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Helene Wecker grew up near Chicago, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York. Her work has been published in the online magazine Joyland, and she has read from her stories at the KGB Bar in New York and the Barbershop Reading Series in San Francisco. After a dozen years of moving around between both coasts and the Midwest, she now lives near San Francisco with her husband and daughter. The Golem and the Djinni is her first novel.
“But remember this. A creature can only be altered so far from its basic nature. She’ll still be a golem. She’ll have the strength of a dozen men. She’ll protect you without thinking, and she’ll harm others to do it. No golem has ever existed that did not eventually run amok. You must be prepared to destroy her.”
It was said among the human storytellers that there had once been wizards, men of great and dangerous knowledge, who’d learned to command and control the djinn, and trap them in lamps or flasks. These wizards, the storytellers said, had long since passed from existence, and only the faintest shadows of their powers remained.
It was the transformation that enthralled him: useless to useful, nothing to something. He returned over and over
Snakes, he learned, dreamed in smells and vibrations, their tongues darting to sample the air, their long bodies pressed close to the dirt. Jackals dreamed in yellows and ochers and fragrant reds, reliving their kills as they slept, their limbs and paws churning at the air.
He stared down at the narrow streets and saw that this city was also a labyrinth. And like all labyrinths, it hid something precious at its heart. What did it hide? A voiceless voice whispered the answer. Life unending.
“But love founded only on loneliness and desire will die out before long. A shared history, tradition, and values will link two people more thoroughly than any physical act.”
Later he’d tell his friends he’d seen the Angel of Death on Orchard Street, out collecting souls.
“Faith is believing in something even without proof, because you know it in your heart to be true.”
“I see hundreds of men every week at the Sheltering House. They all need the same things—a place to stay, a job, English lessons. But some will be happy with whatever comes their way, and others won’t be satisfied with anything. And there’s always a few who are only looking to take advantage. So when my friends talk about how best to fix the world, it all sounds so naïve. As though there could be one solution that would solve every man’s problem, turn us into innocents in the Garden of Eden. When in truth we will always have our lesser natures.” He looked up at her. “What do you think?”
It lasted forever; it was only a moment.
“Let me tell you,” he said, “about the souls that go on after death, or are brought back against their will. And this is the truth, not some story told to children. Have you ever seen a shadow that flies across the ground, like that of a cloud? Except that when you look up in the sky, there are no clouds to speak of?” Hesitantly Matthew nodded. “That is a shade,” the Djinni said. “A lost soul. In the desert there are shades of every type of creature. They fly from here to there in perpetual anguish, searching and searching. Can you guess what they are searching for?” Matthew had gone pale and
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It was dusk, and he stood on a scorched plain, ringed by distant peaks. The western sun stretched his shadow narrow as a spear, turned his arms to long gnarled branches, his fingers to twigs. Before him lay the late-summer valley, its animal inhabitants beginning to wake. He blinked—and there in the empty valley appeared a beautiful palace made all of glass, its spires and ramparts shining in the last golden rays of the evening.
