So Nina kept walking, though her legs had turned to water and she had forgotten how to breathe. Stella was just in front of her, no more than an arm’s length away, and Nina was desperate for the touch of her hand, the warmth of her skin, the knowledge that she was not alone.

How long? How many minutes were left to them?

She shut her eyes to the leaden sky above and the mud beneath her feet and the stench of suffering that enveloped her. She remembered, instead, the sound of birdsong, the scent of flowers in bloom, and the delicious heat of a sun-drenched day. She inhaled every sweet and vanishing moment of life, her one precious life, even as she swallowed down her howls of despair.

Suddenly she could bear her memories of loveliness no longer. There was so much she had yet to see and feel and do, and it was being stolen from her, and she could do nothing—nothing—to save herself.

“Nina.”

It was Stella, risking a goodbye while the guards were near enough to notice.

“No,” Nina whispered, shaking her head, her eyes clenched shut. “Not yet.”

“Nina. Look where we are,” Stella persisted. Her voice was trembling, but not with fear.

With hope.

Nina opened her eyes. They were back at the railhead, and the scores of women ahead of them were climbing steep wooden ramps into one boxcar after another, and then she and Stella and the remaining women were urged inside and Nina waited for something awful to happen.

Instead the door closed behind them. The train began to move.

“I listened to the guards as we were walking,” Stella said. “They’re sending us to Germany. One of them was angry that we’re going there while he has to stay in this ‘shithole to end all shitholes.’”

“How would you know a word like that?” Nina asked, and in spite of everything she had to suppress a laugh.

“From one of the other prisoners in Bolzano. She was Austrian.”

“What else did the guards say? Why are we being sent to Germany?”

“I think we’re meant to work for them. They said we’re going to an ‘arbeitslager.’ A work camp.”

“Doing what?”

Stella shrugged, and then she hugged Nina tight. “Who cares? Anything has to be better than this place.”

THEY WERE ON the train for three days, and this time they were supplied with water and the latrine bucket was emptied twice a day. They weren’t given any food, but Nina had been hungry for so long she hardly noticed. The car wasn’t too horribly crowded, and it was possible to sit at times and even catch glimpses of the passing landscape from a gap at the edge of the door.