“I need to head south,” Róża says in a low voice. She walks in place as if to make headway even now. Ice in thin patches crackles, and frosted branches snap beneath her feet. Miri does not ask her why and Róża is all the more grateful to her.

“Didn’t Jerzy, from the large encampment, tell us that there was a Jewish partisan group south of here?” Chana asks.

Miri looks worried. “Possibly.”

“Well, we can head in that direction. There’s no leaving the forest, anyway, until we can get news.”

They begin the trudge southward, but Chana refuses to move camps when the temperatures are frigid. “It makes no sense, Róża! We can’t make headway in this wind, and we can’t keep digging out the frozen earth. Let’s stay here at least until the weather grows a bit milder.”

Róża concedes, but the weather does not grow milder. The winter is brutal and unending. Wood for the meager fire becomes more crucial than food.

Róża’s night terrors return more vividly than ever, with images of choking threads, shattered flowerpots, yellowing matchstick bones arranged into wings. Miri reaches for Róża and rubs her back. Chana sets water to boil, throws in some scavenged roots to make a tea. Róża’s story spills out between sobs—how Shira is in the convent orphanage for safekeeping; how Róża is desperate to get near there, ready to claim her at war’s end. How everyone else is lost: Her mother and father. Natan.

Róża thinks back to the earliest days, pregnant with Shira, when she composed a lullaby for (her) cello and (Natan’s) violin.

“Since when do you compose in six-eight time?” Natan asked, looking over the music.

“When it fits the occasion.”

“Six-eight is for berceuse.”

“Yes, Natan, I know.”

“For lulla—” And that’s when he’d rushed to take her up in his arms, hardly able to kiss her for laughing with delight. It was he who suggested the name Shira, derived from the Hebrew, meaning song.

Róża peers out at the ice-encased trees and shivers.

At dusk, while foraging for kindling and any possible edibles—nuts, stalks, the inner bark of pines—Róża and Miri find three pairs of horn-rimmed glasses, one sized for a small child, mangled in a heap. Róża can’t manage to get warm after that, despite the fire they build. Late that night, Chana thrusts a tiny graying capsule into Róża’s hand. Cyanide.

“We both have one and we want you to have one too. In case you are trapped.”