Track 15 Delilah #3
And then she listens, enraptured, as Emmett tells her about the truths hidden in the folktale, about the notes and journals and secrets passed down, disciple to disciple, generation to generation.
They tell her about the rebbe who created a golem to be a companion to his dying daughter, how he crafted a new set of rules and incantations and borderline blasphemies to make a creature that wouldn’t just obey orders but could feel, and think, and love.
Not something with a soul—because that was the domain of God alone. But as near to it as he dared.
They tell her about the memories that clung to the clay the man used to craft his daughter’s golem, memories that clung to it after the child died and the clay was passed down again, down and down, to Jacob’s great-grandfather, who came to America alone and needed his own companion.
And on and on until there was Jacob, grieving to the point of invention, uncovering what he thought could be a key to restoring something he could never get back, and ending with something halfway between his son and something that could never be his son, but close enough that the idea of destroying it was impossible.
They tell her about Jacob’s determination to start a new life, one where no one knew who he was or what he’d lost, where no one would question his refusal to let Emmett go.
They told her about the family Jacob made that Emmett could only tangentially be a part of; about the fierceness of their own love and protectiveness toward Jacob’s children and the fondness they couldn’t help developing for his new wife; about Jacob’s instructions to not get too close to anyone, to not reveal the truth; about Jacob’s illness, his dying commands, and his death.
About why Emmett is really going to California.
“I don’t know if he decided he’d made a mistake,” Emmett says, “or if he just thought that, with him gone, there wasn’t anyone else who could—could make sure I didn’t do anything to hurt anyone.”
Delilah’s fingers are still pressed to Emmett’s arm, moving idly between rough stone and soft skin. She stills, confused. “Why would you ever hurt someone?”
“Don’t you remember the story? The ending?” Emmett’s pulse—is it a pulse?—flutters under Delilah’s fingertips. “The rebbe brought the golem down to the river and turned it back into clay. To keep it from turning against the people it was supposed to protect.”
“That’s just a story,” Delilah protests. “There’s no reason to think that would happen to you.”
“There’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t.
” Her eyes have readjusted to the dark again, so she can see the way Emmett tilts their head back, as if they might find answers in the endless stars.
“And he knew I wouldn’t dare risk it. So he told me—he told me to go back to where it started.
There’s a cave system out in California, where he made me from a mix of the natural clay there and what was left of the clay that’s been passed down through his family, going all the way back to the rebbe.
He told me to take his journals, so that no one would ever make something like me again, and go back there, and—and undo what he did.
So that I couldn’t hurt anyone, and no one else would make his mistakes. ”
The wave of fury at the idea of someone referring to Emmett as a mistake distracts Delilah, just for an instant, from what Emmett has just said.
But then her brain catches up and her heart drops into her stomach.
“But—but you’ll die,” she whispers. “Right? If you go there and…and undo whatever he did, you’ll die. ”
“Is it dying if I’m not really alive?”
“Is that a real question or a rhetorical one?”
Emmett laughs, and it’s the saddest sound she’s ever heard. “I don’t know.”
Delilah shifts her hand until she finds the raised veins on Emmett’s inner arm once more, feeling the firm, steady beats against her fingertips. If it’s not a pulse, it’s a perfect imitation. “You told me,” she says, “that you’re real. That this is real.”
“Yes.”
She swallows. “Then how can you be anything other than alive?”
Emmett goes still. If not for the maybe-heartbeat under her fingers, Delilah might think they’d truly turned to stone.
Then they let out a breath, or the facsimile of one, shaking and slow.
“I don’t…I don’t know.” They put their other hand to their chest. “These patches—I didn’t have them before I decided to go with you instead of getting on that bus.
I don’t know how fast they’re growing, and I don’t know what will happen when they… when they’re everywhere. I just—”
Delilah takes their hand, the same way Emmett had taken hers earlier. She threads their fingers together and squeezes. “You just…?” she prompts.
“I just wanted to do something,” they say, barely audible over the whisper of the wind through the trees around them. “Something he couldn’t control. Something for myself. To prove that I have a self. Even if it’s just temporary.”
Their hand is tight in hers. Like she’s something safe.
Even Sam never held on to her like that.
Delilah takes a deep breath, reaches out, and touches their jaw, turning their face to hers. Their eyes are wide in the darkness, the moonlight turning their eyes to a shining, impossible silver. How could she not have realized that Emmett was made of something magical?
“Do you want to do something else he can’t control?”
Emmett’s lips part. Their gaze flickers, just for an instant, from Delilah’s eyes to her mouth.
They say, in barely a whisper, “Yes.”
“I prayed one word: I want.”
—Sappho