“Papa is dead,” I said, the reality of it sinking painfully into my bones.

“But I am here.” Mama cupped my face in her hands, forcing me to look into her eyes. “I am here and I will never leave you.”

The sewer worker walked over and knelt in front of me. “My name is Pawel,” he said gently. “I knew your father and he was a good man. He trusted me with your safety and he would want us to keep going.” He stood and turned away and continued on, leading the others down the path.

Mama straightened, seeming to gain strength from his words. Her rounded belly protruded even more. “We will make it through this, somehow.” I stared at her in disbelief. How could she even think—much less believe—that now, right as we had lost everything? For a second, I wondered if she had gone mad. But there was a calm surety to her words that I somehow needed to hear. “We are going to be fine.”

Mama began pulling me forward. “Come.” She had always been deceptively strong for her slight size, and now she tugged so hard I feared that if I resisted I might slip into the water and drown as well. “We must hurry.” She was right. The others had kept going without us and were now several meters ahead. We had to follow or we would be left lost and alone in the strange, dark tunnel.

But I hesitated once more, looking fearfully at the churning dark river that ran alongside the path. I had always been terrified of the water, and now those fears seemed validated. If Papa, a strong swimmer, could not manage the murky current, what chance did I possibly have?

I looked down the dark path ahead. There was no way I could do this. “Come,” Mama repeated, her voice softer now. “Imagine that you are a warrior princess and I, your mother, the great queen. We will travel from the halls of Wawel Castle down to the dungeon to slay the dragon Smok.” She was referring to a make-believe game we had played when I was little. I was too old for such childish things, and the memory of such games, which I had most often played with my father, caused my sorrow to well up anew. But my mother’s ability to put the best face on any situation was one of the things I loved most about her, and her willingness to make believe, even now, reminded me that we were in this together.

We caught up with the others and continued along the sewer path, which seemed to go on forever. Pawel walked in front, followed by the young couple and then the religious family with the old woman, who, despite looking close to ninety, moved with surprising speed. Surely we must be nearing the city limits, I thought. Perhaps there was some route to freedom ahead, maybe to the forest on the outskirts of the city where I’d heard of Jews hiding. I could not wait to breathe fresh air once more. Pawel led us to the right into a smaller offshoot of the main tunnel and the path seemed to incline upward, as if we were nearing the outside. My heart lifted as I imagined feeling the morning sunlight on my face and leaving the sewer behind forever.