“Hear, O Israel, Adonai, our God, Adonai, is one,” her mother recited the Shema prayer before bed, then opened her eyes. “Remember, Batya. No matter where you are, say your prayer. It will protect you from demons that come during the night searching for innocent souls.”

Hadn’t the demons arrived in the form of the uniformed Russian soldiers and the muzhiks, the wild peasants, who came looting, burning, and killing? Batya silenced the memory of the constable’s mocking voice when he had darkened their door and told Koppel that because he was “a good Jew” his family would be spared death if they left.

She soaked the family’s single towel in water, then wiped her mother’s face, examining the wrinkles that framed her eyes and mouth. Her mother had married young. At thirty-eight now, she was already a grandmother to Hedi’s baby, although she would never meet that child. Two years earlier, scandalizing the family, Hedi had eloped with a goy. With his love stretched past the breaking point, their father had declared Hedi dead and forbidden the rest of the family ever to see or speak of her. But how could Batya erase that sight, when, on the dawn of their escape, she saw her beloved Hedi—very much alive—standing behind the fence of their burning hut? Through the haze of smoke and trembling hot air, her sister’s silhouette seemed ethereal as expected from a betraying daughter-declared-ghost. Their mother reached out her arms from the distance, as if to hug her supposedly dead child.

“Ignore the ghost,” Batya’s father ordered, then raised the shafts of their cart and began marching. Only Batya saw the tears streaming down his cheeks and disappearing in his beard, which, overnight, had turned gray. Batya had wanted to wave back to her sister, but had been afraid of the calamitous consequences of returning a gesture from a ghost.

Batya was exhausted. In the only light of dusk streaming from the cracks in the barn walls, she collapsed on the bedding next to her mother.

“You’re a good daughter,” her mother murmured. “The light of my days.”

Batya’s eyelids were just closing when the innkeeper returned.

Batya’s father rose to meet him. “God will reward you for your kindness.”

The man collected his pot. “Until He does, maybe your wife can come to the kitchen to clean up? The inn is full of guests, and my wife is complaining—”

Although they spoke Russian, Batya understood enough. “I’ll go,” she said quickly to her father in Yiddish. “Let Mama rest.”

“Maybe my two daughters help instead? As the Good Book says, ‘Two are better than one.’”

The innkeeper’s glance hovered over Surale’s small frame, curled into a ball. “Maybe she can scrub the floors later, when we close for the night.”