. I had been unable to eat dinner, served at noon, not because it wasn't kosher—although it certainly wasn't—but because of my nausea. The soup they always served, which vaguely smelled of mutton bones, had made me throw up twice and I had given up trying to eat it. The rest of dinner was either tough meat, which I could just barely manage, or salt fish, which was impossible. And they'd served salt fish at dinner today, which meant I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. This was not so unusual—I joked, grimly, that food and I had a mutual enmity.

I elbowed my way through the other passengers, who were already swarming the crew. None of us had washed or changed our clothes for days, there being no good place to do either on the steamship, but I was in too much of a hurry to pay attention. I grabbed two biscuits out of a pail one of the crew was offering, prepared to shove them down my throat with no regard for manners. Then I actually looked at the two I'd grabbed, and almost started to cry. There was as much mold as biscuit there, and I couldn't eat the mold. I'd get the equivalent of one biscuit, if I was lucky.

"Alte, what's wrong?" Hode had approached me, Levine behind her, their own biscuits in hand. "Are the biscuits moldy?"

"No." I hated any attention called my troubles with food, but I didn't know why I was bothering to lie. Even after only a few weeks with Hode, I knew she could sniff out falsehoods like milk abandoned on a summer day.

Hode shook her head. "When you say no like that, it just shows you mean yes." She plucked one of my biscuits out of my hand and returned one of her own, just as Levine did the exact same thing. They looked at each other with a mix of amusement and understanding.

"No, wait—" I began, but Levine responded by simply walking away. I looked at Hode helplessly.

"Don't be proud and silly," Hode said. "If you faint we'll have to take care of you, so it's in our best interest to keep you fed." She smiled at me and began picking mold out of the biscuit.

My survival instincts were stronger, by several times, than my manners. I took a huge bite out of a biscuit, mumbling, "Thank you," through it.

Did I deserve this precious help they gave me? No. I wanted there to be a word for when your friends are too good to you, and perhaps there was, in some language unknown to me. Before, I'd have just made it up, as I'd once done for any concept for which there was no word, glorying in my freedom to play around with sound and meanings. But that time was gone.

It was gone—except for one word, niathi. The word I used to describe myself, the word that made a shadowy pit yawn open in my stomach, but that I could not get rid of.

The sun touched the ocean, and Hode went off to listen to the music which some Hungarian passengers had taken up playing in the evenings. A crowd had gathered around them, clapping and stomping their feet to the rhythms. I stayed where I was, feeling the cold salt air on my face and wondering, for the hundredth time, just what I was doing here. I had a pinching terror of failing my sister and brother, Zipporah and Benjamin. I'd heard my parents arguing at night, my father saying, Benjamin should be the one to go, and my mother saying right back, over and over, but Benjamin can't go, not anymore.

So I'd been the one. Not my father, whom my mother feared would go to America and forget the rest of us. Not Zipporah, brave but only eleven. Not my mother, who had to hold the family together back in our home in the province of Minsk in Russia. Not Benjamin, who had told me so many times of how hard he would work, of how soon he would send us money so we could join him. I was the one who'd taken the rubles we'd been saving for the past four years and bought a steamship ticket and was now headed to a country none of us really knew anything about, and I was choked with the fear of letting Zipporah and Benjamin down. I felt my feelings begin to crack like ice, and hastily held my puppets up.

"How are you, Alte?" I made Isaiah ask.

"Scared," I muttered. "Really scared."

"Do you want to be scared?"

"No, but…I should be."

"Why?" Isaiah inquired. "What good does it do?"

At the start of this journey, I would have replied that being scared made me more alert to danger. And perhaps for some people it would. But I'd discovered in the course of my travels that the more fearful I was, the more likely I was to freeze up and be unable to do anything. "I suppose it doesn't do any good."

Ruth chimed in. "Then act like you're not scared. Stop dwelling. Go talk to Levine or something."

I nodded reluctantly. I had sewn at least seven glove puppets before confirming that these two helped the most—Isaiah, who asked me for the truth of my feelings, and Ruth, who encouraged me to behave as if I were brave or happy or calm even when I wasn't, for often the behavior changed the feelings, if only just enough. Yes, I was considered so strange that my siblings were my only friends, but without Isaiah and Ruth, my life would have been even worse.

Explaining this was never easy, but I had always envisioned feelings as the water of a lake covered in a layer of ice. When the water was splashed or disturbed, the feelings got out of control. Most people had control over their feelings; they had ice many inches thick over the water, a barrier between their feelings and anything that might disturb them. What did I have? Only a thin layer of ice, that any rock could chip or crack or even smash, splashing my emotions into chaos.

Which meant that when I didn't have some way to deal with my feelings, I screamed and threw tantrums, even at eighteen years old, because my emotions were too overwhelming, swamping me with blinding rage or huge panic at the tiniest problems or setbacks. I did not want Hode and Levine to see that part of me, ever, so when I felt my ice cracking, I brought out Ruth and Isaiah. How could others control their feelings without even conscious thought, when I could only do so by making myself stop and talk them out aloud? I let out a hiss of a sigh and went to join Levine, who was watching the water and tapping his fingers against the railing.

He turned when I approached. "You look like you've got storms swirling in your head."

I looked away. "It's nothing."

"Don't be ridiculous," Levine said good-naturedly. "You're breaking Levine's Eighth Rule for Survival."

I snorted. Even after only nine days on a steamship with Levine, I'd become familiar with a good few of his Rules for Survival. "And what is Levine's Eighth Rule for Survival?"

"If you must lie, then lie for a good reason and make the lie convincing. Your lie just then was not convincing, and there's no reason for you to pretend you're fine when you aren't. But you don't have to talk about it if you'd rather not."

"You know I nearly died at birth?" I said abruptly.

"I thought maybe," Levine said. "Your name."

I nodded. My name, Alte, meant old one, a trick to fool the Angel of Death into thinking the infant in question was elderly, and would die soon anyway, and thus should be left alone. But though Death had never claimed me, he'd never left me alone either—as I'd grown from a sickly baby into a spindly girl with ash-brown hair and long fingers, it had seemed that particular angel always had at least one of his many eyes on me. "That wasn't the last time. Before I was seven, I nearly drowned twice. Once in the well and once in the river. Before I was twelve, I survived a thunderstorm where I got struck by lightning, and two winter storms." In Minsk, the snowstorms were often deadly. "When I was fourteen, a drunkard flung a knife at me. That's how I got this scar." I pointed at my collarbone—the knife had just missed my throat.

Most people looked surprised at best when I recounted my list of near-deaths; Levine looked somewhat impressed. "Well, you must bring luck."

I croaked a laugh. "I'm lucky; I don't know if I bring luck. The pogrom—" I stopped, because Levine's face had gone blank with just an edge of despair, and his fingers were barely moving. Pogroms—mobs that hated us Jews, that destroyed our property and killed us—were enough of a terror even for those who hadn't experienced them. And I didn't know anything about Levine's past, except that he and his mother came from Odessa and he had a brother and sister. "I didn't mean to remind you of anything."

"If you want to talk about it, you can," Levine said, looking at his hands.

"No. No, I don't want to." I blocked out the memories. They would disturb my feelings as if my thin ice had been smashed by rock. If I could still invent words, perhaps I could soothe my own agony, but that was a useless wish. I rubbed my left thumb against Isaiah's embroidery and tried to think about anything except the fear I'd felt when I'd seen the mob in the street of my shtetl, the fear that had allowed for no thought but run. "Just, I got away, and my brother…didn't. And that's why I'm on my way to America, not him. What right do I have to be on this steamship at all, when I'm only here because he suffered so much?"

Levine gave me an odd, almost soft look. "I understand that, a little at least," he said. "Something like it happened to me. But Miss Katz and I, we're glad you're here."

That did touch me. "Thank you. I…" I paused. "I'm glad to be here too. I don't want to be glad. I almost told my parents we should wait to see if Benjamin got any better. But I didn't. I couldn't survive what my world had become." The terrifying thoughts rose in my head again. What if I was doomed? Then my family would be doomed too. Sometimes I did believe I was niathi—the word I'd invented, which meant death-marked wordmaker. A joke? Perhaps. It had started that way, but these days I believed more and more that it was true. "I hope leaving wasn't selfish."

"I hope not too," Levine muttered, looking at his hands again.

I opened my mouth to try for reassurance, not that I knew what I would say, when Mrs. Levine hurried up to us, tall and sharp-nosed with white in her brown hair. Levine looked at her and his eyes went wide at her expression. "Mother, what's wrong?"

"It's Miss Katz." Mrs. Levine shoved her spectacles up on her nose. "She's staring like she sees a monster right in front of her, only nothing's there. Crying and shaking, and I couldn't wake her, not even when I spoke right in her ear, not even when I stood right in front of her."

My breath hitched. "Nightmare hex." I bolted, Levine and his mother right behind me.

Hode was on the other side of the steamship deck. She was trembling from ankles up, white as salt, and she wasn't even wiping away the tears pouring out of her now-enormous eyes. Mrs. Levine gently shook her shoulder, while Levine began murmuring to her. But this would not be solved with comfort. I raised my voice, hoping to be heard over the Hungarian instruments. "Wizard! Whoever you are, torturing my friend. Don't hide away like a coward! Face me." My feelings were roiling over me, but I didn't care to keep them in just now.

"Miss Sokolsky, what are you doing?" Levine demanded. "We don't know anything about this wizard!" I ignored him. We couldn't leave Hode in this mess, not when we had no idea what the wizard was doing to her, or planning to do.

"Gamble with me, wizard!" I shouted. "Come out and duel with me! I'll offer you good stakes!" I scanned the crowd. All I saw were people looking surprised at my yelling in my sweet Zaskelen—sweet being my designation of the language—which they would hear as nonsense. The rare non-wizard who spoke my sweet Zaskelen would have backed away upon hearing my challenge. Everyone with sense got out of the way of hexing. "Will you make me come and find you, wizard? Will you make me drag you out?"

"I doubt very much you could do that," said an amused voice to my left.

I whirled around and saw a nearly-white-skinned man of medium height, dressed all in white embroidered liberally with black from head to foot. His hair was an almost-white gold and fell to the middle of his back, though he had no beard. No such styles, in either clothes or hair, were frequent among the humans I had seen anywhere at home or in my travels, and they told me he was from Zaskele, from the land-beyond-the-veil. But they were not what told me he was a wizard. It was his mouth. It was crooked, almost jagged, as if somebody had cut his lips into peaks and valleys, and his teeth were a shining black that caught the light.

To utter hexes would do that to your mouth. Mine was slowly becoming the same, and I supposed Hode's and Levine's must also be, but the magic had not yet wrought visible change on any of us. That this wizard had an obvious hexing mouth meant that he was considerably more experienced than we, and with experience usually came power.

It didn't surprise me that I hadn't seen him before. He'd likely spoken do-not-notice hexes when he got on the steamship. Human wizards fleeing from Zaskele often did—they tended to be anxious about being taken back, or else the habits of hiding simply held strong. Usually I felt great sympathy for Zaskelen humans. The rulers of Zaskele enslaved them, and had for centuries kept gesture-magic from them, until the Zaskelen humans had finally managed to invent word-magic—the kind we Earth humans had learned from them. But I wasn't going to feel sympathy for anyone who used nightmare hexes. I raised my chin. "You think I'm afraid of you?"

"I think you should be," the wizard replied. "And who is this young woman to you, that you call me out to gamble for her sake?" He pointed at Hode, who was still shaking and crying, with Levine and his mother flanking her and both glaring at the wizard.

"My friend," I said flatly.

"Of how long?" the wizard asked, seeming more amused than ever.

"A few weeks," I said. "And I want—"

The wizard interrupted me with a high, hiccupping sort of laugh that screeched in my ears. "You'll duel with me, for somebody you've known a few weeks? You're mad."

My feelings cracked inside me—anger this time, not fear. I wanted to slap the wizard, but just dragged the impulse back. I held up my left hand, with my Isaiah glove puppet on it. "Do you really want to do that, Alte?" I made him squeak.

"No," I muttered.

Out came my Ruth glove puppet. "So act calm," I made her declare. "Act calm and you'll knock his soul right over!"

"What are you doing?" the wizard inquired warily.

With enormous effort, I shoved my hands into my pockets, sending Ruth and Isaiah with them. "Nothing. What does it matter to you, why I want to duel with you? I'm willing and I have the skill and I have an embroidered tablecloth that my mother and I stitched for a whole winter, for my dowry. I'll lay it down as stakes." I'd been the subject of a nightmare hex in the past and I wasn't willing to let the same thing happen to Hode. Nightmare hexes could mean seeing visions of your mother being pushed off a cliff, visions of your husband having his throat cut or your wife's skull broken with a rock, visions of your only child drowning. I had been saved by a wizard passerby, but if I didn't save Hode, nobody might—and she'd be wracked by nightmares until the wizard tired of her, which could be in months or years.

The wizard looked intrigued. "Show me this tablecloth."

I took my hands out of my pockets and got the tablecloth out from the bottom of my bag, holding it up enticingly. As I had suspected, the wizard drew in so close that his nose almost touched the fabric. The more work and emotion had been put into something, the more any wizard wanted it, even if my emotions about a dowry—about getting married—were decidedly mixed. "Well?"

"One round of hexing," the wizard pronounced. "If I win, I get all the fear I want from the girl, and get that." He pointed at the tablecloth. "If you win, you keep it and she's free."

It was a classic wager. "Yes." I thrust my bag and the tablecloth into Mrs. Levine's arms and began flicking through my memories. The wizard closed his eyes, no doubt doing the same. I refused to let myself fear. Since I'd had a nightmare hex put on me before, I was now immune to them, just as Hode would be if we freed her.

And what other things could this wizard do to us, if I lost? I'd just ignore that possibility.

"What's a nightmare hex?" Mrs. Levine asked, low. "What is that wizard doing to Miss Katz?" Since I'd spoken with the wizard in my sweet Zaskelen, not my darling Yiddish, she wouldn't have known what we were saying, though Levine, as a wizard, would have.

"He's bringing all her worst nightmares to the front of her mind, to distract her so she can't fight him off," Levine muttered. "He's searching her mind for strong memories he can use for himself."

Mrs. Levine looked a mixture of indignant, disturbed, and terrified, which was about how I felt. She opened her mouth, but before she could say whatever she'd planned to say, we heard another voice.

"Sebri, what are you up to now?"

I looked over to see a woman just emerging from the crowd, most of whom were edging away from us. She had the same skin, and the same hair—almost-white gold—down to her waist, and was dressed all in black with white embroidery. And she had the crooked mouth and the black teeth. Another one. How many wizards could one steamship hold?

"I needed some new memories," the first wizard informed her. "Don't give me a lecture. I have to duel with this one." He jabbed a thumb at me.

"For the freedom of that girl you're stealing memories from, I suppose." The other wizard eyed me with weary interest.

"How did you know?" the first wizard demanded.

The other wizard sighed. "If you weren't a reckless fool, you wouldn't have chosen to steal memories from a girl who's friends with the only other two wizards on this steamship."

"I didn't want some plain ordinary memories," the first wizard retorted. "I wanted memories with magic. That means draining a wizard."

The other wizard folded her arms. "And now you'll duel with her friend, hm? What if she does get into your mind?"

"Not a chance," the first wizard said scornfully.

The other wizard raised her eyebrows. "Now you're just being arrogant, Sebri."

Not for the first time, I was grateful for the magic of hexing mouths, and hexing ears. If any wizard heard or read any word, and found out the meaning, it instantly became part of their automatic vocabulary. Hode, Levine, and I, all native speakers of my darling Yiddish, had become excellent speakers of my sweet Zaskelen by talking with passing Zaskelen wizards, and by reading the books they lent us. We were hoping this same magic would help us learn English as well—I had not yet given an adjective to English as I had to my sweet Zaskelen or my darling Yiddish, since I had barely heard a word of it.

The first wizard—Sebri, I now presumed—glared at the newcomer. "You're obnoxious, Vreya. Go away."

"No." Vreya gave Sebri a look that somehow combined patience and exasperation. "I know that shield-hex you're using, and it's dangerous. You need me to keep an eye on you." She turned to observe the rest of us, and I blinked in surprise.

Vreya had a raw red burn scar reaching from her left temple all the way down her cheek, to the left side of her jaw. Somehow her eye had been spared damage, though I wasn't sure how, since her eyelid was completely gone. She caught me staring and chuckled, and tapped her eye. It made the sound of a fingernail on glass. "False eye, daring one."

I dragged my eyes from her to Sebri. "Two minutes from now to prepare?" He nodded and closed his own eyes again. I didn't trust him or Vreya enough to do that, but did turn half-away so I could both watch them and concentrate to some extent.

Given I knew nothing about Sebri, I'd have to wait until I got a look at his shield-hexes to know where he would be vulnerable. The best way to use my time now would be to develop my own defenses. My first shield-hex, the outermost one, was all memories of food. Some might scorn such a strategy as plebeian, but tastes and smells were so very vivid that this shield-hex rarely failed. It appeared as layers of orange-pink mist that resembled some sunrises.

My second shield-hex was the time I'd stood up to my father when he threatened to stop me from hexing. It wasn't a happy memory, but I'd grown up that day. Rites of passage for a shield-hex? So strong…I'd met a couple of Jewish wizards who always used their bar mitzvot, which was when they became adults. The hex appeared as well-polished iron bars.

My third shield-hex, the one to use when all else failed, had always been the year after year after year Benjamin and I had found the afikomen together—found the special piece of matzo wrapped in a cloth and hidden on Passover. With my wits and Benjamin's together, we found it so often the other children had protested that it was unfair.

It was a repeated memory, which made it strong, and one of my most joyful, which made it more durable yet. But now, with Benjamin so far away from me, so hurt—would it be as strong as it had been? I didn't know, but it was the best I had, so I left it as it was, looking like a woven rainbow of multicolored fibers, soft but strong.

"Are you ready, daring one?" Vreya inquired of me. Sebri clearly was, and he looked confident. I assumed a wary expression, to let him think my tactics would be wary also.

"I'm ready," I told them.

Vreya nodded. "Then duel."

I closed my body's eyes and opened my soul's eyes. Now I floated in a world of grey mist, existing only as a soul, as a globe of blue-white light. Sebri's soul hovered across from mine, each waiting for an attack on the shield-hexes behind us, the shield-hexes we were guarding. They were the only thing that defended our minds from the other's invasion.

I threw my soul at Sebri's shield-hex, hoping to hook on it and tear a piece or two out, or at least to disconcert him with my sudden attack. Instead, I slammed into the hardest shield-hex I'd ever encountered—not only hard, but so slippery I couldn't get a grip on it. Sebri's soul shot towards my own shield-hex. To my relief, he bounced off it, though not as hard as I'd bounced off his. I hastily backed off to guard my own shields again, trying to recover from my dizziness, and took a better look at the shield-hex. It resembled a square of rusty steel. Very hard rusty steel. How was I supposed to get through a shield-hex made from such strong memories? For it was clear to me that those memories, whether joyful or grieved or angry or delighted, were some of the strongest I'd ever encountered.

In my soul-state, I could feel the tension rolling off our audience—Levine terrified for me after he sensed Sebri's shield-hex, Vreya wary for Sebri after she sensed mine, and Mrs. Levine, being unable to see anything beyond us standing there with our eyes closed, grimly longing to kick Sebri in the kneecaps and knowing that would only make it worse. None of the steamship's other inhabitants seemed to notice what was going on at all, which was no surprise. Only a wizard could sense shield-hexes, and it would have been very odd to have more wizards on this ship.

I began slowly circling Sebri's soul one way, then turning and circling the other way before he could even move to block me, then doing the same on the other side. I had learned that this threw opponents off-balance, and it gave me time to think. I didn't think Sebri could get through my shield-hexes easily, but that wouldn't help if I couldn't get through his. I needed a better look at it. Which meant I had to give Sebri's soul the distraction of attacking my shield-hexes, so I could observe his for a few minutes without interruption. Now, if Sebri's soul would just get impatient with my pacing and go on the attack…

As if to answer my hope, Sebri's soul leaped at me. I dove out of the way, throwing in a bit of fear to make my flight more convincing. Sebri's soul turned its attention to burrowing through my orange-pink food-memory shield-hex, and I turned to observing his. What had stopped me so thoroughly? What memories had Sebri used to form such a strong shield-hex?

Memories of war as a conscripted soldier.

Usually I wouldn't have been so sure, but my father had been conscripted into the Tsar's army, as so many Jewish men were. When I was first using magic, and my control wasn't as good, I had accidently dipped into my father's memories. It was very specific pain, and I was seeing it now. I had seen much agony in Zaskelen wizards' minds, given how badly the Zaskelen rulers treated humans, but not this precise thing.

I almost gave up then and there. This was a kind of agony I could not understand, and the less you could wrap your mind around the emotions in a shield-hex, the harder it was to have any power over it. I couldn't even begin to think of how to break this shield-hex. However…

I peered at the shield-hex. It was the strongest I'd fought, but it was clumsy, with not only rust, but warping, and weak nails in its four corners—evidence that little effort had been spent on it. And I suspected I knew why. Sebri had not wanted, perhaps could not bear, to spend much time with these memories. So he'd thrown the shield-hex together, not wanting to revisit the pain of conscription and being forced into training and going to war for a cause he didn't care about. And he'd probably thought he wouldn't need to, believed that such deep agony would be enough to repel other wizards all on its own, especially a wizard like me, whom he'd dismissed right away.

This shield-hex could not be broken—but perhaps it could be taken apart.

A sharp pain made me jolt around to observe Sebri's soul. He'd broken through my first shield-hex, burrowed his way through my layers of orange-pink mist and food memories, and had just slammed into the second shield-hex, the iron-bar memory of my standing up to my father. He was having more trouble with this one, but I doubted it would hold him forever. Time to make my own move.

Wizards used words or memories to form shield-hexes, and words or memories to take them apart. I had found that words with double meanings worked the best. Once, I would have invented one in an instant, but I couldn't do that anymore. At least I could still use other words. If I was calculating correctly, Sebri's shield-hex would no longer protect his mind if I took out the nails on at least three corners. I conjured kashe, which in my darling Yiddish meant both a difficult question and buckwheat porridge, and which appeared as claw-shaped to me. I hooked it over the nail holding the first corner of Sebri's shield-hex, and yanked.

Sebri's soul had given up trying to burrow through my second shield-hex and was simply bashing himself against it, attempting to crack the iron bars open. If he did, it would be agony for me, but I went on grimly yanking away. He obviously didn't believe that my actions now were a real threat, but once he figured it out, I would need all my strength.

The first nail on Sebri's shield came out. I promptly went to the second, which was easier—it came free after only a little yanking with kashe. I moved to the third corner.

When Sebri's soul hit mine, I almost fell off the shield, and I did drop kashe. There was no time to retrieve it. I instead conjured yoyz, which meant either crucifix or sourpuss, and which appeared as a lodestone to me. I made its magnet-force pull on the last nail, gripping the steel shield-hex with all my might so I wouldn't fall off. Sebri's soul was now slamming into me every few seconds, having clearly realized he was in real danger. His soul was smashing into mine so hard that the teeth in my physical body were rattling too.

He knocked yoyz out of my hand, but he was too late, and the third corner came loose. With only one corner still attached, the shield-hex creaked, ready to fall, and Sebri's soul flew to hold it in place, with obvious effort. I thought furiously. If I disturbed him enough, he would drop it, but if I waited too long, he might be able to fix it. What disturbing memory could I use? I grabbed the first one I could think of—the drunkard throwing the knife at me—and hurled it.

The shield fell, and unlike me, Sebri had one instead of three. Determined not to let him stop me, I dove into his mind.

And nearly choked in shock—because it was like mine. Not exactly, but it had those same out-of-control feelings. I didn't know if he'd always been that way, like me, or if some grief or cruelty had done it, but it was unmistakable. I'd dueled with many wizards, but never encountered this.

I shot out of Sebri's mind and back into my body, blinking my watering eyes. Sebri was shaking. "I concede," he spat at me. "Stay out of my way once we're in New York." He stalked off.

Vreya gave me a measuring look, then turned to Levine. "As soon as you get onto Ellis Island, start using do-not-notice hexes, or you'll be in trouble." She walked off.

I blinked at Levine. "Why would you need to do that?"

Levine frowned. "I…don't know."

Hode dropped to her hands and knees, gasping. Mrs. Levine hurried to her. "Miss Katz, how are you?"

Hode stared up at Mrs. Levine, then past her to Levine and me. "What happened?" Her voice came out small and lost, and still rough with crying. "I thought I was by the river. I thought I—I was finding him again."

"No river here," Levine assured her. "Just all this salt water that makes Miss Sokolsky sick." I glared at him.

Hode wasn't in a living nightmare anymore, but neither was she recovered. She refused to sleep, and cried on and off all night. Luckily there was no storm, and we were permitted to stay on the deck at night, so Levine, Mrs. Levine, and I took turns sitting with her, surrounded by the sleepy bodies of other immigrants. During my third shift, the sun was showing grey where sky met sea, and I was just about to let my heavy eyelids fall shut when I felt Hode grasp the hand with Isaiah on it.

"What is it?" I asked groggily, kneading my eyes with my Ruth hand.

"While you were asleep, Levine told me what you did," Hode said. "How you got that wizard to let me go. He could have really hurt you, if he'd gotten past your shield-hexes. He could even have done something to you just for daring to challenge him."

"Yes," I admitted. I decided not to mention that in my opinion, it would be better for Sebri to hurt me than her. Hode wasn't niathi, wasn't death-marked. But she would likely argue with me. "It was still worth it."

Hode squeezed my Isaiah hand. "I won't forget this. It meant a lot to me." She paused. "Do you think wizards like that are—common, in America?"

"Sebri isn't an American wizard," I pointed out. "He's an immigrant, same as us."

"That doesn't answer my question, Alte."

I sighed. "I don't know. I hope not."

"Land!" somebody shouted. "Land to the west!"

Hode drew a sharp breath. All around us, people were scrambling to their feet, running for the railing. For once heedless of nausea, I ran after them and drove sharp elbows into people until I could see too.

It was only a smudge, but the smudge was growing bigger every moment, and around me, people were erupting into feeling. A young couple were standing there just laughing as if they'd heard a joke from an angel. A man, whom I knew from the voyage was a terrible grouch, was kissing his wife. Children were tugging on their mother's skirts and father's trouser legs, hoping to be lifted up to see. Everyone, in a dozen voices—

"America!"

"It's America!"

"We're here!"

"America!"

"We made it." Levine had elbowed his way after me and he sounded stunned. "We—we made it."

"I know." My voice was as awed as his. We were here. I couldn't help but wonder, though…

What else would we have to survive?

Commentary for Chapter 1

This is not necessary to follow the story, but will offer further insight if you want it.

This story is vital to my heart. I chose to write it, and some accompanying essays, as my capstone study when I graduated from college in 2022—and thus, it was my first semi-public declaration of my desire to write fantasy about characters who are both queer and neurodivergent. I'd written about all those things separately in workshopped plays, and I'd written private stories about them together, but You Speak and Stars Fall was my "coming out" as a queer neurodivergent fantasy author, even though it was just to my advisors and the people at my capstone presentation. It didn't go exactly the way I wanted it to, but looking back, I'm extremely proud of choosing the path I did, and I'm also very happy with this story—the opening you have just read, and also the chapters to come.

You Speak and Stars Fall is also a tribute to my chosen family. It's rarely acknowledged by our culture, but there is no such thing as a hero, in fantasy or life, who triumphs alone. We all have people, often many people, who help us get where we're going. My blood family is very dear to me, but this particular story is a paean to my friends, who are as wonderful and important to me as my protagonist's friends are to her. Many people who are queer, neurodivergent, or both rely on their chosen family in place of blood family due to rejection or toxicity. Even such people who have healthy blood families (like me) often gather chosen families as well, for additional love and understanding, and to support others. Romance is wonderful, and this story has that as well, but the romance is between friends, and the non-romantic friendships are equally important. In 1910s New York City, a place where Jewish immigrants would struggle to have their queerness even tolerated, much less affirmed, and with the magical forces our heroes must battle, they will need all the support they can get.

I consulted many social history books, memoirs, and psychology texts while writing, in order to ground my historical fantasy in fact. The ones I'll refer to in this particular commentary are: Not So Long Ago by Emma Beckerman, At the Edge of a Dream by Lawrence J. Epstein, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars by Elizabeth Ewen, DBT Training: Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition by Marsha M. Linehan, The Time That Was Then by Harry Roskolenko, and Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods by Michael Wex.

The trip from Hamburg to New York City via steamship could take anywhere from eight to fourteen days. People keen on immigrating to the United States from Eastern Europe could go to any number of ports—Bremen and Hamburg in Germany, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, or Antwerp in Belgium. Alte, living in Russia, could conceivably have chosen to go to Hamburg from her shtetl (Epstein 17).

To get out of Russia, immigrants could choose to go legally or illegally. To go legally required visas and other papers that could take years to obtain. If you chose the illegal path, you would often have to pay bribes and take a risky journey over the Russia border. As Abraham Cahan wrote later about his illegal trip out of Russia: "We waited a long time…before realizing we were being held for more money. Having paid, we moved on. We made a strange group going across fields and meadows in the night, halted suddenly every few minutes by the tall peasant holding up his finger and pausing to listen for god-knows-what disaster…We stumbled on endlessly. It seemed as if the border were miles away. Then the peasant straightened up and announced that we were already well inside Austria." (Cahan quoted in At the Edge of a Dream 18)

Many Jews will not write "God" on paper when referring to the singular divine, but will instead write "G-d" as Alte does here. This is because the paper could be torn up, burned, or otherwise destroyed, thus desecrating the written name of God. Since the conceit is that Alte is writing this on paper, I went with G-d. Alte is less religious than many of her fellows, but I think that habit would hold strong.

Alte is very pansexual. (If anyone doesn't know, pansexual means attracted to all genders.) I'm pansexual too, and I love writing such characters.

Do I like writing about objects with life in them? Why, yes, I do. (I created a magic system that includes objects with souls in another story of mine, Ironclaw New York, which I’m running on Patreon. I'm also pretty into Star Wars droids.) I don't know why. Why is water wet? We all have our things.

The steamships indeed served soup of mutton bones, tough meat, salt fish, and moldy biscuits to their passengers (Beckerman 9 and Epstein 24).

Eating disorders in United States culture are highly associated with body image. I don't doubt that many people have that problem. But I and a number of people to whom I'm close struggle with food, and none of us have particular issues with body image. Our problem, which Alte shares, is that our bodies simply reject certain foods—not because of allergies, but because the textures, smells, or tastes are too intense for us, or read as disgusting. For some of us, it's due to Autism. For Alte, it's part of her own neurodivergence—more on that later.

Hungarian passengers (and Slovak passengers) did sometimes play music aboard the steamships (Epstein 22).

To send a young woman as the first immigrant in a family, and alone, wasn't the usual tack, though it was not unheard of. Often, fathers were the first to immigrate, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for Alte's family to fear that her father would go to the United States and abandon them—this did happen (Ewen 53). Due to her mother's worries about that, and Benjamin's new disability, Alte is the first.

By 1900, the cost of a steamship ticket to the United States was between $34 and $37 (Ewen 56). By 1910, the year of Alte's journey, it may well have been even more. Either way, that was a lot of money for the average Jewish family in Eastern Europe. Alte's family probably spent years saving for the first steamship ticket—once an immigrant was in New York, they could work and bring the rest of the family over (Epstein 20).

I was torn between trying to figure out what Alte's mental health problem is in modern terms, and feeling that such modern vocabulary wasn't really relevant in writing this particular story—only her symptoms were relevant. Many people have mental health problems that don't neatly fit into a diagnosis, or fall into multiple diagnoses. So I eventually decided to focus solely on Alte's symptoms, because that is what she would focus on.

The technical name for those symptoms, if you're interested, is emotion dysregulation. In other words, Alte's emotions—fear and anger for her in particular—are very strong and she needs more strategies than most people to regulate them. Thus, the puppets.

Isaiah and Ruth recommend strategies that, in the world of the story, Alte has stumbled across accidentally. But in my world, they are drawn from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a kind of therapy focused on (among many other things) giving patients strategies to not let their emotions rule them. I do a lot of DBT and it works very well for me. Isaiah recommends a strategy called "Check the Facts," where you ask yourself whether your current emotion is helping you. Ruth recommends a strategy called "Opposite Action," where, if your emotion is not help you, you do the opposite of what you feel. DBT was developed by Dr. Marsha M. Linehan, and these strategies can be found in her book DBT Training: Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition. Quite helpful for some of us! (My story Serathi and the Demon Wing also features a protagonist who uses tactics drawn from DBT.)

Pogroms were very violent, often grotesquely so. I may go into that later, but I'll have a trigger warning. For now, just know: Alte's brother losing his leg was probably nowhere near the worst thing that happened at that pogrom.

I had good fun choosing the adjectives for the languages (sweet Zaskelen, darling Yiddish). English will have one too!

Alte's antipathy for marriage is not an antipathy for sexual love. We'll find out later what she specifically objects to around marriage.

It is unusual to have so many wizards on one steamship, but wizards in this world are not vanishingly rare, just somewhat uncommon. Alte and company will meet more in New York City.

The ability to learn a language quickly—which Alte, Hode, and Levine all possess, since they are all wizards—is partially thematic, since Alte loves words so greatly and I wanted to give her access to words in multiple languages. However, I also wanted to give our three wizards access to people who don't speak Yiddish, later on. They will still have to work hard to learn English, but my vision for this series goes beyond the world of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants. So I had to figure out a way to give our heroes somewhat-enhanced language skills, without entirely removing the struggle that most immigrants experience, of adapting to a country with a different dominant language.

Finding the afikomen is fun! My dad was always good at hiding it without the rest of us even noticing he'd done it.

Many Jewish men fled Russia to avoid the draft—the army did all they could to force Jewish conscripts to give up their Judaism (Epstein 4-8). Harry Roskolenko, son of Jewish immigrants, wrote in his memoir: "Neither Uncle Solomon nor my father had any use for the Tsar—for they had both served in his armies. My father carried with him forever the scares and lashes from the nagaika [whip] across his back." (Roskolenko 124)

By no stretch of the imagination do I speak Yiddish, but I have found some words and idioms I love in the course of my research. Kashe and yoyz are two of them, and you will encounter more later. If anyone is interested in a book that introduces many interesting elements of Yiddish without requiring you to wade through intricacies of grammar, I recommend Born to Kvetch by Michael Wex, which is where I got most of my information, including the above words and meanings.

Some of you might be able to guess why Levine will need do-not-notice hexes on Ellis Island. If you can't, don't worry—all will be revealed later on!

I drew inspiration for this last section from the following, written by Anzia Yezierska: "All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get their first glimpse of the golden country, lifting their children on their shoulders so they might see beyond them. Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old friends in love. Age-old visions sang themselves to me—songs of freedom of an oppressed people. America—America." (Yezierska quoted in At the Edge of a Dream 26)

And that's it for now! See you next time.

© Elijah Merrill 2024

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