“Hannah!”

He thought he had shouted it, but it came out as a whisper. Her eyes grew large as she stared at him. And then he grabbed her up and she was in his arms.

For a brief moment Aharon held her, felt the soft weight of her pressed tightly to him—blue jeans?—his face against this strange cotton hood, his heart pounding with joy and disbelief. And then she was pushing him away, her pretty face scowling.

“Aharon Handalman, where have you been?” She was seriously angry, spoiling for a fight. But as she got her first good look at him, her eyes widened with fear. “Oh, my heavens, Aharon, what happened?”

He was wearing a heavy Fiorian robe, which no doubt had its own aroma. And he knew he had changed a great deal physically. He must look an impossible sight, like a ghost maybe. But he wouldn’t let her push him away. He cupped her face with his hands, reassuring her with low sounds until she calmed. Only then did he let his own gaze wander up and down.

She was complaining about him? Hannah Handalman, a respectable Orthodox rebbetzin and mother of three, was wearing blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. He had never seen anything so wonderful in his life.

She glanced at Wyle and pulled away. “Don’t start with me, Aharon. I know, I know, what you think. It’s terrible that I came, a horrible invasion of your privacy, your work, and so on and so on. But what was I supposed to do when the man came to the house and said—”

“Who?” Aharon asked sharply.

“M-Mr. Norowitz,” Hannah said nervously. “He told me they’d tracked you here and then lost you. He wanted to know where you were, if I’d heard from you. When I realized you were missing… that even they had no idea where you were… what was I to do? I had to come see for myself if I could help or… something. Aharon!”

Her face looked so stricken and he realized, with a terrible feeling, that her relief at seeing him, and even her anger, had been subsumed by something else—fear of his reprisal. She, his own wife, was afraid of him. What kind of person had he been?

“Hannah.” He pulled her to him, realizing anew, from the sensation of her under his hands, how small his wife was, really, how slight, how tender, how brave. “Do you think I could be angry? I’ve never been so glad of anything as I am to see you. How could I feel anything but joy? I love you, Hannah! My precious jewel!”

He kissed her face, her astonished little face. She had that set look in her eyebrows, the look of a wife who knows for certain that an alien has taken over the body of her husband. She snuck a glance at Wyle, as if wondering how Aharon could dare touch her, kiss her like this in front of another person, and a stranger also. It brought him back to his senses a little. He dropped his hands, his fingers brushing the cottony hood now hanging down her back.

“Of course, why you have to dress like a goyisher teenager to come look for me is another matter.”

He was joking—mostly. But her eyebrow quirked, as if to say, Ah, there you are!

And then another thought hit him. “And, while I’m thrilled, light of my life, to see you, and I would be honored to have you share every detail of what’s happened with me, my rose of Sharon, my helpmate, frankly, it is a little worrying that you have thrown yourself in the path of danger. After all, we have three children. I’m sure they would be put out to lose their mother. Does Norowitz know you’re here? Do you know U.S. agents are just down the road in that house? What are you doing driving a car around in the middle of the woods in the dark of the night, Hannah?”

But she only got that look—that rebellious look—and crooked a devious smile. “Could we get back to the ‘I love you’ part?”

And then… well, what excuse could he possibly have? A rabbi, a man in his forties, and not even alone, and he was behaving like a… like a goyisher teenager himself, kissing his wife right there and not caring.

“Rabbi Handalman?” Denton’s voice, loud.

Aharon broke from his wife, cheeks heated. “A man has been away from his wife for three months, what do you expect?”

“Three months?” Hannah asked, confused.

Wyle was jumping up and down. “Hey, I wish you raptures, but could we possibly get out of the cold? I mean, I realize you’re not exactly cold at the moment, but there’s me, Jill, Nate, and an unconscious guy, and we’re all turning into Popsicles.”

“Oh!” Hannah said, as if remembering something. “My god, Aharon, we have to get you out of here! There are American agents just down the road and the Mossad is here, too.”

“Thank you, Hannah. I’m so glad you’re up on all this.”

Hannah was staying in a tiny hospice in the town of Monowice, a short distance away. By cramming into the car and spreading Farris out over the legs of the three people in the backseat they made it there in one piece. It was the off-season, and they were soon in possession of the entire upstairs of the house, consisting of three guest rooms. The hospice owner was not interested in anything but his TV, and they were able to carry Farris upstairs without being observed.

Jill was exceedingly grateful to be out of the cold. She and Nate quietly shared their amazement over such a benevolent spike of the one pulse as running into Hannah. A coincidence like that might be normal on the seventy-thirty world, but here it was more than they could have hoped for. At least, that was the way Jill figured it. Nate only smiled thoughtfully and kept his opinion to himself.

Upstairs, Hannah bustled around getting them blankets and towels and fussing over all of them with a maternal warmth. Jill liked her at once. She was efficient and outspoken, with a sharp intelligence glittering in her eyes, and she listened to Aharon’s suggestions only when it suited her to do so. Despite this, Aharon appeared to be deeply in love. It softened Jill’s opinion of him considerably.

They put Farris in the smallest bedroom and left the door cracked open so they could hear if he got up. The rest of them bundled into Hannah’s room, sitting on the floor in blankets around the heating duct and sharing a package of fruit cookies. It was the first moment of peace they’d had, and as Jill looked around at the faces she could tell that all of them were in shock to one degree or another. She was having a hard time accepting it herself—that she was really sitting on a hard wooden floor eating packaged Polish cookies. Nate groaned at the taste of sugar on his tongue, focusing his attention on the cookie as if it were the first food he’d ever tasted. But Jill was too anxious to do more than nibble. She kept staring at the marked changes on Denton’s face and Aharon’s, even Nate’s.

Aharon was the most changed. Hannah could not stop staring at him,either. The robe he wore was coarse and rank. He had lost weight and added bulky muscle. Even so, he looked drained and ill-used, as if he’d been on board a Roman galley for three months. Denton, on the other hand, was glowing with a tan, his hair bleached blonder by sunlight. There was a new strength and calm about him. Still, there was a dazed look about his eyes that made Jill think he hadn’t transitioned as easily as it appeared.

Nate, if she tried to regard him objectively, had turned from olive to a deep reddish-brown since their days at Udub, and he had lost weight to the point of skinniness. She knew she herself probably looked anorexic. She pulled a strand of her hair forward, studying it. She’d gone nearly platinum from the power of the sun on Difa-Gor-Das. Even her delicate white skin had browned.

“Aharon,” Hannah said, “there’s no way you could look so different. You said something about three months, but it’s only been a couple of weeks. What is going on?”