Ever since the priest’s Epiphany homily, she’s felt stained. But it’s remembering what she did in the barn—tapping and chirping when she was meant to be silent and gobbling Krystyna’s treats while her mother starved—that shames her most. She can’t take a bite of food anymore without thinking about it. Only stowing little bits from her meals, bread crusts and potatoes, makes her feel better.

“Zosia, let me take a look at those hands of yours.”

Zosia hears a catch in Sister Alicja’s voice as she looks at her fingers, swollen and already bruising.

“Stay still now, you hear me? I’ll be right back with Sister Nadzieja. The two of us will get you fixed up.”

Zosia nuzzles her shred of blanket with her cheek and stares up at the high rectangular window, the drifting clouds. Kasia steps close and reaches for her arm.

Róża shuffles straight legged to minimize the sound of her movements in the woods. The leaves, high in the branches and full of color just a week ago, are gone from the trees. Winds have swept the trees bare, the remains of autumn delivered to the forest floor, dried and curled, a thick carpet announcing her every step with a riot of rustling. Chana, wearily oblivious, lets herself get whisked along.

Róża remembers how, on their journey out of Gracja, Shira hummed and tapped and asked endless questions and called for her tata. For better or worse, Chana makes no sound at all. Róża fears Chana is close to starving, rawboned and torpid. Even when they manage to find food—as when Róża found chanterelles to boil into a soup—Chana barely eats.

Burdened with keeping them both alive, Róża flares with frustration, then regret. She knows that Chana is privately cataloging her own missteps: how she drowned out Miri’s grief with her anger; how she allowed her partisan dreams to push them to the periphery of the woods. Her actions conceived at the time as protective; in truth they were protective of herself.

Róża understands this form of torture.

A cold rain streaks the white sky. Zosia quavers in front of the classroom’s open window. She lowers her bruised, shaking hand to the sill. Her bird perches on her forefinger.

“I’m going to miss you terribly, but you must fly as quickly as you can to the barn and tell Mama I need her. She’ll follow you, I know she will. Watch out for soldiers, and others too. Find the safest route and lead her back to me, please!”

The bird hops from Zosia’s finger to the open window casement, then flies off. Zosia watches until the streak of yellow disappears into the white.