The Forest of Vanishing Stars

by Kristin Harmel

  There was a giant bang as the truck swerved sideways, lurching into the bushes beside the road and slamming headlong into a tree. Zus cursed, and as some of the soldiers were thrown from the truck and others scrambled down, their guns drawn against an invisible enemy, there was no choice but to open fire, even though this was the wrong truck, a truck that couldn’t possibly provide ample food for the winter, a truck whose only real bounty was men.

  Yona ran forward with the others, all of them firing at the Germans. Some of the soldiers had reached for their weapons; others simply stood there, stunned. One soldier lay in the middle of the road, still and bloodied, apparently knocked unconscious after falling from the vehicle. The driver of the truck clambered down from the cab, his cap askew as he searched the forest wildly. A bullet sliced through his neck before his feet hit the ground, and he slumped face-first into the earth.

  Most of the soldiers fell, one by one, dropping to the ground in clouds of their own blood, but impossibly, two remained standing long enough to fire back. Their bullets ricocheted off the trees, whizzing like crazed bumblebees as they shot haphazardly at a threat they couldn’t see, panic rendering them careless. But it was too late for them; a bullet found the head of one of them, and a spray of machine-gun fire from one of the brothers shredded the chest of the other, and then, with all the Germans finally lying dead, the forest fell silent.

  Yona slowly lowered her weapon, her legs quaking beneath her as the full reality of what they’d done began to sink in. They had murdered these soldiers for no good reason; there was no assurance they were carrying anything of value aside from their weapons and the clothes on their backs.

  “That was for our parents,” Maks Rozenberg said, kicking one of the Germans. His brother Joel spat in the dead man’s face.

  “Come, quickly,” Zus said, shouldering his gun and grabbing Yona’s hand. “Come, all of you. We must take what we can and disappear before another truck arrives.”

  It was too sloppy, all of it, and Yona felt sick. Rosalia had acted without considering the consequences, her hatred temporarily squeezing her common sense aside. Yona scanned the road, looking for her as the others gathered themselves. Her heart skipped as she realized the fiery-haired woman wasn’t there. “Rosalia?” she called out.

  The others stopped what they were doing and turned, looking for her, too. It was Yona who saw her first, facedown on the ground, her beautiful red hair splayed around her like a lion’s mane. “Rosalia!” Yona cried, rushing to her side and dropping to her knees. She put a hand on Rosalia’s back; the other woman was still breathing in shallow gasps. Yona knew even before she gently rolled her over that Rosalia was dying.

  Her face no longer looked like stone; as she tried in vain to drink the air, there was a softness to her that Yona had never seen before. Zus came to kneel beside Yona, and then Chaim was there, too, all three of them looking down helplessly as Rosalia opened her eyes, struggling to focus on them. Yona could hear one of the Rozenberg brothers exclaiming over something he’d found in the truck, one of the wives urging them to hurry. But their voices sounded very far away. There was a gaping hole in Rosalia’s chest, and Yona could see blood bubbling out each time she took a breath.

  “I had to,” she managed through gasps for air. “They took so much. My children would be proud that I stood up for us.”

  Yona could feel tears in her eyes as she reached for Rosalia’s hand and held tight. Zus put his hand on Rosalia’s chest to try to stop the blood, but Yona shook her head at him sadly. It was no use.

  “Yes, they would be,” Yona said, and Rosalia smiled a wobbly smile.

  “I will tell them,” she whispered, and then she took one last shuddering breath, and the light went out of her eyes.

  Yona could feel herself choking on a sob, but before she could say anything, Chaim had grabbed her arm and Zus’s and was pulling them away. “We have to go,” he said, his voice thick with both grief and urgency. “Now. We’ve been here too long.”

  Yona looked up in a daze to see the others waiting by the edge of the road, the giant packs Moshe had made for them stuffed full. Yona blinked back tears; there had been more supplies in the truck than she had imagined. The Rozenbergs had worked quickly; the Germans lying on the road had been stripped of their guns, boots, and coats, too—an impressive stash with which to survive the winter.

  “Come,” Chaim urged again, his tone panicked now, and then Zus grabbed her hand and was pulling her along, toward the woods.

  “What about Rosalia?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “We can’t waste any more time,” Zus said, squeezing her hand. Chaim nodded his agreement. “We must honor her by surviving. And when the Germans find her, perhaps they’ll feel that they’ve gotten their pound of flesh. She may yet save our lives once more.”

  He was right, of course, but Yona couldn’t resist one last look back at Rosalia, who lay silent forever among the dead Germans, her sightless eyes staring up at the sky. Yona whispered a prayer to God, and then she followed Zus and the others as they fled back into the woods, heading for the river to hide their footprints, making them impossible to follow.

  * * *

  They ran for an hour and then waded downriver for another mile before emerging into a part of the forest that was unfamiliar to everyone but Yona. They had gone far enough that the Germans wouldn’t track them. The group finally stopped to rest in the shade of a thatch of oaks. Without a word, the Rozenbergs began to unwrap the bundles they’d been carrying, and Yona and Zus, who had been balancing a large bundle between them, did the same. Chaim and Leonid each had a small bundle, and in a moment, everything they’d taken lay on the ground before them.

  Yona gaped at the treasure. She’d had no idea what they’d been carrying, but now, with all of it spread before her, she wondered if perhaps Rosalia’s death hadn’t been entirely in vain after all.

  There were a dozen new machine guns, four pistols, and plenty of ammunition. In the bag she and Zus had been carrying, she was stunned to find two dozen loaves of hard bread, boxes of cigarettes, at least a hundred wrapped candy bars, and dozens of tins labeled Rinderbraten, Truthahnbraten, and Hähnchenfleisch. Chaim and Leonid had similar hauls, as did Regina and Paula, who were also carrying packages of pellets labeled Erbswurst, and bags of hard crackers. The bread and cigarettes had been soaked, but everything else looked mostly intact.

  “What is all this stuff?” one of the Rozenberg brothers asked.

  “The tins are beef, chicken, and turkey,” Yona said slowly, reading the labels as she reeled from the unexpected bounty. “And the pellets are to make pea soup.”

  “Soldiers’ rations,” Zus murmured, and Yona nodded. It made her hate the Nazis a bit more for plundering villages and destroying crops when their own survival was already assured.

  “With this, we’ll have enough for the winter,” Yona said. “This is what we were after.”

  They exchanged looks as the weight of what they’d taken settled over all of them. It was Chaim who broke the silence. “We should go,” he said. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  Everyone mumbled agreement, and they hastily bundled the supplies into heavy packs once more. They would walk until they couldn’t take another step, and then they would rest for a few hours, continuing their homeward trek before dawn.

  “Are you all right?” Zus asked, his voice low, as he fell into step beside Yona, who was leading the march through the woods.

  “No,” she whispered after a moment.

  He nodded, and she knew he wasn’t, either. They had all known the risks today, but losing Rosalia felt senseless.

  “Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra chirutei,” Zus began after a long silence, and Yona felt her heart flutter in recognition. “V’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen.”

  It was the mourner’s kaddish, spoken in Aramaic to honor
the dead. She took a deep breath.

  “Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya,” they said together, their voices joining as one. Yona whispered along as Zus continued with the rest of the prayer, and she knew, from the way his voice cracked, that he’d said it many times for many people he’d lost. To say it now, alone in the forest without a quorum of ten men, wasn’t tradition, but it brought Yona comfort. They would say it properly later, just as they had for Aleksander and the others. But for now, this was enough to keep Yona moving forward, to keep all the survivors headed home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The winter moved in swiftly that year, frosting the forest in ice before the group had the chance to finish building their zemliankas. Still, they had managed to hollow the ground out before it froze solid, so they were fortunate; all that remained was to build the roofs and stoves, and that they had accomplished by the first heavy snowfall.

  There would be just enough food to see the group safely through the cold, thanks to the autumn attack on the German truck as well as a few supply missions to neighboring villages. With the Germans mostly dispersed from the area now, it was easier to venture in and forage for food left behind. Before the world was frozen, they had brought home half-rotten potatoes, a dozen hens that had somehow managed to escape the Nazi slaughter, and even some bags of grain from a hidden basement in a barn.

  With the cold of the winter, too, came a warmth Yona had never known. Without saying a word about it, she and Zus had drifted together, spending more and more time with one another and eventually moving into the same zemlianka, where they huddled together at night under a shared blanket, absorbing the heat of each other’s bodies. There hadn’t been time to build smaller shelters this year, so they were living with eight others, packed in wall to wall. Modesty prevented them from doing more than holding each other at night, but the way he kissed her gently and cradled her like a treasure was enough. Yona knew how he felt, and her heart echoed his.

  “You’ve found love in the madness,” Ruth said to her one day with a small smile as they stood in the clearing watching Leah, Pessia, and Daniel play with the Gulniks’ little girl, Maia. Daniel was toddling now, unsteady on his skinny legs, and the girls delighted in being teachers, showing him how to put one foot in front of the other and giggling with him when he tumbled into the snow. “What a blessing.”

  Yona hugged her arms around herself and gazed around the camp. It was relatively warm for a winter day in the forest, the biting wind absent for a change, though the snow was falling enough to erase the traces of them when they went back beneath the earth. Elizaveta was outside bouncing a giggling Abra on her knee, while Nachum tossed a ball made from Moshe’s yarn back and forth with Chaim’s boys. Four of the adults were playing cards with a tree stump for a table, and a few more were laughing at something while passing a bottle of bimber back and forth. It felt strangely normal. The threat wasn’t gone, and there was still a smattering of Germans in the area, but on this day, no one was thinking about survival. They were simply enjoying the moment, a rare luxury in the woods, and it was beautiful. “I think we’ve all found love,” Yona said at last, smiling as she watched the children. She hadn’t realized it was happening, but somehow along the way, they had all become her family, each and every one of these refugees. She had thought she was teaching them how to live, but now she realized that in many ways, she had been the student all along.

  Ruth nodded and put a hand on Yona’s arm. “Thank you, Yona. I’m not sure if I have said this before, but I don’t think we would have survived without you.”

  Yona looked away, embarrassed. “You would have. I only helped a bit.”

  “Yona, you saved us.” Ruth cleared her throat. “You are a true gift from God, and I thank him for you every day.”

  Yona looked once more at the scene before her, normalcy in the midst of madness. “I thank God for all of it.”

  That night, the whole group crowded into the largest zemlianka, and in their hiding place beneath the earth, they sang the Hebrew songs Yona had come to know, and Ruth told the children fairy tales of elflike creatures called shretelekh, who brought goodness to those who were good to them. It was an evening that should have felt magical, but Yona found herself thinking instead of the winter before, and the first night the group had lit a menorah together. Hanukkah would begin again in a few days, but so many of the people from that celebration were no longer here. Her heart ached for all that was lost.

  Sulia was with Harry Feinschreiber now, having moved on from Aleksander almost as if he’d never existed, but the past never really disappeared, did it? There were ghosts in the woods that night—Rosalia, Aleksander, Leib, Luba—but it wasn’t just their ghosts. It was the sense of countless lives snuffed out, the hopeless cascade of future generations lost. She glanced at Zus, who sat in the shadows, and when he turned to look at her, she had the strange sense that he was thinking the same thing.

  And though the night of celebration eventually ended and Zus came to bed with Yona as he always did, his body warm against hers in the stillness, he didn’t say a word, and it felt as though a cloud had moved in front of the stars, obscuring all the light in the world.

  * * *

  Later, long after the sun had disappeared, the whole camp was asleep, tucked away in their winter homes beneath the ground. Yona awoke with a start in the pitch darkness and realized right away that she was alone in her reed bed. Zus was gone.

  She sat up, blinking into the blackness. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but she could make out only the vaguest shapes in the zemlianka, and Zus was not among them. Wrapping her blanket around herself, she pulled her boots on, then made her way toward the door, opening it quietly and stepping into the cold world outside.

  The snow was drifting down gently, silent in the soft moonlight, falling only from a few scattered clouds that trekked slowly across the sky, allowing glimpses of the stars. It was still a few hours before dawn. The sky stirred while nature slept, and for a few seconds, Yona simply stood still, taking in the silence and the peace, letting the snowflakes kiss her cheeks. Then she looked down and found Zus’s footsteps just barely visible in the freshly fallen snow. Worried, she set off in the direction he’d gone, tracking his path deeper into the woods.

  She walked for twenty minutes, and she was beginning to panic when she finally saw him, his back to her, his hands clenched in fists by his sides as he stared into the black depths of the forest. She exhaled in relief. As she walked toward him, he heard her and whirled around, his eyes wild and unfamiliar. He didn’t have a gun with him, but he was crouched in a defensive posture, ready to fight. “Yona?” he asked after a few seconds, straightening back up, the shadow over his face clearing, but not all the way. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you.” As she walked closer, he took a step backward, away from her, and that’s when she realized he’d been crying. There were tear tracks down his cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Zus?”

  “I didn’t want you to see me like this.” He took another step backward, forcing distance between them, and though she wanted to pull him into her arms, to promise him that everything would be okay, she knew that might be a lie.

  “What happened, Zus?” she asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head, and another tear fell from his left eye. He swiped it away angrily. “It’s Helena,” he said, his voice strange and strangled, and it took Yona a few seconds to realize he was speaking of his daughter. He had never said her name aloud in Yona’s presence before; even when she had gently asked about his past, he had shaken his head, pressed his lips together, and told her that he could not open that door without falling apart. It was only from Chaim that she knew the truth.

  “Oh, Zus,” she murmured.

  He turned his back to her, staring out into the wilderness again. Overhead, the sky watched in silence. In a few hours, it would be dawn, and the forest would be a
live again, the world would be alight. But for now, it felt like just the two of them in the moonlight.

  It was a long time before Zus turned back around. “She would have been six today. It should have been her birthday. But I—I couldn’t save her. How can it be that I am still alive and she has been gone from this earth for two years now?”

  He began to cry again, heaving sobs this time, and Yona hesitated before stepping forward and putting a tentative hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but he didn’t pull away, so she took another step, pulling him against her. He didn’t resist, and after a moment, his arms were around her, and he was sobbing into her hair. She absorbed the tremors of his grief.

  “There are no words that can tell you how sorry I am, Zus,” she whispered when finally his tears had stopped falling. “I wish I had known her.”

  He took a deep breath and pushed away, creating a sudden gap between them. He looked disoriented, defensive. “But don’t you see? If I had not lost her, if I had not lost Shifra, my wife, I never would have met you. This life that I have now with you, these feelings I have…” He shook his head. “It is only possible because they are dead. How can I embrace that? Am I not betraying them?”

  She blinked as he took another step backward, away from her, widening the distance. It wasn’t just sadness eating at him, it was guilt, and she was at the center of it. “Zus, I—”

  “There’s nothing you can say, Yona. There’s nothing anyone can say.”

  It was the first time she’d heard him sound cold toward her, and it sent a chill down her spine. She knew it was his grief speaking, but it still felt like a blow. She knew that things with Zus were different than they had been with Aleksander, that what she had with him was real and true. But was love transitory? Could it run its course, disappear at a moment’s notice? What if that was what was happening here? Could a person simply decide to turn his heart off? There was so little she understood; a lifetime of reading books deep within a lonely forest had not prepared her to open her own heart the way she had.