Wearing a borrowed pinafore, Lian carried buckets of hot water from the kitchen to the hut where the orphans were being washed. Her mother sat on a low stool beside a wooden tub, briskly scrubbing a small girl’s feet. All around them, the hum of conversation in several Chinese dialects, German, and occasionally, English.

Lian counted two dozen children, all girls. Some had been at the Henan orphanage for years and looked healthy, reasonably clean, and calm after their harrowing journey through a war zone. Most, however, were recent casualties of war, orphaned or abandoned, seized from harm. These children were silent and thin, confused and timid. She caught snatches of conversation as she walked back and forth between kitchen and hut.

“The difficult part was how to bring the children,” said one of the women. “The army ordered us to evacuate, but the missionary ladies refused unless they provided enough transportation for all the orphans. Waah, those army officers were so eager to be rid of the foreigners, two large trucks appeared at our door the very next day!”

Lian carried a tub outside, tipped the dirty water into a flower bed. She took the wooden tub back to her mother and together they filled it with warm water. An orphanage worker brought another toddler over to the tub and began removing the little girl’s rags.

“Let go of that ribbon,” Lian’s mother coaxed. “I’ll put it down here and you can have it back later, after your nice, warm bath.”

The child gripped the dirty strip of red closer to her chest. A red crocheted ribbon. Lian’s breath caught in her throat. She looked more carefully at the girl’s face. Dirty and thin, unsmiling. The cheeks no longer plump, the eyes no longer bright.

“Duckling?” she said, kneeling beside the child.

At the sound of her name, the girl looked up and around. “Baba?” she said, in a plaintive, uncertain voice. Father. She was looking for her father. Private Fung, whose wide smile she had inherited. A father who couldn’t have been prouder of his little daughter.

“Do you know this child?” the worker asked.

“Yes, her name is Duckling,” Lian said. “Family name Fung. From Shaanxi Province. Her father . . .”

Her father. Young Private Fung was probably dead on a Henan battlefield. Or dying in an understaffed hospital. Lian didn’t want to think about the horrors Duckling must’ve survived if her father had actually taken her to the front. Surely by then he would’ve understood the danger. Surely he had changed his mind, left his daughter behind in a safe place. A place where the missionaries had found her. She prayed this was what he’d done.

She held her arms out but Duckling shrank away, small fists clenched tighter than ever.

Little Duck, Little Duck,

Sing the moon, dance the stars!