Before dawn, when the souls of the dead hovered in the greying sky, the women gathered in the synagogue courtyard. They carried candles, the white shawls they wore over head and shoulders floating in the misty dawn like the souls of their grandmothers. The young [prayer leader] didn't carry her double case watch or her silver prayer book, and no pearls swung against her flat chest. Unadorned, she led the women into the graveyard between the synagogue and the woods. They circled the cemetery seven times, soundlessly, stopping at Manya's grave. Once a year the women prayed at Manya's grave. During the days of awe, at the moment of judgment, all the women of Blaszka gathered at Manya's grave and prayed that their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers would intercede for them with the Holy Court. The rising sun was burning off the fog. Leaves drifted from the woods into the high grass and wildflowers that grew up and around the softly crumbling tombstones, the women's boots solid on the earth between the yellow blooms of butter-and-eggs. At this time of year, as at other times of life and death, dread and relief, danger and birth, the women stood together, arms linked, a net that gathered up their compassion, and let their grudges fall through. Only Misha, being close to her time, was not there among the women at her great-grandmother's grave.