She handed up the brimming vessels, but more were thrust at her, and the others’ faces were so desperate that she approached the guard, her head bowed submissively.

“Noch mehr, bitte,” she begged. More, please. He nodded, so she rushed to the fountain, gulping what water she could as the cups filled up, then ran back to the car and handed them over.

But when she turned, hopeful of a third chance at the fountain, a different guard was standing between her and the beckoning water. He shook his head, and when she looked past him she saw how the other guards had advanced, their guns pointing at her and the other women who had been fetching water. Their reprieve was over.

She scrambled back into the car, scraping her shins on the rough threshold. The door slammed shut, the train began to move, the wind began to whistle through the cracks in the wood siding, and Nina realized she was cold, far colder than she’d been before.

Looking down, she saw that the front of her smock and its long sleeves were sopping wet.

“Give me a cup,” she asked the women surrounding her, and right away they understood what she meant to do. She wrung the water from her dress, careful not to spill so much as a single precious drop, and when its bodice and skirt were all but dry she shrugged her arms from her sleeves and let others mine them for even more water. Not until the last drop had been chased from the dirty fabric did the other women retreat, their whispered words of thanks a balm to Nina’s despairing ears.

She’d had more water than the others, but it had made no difference. Her thirst still consumed her. Emptied her. Hollowed her out.

Left her thin and fragile, a scrap of paper crumpled in an indifferent fist, discarded, and left to dissolve underfoot.

ANOTHER DAY CRAWLED by before the train stopped again.

It was dark, and she was on her feet only because there was no room to fall. Outside, beyond, somewhere in the night, Nina heard metal scraping upon metal, the muffled shouts of angry men, and the gruff, staccato barks of agitated dogs.

But the door did not open.

The train heaved itself forward, then stopped.

Forward, stop.

Forward, stop.

There was a moment of silence, stretching thin and taut, and then a terrifying eruption of noise: barking dogs, men shouting in unfamiliar languages, and all around her the startled screams of the women in the boxcar.

The door was slammed back and the darkness was abruptly obliterated by disorienting beams of light. Nina shielded her eyes, wary of falling from the train. She looked down, blinking, just as a heavy plank was dropped into place between the edge of the boxcar and the back of a large, canvas-topped truck that had pulled up about two meters away.

“Raus! Raus! Schnell!” Get out! Quick!