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“There’s a blaze of light in every word;
It doesn’t matter which you heard –
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.”
-- “Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen
A long, long time ago, long before my grandparents were born – before even their grandparents were born! – a great miracle occurred in the land of Israel. In this time, our people still worshiped HaShem in the Beit HaMikdash, in the Temple. But the land had come under the rule of the wicked king Antiochus. He was a Greek, and although the Greeks believed in many gods of their own, they did not believe in HaShem. Antiochus ruled over many people, and many cultures, but he wanted all of his empire to be a Greek empire. So, my aineklach, this Antiochus began to outlaw many of our Mitzvot – he forbade the observance of Shabbat, of Pesach; he said that we could not eat or dress differently than his Greek people; he forbade the study of the Torah; and worst of all, he would not allow us to worship in the Beit HaMikdash. Instead, his soldiers desecrated this holy place, and Antiochus made altars to his own gods in the place that had been reserved for HaShem. Oh, such a terrible time! And what could the people do? Well, kinder, many of them did nothing. They decided that the darkness of Antiochus was more powerful than the light of HaShem, and that it was easier and safer to let it be, to do what they were told and let the dark rule over them. But there was one man who decided that he would not live in the dark. And this one man was the beginning of the miracle….
The Gotham sunset washed Harley’s pale skin into a milky lavender as she tiptoed through the deserted first floor of the gutted warehouse, her hands cradling a pile of mismatched and lumpy shapes against her stomach. Bits of debris and ceiling plaster made tiny sounds as her feet knocked them out of their dust-blanketed places. Her breath floated away from her in little clouds as she made her way to the furthest corner of the black vaulted room. It was four days until Christmas, and there was hardly any glass left in the windows here on the ground floor. Actually, there was hardly anything at all left on this floor. Harley glanced around at the concrete walls as she approached the last window; the blocks were still black and scorched, making the darkness appear deeper than it actually was. The warehouse stood on the corner of Pikel, just north of Chinatown, and if Harley had leaned out one of those last few windows and looked on a diagonal, she would have been able to see the no-man’s-land that had once been the intersection of Avenue X and Cicero. The carnage of the explosion had since been cleared, the skeletons of the buildings razed to the ground, and the whole block was now a flat gray expanse surrounded by structures that were almost all condemned. The flames had reached far enough into the adjoining streets to scorch the whole eastern side of the warehouse where Harley now sat. The Joker and his gang were camped out in the upper floors on the opposite end, prepping for some sort of stunt the Joker wanted accomplished by Christmas Eve. Up there they had a camping stove, intact windows, boxes of weapons, food, and a mass of scribbles and notes all over one wall. But here on the east end of the warehouse, all was cold, quiet and still.
Harley dropped her lumpy burdens in front of the window and tried to brush away the residue some of them had left on her leather jacket. Then she began lining them up on the window sill. They were the product of a week’s worth of scrounging in dumpsters around the city, anywhere they had stopped long enough for her to search. In the end, she had come up with four tall dinner candles thrown out by some restaurant (one of them cracked), a pink-striped birthday candle shaped like a number four, two ugly mauve lumps of the kind used by old ladies in wall sconces, and one fat apple-cinnamon monstrosity that had burned sideways. They were a pathetic little group, but they were the best she could do. She just hoped they all had enough burn time in them. The big fat one would definitely have that covered, so she’d light that one first; but the wick on that number four looked awfully short. It would have to do, though. It was all she had.
From the breast pocket of her jacket she wrestled a lighter. The big candle and the mauve twins were sitting firmly on the sill, but the number and the dinner candles would need help standing up. She picked up the first one and held the lighter under it to soften the base; if she could get them melty enough, she could stick them to the concrete.
Who was the one man, Zayde?
The smell of the wax and the soft flicker of the flame brought the memories back just like playing an old cassette tape, and Harley let her grandfather’s soft voice fill in the silence around her as she watched the wax begin to run.
His name was Matityahu, little one. And he was determined that he would not allow himself and his people to be pressed down into nothingness. He knew what I have always told you girls – that when it looks like nothing can be done….
…then that’s when you should do something?
Exactly! Whenever there is darkness, you add the light. And whenever it looks as though there is nothing you can do, that is exactly the moment when you should do the thing, hard as it is. Matityahu knew it, and he taught it to his sons, just like I have taught it to you….
Harley squelched the dinner candle into its place in the line and sat back on the dusty floor with a sigh. Her grandfather’s rug, it wasn’t. She brushed at some of the gray powder beside her wistfully, thinking about that soft blue rug. The pile had been deep and mossy, and always cool no matter the temperature of the room, the color of cotton candy at the pier in sunlight. She remembered vividly the way it felt when she had buried her little child’s fingers in it - the sense that if she had pushed her hand far enough and hard enough between the fibers that it would have just kept going, through a cool and quiet membrane into some Other Place. Some magic Place like the other side of a mirror, a forest of silent blue trees where all her grandfather’s stories were happening for real. That rug and that piece of floor had been the heart of the whole room. That front parlor on her grandparents’ side of her childhood house had been like a divided Berlin – her grandmother’s couch and television and footstool and lace-draped coffee table on one end, and her Zayde’s little hideaway at the front by the window, separated by a wall that could be felt but not seen. His seat, too large to be a chair but too small to be a couch, had faced the window, its back to the rest of the room like a wall, and it had been flanked by his heater, his old record player, his bookshelf, his lamp, and the table with the plant in such a way that to little Harley, it had been like a fortress that had kept all of Bubbe’s coolness out and all of Zayde’s warmth in. It was its own world. For most story-times, she and Esther had perched in the oversized chair with him, one on each side; but on holidays it was different. Something changed in the atmosphere, the smell of latkes, maybe, or the lights. The stories were more important somehow. And those stories had to be listened to from the floor, gazing up at Zayde like he was a prophet. But she hadn’t sat on that floor, on that fat, fluffy blue rug, in years anyway. That was Zayde’s place, and after he had died, Bubbe had wanted everything done at the dinner table, even the telling of the stories. It had never been the same after that, and not just because Zayde had been gone – it was the loss of that little pocket universe at the front of that room, and that feeling of being so small on that rug, and the stories so big. Harley missed that almost as much as she missed Zayde himself. She crossed her legs on the ashy floor, trying to imagine the thick warp of the rug beneath her, and tilted her head back to listen across the years of absence
Matityahu gathered together all of the people in Israel who thought as he did, that the light of HaShem should win over the darkness. He led the people to fight back against the evil of Antiochus. And when he died, his son Yehuda began to lead them – Yehuda, who was called the Hammer, because that is how he struck! Because of that name, all of those who followed him we now call the Maccabees. Yehuda led these faithful to rise up against Antiochus; they were small in number – next to the king’s army? Grasshoppers! But they were mighty in their spirit and their faith in HaShem. Never forget this, kinder: no one is small who has a mighty faith –
“—Not even little lambs like you,” Harley finished quietly. Hearing her own voice aloud in the emptiness broke the spell, and she sat up reluctantly. She’d better get a move on, or sundown would be past and she’d be feeling even sillier than she already did. Harley looked over the row of mismatched candles and took a deep breath. “Well, you said to do something, Zayde,” she announced to the empty room. “So here I am. Doing something.” Her fingers beginning to stiffen in the cold, she reached into a different jacket pocket and drew out something small and white. It was a birthday candle, smaller than a cigarette, one of the kind that came in packs in the party section of the drug store. A thin silver stripe wound up and around from the base to the unburned wick. Harley switched it to her left hand and picked up her lighter again. Then she paused, suddenly unsure of herself. She had never sung the blessings alone. She had never done any of this alone. What if she couldn’t remember the words? The hand holding the lighter faltered. A loud thump from upstairs startled her, and she turned to look; but nobody had come looking for her. They were probably just moving around some of the crates. Thinking about that made her think of the Joker, and the look of purpose came back into her face. She nodded to herself and raised the lighter. “Like you said, Zayde. When there’s darkness, add light.”
The little candle caught slowly, and for a moment the flame seemed to cling to the wick without burning it. Harley watched it bounce in a cold draft of air, smiling but unaware of it. Then, cupping her hand to shield it, Harley sat up on her knees and took another deep breath.
“Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam….” Her voice shook, and there was a second’s hiccup as she almost forgot what came next. Then her grandfather’s voice came back to her, and the rest of the verse came tumbling out. “…asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav …v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner… shel Hanukkah.” Unsteady both with cold and with self-doubt, Harley lifted the little candle toward the big cinnamon blob on the far right. This time the words came easier. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam… she-asah nisim laavoteinu… bayamim hahaeim …baz’man hazeh.” The wick of the cinnamon candle seemed reluctant to catch at first, and Harley wiggled the little birthday candle as if trying to will the flame to jump ship. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam… shehecheyanu… v’kiy’manu… v’higianu laz’man hazeh.” The flame danced upward just as she finished singing the blessing, and Harley let out a quivery breath as she tucked the little birthday candle into a crack between the blocks of the sill. There. She had done it.
“Although why, I’m still not sure,” she muttered to herself. When the idea had occurred to her more than a week ago, it had been a whim - a cute little thing she could do since she wasn’t going to be home for Hanukkah now, a sort of Why not? idea. Just throw some candles together, light them, and laugh at herself before moving on. As the week had gone on, though, the idea had gotten stronger and stronger until she’d found herself ankle deep in trash three days ago pulling dinner candles out from under someone’s half-eaten lasagna, and she’d realized that while she wasn’t looking, her cheap reenactment of the holiday had somehow taken on a talismanic importance to her. Now she had to do it. Had to do it just as desperately as King David had to dance when they’d recovered the stuff from the temple - whether it made sense to anyone else or not. Now that the moment had passed, though, she had begun to feel silly again. Here she was, sitting on the floor of a burned out warehouse, trying to do Hanukkah with eight broken candles she’d pulled out of dumpsters and absolutely no idea why she was even bothering. “What am I doing, Zayde?” she whispered, drawing her knees up to her chin. “What the hell am I doing?”
It was more than just a question about her makeshift Hanukkah, and she knew that if Zayde had been there, he would have known that without her having to say it. She sniffled against the knees of her jeans and tried to imagine what he would have said in answer.
What question! he would have laughed, probably waving his hand at her dismissively. She chuckled against her knees as she pictured it. What do you mean, what are you doing? And I want you to answer me, hmm? Not this dancing you do to avoid the point.
“Candles,” she spat against her jeans. “That’s what I mean. Lighting candles that nobody’s gonna see, so what’s the point? No menorah, no dinner… no stories… and nobody in this part of town to even see the stupid candles, which is supposed to be the reason you light them…. and….” She sighed. “Zayde, it’s all wrong, and it’s not going to accomplish anything anyway.”
Oh. Like you are starting to think being here in this place, with this man, is not going to accomplish anything? She could almost see the twinkle in his eye, and the way he would be brushing his finger lightly against the side of his nose to tell her that he saw through her words to the ones underneath them. That wasn’t what you thought two months ago. Two months ago, you thought you could save him.
“Two months ago I was an idiot,” Harley mumbled. Her grandfather laughed softly from the deep armchair of memory.
I’m sure you were, lamb. Probably still are. As are we all, because that is what people are best at being. But that’s not the problem. Sometimes it’s good to be an idiot. If we weren’t idiots from time to time…. She could see him shrug, a gesture that had always meant deep valleys of meaning below the one sentence. Well, if we weren’t, we’d never do anything good. Anything worth doing. Most of the best things… they require bravery, yes, and faith, but they also require us to take leave of our senses for a moment or two. If Dovid had kept his head on straight, he would not have stepped out to meet the giant with a stone and no armor; and he also would not have defeated him.
“Yeah,” Harley scoffed. “And God’s gonna dig right in and help me try to rescue J from himself just as hard as he dug in for a battle to save a whole country. Sure he is.”
Oh, and you know the mind of HaShem now, little lamb? She could hear the good-natured scolding as clearly as she could picture the white eyebrows lifted in feigned shock. You know what things He has decided to put a hand in? What He considers important? Feh! Such information you have. Please tell me where you hide this special telephone, eh? I would like to see it.
“Zayde…,” she tried to say reprovingly, but the corners of her mouth were twitching upward against her will.
Sheifale, she imagined him saying in return, mimicking her tone the way he always did when she tried to scold him. Listen, little one. Dovid’s battle was for a whole country, that is true. But tell me - who was HaShem trying to save on the night He wrestled with Yakov until sunrise? Hmm? Was he a whole country? No. He was one man, and not the bravest or most honest of them either. But HaShem fought a battle for his soul with the same strength that He gave to Dovid when he faced the giant. So tell me - who are we to decide where HaShem will ‘dig in?’
Harley sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the flame on the candle as it hopped from one side to the other in the chilly breeze. She hadn’t even realized that she remembered all of those stories until now, but thinking of her grandfather like this had brought them floating back up to the surface from wherever they’d been hiding - wherever she’d stuffed them to make room for things like Erikson and Jung and HIPAA laws. This whole exercise was beginning to feel like one of those days when you started cleaning out a drawer and ended up spending two hours re-reading a journal you wrote in middle school instead. She wondered what else was living down there in the unorganized corners of her brain. Her head tipped backward as she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, her fingers toying with a drift of ash on the floor. It was that cool blue sort of texture - like the fibers of the old rug - that sent a parade of other moments flickering across the projector screen in her head, all of the storytimes across all of the years. Out of nowhere, she suddenly remembered one particular evening and one particular story. She had been twelve and wearing her first training bra, and Brandon Mulholland had grabbed it on the way to the computer lab and snapped it hard enough to leave a welt on her back. She had kicked him in the balls so instinctively that she hadn’t really known she’d done it until he’d crumpled up on the tile. Naturally, he’d been sent to the nurse and she’d been sent to detention, where she’d had to listen to Father Richards explain the difference between a “harmless joke” and the “physical assault” she’d committed. It had been early December, and by the time she got out of detention she had only just made it home in time for sundown. She had watched Zayde lighting the candles through unshed tears that had made the flames wiggle in front of her, and he had noticed when she hadn’t said the blessings with the rest of them. He had taken her into the oversized chair with him and coaxed the story out of her - but before he could offer any advice or wisdom in response, Bubbe had spoken up unexpectedly from behind them. You know the story of Yehudit, Harleen? she had asked. Harley had known it, if a bit vaguely, but her grandmother had told it again anyway, not skipping a single detail of the tongue lashing Judith had given the men of the city, of her plot and her seduction of the wicked general, and especially of the hacking off of said general’s head. She had finished by commending Harley for defending herself, detention or not, and subtly asking her why she hadn’t popped both of the boy’s testicles while she was at it. When she had retreated to the dining room, Harley had looked up at Zayde to find a pursed and uncomfortable look on his face. She remembered asking him, You don’t like that story very much, do you, Zayde?
Oh, I like it just fine, lamb, he had responded, tapping her under the chin with his knuckle. But I don’t like the reason your Bubbe tells it. Years later, Harley had asked Zayde what he had meant by that statement, and he had patted the seat beside him and waited for her to sit before answering. You have heard us talk about the things your Bubbe saw in the war when she was a little girl? he had begun, and she had nodded. Well, sheifale, for some people being hurt and afraid like that will make them stronger in their faith in HaShem. For others…. He had shrugged. There are many things your Bubbe stopped believing during that time - and I suppose if you are going to stop believing, then that is as good a reason as you can have. But she still lights the candles, and says the words, and tells the stories. And sometimes, I would rather she did not. Do you understand why, Harley? Harley had shaken her head, and Zayde had chuckled. Your Bubbe says the words and lights the candles ...because she CAN. Because she lived through a war to be allowed to do it. Because it makes her feel as though she has defeated an enemy every time she speaks a syllable or strikes a match. She says the prayers to HaShem out of spite - not because she believes in them – or Him. And she tells you about Yehudit not because she believes Yehudit really existed… but because Yehudit is who she wanted herself to be. Do you understand?
Harley had understood - eventually. She had understood that her grandfather disliked falseness above all other things, and that he would rather have seen Bubbe toss the hanukiah out into the street than watch her light it out of pretense and anger. And it had helped her begin to understand the invisible wall that had gone up between her couch and his. Abruptly, Harley stopped playing with the ash and wrapped her arms around her knees again, sighing into her jeans.
“You’d probably hate this whole charade, then, huh?” she murmured, picturing the disapproval with which her Zayde had watched Bubbe’s empty ceremonies. “I mean, I’m not exactly what you’d call an observant Jew, am I? And this--” She gestured toward the guttering candle and its unlit fellows in the window. “Pretty lame,” she finished, tucking her chin into the dip between her kneecaps. Zayde’s response, when it came, was almost real enough that for a moment it didn’t sound like her imagination at all.
Your Bubbe would say that if they could put a wick in a potato at Auschwitz and call it a candle, then you can light your broken ones and be grateful for them. She could almost hear the smothered chuckle that followed his words, and she smirked at the darkness.
“I don’t care what she would say,” Harley quipped. “What do you say, Zayde?”
I? she heard him query. I say.... I say that you have forgotten what I told you about the dreidel.
For a moment, Harley stared at the windowsill in blank surprise, and she thought her grandfather must actually be talking to her – how do you imagine somebody reminding you of something if you don’t remember it to imagine it? She lowered her legs to sit criss-cross and picked up a chunk of loose concrete from the floor between them, chuckling dryly as she rolled it between her hands. As if she had actually been reminded, the scene began falling into place in her head in bits and pieces. She and Esther had been sitting on the rug after hearing the Hanukkah story for yet another year, and had been waiting on Zayde to hand over the dreidel so they could earn their gelt. She remembered they had been in junior high or somewhere close to it, and Esther – having gotten her first period earlier that week – had looked ready to commit murder for those chocolate coins. But before he had given them the little blue-painted top, Zayde had stopped. Harley remembered him rolling the dreidel between his hands the way she was rolling the concrete now.
Do you know why I tell you this story, kinder? he had asked them. Esther had answered with machine quickness, her eyes on the gelt.
Because it reminds us that Go— I mean, that HaShem always helps us when we’re in trouble, and that He provides for us, like He did with the oil.
Yes, lamb, Zayde had chuckled softly. But that is not the only reason. I also tell you… to remind you of how it happened. That the beginning of the miracle was not a ceremony, or a prayer, or even an army – although those things were important. Your prayers, your mitzvot, they are always important. But they were not the start of the miracle of the oil – the start was one man.
Matityahu, Harley had said quietly, and had received a smile in return.
Matityahu. Yes. Because that one man decided to face the dark rather than to sleep in it… that man opened up the gate to let the miracle in. Just like the shammash, the one candle by which all the others are lit – most miracles begin with only one person, who says to HaShem: “Here I Am. I will do the thing.” And that person brings the miracle, like the shammash brings the flame.
Harley passed the piece of concrete back and forth between her hands, her eyes settling on the little birthday candle with the silver stripe. It was guttering and contracting in the breeze, unable to hold its flame as high as the big cinnamon candle; but it was still lit, and putting forth a valiant effort to stay that way. The candles her Zayde had used for their menorah had been a rainbow of colors, red and orange and blue and green with a fancy twist in the wax – but they had smelled just like birthday candles when the flames had gone out. Harley pulled her lips to one side as she felt her throat begin to get uncomfortably thick.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, Zayde, I remember. But what does it mean if I say I will do the thing? I don’t even know what the thing is. I’m taking suggestions….” She actually looked around then, half convinced she would see her grandfather standing in the corner chuckling at her. But there was nothing but the blackened walls and dusty floor of the warehouse. Harley sighed. “Come on, Zayde. Let’s be realistic. What am I supposed to do?”
Do? came the reply, as clearly as if he were really standing beside her. What do the candles do, Harley?
“Nothing,” she muttered, a little irritation creeping into her voice. “They just sit there.”
Oh, good, you were paying attention. I was afraid you had forgotten.
“What?” Harley mumbled. Her grandfather’s voice went on as if it were independent from her memory.
Harley – sheifale – you are right. The candles do nothing. And that is the very point of the candles. Hanerot Halalu, lamb. You remember the words? The lights we kindle are sacred – and so we cannot make any use of them, not to work by or to warm ourselves or to burn anything – they are only to be looked at, to commemorate, to give praises to HaShem for His miracles, and His wonders, and—
“—and His salvations,” Harley finished quietly. She imagined Zayde smiling down at her from his armchair as she said it.
The candles do nothing because that is not what they are there to do, Zayde’s voice echoed. They are only there to be looked at. But that does not mean they are not accomplishing anything. Feh! Of course they are! They are giving light, and they are being seen by those who are outside in the cold and the dark – people like that man who is waiting for you upstairs, this man that you love. To give light… that is not nothing, Harley. It does not look like action to our eyes, because we have been spoiled by stories of champions battling giants and heroines beheading monsters. But that is not the kind of action that HaShem calls all of us to – and it is usually not the kind of action that opens the door to the miracle. Sometimes our purpose, like the candles, is to simply… be. To exist… and to be still… and to let HaShem do the rest. To give light in the darkness.
Harley felt herself smiling even as she wiped away the single rogue tear that had managed to escape. “If you say so, Zayde,” she grumbled, pushing herself up off the floor. Her whole backside was numb from the cold and the hard concrete, and the seat of her jeans was covered in a fine coating of blue-grey dust. She swiped at it absently as she stepped closer to the windowsill, looking out over the burning candle into the empty street. “If you say so,” she repeated, watching the cloud of her breath float away into the dark room.
Harley? This time Zayde’s voice was so clear and so present that she could feel the sensation of his knuckle tapping her under the chin, and she jumped in spite of herself. She tried to look away, back out into the street, but only succeeded in looking down at her crossed arms. She squeezed her eyes shut; behind her eyelids, she could see the image of her grandfather crossing his arms to mimic her. Harley, tell me – what do the letters on the dreidel mean? Hmm?
She was quiet for a minute or two, and then she took a deep breath and answered. “A Great Miracle Happened There,” she recited, and when she closed her eyes again she could almost see him nodding in approval.
Very good, sheifale. A Great Miracle Happened There, yes. And that… that is the real reason I told you the stories. All of them. Over all those years. Because I wanted you to know this one thing. Because if a Great Miracle can happen There… well… then it can happen Here, too, little lamb. It can happen here too.
“Hey, Harley!”
Harley jumped at the voice, the breeze from her movement accidentally putting out the little birthday candle. She willed her heartbeat to settle back down as she listened to Billy poking his way down the crumbling stairs looking for her. She could hear chunks of plaster and concrete skittering out of the way of his boots, and the sound made her take a real look at the room she was standing in – the charred blocks of the east wall, the windows empty of glass, the debris-littered floor, her pitiful candles… and somewhere over her head, above the blackened crossbeams, a man who carried around his own personal universe of darkness and cold, who could live in a warm room and yet still always be outside it. Harley sighed. “You sure about that, Zayde?” she muttered, this time speaking to the candle that still burned on the sill. “You think miracles can happen in places like this?”
Of course, lamb. They can happen wherever you are standing when you decide to say ‘Here I Am.’
“Right,” Harley breathed, and the candle flame danced away from her breath. It came back cautiously and wrapped itself around the wick again, resuming its bobbing little dance. Harley watched it in silence.
“Harl? You down here?” Billy called again, and this time she only jumped a little. She stared at the flame a second longer; then she turned to answer him.
“Here I am,” she replied, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips. Billy came from the other end of the warehouse into one of the squares of moonlight that lay below each window. He tossed his bangs out of his eyes and smirked at her.
“Geez, sis, I thought you’d run off or something. Boss is sending me out for food. You want anything?” His eyes went to the candles then, and he lifted a confused eyebrow at her. “Is that supposed to be a menorah?”
“Why thank you, Billy, I did do a good job, didn’t I?” she sneered at him, but it broke into a grin almost immediately. Billy grinned back.
“Um. Mazel tov? I guess?”
“Close enough,” Harley laughed. “Come on. We’ll go get the food together.” She placed the concrete chunk she’d been holding gently on the windowsill beside the guttering candle and brushed more aggressively at the ash on her jeans. Billy smiled.
“Too bad you can’t get Hanukkah food at burger joints, huh?”
“I dunno, do you think McDonald’s hash browns count as latkes?”
“I… don’t think you can get those at this hour,” Billy winced, glancing at his watch. Harley winked at him.
“I think they’ll cook me anything I want if I point a revolver at them,” she countered, and Billy laughed. “Go on,” she told him, digging her Volkswagen key out of a pocket and tossing it to him. “Get the Bug warmed up. Meet you out there.”
Harley watched as Billy swung around and headed toward the warehouse back entrance, listened to the screech of the heat-warped metal as he pushed the door open and let it fall shut behind him, heard the whumf of her Bug engine as it unwillingly stirred itself in the cold air. She leaned down over the cinnamon candle for a moment, looking at her own reflection in the hot pool of melted wax in the center.
Here I Am, Zayde, she said to herself – and to him. Here I am.
Then she blew out the candle and followed Billy outside. Behind her, the wisp of smoke waved its way up from the blackened wick to the blackened ceiling, wafting back and forth like an ethereal staircase into the warehouse rafters, and carrying with it the faint scent of cinnamon like incense.