Shira’s mother is always ordering her to be still and silent, but then Henryk mounts the loft ladder, and he moves around and makes terrible noises. Her mother doesn’t say anything, and she forbids Shira even from turning her head or opening her eyes. She just has to lie there, frightened, listening to Henryk’s bumping and gasping and what sounds like strangled screaming.

It is hot beneath the hay, and Shira labors to breathe. She wishes her tata were here to make it stop. On her own, there’s nothing to do but to wait. Drown out the sounds with the music she hears in her head, dark and foreboding.

When Henryk finally climbs down the ladder and leaves the barn, Shira steals a look at her mother, staring up at the ceiling, panting. It’s the only time Shira can’t read her mother’s face.

Chapter 17

As the weather warms, the barn sweats. The hay, dry and sweet scented in winter, grows dank in the loft. Moisture gathers in the rafters and the wallboards expand. The cracks shrink to reveal less of the farmhouse, less of the road.

Still, the sound of the boys floats up to the loft; Shira can hear Jurek and Piotr bicker as they pound a rickety fence post back into position.

Shira’s mother grows cross when the boys are about. She hunches against the wall, her arms folded across her chest, wishing to block out their voices. But Shira hangs on their conversations.

They used to complain about having to go to school, but now that it’s been closed, Piotr wants it to reopen.

“Maybe farm life is fine for you,” Piotr says.

“I like it all right.” Jurek’s words come out in the rhythm of his hammer swings.

“Well, I want to train to become a doctor.”

“You’ll have to go to school forever. It’s not worth it.”

“It is worth it. And it’s not right that I can’t have the chance—”

Shira licks the remnants of Krystyna’s cauliflower soup, then puts the pail aside. Her bird ruffles his wings, hops across her crossed legs, and pecks at her shoes.

“Shh,” she whispers. “I told you, you have to stay still and silent. You have to hide.”

The bird’s eyes are full of questions, so she continues: “Birds like you are not allowed to be out, not allowed to fly.”

Shira knows he doesn’t understand. She wishes she had better answers. Even the girl in the enchanted garden doesn’t really know what’s happened to her tata or the rest of her family, or why others can make sounds but she needs to be silent and hide. Sometimes her mother mutters about being different, about having pride in who she is, but it doesn’t make any sense!

Outside, a stork burrows into its nest atop the neighbor’s potato ziemianka.