“Mama?”

“I’ve had to make a different plan for you.”

“No, Mama, please! Give me another chance! I didn’t mean to be loud before.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Shira. It is just that there is a better place.”

“But—”

“We can’t stay here any longer. And this new place is going to be good for you. You’ll be with other children, you’ll have space to run and play.”

A single moment in which Shira wants to go to the better place, even apart from her mother, until her fear overrides it—

“Please, Mama. Not without you!”

Shira clings to her mother, digs her fingers into her flesh as Róża lifts Shira out of the hay and carries her down the ladder. It creaks noisily, yet despite the noise, her mother does not stop until she reaches the ground with Shira still hanging on, frantic.

Will there be giants?

An unfamiliar woman steps through the barn door, bringing gusts of cold air with her. Shira can’t make out her features, bundled as she is against winter, just her pale blue eyes that sweep the barn and come to rest on Shira.

“Mama, no!”

“Only for a little while, my darling—”

Shira begins to cry. Her mother kneels down so that they are level. Shira raises her palms, waiting for her mother to fold her large fingers around them, but instead her mother thrusts her blanket into her hands.

“Be sure to keep this with you. I’ve stitched the letters of your name—”

Shira buries herself in her mother, eyes squeezed tight, fingers clenched around her.

Kisses wet her cheeks. Shira opens her eyes. Her mother is still kneeling there, unwrapping Shira’s fingers from her arms.

Shira breathes in her mother’s sharp, grassy scent. She looks at the ladder leading to the barn loft.

“Mama?”

“I love you with all my heart,” her mother says, her face going liquid like melted snow sliding from an eave.

Everything happens so quickly after that. The lady whisks Shira out of the barn and down the lane past rows of sleeping houses. The air is frigid. It burns Shira’s eyes as, panicked, she struggles to look around her. Where is she taking me?

The darkness outside is different from the dark of the barn—the moonlight reflects brightly off the snow, causing a blinding glow—and Shira has to blink several times to see anything at all.