With a jerky start, the carriage begins its ramble over the uneven cobblestones, away from the convent building. The rabbi’s wife hums another melody that is familiar. Zosia cups her hands in her lap, wishing for the comfort of her bird amid all the confusion. But in her mind, her bird has grown larger, fiercer. His bright yellow feathers appear coarse and gray, and his feet boast sharp talons. His call is neither a melodious eighteen-note wonder nor a tremulous wavering between two notes. It is a strident warning shriek.

Zosia wakes, shivering, with the rabbi’s wife still beside her in the carriage. It is entirely dark except for a thin strip of light bleeding in at the curtain’s edge. Zosia yanks the curtain aside and sees that they are stopped outside a large encampment with lanterns illuminating a path to a doorway.

“Where am I going?”

“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll stay here just until we can secure safe passage to your homeland.”

Does this mean I am going home? Am I here first, to find my mother?

The rabbi’s wife leads Zosia, clasping tight to her duffel, up the path. Inside, a large room is subdivided by blankets hanging from the ceiling. Along the corridor, the air reeks of sweat and soured milk. A baby yowls from within. Lifting the sides of blankets and peering in, the rabbi’s wife disturbs several families getting settled for the night before she locates the orphan unit and, within it, an empty bed. She pats the covers, indicating for Zosia to get in.

“You’re to be called Tzofia from now on. Don’t worry, you can be yourself here—everyone is just like you.”

She feels even lonelier than when she looked down the row of convent beds to see Adela and Ula and the other girls. For the first time she considers their loneliness—Ula, orphaned at age three; Adela, left at the convent door despite rumors that her parents still lived in the outskirts of Celestyn. Above all she misses Kasia, who showed her whipped cream in the clouds, skating floors in newly polished wood, and holy expressions in the faces of cats; who from her first “hallo” treated her, always, as her friend.

She tosses in bed for hours. With another new name, she is a stranger to herself again. She suddenly, desperately longs for her blanket, with its bumpy stitched seam. Why didn’t I think to take it?

She gets up and wanders through the corridor. Peering through a streaked window, she sees it is early morning. In a dirt area between low-slung barracks, children chase one another in packs, racing and climbing in the branches of a lone tree. The sky is overcast, gray. Tzofia puts her hands to the cold glass.