Róża says they are not family, but Shira feels they are. Even if Shira has to hide away when Henryk comes to the loft. Even if the boys don’t actually know she’s there. From her perch, she has learned that Piotr’s favorite game is zośka and that Jurek hates mucking out the chicken coop more than any other chore. She has overheard both boys complaining about the lack of food; the menacing soldiers; how the other kids look down on their father for not fighting in the war.

Shira senses when the boys feel afraid, though the adults’ fear is worse: lodged in their faces and bodies, trapped in the sounds beneath their words. Outside, when a neighbor stops by for a chat, when Krystyna excuses herself to tend to the boys and Henryk to the animals, when at night her mother asks Henryk for the latest news, Shira hears it shuttling between their whispers. She knows it from before, from when they still lived in Gracja; her parents tried with their instruments to play over it, to play through it, yet it clung to their notes anyway.

Confined within the barn, her mother invents ever more elaborate stories: To keep silence in the enchanted garden, the little girl fashions handkerchiefs out of daisy petals to muffle the princess’s sneezes. She tricks the giants (whose thundering footsteps keep the flowers from blooming) by flipping the soles of their shoes so that they walk away from the garden rather than toward it. And with the help of her mother and her yellow bird, the little girl plants a secret strawberry patch, hidden among the sunflowers, so they’ll have delicious treats that even raiders won’t be able to find when they come to pillage.

Shira asks if there are any cats in the garden. The last time Krystyna took Shira out, the tabby whooshed its tail against Shira’s legs, then flopped to the ground in front of her. She thought he wanted a pat, but when she knelt down and extended her hand, he tried to scratch her.

“No, there are no cats in the garden.”

“Good, because they might not be nice to birds.”

“The garden is safe for birds and for quiet girls.”