Zosia makes a quiet clucking noise to soothe him. In her head she speaks admonishing words. I know that you want to peck at her, but you mustn’t, not now with Sister Olga coming back. We’d get in terrible trouble. When she is sure her bird will stay put, Zosia lets a finger rise to stroke his soft, downy chest. She thinks of the time Ula awoke with a cry, clutching her arm in confusion. Zosia and her bird knew what happened.

Zosia positions herself to be still through the night—shoulders and head lined straight, never tilted to one side—and drifts into sleep. Her dreams go not to Adela or to Ula or to Sister Olga but to a long-ago sunlit room filled with the scents of varnish and wood glue.

Violins are everywhere, scattered among boards of maple and spruce on worktables crowded with glue pots and brushes and chisels and knives. In the center of the room, a man Zosia once knew but can no longer remember sits on a stool, hunched over a violin, his fingers stained the color of cherries. He has a beard that a bird could nest in, bushy and long, and his eyes crinkle up at the edges like a smile even as he complains that, with the high humidity, his varnish is slow to dry.

“How long have you been waiting?” Zosia asks, happy to be standing beside him once again.

He winks. “Do you see this beard? I didn’t have it when I applied the first coat.”

Zosia asks the man if he might play something for her. He lifts a violin from the wall rack and plays a snippet of Gypsy music. Then he continues his work. He tells her Jesus wished to be a violin maker, so that he might have the joy of creating something not just with his mind and his heart but also with his hands.

A bit later, it is time for her to go. The man kisses Zosia on each cheek and puts his hands palm to palm with hers. But just as he begins folding his long fingers over her short ones, she sees the glare of bayonets coming through their entwined grasp. “Nie—”

Zosia wakes in a sweat. Several girls stare sleepily in her direction, all too used to nightmares. Kasia once again offers her doll. Zosia takes it and swallows hard, unable to blot out her scream’s echo.

Chapter 29

When she is summoned to Mother Agnieszka’s chamber, Zosia finds a man nearly as old as her grandpa standing beside Sister Nadzieja. His heavy mustache and bushy sideburns give him a downturned look, but his eyes are soft and light, and a black violin case is tucked neatly beneath his arm.

“Zosia,” Sister Nadzieja starts, “this is Pan Skrzypczak. He is a real violin instructor, and—”