The Forest of Vanishing Stars

by Kristin Harmel

  “Yona, I think Aleksander is right,” he said, turning his warm gaze on her. “You would be the best person to go, but that’s why you must stay, in case something happens. The group needs you. I will take Chaim. We both know the land. I even know the pharmacy we’ll visit, unless it is no longer there. There’s a chemist in Lubcha who hired my father to repair his windows many years ago after a break-in. My father did good work, like he always did, and afterward, the man refused to pay. Called him a dirty Jew, accused him of shoddy work, then said he hadn’t actually done the work at all.” Zus smiled slightly, but there was sadness at the edges of his mouth, anger in his eyes. “It will be nice to pay him a visit for old times’ sake. I think Chaim will feel the same.”

  He looked at Aleksander, and Aleksander nodded. “It’s decided, then. How soon can you go?”

  “We can leave within the hour. We should be at the forest’s edge by midnight. Can you make camp here for a couple of days so we can find our way back to you?” Zus looked at Yona.

  She thought about it for a few seconds, her mind still spinning uneasily through all the fates that could befall Zus and Chaim in the forest, especially if they were discovered. But they had managed to lead nine others, including children, out of the ghetto and into the woods undetected. They would survive, as long as nothing went wrong. “Yes,” she said. “We will stay here unless something forces us to move. I think we are safe for a few days.”

  Zus nodded. “I’ll go tell Chaim.”

  She watched him go and then turned to Aleksander. “I really should go with them. It will increase their chances of getting back alive.”

  “You are better off here.” There was something cold in his tone, something that caught her off guard and made her look up sharply to meet his gaze. He looked away. “It’s decided. They know the forest. They will be fine.”

  As he, too, strode away, she rubbed the back of her neck, trying to untie the tension knotting her muscles, the lingering feeling that something terrible was coming. As Zus emerged from one of the shelters across the clearing, Chaim following close behind him, his eyes found Yona’s, and for a few seconds, she sensed he shared her foreboding.

  * * *

  Zus and Chaim left within an hour, both armed with the rifles Yona had taken from the dead Russians the summer before. Before they went, Zus paused in front of Yona and murmured, “We’ll return with the mercury. I promise.” His words were soft, and she could feel them against her cheek.

  “Just be safe. Please.”

  He nodded, and then the brothers were gone, the forest swallowing them whole.

  The next night, Aleksander was out on patrol, and Yona went to sleep alone in the hut they’d built the day before. As they had the previous summer and fall, the group slept in smaller clusters again, now that they had emerged from hibernation, two or three to a hut, some of them—such as Rosalia and Zus—choosing to build their own one-person lean-tos and sleep alone.

  Yona still couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was coming, but she was good at sleeping for a few hours at a time even when her mind raced, for sleep protected against illness and was essential to survival. Though she was worried about Zus and Chaim, she drifted off just as the moon reached its zenith in the sky; there was no rain in the air, so she and Aleksander had opened their makeshift roof to watch the stars, which brought her peace.

  She awoke with a start a few hours later. She had dreamed of a great cloud of ravens, so numerous that the moon and stars disappeared under a canopy of black. As they all croaked at once, their voices reverberating, she sat bolt upright, her heart thudding. Dreaming of ravens meant imminent death. She was out of bed and running into the clearing before she could stop herself.

  “Aleksander!” she hissed into the darkness. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, she could see the outlines of the group’s huts, lit by a nearly full moon. She heard people sighing in their sleep, someone shifting on a reed bed. Otherwise, the night was silent, ominous. She could still hear the echoing call of the ravens in her head.

  She stood motionless and listened until she could hear footsteps, just a single pair around the perimeter, moving in a steady circle. It was Aleksander on patrol; she needed to find him quickly and tell him that something was wrong. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest as she set out in the direction of his footfall. “Aleksander!” she whispered again.

  But when she reached the perimeter and saw a man’s shadow coming toward her, she stopped, startled. It wasn’t Aleksander.

  “Leib?” she asked in confusion as he quickened his pace to approach.

  “Yona? What is it?” His voice was laced with fear. “Has something happened?”

  She shook her head as he stopped beside her. “Where is Aleksander, Leib?”

  When Leib’s eyes settled on her, they were dark, shuttered. “He’s not here.”

  “But he was on patrol tonight. If he’s not here, where is he?” She blinked and saw the ravens again, calling out their warning in her mind’s eye. She scanned the forest, but nothing moved in the darkness. “Leib?”

  “He’s…” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he shifted uncomfortably and stared down at her. When she looked up and met his eyes, the depth of the pity there knocked the breath out of her, and all at once she knew. He wasn’t in danger. That wasn’t what her dream had been foretelling at all.

  “He wouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “Yona—” he began.

  But she was already moving back toward the camp, and she knew exactly what she would find even before she reached the shelter that Sulia and Luba shared, the one with the web of woven marsh grass draped across the front for privacy. Slowly, her heart slamming against her rib cage, she pulled back the curtain of green and peered in.

  On one side of the sloping lean-to, Luba lay on her side, snoring softly. On the other side lay Sulia. And on top of her, his back bare, moving in a rhythm that Yona recognized with a sick, immediate certainty, was Aleksander.

  “Oh!” Despite herself, Yona let out an audible gasp, which was enough to make Aleksander turn awkwardly, rolling away from Sulia.

  “Yona!” he choked as he scrambled upright and hastily tugged his trousers back over his hips.

  It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Sulia was protesting, reaching for Aleksander, even as he distanced himself from her, his face white in the shadows. Sulia grabbed for her dress, her face a mask of fury as she tugged it over her head and said Aleksander’s name. But he was already moving away from her, moving toward Yona, as he stammered an explanation. In the corner, Luba continued to snore heavily, oblivious.

  Yona didn’t wait to hear what Aleksander had to say. Instead, she took a few steps backward, into the clearing, and then she turned and ran, stumbling into her hut, the one she had shared just the night before with a man she had believed loved her.

  But it had all meant nothing, and now, as she lit a piece of pine bark with shaking hands and hastily gathered her things, tears coursed down her face like rivers. She ignored Aleksander as he entered behind her.

  “Let me explain, Yona!” he said, reaching for her, but she twisted away.

  “What could you possibly say?” She didn’t look at him. She was shaking, and she didn’t trust herself not to fall apart. She had never felt this way before, and she had no idea what to do.

  “You don’t know, because you don’t come from society like we do,” he began.

  “Enough of that! Enough of trying to make me feel like an outsider! I know I’m an outsider, Aleksander! I just didn’t think it mattered to you!”

  “That’s not what I meant, Yona!” He touched her arm again, and again she pulled away. “Just that you’re different than we are.”

  She snorted. “I’m different, so I couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to be betrayed?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying! What I mean is that it’s not like what you’ve probably read in your boo
ks, Yona. It’s a whole different world out here. I was just trying to find some happiness for a little while, to forget the misery…”

  “And you couldn’t do that with me?”

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times before looking away. “You don’t look at me anymore the way Sulia does. She needs me to save her.”

  “So you don’t want me because I’m not helpless?”

  He looked back at her, his jaw set. “It’s just…” He raked his hands through his hair. “It’s more difficult with you. And with Sulia, it is easy. Isn’t life hard enough?”

  Her heart suddenly felt hollow. “I make your life more difficult?”

  “That’s not what I mean, Yona. Please, just stop packing your things and listen to me for a moment. You don’t understand.”

  Indeed, Yona had little experience with the way people were supposed to interact with each other. But she knew enough to know that when a man loved a woman, he didn’t do this. Not a good man, anyhow. And she knew, just as surely as she knew her own soul, that she couldn’t stay here for another second. She may have helped the group to find their way, to survive the winter, but they knew the things she knew now. And they were Aleksander’s group, not hers, as he and Sulia had just made abundantly clear. Yona had ignored Jerusza’s warnings, had opened her heart incautiously, had made an enormous, unthinkable mistake by believing she was actually a member of this family. Even now, she could hear Jerusza’s laughter, soft and cruel in her memory.

  It was time to go.

  It took her only five minutes more to put everything she owned into her knapsack. She turned to Aleksander, who was still behind her, still talking, saying things that didn’t matter. She put a finger to her lips, and finally, he stopped, his eyes shining with desperation in the darkness. “Yona?” he asked, his voice high, pleading. “It is the woods. The rules are not the same. We are all just trying to survive.”

  “I shouldn’t have stayed so long,” she said softly, and when his eyes widened and he began to protest, she held up her hand and waited until he went silent again. “It was my mistake. When Zus and Chaim return with the mercury, gather several eggs from nests nearby. Use just the whites. Mix them with the mercury, and dip strips of fabric into the solution for everyone to wear across their chests for a day, then across their backs for a day. It should rid you of the lice. You know how to hunt now, how to trap, how to fish, how to stay on the move. Zus and Chaim are with you now, and they know the woods better than you do, so don’t let your pride get in the way, or you’ll die out here. Listen to them. And never let your guard down, for the Germans will find you. May God watch over you all.”

  She turned to go, and when he grabbed her wrist to stop her, her pain bubbled to the surface as a white-hot streak of anger. Twisting away, she dug her nails into his forearm, squeezing until he yelped in pain and let go. “You will never touch me again,” she said.

  “But the woods—”

  “Are where we learn who we really are.” And then, extinguishing her pine light in a puff of breath, she hoisted her pack onto her back and slipped into the dark night.

  Across the clearing, Sulia stood outside her shelter, her dress askew, a small smile on her face, as if she believed she’d finally triumphed by driving Yona out. But it hadn’t been Sulia to make her go. Yona should have been gone months ago, but she had foolishly opened her heart to the wrong person, which made her ignore all the things she knew to be true. Now she was wiser. Now she would return to the world she knew, the world in which she flew alone, a dove in the wilderness, untethered. Her wrist throbbed with purpose as she turned and strode toward the trees.

  Later, when her anger had faded and the heartbreak crept in, the thing that would hurt most was the fact that when she left, Aleksander didn’t follow, nor did he try to stop her. She didn’t turn to look back, but she imagined him standing beside Sulia as they watched her go, the woman who had helped them to survive already no more than a footnote in their story.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Yona had walked for only thirty minutes—tears streaming down her face, no sense of direction in the thick forest, where the moonlight was nearly lost—when she heard footsteps approaching. Her grief was pushed immediately aside by fear, and she slid quickly behind a tree, holding her breath. She could tell by the footfalls that there were only two people trudging through the darkness, both men, judging from the sound, and her mind spun. If they were Germans, there might well be others not far behind. She had a chance to stop these two, for she had the element of surprise, but what about a whole German unit? Would it be too late to protect the group?

  But as the men drew closer, she heard their voices, and she recognized them immediately with a great swell of relief. It was Chaim and Zus, returning from their mission. She closed her eyes and put her hand on the tree to brace herself, weak with gratitude that they were safe. For a few seconds, she considered letting them pass. After all, she was embarrassed by the pain she knew was written across her face. But she needed to know whether they’d been successful, because if they had the mercury, she would sleep better knowing that the group would be able to eliminate the imminent threat of typhus. If not, she would have to go back, wouldn’t she?

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped from behind the tree when they were just a few feet away, and she was encouraged to see that their reaction was instant; their guns were on her immediately, even though their guard had been down just seconds before. With instincts like that, they’d have a fighting chance.

  “It’s only me,” she said softly, and they both blinked at her, alarm still firing in their eyes as they lowered their guns.

  “Yona?” Zus asked, stepping forward. He reached out as if to touch her face and then seemed to think better of it, pulling his hand quickly back. “What is it? What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

  She shook her head. “The group is fine. I just— I couldn’t stay any longer.”

  In the silence between them, the words seemed to unfold without a sound, and after a pause, Zus blinked in understanding. “Aleksander. What did he do?” When she didn’t answer, his jaw clenched. “He was with Sulia?”

  “You knew?” Another wave of despair threatened to wash over her.

  “No, Yona, I didn’t. It was just—it was a guess. I’m sorry.”

  Yona was embarrassed to feel tears in her eyes again. “Yes, well, he said I didn’t understand because I am not like him. That things were easy with her.” She delivered the words in a monotone, embarrassed by how deeply they had wounded her.

  “Those are not the words of a man with a backbone,” Zus said instantly, and Yona could hear the fury in his voice. “And they speak entirely of his character, not yours.”

  She looked at the ground. “Is it supposed to hurt this much?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is.” Zus frowned and then turned to Chaim and nodded. An understanding passed between the brothers and Chaim stepped several meters away, out of earshot. Zus turned back to Yona. “I didn’t know, Yona. I wouldn’t have kept a secret like that. I don’t believe in betraying the people who care for us.”

  “I know.” And she did. She understood, even with her limited exposure to people, that Zus was a different kind of man than Aleksander was, with a different kind of heart. She had felt it from the moment she first met him, and it had confused her then the way it confused her now. Aleksander had seemed like everything she needed: safety, security, a place to belong. In the end, he had been none of those things, and she wondered just how blind she had been. Certainly, she had been a terrible judge of character—and terrible at discerning what lay in her own heart. She wiped her tears away. Inside her chest, sadness was fighting a prolonged battle with fury. “Did you get the mercury?” she asked.

  He nodded, opening his coat to show her a large knapsack of vials. Relief flooded through her, making her knees weak. Zus reached out to brace her, and their eyes met.

  “Thank God,” she murmured without looking away. “Tha
nk you, Zus, for doing this. I know it was dangerous.”

  He seemed to hardly hear her. “Where are you going, Yona?”

  “Away.”

  They held each other’s gaze, and for the first time, Yona had the sense that he could read her like a diary, that perhaps he’d always been able to. The thought should have unsettled her, but instead, it filled her with a strange peace, an unfamiliar sense of being entirely understood. “Don’t go. Please,” he said.

  “I have to. I should have gone long ago. It was a mistake to get comfortable, a mistake to stay. I never belonged. I see that now.”

  “You’re wrong. You can’t let Aleksander force you out, Yona.” Zus took a step closer, and this time, when he reached out to touch her face, she didn’t resist, and he didn’t stop himself. His touch on her cheek was rough and gentle at the same time. “You didn’t see it, but he was never worthy of you.”

  “Or maybe there is something broken in me.” Somehow, speaking the words aloud felt like releasing a flock of birds to the sky. “Perhaps I just don’t know how to love.”

  “You will know, Yona. When it is the right person, you will know.” Zus took a deep breath. “And you’re not broken, Yona. It’s the cracks in us that make us who we are, and you… you are stronger than anyone I have ever met, I think. Stay, Yona. Please. We need you.”

  “I’m sorry, Zus,” she said softly, stepping away. His hand fell from her face, and the sadness in his eyes was as deep as a well in the earth.

  “Yona—”

  She smiled sadly. “I am a dove, Zus.” She held up her wrist, which was throbbing with purpose now, warning her. “And doves are meant to fly.” She took another step away from him. “Protect them, Zus. I know you will. They listen to you now, all of them. They respect you. I do, too.”

  “But—”

  “Be well, Zus.” She turned, because if she let him hold her gaze for a second longer, she might stay forever. Then she ran, stumbling through the undergrowth, knowing that he wouldn’t follow—not because he didn’t want to, but because he knew the choice was hers.