Page 150 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

she had heard from her father, about the great Ba'al
Shem Tov. It was set in the time when he was a boy
named Israel and his father warned him: "Know, my
son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will
be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living
flesh, for he is the other part of yourself. There will be
times when he will surround you with walls of darkness.
But remember always that your soul is secure to you,
for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your
soul, for your sour is part of God." Fayge's voice rose
and fell as she told how young Israel led a small band
of children against a werewolf whose heart was Satan's.
And in the end, when Israel walked straight into the
werewolf s body and held its awful dark heart in his
hand, "shivering and jerking like a fish out of water,"
Fayge said, her own hand moving in the same way, that
awful heart was filled with "immeasurable pain. A pain
that began before time and would endure forever."
She whispered the story as the night enfolded them.
"Then Israel took pity on the heart and gave it freedom.
He placed it upon the earth and the earth opened and
swallowed the black heart into itself."
A sigh ran around the barrack and Hannah's was the
deepest of all. A werewolf, she thought. That's where
we are now. In the belly of the werewolf. But where,
where is its dark pain-filled heart? She was still sighing
when she slipped into sleep.

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