Rabbi Adam is a centuries-old character in Jewish folklore, a proto-superhero who battles supernatural evil. The Hidden Saint is an origin story of sorts for this figure and I wrote the following story for it. But while Rabbi Adam and the Sorcerer of the Woods wanted to live, it didn’t want to live within the novel. So here it is as a standalone story…
Rabbi Adam looked across his reading stand at the two dozen men who sat in groups of twos and threes at the tables and benches that filled the little synagogue. The sun had set, the evening prayers concluded. Candles burned from the wall sconces and on the tables, multiplying the shadows of each man and creating the impression, at least on the walls, of a hundred or more, all about to engage in the exalted enterprise of learning. As he watched the shadows dance, Adam fancied that they were the shades of villagers who had prayed and studied in this little room over the centuries, and maybe they were.
A large volume of the Law was opened before each group of men. These books told them what the Holy One, Blessed be He, expected of them: Which animals they could eat and how they must slaughter them. How many witnesses were needed at trial and how they should be examined. Which times of the month they could have relations with their wives and how the women would prepare for that holy act.
Adam liked being the rabbi of Lizensk, a village so small that neither the Tzar of Russia nor the King of Poland nor the Grand Duke of Lithuania—each of whom had owned the hamlet at some point, as their mutual borders were continually redrawn—knew of its existence. He liked teaching Scripture and Law to the villagers. He liked answering the villagers’ questions on religious practice. And he liked that the job was more or less his for life. More, because there was once, he knew, a Lizensk rabbi who so loved giving sermons from the pulpit that he did so for months after his demise, until an exorcism could be successfully performed. And less, because he knew of another of his predecessors who had publicly rebuked an ignoramus who turned out to be a witch or a demon—there was no consensus on this point—and, for his trouble, was turned into an apple tree. To console the transformed rabbi as best they could, the villagers used his fruit, along with the traditional honey, to help celebrate each incoming new year. The tree still stood and bore apples although, with each passing year, the fruit proved increasingly bitter.
“Continuing from where we left off last evening,” said Adam, gazing out at the men, his eyes alight with more than the reflected glow of the candles, “we learn from the Book of Courts that ‘whomsoever saves a single human life,’” he bent over to consult the massive tome, “‘Scripture regards it as though he saved the world entire and whomsoever destroys a single human life, Scripture regards it as though he destroyed the world entire.’” Adam straightened. “Why should this be so?”
But the villagers of Lizensk would not hear the answer to that question, at least, not on this night.
Bang! The heavy wooden door to the synagogue flew open and slammed against the wall, making a sound as sharp as a musket blast. Several of the candles closest to the door blew out, making the shape in the doorway difficult to discern. The men were startled into silence.
The shape moved forward and into the dim light. It was a smallish man. No, at a time when demons roamed and no woman should be out, certainly not alone, it was a woman. She dropped her hood and it took the men a moment to recognize her through the slightly disheveled blonde locks matted about her pale face, a face that usually shimmered with warmth. Leah, the rabbi’s daughter, was too out of breath to speak.
The men rose hurriedly from their benches. Adam gaped at his daughter, then pulled himself from his small wooden chair and hurried to her.
“Leah, what is it?”
Gimpel Carrots, the ancient sexton, slid a stool behind Leah and she sank into it. Adam quickly loosened the clasp of her cloak.
“It’s Hersh,” Leah said, her gasps of air easing. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?” Gimple Carrots repeated slowly, as though trying to understand the concept.
“His parents came to ask if he had tried to see me before the wedding,” she continued. “They haven’t seen him all day. He should have been on the farm. He would never have left the animals without tending them.”
The wedding of Leah and Hersh would be—was supposed to be—in two days. Adam shivered. He had always tried to protect his daughter from harm although, as she’d grown, his protection had seemed one of the last things in which she was interested. She’d gotten into as many scrapes as the boys of the village and emerged just as unscathed. And when she’d insisted on learning Scripture and Law, an activity reserved for boys, Adam had set aside time each week to tutor her. True, he had done so with a reluctance to deviate from the tradition, but he’d seen how important it was to her, and he’d done it, and she’d taken to it with the seriousness and aptitude of any pupil he’d ever had. He and Sarah had both wondered if their daughter’s erudition would make a match impossible. They needn’t have worried. Hersh, the daughter of Lazar the Farmer, was studious as well, and kind and honest and a hard worker, everything they could have wanted in a son-in-law. While Leah’s learning was not universally admired in the village, Hersh seemed attracted to Leah all the more at the prospect of gaining a study partner as well as a wife.
And now Hersh was missing.
Leah rose from the stool and addressed them all. “Lazar and some of the men are in the square now, forming search parties,” she said. “You’ve got to help!”
Daniel the Tanner, enthusiastic if malodorous, reached out to pat her arm reassuringly, catching himself just in time from a breach of the Law. “Of course we’ll help.”
“And we’ll find her too, my dear girl,” said Eliezer the Bookbinder, the village’s dandy, dressed improbably in a dark velvet suit that had come, years before, from Warsaw. “Don’t you worry.”
“He isn’t in the fields. He isn’t by the river. He isn’t in the market,” said Leah, looking intensely at the men, as though daring them to contradict her. “He couldn’t have vanished. He must be somewhere.”
Silence settled in the little synagogue.
“You know… who I did see… in the market today?” asked Gimpel Carrots in his tentative way. Every head turned to look at the old man whose still-red hair, a lifetime before, had given rise to his nickname.
“Who, Gimpel, who?” they prompted him.
He gurgled out: “Motl.”
A dark mood swept through the room. Motl the Hermit—the half-human hermit, according to most of those who had encountered him—was almost never seen in the village. And every time that Motl was seen in Lizensk, so was trouble. He never stayed long, just long enough to buy his meager provisions, and just long enough for some misadventure to befall one of the village’s inhabitants. Not that Motl could ever be held responsible for the mishaps. He had been at least fifty yards away, and in the presence of witnesses, when Zev the Slaughterer lost a thumb with the knife he used on the chickens and cows; one hundred yards away, and again before witnesses, when Yudl the Carpenter fell from the roof of the village hall and broke his legs; a full mile from the fields, berating as many village elders as he could find, when Borukh the Drayman was crushed beneath the wheels of his cart. It was said that Motl had allied himself with dark powers. Though this was never proven, no one in Lizensk doubted that the accidents had a common cause.
And now, Motl had been seen in the village on the very day that Hersh had disappeared. Adam shuddered at the thought of the man who was invariably filthier, smellier, and, frankly, less human every time he showed his pockmarked face with its ever-deepening veins of red and blue and purple. Adam twisted the ends of his wispy black beard nervously. He recalled an encounter in the market, just a few months earlier, when he had beheld Motl’s bulging eyes with their unfocused gaze, suggesting a man who peered simultaneously at two worlds.
Leah commanded the room. “You men join up with the others,” she called out, including all of the assembled with a sweep of her hand. “Papa and I will go to Motl’s hut.”
Adam started. Go to Motl’s hut? he nearly sputtered out loud. And then what? Of course his daughter was anxious to act, but clearly, she had given this no thought. What if their intervention led to Hersh’s death? To their deaths? To the deaths of the entire village? Adam didn’t know if Motl’s powers were strong enough for that—but that was the point. No one knew. And how could they act without knowing, without considering their options and the likely consequences?
Go to Motl’s hut. The men were nodding.
“Yes, something must be done,” Adam agreed slowly. “But we shouldn’t act without a plan.”
He could feel the others’ eyes on him, especially Leah’s, faintly accusing him of… what? Cowardice? The year before he had saved Daniel’s daughter, Rivke, from drowning in the river. They knew he was no coward. But the way they looked at him now, he wasn’t so sure they recalled the incident.
“Leah, don’t be rash,” Adam continued, his voice plaintive. “We don’t understand the powers we’re dealing with here. We could end up making things worse.”
“No!” said the one person who had never said that to him before. Leah refastened her cloak about her neck. “I’m going—now!”
The men turned to Adam and he felt their gaze burn like a ring of torches. He sighed and joined his daughter.
“Very well,” he said finally, shrugging his acquiescence. “But Leah, perhaps you should wait here. I don’t think—”
Leah was out the door of the little synagogue. Adam grabbed his large black, fur-trimmed hat, stuffed it on his head, and followed her into the night.
* * *
The men fanned out in pairs and searched the village hall, the bakery, the ritual bath. They searched the slaughterhouse, the icehouse, and the streets and houses surrounding the market square. They went out to the stables, the riverbank, the ruins, the cemetery, the pastures.
While the others conducted their search, Adam and Leah made their way through the gloom of the woods toward Motl’s hut. Adam struggled to keep up with his daughter, the back of his neck, his brow, his sidelocks soon damp with sweat. His way was challenged by roots that tripped him and vines that slapped at his face. Brambles grabbed at the long white fringes—required garb for every adult male, symbolizing fidelity to the Law and to its Author—that hung from the corners of his shirt down to his knees. The deeper he and Leah invaded the woods, the more Adam had the feeling that these obstacles were directed at them, that they were infused with malevolence. He could feel evil hanging from the trees about him like rotting fruit. The blood pumped through him ever faster, urged on by something dark, shapeless and dreadful.
In response, Adam found himself murmuring the words recited every morning and evening in the synagogue, the words that were the ultimate expression of faith in the Holy One, Blessed be He, the words that his co-religionists across the millennia always hoped would be the last on their lips as they died. These words had always provided great comfort to Adam.
“Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”
But tonight these words did not extinguish his sense of foreboding.
“Remember when Aizik the Tinsmith broke his arm?” Adam called out to his daughter, who was moving a few yards ahead of him. Leah stopped to let her father catch up and catch his breath. “He didn’t fall down,” Adam continued when the sting of the cold night air in his throat had subsided a bit. “He wasn’t hit by a branch or a rock. No. But he was too close to Motl’s hut. His arm just broke, as though it had been twisted by… something.”
Adam wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked imploringly at his daughter. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”
“That’s why there are two of us,” said Leah, mustering a patience Adam suspected she didn’t feel. “He can’t stop us both if we act quickly, break into the hut, catch him unawares. I’m prepared.”
Leah pulled back her cloak, revealing a flintlock pistol. Adam looked at it soberly. Well, he had only himself to blame for that. Leah had long ago argued that if she and her mother should encounter a robber, wolf, or demon without benefit of his protection, a pistol might be their only defense. However reluctantly, Adam had consented and taught his daughter to use the firearm she now held out toward him. It was fitted with a brass barrel embossed with a pair of gryphons, all teeth and talons and fiery expressions. Adam could see it was loaded and he knew that it took a good fifteen seconds to reload. In less time than that, someone confronted by gryphons would have no use for a pistol.
“You know you’ll only get one shot with that gun,” he told his daughter grimly. “What then?”
Even in the darkness, Adam could see Leah’s toothy smile. “Then I’ll have to make it count,” she said.
Adam said something too, too softly for Leah to catch:
“Hear O Israel…”
* * *
Motl tended the fire in the stone fireplace of his hut, muttering in a language seldom heard in this lower sphere. He practiced the words over and over. One error, and these could be the last words he would ever utter.
The tables and walls of bookcases past which he moved were filled with the paraphernalia of his obsession: charms and signs to ward off demons or to summon them, the potions to induce astral projection, the powders to transmute elements, the bait to lure and control imps, the utensils with which to effect curses, the machines that could see into the past and perhaps into the future. But these held no interest for him now.
Motl glanced at the muscular lad tied to the long, low table in the center of the room. He was still unconscious, his white linen tunic ripped at the shoulder, a result of their altercation earlier that day. He watched the boy’s face carefully. It was pale, probably a residual effect of the spell he had used on him. Just then the boy let out a soft moan and lolled his head, enough to send one of his dark brown sidelocks spilling over the edge of the table. He was beginning to awaken; Motl would have work quickly.
He growled. The preparations were not done, not all of them, not yet, because it had taken longer than he’d anticipated to find Hersh alone. Motl never liked leaving the protection of the forest to enter the village. Snatching Hersh had been riskier than he’d anticipated. He’d almost been seen sneaking into Lazar’s field by Basha the Dressmaker, and he knew what the villagers would do with a provable offense against him. He was powerful enough to stop any one of them, but his powers couldn’t protect him from a mob seeking to exorcise its long pent-up desire for vengeance.
But it had taken him longer for another reason, too. It was already decades ago that a river demon had befriended the young Motl—orphaned by a pogrom and living on his own in the woods—and taught him the rudiments of magic. To Motl, magic was now a way of life. He had mostly used his magic against those who had wronged him in some way: killed his parents, cheated him in business or at cards, laughed at him in the village square. But this boy, he had done nothing to him. Motl had long since become almost completely consumed by the Evil Inclination; but the small part of him that hadn’t knew that this was wrong.
“Shhhh,” whispered the Evil Inclination soothingly; it was never far from him, always just beyond his vision, a thing of shadow and movement rather than of substance, but no less real for that. “You know what the villagers say about you. How they laugh at you. How they embrace Hersh and Leah, and shun you. Show them how wrong they are, and what being wrong must cost them.”
The Evil Inclination was right. He was reassured by the hot breath of the voice at his ear and by the caress he could almost feel across his cheek.
Motl reached to his belt and unsheathed the large knife he kept there. With its shimmering blade and its vicious, jagged edge, it looked like it could kill with a touch. He raised it above the lad’s chest, inches from where Hersh’s heart, unaware of the danger, beat deeply, peacefully. But Hersh was not to be a sacrifice to the other’s demons, not yet. Motl began to murmur an incantation to make the sacrifice acceptable to them, the ancient words coming to him intuitively, though the language was unknown to him.
* * *
Cloaked in darkness, Adam and Leah crept toward the hermit’s hut. Its curved shape rose from the forest floor like a small hill. Its roof was thatched and covered with vines that grew both up from the earth and snaked down from overhanging branches, nearly obscuring the structure from view. If the hut had not grown out of the forest, the forest seemed determined now to claim it for its own or, at least, to protect it.
Adam put his hand on Leah’s arm to restrain her, if only for a moment. “What if Motl is innocent—at least, of this?” he asked. “We’re making a serious accusation. What if Hersh has some business that brought him here? Scripture admonishes us to give others the benefit of the doubt in judgement, and the Sages—”
“Papa, we’re not in the study hall!” Leah interrupted.
Adam was stunned into silence. His daughter never talked to him this way, but Adam knew it was her anxiety, not her soul, that spoke now. And what was so wrong with the study hall? Weren’t they supposed to turn every question over and over again, considering every possibility, every eventuality?
Leah turned toward the wooden door of the hut. “Are you ready?” Without waiting for Adam’s reply, she drew herself up as straight and tall as a scroll of the law and charged toward the door. Adam ran alongside her and the two threw their combined weight against it.
Adam and Leah flew into the hut, crashing into the empty table in the center of the room. They hit the floor, then looked up and gasped. Hersh stood at the far wall. He was pale as parchment and shirt was torn at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked remarkably well. He was even faintly smiling.
“Hersh! Thank God you’re all right,” Leah cried as she scrambled to get up.
“Why shouldn’t I be all right?” he said, a touch of challenge in his voice.
Leah gaped at him. “Because… Because you were kidnapped!”
Hersh took a step back. “Is that what you think?” he asked, an odd smile forming on his face.
Adam listened to them, shook his head, and sighed. Hadn’t he cautioned his daughter that Hersh might have chosen to come here for some reason? But Leah had refused to consider that possibility. He touched Leah’s arm.
“We acted rashly,” Adam said, already adjusting his coat and hat in anticipation of their journey back to the village. He managed a thin smile to Hersh. “If you’re not here against your will—”
Leah looked incredulously at her father. “What are you talking about, Papa?” She addressed Hersh. “And what are you talking about? Don’t tell me you’re here by choice.”
Hersh took another step back, widening the distance between the two of them. There was a chill in the room. Leah tilted her head and looked at Hersh through slightly narrowed eyes. “Does Motl have you under some kind of spell?”
“I have business here, that’s all,” he said, the edge in his voice growing. “My business, not yours. It’s best you left. Now.”
Business with Motl? Adam could see Leah’s forehead crease with bewilderment. Hersh’s words were plain Yiddish, but it might have been the language of birds for all the sense it made.
“Leah,” Adam approached his daughter and again tried to calm her. “We found Hersh. If he doesn’t want to come with us—”
Leah made an impatient sound and shook off her father’s hand. Adam gave Hersh an apologetic shrug—then a second, closer look. Something was wrong, something besides the monumental wrongness of this holy lad in this unholy place. That wasn’t the only contrast, of course: Hersh wore black skullcap, white tunic, black breeches, white knee socks, black shoes. Black, white, black, white, black. Nothing unusual in any of these, so what was nagging at Adam? Black, white, black, white, black. What was worthy of notice?
Adam knew. With the certainty of the law-giving at Sinai, he knew—and he forced his face into impassivity.
“Papa, we can’t leave without Hersh,” Leah insisted.
Adam barely heard his daughter over his own thoughts. Hersh, what had happened to the poor boy? And what should he do? His gaze fell on the bottles of potions. Should he break one and use it as a weapon? Use the unknown potion and hope for the best? Cause a distraction? Too many thoughts, and no way to choose among them.
“Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.” The words he heard were faint, hoarse, so seemingly distant that he had trouble realizing that they had come from him.
A haze formed around Hersh. His features were shrinking, expanding, darting about his face like fish in a pond. His clothes were changing as well, the blacks and whites becoming gray, shrinking and crinkling up and flying away like desiccated leaves. Now Hersh himself was morphing into something else: something heavy, ugly—and hairy.
Where Hersh had stood just a moment ago, Motl the Hermit now confronted Leah and Adam, his fat face bulging with his ugly eyes and dark, pulsing veins. Leah hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. She reached under her cloak and whipped out her pistol, steadying it with her other hand as she aimed at the sorcerer.
“What have you done with Hersh?” she barked.
For an answer, Motl threw a silvery powder at her. The weapon dissolved into hundreds of shiny black beetles that ran up Leah’s arm and across her body and head. The young woman cried out and spun in circles as she rushed to shake them off. Motl used Leah’s distraction to lunge at Adam, his two thick arms rising like clubs. Adam stumbled back against the wall and fell to the ground.
“Leah, look for Hersh!” Adam shouted as Motl moved his mountain of flesh toward the rabbi. “I can handle Motl.” As Leah moved toward Adam, he repeated, even more urgently, “Please Leah! Please do it!”
Adam rose clumsily to his feet. Motl was upon him again, his fists like anvils. Adam tried to return the sorcerer’s punches but they glanced off Motl’s chest like a child’s ball. Beyond Motl, Adam saw, Leah was throwing open cabinet doors, searching frantically for her bridegroom. Adam didn’t expect to overpower Motl, but hoped he could occupy him long enough for Leah to find Hersh.
Motl punched Adam again and he doubled over. He brought his hand down on a small table to keep from falling, then grabbed it with both hands and brought it up against his assailant, smashing it against Motl’s head and chest with a vehemence born of instinct, not thought. He didn’t stop Motl but the dazed look on the sorcerer’s face told Adam he’d succeeded in slowing him down.
Now Leah was on the floor, pulling at the floorboards. One came up in her hands and she peered at the sudden gap in the floor. She pulled more boards away and Adam could see Hersh, bound and gagged, but moving, in a shallow recess dug into the earth. Adam started toward them but was stopped by another stinging blow from Motl. The sorcerer threw him against a bookcase filled with large, ancient volumes, sending books and loose pages raining down like the hail that plagued the ancient Egyptians. The bookcase toppled over, knocking Adam down and pinning him to the floor. He cried out as hot pain raced from his legs throughout his body, and again as he saw Motl grab his daughter and throw her onto the table. Motl jumped onto her and pinned her with his knees, his hairy hands around her throat.
“Leah!” Adam called out, panic pouring through him. Leah gurgled something but couldn’t speak. Motl’s hands pressed tighter around her neck. The pain and the panic came together in Adam’s mind and emerged as a single thought: “Please God,” he whispered, if he spoke audibly at all, “save my child!”
* * *
Leah tried to free her arms from under Motl’s tremendous weight, but they were hopelessly immobilized. She couldn’t breathe as Motl pressed harder and harder against her throat, the pain unbearable. Flashes of brilliant white light obscured her vision and the table began to melt away under her as consciousness began to leave her body. Motl shifted his weight to get a better grip on Leah’s throat and the young woman’s right arm was suddenly free. It thrashed about the table and then she was jolted by the sense of something wickedly sharp. Leah touched it again and her hand stung with the pain of a suddenly cut finger. She reached out and grabbed the knife.
Her hand moved spasmodically, waving the knife wildly until it plunged into Motl’s thick neck. The sorcerer let out a roar as the blade disappeared amid a widening and increasingly forceful release of blood. He staggered off the table and looked at the knife, the hilt now extending down from under his chin like a cravat. He looked at Leah, on the table, gulping air. And whatever he looked at next was not of this earth. Motl fell dead.
Leah lay still, barely conscious. From a great distance, she heard something—her name?—called urgently, over and over. It was her name, and it was her father calling to her, so why was it coming from so far away? She opened her eyes. Motl was gone, but the great weight of the sorcerer seemed to press against her still. She pushed herself off the table, groaning as she did so.
“Leah, Leah…” Her father croaked.
There, just beyond the glowing wreck of boxes, globes, and contraptions, she saw her father trapped on his back. She gripped the side of the bookcase and heaved with an effort that sent a new jolt of pain up her arms. Her father used his heels and hands to half slide, half crawl clear of the case. Leah let it fall with a great thud and, steadier now, bent down to help him up. Adam shook his head and pointed across the room to Hersh, still bound and gagged in the earthen cell that might have become his grave. Leah ran to him and tore at the ropes that bound him and the filthy rag still stuffed in his mouth, freeing him.
“Thank God you’re safe!” she said and was pleased to see him manage a smile. “Yes,” he whispered. “But I think God had help.”
Leah took Hersh under an arm and helped him to stand. The two did nothing more than look at each other, slowly accepting that the nightmare was behind them. They heard a sound and turned to see Adam struggling to his feet. His clothes were splashed with dirt, his jacket torn, and his hat and skullcap lost amid the debris. They helped him up and Leah embraced him. Adam winced.
Leah picked up the crumpled skullcap and the battered, fur-trimmed hat and gently placed them on his father’s head. Even with that now-undignified headgear, he began to regain a measure of his rabbinic dignity.
Leah considered her father. “Papa, you knew that the other Hersh was really Motl in disguise. How?” she asked.
“The ritual fringes,” said Adam, pointing to the long white strings that hung down the sides of Hersh’s breeches.
Hersh was perplexed. “What was wrong with his fringes?
Adam cocked an eyebrow questioningly at his daughter. Leah frowned, then beamed.
“He didn’t have any!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly,” agreed Adam. “Motl must have heard us outside the hut or received a warning in time to hide Hersh and transmute himself. But fringes are a symbol of holiness. It was the one part of Hersh’s attire that Motl couldn’t bear to duplicate—and that Hersh, the real Hersh, would never have been without.”
“Rabbi Adam, Leah,” said Hersh with a quaver in his voice. “Even with Motl dead, I think I’d feel safer somewhere else just now.”
Leah helped both her bridegroom and her father out the door.
“‘And a child shall lead them,’” murmured Adam.
Leah looked quizzically at him.
“The prophet Isaiah,” said Adam, his thoughts drifting momentarily to an ancient time and place. Then, he smiled at his daughter and spoke more crisply: “Yes, by all means, let’s get out of here.”