The painter offered to give Lea his small bed, but she insisted she would be comfortable on the floor along with Ava. They were quiet, and didn’t bother one another, and soon enough became used to each other. Ava and Lea knew Monsieur Weitz woke up at six and made tea on the hot plate set on a bureau where they could cook, and he knew they left for the school by seven. They had dinner together, often leftovers Ava brought home from the school’s kitchen. The winter had passed in a dream, and before they knew it spring had arrived; the fields were greening and wild cabbages grew up through the frozen ground. There was soon mud everywhere, and people wore clogs or boots. They’d worn winter coats one day and shirtsleeves the next. It was the time of year when the birds began to return, clouds of greenfinches and goldfinches, pigeons and turtledoves and swifts. Each day Ava looked out with a hand over her eyes, waiting for the heron. She walked in the mountains that surrounded the village in the evenings. At last she saw him, in the distance, at dusk. Though it was April, there were still patches of snow in the forest, yet he had come back to her, returning a month before most of his kind would begin to leave their southern homes. Ava threw her arms around him and felt his beating heart against her chest. He told her where he had been, to beaches where the sand was black, where the heat turned the sun red, and the shells were as big as a human hand. Everywhere he went, he dreamed of dancing with her in the grass. They did so now, as if enchanted, as if no other time or place existed.

At last she noticed the message attached to his leg. He had carried it through the winter, to all of those faraway places. Lately, Ava had been trying to make time stop, but it was impossible to do, even for the angels. The border was a few days’ hike away, yet she had remained here, hidden in the attic. All because of time. When the locket had opened, she had seen the message; she knew what her fate was to be once she brought Lea to safety. And so she had stayed in this village, in this attic. She told herself it was because it was winter, it was because she was waiting for the heron, but now he was here, and she still wanted to stay. She had lived too long, and as golems were said to do, she had begun to make her own decisions. She wanted to change her fate.