She hugs her knees to her chest and buries her face. She can hear that the robes are being heaved, side to side. A hanger clangs to the floor. Suddenly the sharp tip of a bayonet pierces the partition wall, inches from Zosia’s left shoulder.

“Nie!” Zosia’s yelp is involuntary. She leans as far back as she can and claps a hand to her mouth, praying that the tromp of boots muffled her cry. Sister Alicja’s panicked voice comes from outside the door.

“You will slash the holy robes. I beg you, please, to stop that!”

“What care do I have of your robes?”

The soldiers’ footsteps recede. Zosia’s face wets with tears, but she doesn’t dare move until, later, Sister Alicja retrieves her. Zosia begs, “Please, please let me go back to the barn with my mother. I promise, I will not make a sound—”

Alicja touches Zosia’s cheek, sorrow in her eyes. After checking that the other girls have been put back to sleep, lights out, she gently leads Zosia to her bed.

Zosia sits on her hands to keep from tapping. It’s a special feast day, and the church service, with a visiting priest from Holy Trinity Parish, is running extra long. For the past forty minutes Zosia’s stomach has been rumbling and her eyelids have gotten nearly too heavy to hold open, so it is a surprise when the priest’s Epiphany homily piques her interest.

“There may be no more popular children’s game than hide-and-seek. We all know how it is played: one child closes his eyes and counts while the other children hide.”

Up and down the rows of pews, listing children sit upright. Zosia pulls her hands out from under her legs and tucks them into her lap.

“With the call of ‘Ready? Here I come!’ the hiding children are sought out, one by one, from their hiding places. The first to be found becomes the new seeker, and the game begins anew.”

Children nod at this, but the priest’s face is solemn, a wrinkle at his brow.

“Do we ever stop playing it? As we get older, we spend a good part of our lives hiding from and searching for other people. We even play this game with God. Sometimes we foolishly believe we can hide from Him. Other times, it seems as if He is hiding from us.”

Zosia shifts in her seat.

“Epiphany tells the story of men who journeyed in search of Christ. Even with the help of a guiding star, they had difficulty finding him. They expected he would be in Jerusalem’s royal palace, yet he was in a stable in the nearby village of Bethlehem.”

Jerusalem: Zosia knows this place, where Moses led the Jews after years of slavery. “Next year in Jerusalem,” her grandfather would say from his pillowed seat at the head of the Passover table.