It Stood at the Gate

But panic unfurled like wildfire in Zokrev.

The shtetlyaners cowered behind locked doors, squinting through shutter gaps for glimpses of its shadow at the gate, windows, or well—the post it had claimed since its creation. Men abandoned their tools and flocked to the shul twice daily, not to complete repairs but to beg for its return. Children vanished from the streets, ignoring their mothers' pleas to remain indoors. Livestock languished in barns, neglected and starving, while unharvested fields turned to dust.

They'll be here by Shabbos, they said. They'll come with fire and steel.

"Does it still linger at the river?" the rabbi asked Reb Shmuel, when they were alone. "Does it still stare into nothingness?"

Reb Shmuel nodded. Since the creature arrived and left, new lines had creased his forehead and aged his cheeks. "It won't move."

"Good," said the rabbi. "Say nothing. There it will stay."

"It should be destroyed," Reb Shmuel insisted. "It is an abomination. It will not protect us!"

The rabbi shuddered. Once again, he swore he heard Haidamacks thundering toward Zokrev in the distance.

"Fine," he told Reb Shmuel. "I will find it and destroy it."

"Let me go with you, Rabbi," he begged. "I helped you create it; let me help you destroy it!"

"No," he said. "Stay here and pray. If I do not come back, you will have to take what you can and flee to Uman. If you cannot cross the river, head south."

Reb Shmuel clutched at his heart but obeyed.

Once again, the rabbi ventured from the restless shtetl. He trudged past blackened homes, each exhale hanging in the frigid night. Livestock cried out from their stalls—mournful, hungry sounds. A chill seized his spine as desperate eyes tracked him through slender gaps in shuttered windows.

The road trailing out of the shtetl lay empty. He walked it until the path split off. Then trudged deep through the forest to the river, where the wind died among the branches.

He found its hulking silhouette among the reeds soon after. It crouched at the water's edge with colossal hands raking across its forehead, futilely gouging new tracks into the clay. The motion—methodical, purposeful—carved the word repeatedly until it sank beneath the surface of its earthen skin.

The rabbi froze. The creature did not turn to acknowledge him, but it knew he was there.

The wind sputtered to life, carrying with it a low, grating sound—not speech, not breath, but something older, something crumbling, shifting, breaking apart. In that ancient grinding came its voice of earth, speaking for the first time:

"Who am I?"

The words tumbled through the cold air, thick as the arid soil, heavy with something the rabbi could not name.

He stepped forward and cleared his throat dry. "You are what you are," he said, though uncertain. "You are—"

"Who am I?"

This time, its voice was louder. Not a question. A demand.

The rabbi uncurled his fingers from the fists at his sides and held up his open palms. He had been careless. He thought back to that night at the river—the weight of his exhaustion, the bleeding of his hands. The letters he had carved.

Had he drawn the lines too shallow? Had he left something undone?

"You are truth," he insisted, "and truth protects us."

The creature, with its back to him, did not move.

"Protect us," the rabbi told it, beckoning it toward him. "The truth protects us."

But the creature didn't listen. Instead, its great hands moved again, scraping at its forehead, digging into the letters that should have been firm, unyielding, absolute. The marks had softened, edges blurring.

The rabbi's heart lurched inside him as a quiet horror bloomed in his chest. It was learning. It was questioning.

"Who am I?"

The words struck again, staggering the rabbi. He offered no reply. He retreated, lungs pumping shallow breaths. As he pivoted away, the creature's utterance pursued him, overwhelming the river's gentle slap against the bank and the whisper of wind through branches. When Reb Shmuel emerged from the shul, the rabbi bolted past—blind to his presence, his existence erased by terror.