Shira and her mother don’t speak during the day, the nineteenth day, when sunlight streams through cracks in the wallboards, dappling patches of their skin a luminous white. Even Henryk’s treat of an extra baked potato can elicit no words of thanks. Only her mother’s flat smile as she watches Shira soundlessly devouring it.

In the silence, other sounds are pronounced. Inside the barn, the rustle, thump, and nibbling of rabbits. Outside, the morning calls of the wrens and the rose finch. The whispering leaves. The slap and crunch of Henryk’s boots. And late, late at night, when Shira is to stay especially still, the high creak and shift of the barn door. The scrape of the ladder against the floorboards. The distinctive groan of each rung, then the hushed tones of Henryk, up in the loft with her mother.

Henryk carries outdoor smells with him to the loft. Sometimes there are leafy bits from his boots. He mumbles words that Shira cannot hear. Her mother gives Shira the card fold of photographs to hold, enclosed in her blanket, as she nods and mumbles back to him. When Henryk is there, Shira must lie apart from her mother, turned away and confused by the commotion.

Some evenings, Shira hears soldiers walking along the road. If they have been drinking, they sing about kissing pretty girls, songs that Shira secretly enjoys. Otherwise, sharp footfalls and talk.

When it is too dangerous even for whispers, Shira and her mother gesture. A simple finger near the ear means I hear someone, but more particular signs denote Henryk (the tug of a beard), his wife, Krystyna (the tying of apron strings), and the three Wiśniewski boys (oldest to youngest, a hand upon a child’s head at high, middle, and low heights). A neighbor (palms facing, held near). Soldiers (fists clenched at the chest, as if around a gun). A stranger, they don’t know who (eyebrows raised). Taps on different body parts show hunger, thirst, pain, a full bladder. A hand on a clump of hair, Do you want a braid? It passes a bit of time. A brush of the fingers over closing eyelids, Try to rest now. Shira watches her mother’s lips shape prayers in Hebrew before falling off to sleep. This, more than anything, calms Shira, for in her mind she hears her mother’s silent chants as music.

They wear their shoes always, in case they need to run. Shira’s shoes crush her pinkie toes, but she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t tell about the hay splinters in her fingers either, or about the way she feels hungry all the time. Her mother gives her the larger portion of everything they get to eat. If Shira ever offers her mother more, she never takes it; she sucks on hay instead. The soft, fleshy parts of her are gone. Shira can see her mother’s collarbones jutting out.