“I’m sorry, I cannot thank a nonexistent being.” Chana is defiant as she motions at Róża. “Maybe she has weapons?”

“Chana!”

Róża looks from one to the other. She used to be so engaged with the religious, the political. Now she hopes only to make it to Celestyn by war’s end, to get Shira.

When Miri suggests that perhaps they would do better to join a family camp, such as the large extended group they met hiding farther west, Chana snorts.

“Have you forgotten, Miri? Our family is dead—our brother. Our mother.”

All three go silent.

Róża doesn’t talk of Shira, and it is a relief. There are the dreaming hours ahead to be haunted by her loss; to see Shira’s pleading eyes, her hands outstretched.

They steer the conversation to other topics while they gather kindling. To Róża’s relief, the sisters have steel and flint and a magnifying glass for starting fires—she needn’t expend matches, at least for now. Miri tells Róża how she assisted with her father’s soap-making business and how Chana, with ambitions to attend university, took part in protests against the ghetto benches segregating Jews from other students. This, before their father’s business was shuttered and the university was closed. Before the real ghettos were formed.

Róża finds herself less weary, even a bit energized, in the sisters’ company. She wants to remain with them, yet she hesitates to share a camp. But Chana tells of the corpse they came upon last week, a man with a belt noosed around his neck, pants still down from a soldier’s “Jew test.” Róża is shaken to think how, without a scout and in her fog of hunger, she has been unaware of others—not just Jews but Germans—in the woods. How she’s been luckier than she knew.

“Might I camp with you?” Róża asks.

“Oh yes, Róża; why don’t you choose your spot first?” Miri offers.

Chana makes a dramatic sweep with her arm. “Yes, wherever you’d like.”

The three begin to laugh and cannot stop. Repeated arm sweeps set them off, again and again. Róża reaches a hand to touch her upturned lips, her creased eyes. She’d forgotten laughter.

Róża sleeps soundly for the first time since fleeing to the woods alone. She wakes feeling buoyed by the sisters’ company, Miri’s especially; still, she doesn’t know whether she can stay with them. Róża’s imperative is to head south toward Celestyn and wait by the border’s edge until it is safe to leave the woods and claim Shira. She pulls out Natan’s old compass. Seeing her, Miri looks up at the orientation of the sun.