The Light of the Midnight Stars

by Rena Rossner

  Still, everything feels diminished without the light from the skies to guide us.

  Abba says, “If you help someone find the path to righteousness you can be like a star in the sky that shines forever.”

  Maybe that’s the only kind of light we need right now.

  I want so badly to be a shining star.

  Hannah

  21 Tevet 5120

  There was a hero’s feast to welcome me home. Neighbors delivered barley bread and orange cakes and nut and raisin studded pastries. Eema made spicy fish soup with caraway seed and pepper, and Abba took out pálinka to toast my return. It’s all delicious, and kosher, and it brings tears to my eyes to be home and surrounded by family. These are nearly the same words I wrote over a month ago when I first left home. But now I miss Jakob. Caring for his mother gave me a purpose, a routine. How will I fill my days now that I’m home? I miss their large comfortable home, a kitchen and cellar filled with anything I could possibly be tempted to eat, my room, the gardens and long walks with Jakob—our conversations.

  I laid awake last night in my old bed. Levana was in her small bed by the window and Sarah slept beside me. This house once felt palatial—I used to think how lucky we were that father had built us our own room—separate from the kitchen and living space, separate from where Eema and Abba sleep.

  Now I felt as though the walls were closing in on me. My room in Jakob’s home had stone walls and a large hearth where a fire was always lit. I had an impossibly large bed all to myself, and the ceiling was so high it felt like it contained the sky.

  It says in Pirkei Avot, “Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot.” I’m not sure I am happy anymore, which is the strangest thing I’ve ever felt. My stomach feels empty, even though I know it’s full.

  “Sarah.” I tapped her shoulder after I tried for hours to fall asleep last night. “Sarah, are you awake?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong; I wanted to talk.”

  “Okay, so talk,” she said, and it made me wonder what had happened while I was away. What could she possibly be upset about?

  I stared at the ceiling above our head. I wanted to tell her that I felt so alone, as though I was a different person than I was when I left. But I didn’t.

  “Hannah?” Sarah said.

  “Yes?” I replied.

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  I fished around for something to say. “What was it like here while I was gone?”

  “Quiet, I guess. Quieter.” I felt her shrug. “Nothing much happened.”

  “Did Abba ask you to join him in the study at all, to help with his work?”

  “No. I spent most of my time by the hearth, weaving.” But the edge I used to hear in her voice is gone. “What was it like there?”

  I wanted to ask her more, because clearly something did happen while I was gone, but I hoped she’d tell me on her own. “It was… really different,” I said. “The house was made of stone. The dining room could seat thirty. And the Duchess Eliszabetta’s room was twice the size of our house. There were arched brick cellars under the kitchen, full of wine and mead and spirits, dried herbs and stores of honey and grain, smoked meats and salted fish. You’ve never seen such plenty.” The words spilled out of me.

  “Wow,” she said. “What was your room like? It must have been palatial.”

  I’m pleased by her interest, realizing how badly I needed to speak of what I’d been through. “The first night, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep all alone in such a large bed. There were strange noises and scents. But I was exhausted, and I slept on a feather-filled mattress, with pillows and endless warm blankets. I fell asleep almost instantly. I’ve never been so comfortable.”

  “That sounds like a dream…” she sighed. “What was the duchess like? Was she nice?”

  “Not at first. She was quite ill when I got there and I didn’t know if I’d be able to help her. But slowly I got her to drink broths and sip teas. I worked with tinctures like Eema taught me and laid my hands on her body to ease the inflammation and stimulate blood flow. Eventually, it worked. At first, she was suspicious of me, I think. But Jakob was always kind. He went to the yeshiva to understand what I could eat and brought me food from town. One day I came back to my room and there were two new dresses made for me.”

  “Did you wear them?” she asked, and I turned to her in the darkness.

  “Of course I wore them.” I laughed and elbowed her. She giggled. It was so nice to chat with her like that. Lately things have felt strained between us.

  “What color were they?”

  “One was green and gold, and the other was pink, with froths of lace.”

  “I wish I could see them,” she said. Then she asked, “What’s he like?”

  I was surprised by her question. It wasn’t the type of thing Sarah would have asked before, and I realized then that she’d grown up a lot while I was gone. “Jakob’s the sweetest…” I stopped, picturing his warm smile, his thick blond hair, his startling eyes, the taste of his lips… “But he’s gone now,” I said, shaking my head to rid it of the images. “Who knows if he’ll ever come back.” My eyes filled with tears and I turned my face to the wall so that Sarah wouldn’t see.

  “You love him,” she said. It wasn’t a question. And I wondered how she knew.

  I didn’t answer because I felt like if I did, the small flower of hope that was blooming inside me might die from lack of air.

  “It was like being a princess,” I said instead. “A real princess.”

  “A Jewish princess,” Sarah replied. “Can you imagine that?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t—I can’t. And that’s exactly the problem.

  It is said that Elijah the prophet himself enters the garden of Eden and sits under the tree of life and writes down the names of those who celebrated the holy Shabbat in his book. It is for this reason that we speak of Elijah during the Havdallah ceremony. We smell spices so that the rotten scents of the light of Gehennom will not return, for there is no scent to the light of Gehennom on Shabbat. But on the holy day of Yom Kippur the scent does not return, so then, there is no need to make the blessing over spices. It is customary to wash one’s eyes with wine after the blessing, so that one might get a glimpse of the world to come.

  —The Book of the Solomonars, page 13, verses 3–8

  The first person the mist took was Tomáš, the baker’s son. He wandered too close to the beech trees of the Satu Mare and into the dense fog. But trouble didn’t start until Jozef Kováč went missing. He set off into the forest to cut down lumber for the house he was working on in town, and was never seen again. The next day his daughter, Katarina, wandered off and never returned. Then people began to fall ill. The black spots moved from the trees, to the walls of homes and from there onto clothes and skin and tongues, into lungs and hearts.

  The mist infected dreams and nightmares. It rose into a storm and the storm rose into a blizzard and soon the town was covered in black frost. It was not an ordinary kind of frost. It was the kind that stings your lips and nose, that pinches at your fingers and toes like an itch you can’t scratch but drives you wild nonetheless. Neighbors turned on neighbors, blaming each other for failed crops, and chickens and children died in the night from the cold.

  The Duchess of Trnava woke in the middle of the night and spoke a name. Ssssssolomonar, she hissed, the “S” crackling on her tongue like lightning. The word spread like smoke.

  The community turned to Reb Isaac. “Is there nothing you can do?” But the holy Reb Isaac knew he couldn’t control a storm that had taken root in the hearts of men. It attacked their souls and turned into hatred—and that kind of climate is beyond even the ability of a Solomonar to dispel.

  Sarah

  Months go by. I turn thirteen. I meet Guvriel every day on my way to Mária’s. He’s always rushing in my direction, disheveled, with a silly grin on his face, and he’s waiting for me each day when I finish. It
has become too dangerous for any Jew in town to wander the streets alone. Every day, we fear someone will accuse Abba of dabbling in the dark arts, or Eema and Hannah of spreading the mist. But that won’t stop them from trying to ease the pain of those who are suffering, from going out on house calls under the cover of night. Even the non-Jews have taken to walking in pairs. Everyone looks at each other with distrust. But I refuse to stop working at Mária’s. Now that I’ve gained a measure of freedom, I won’t give it back.

  We don’t understand why the mist seems to pick and choose the homes it enters. Sometimes, all the wisdom in the world cannot explain the workings of the world. And it has affected our community as much as any other one. There is no street in town that is untouched by its darkness.

  “Sarah, I have something to ask you,” Guvriel says as he walks me home one day—our hands are by our sides, so close that sometimes they brush against each other—a ghost of a caress that gives me chills, like having a fever. He has become the center of my life—a light and wisdom I am drawn to, like a moth that can do nothing else but try to get close to the flame. I never understood how the light of God glowed in my father’s veins until I met Guvriel. It is he who has set the light in my veins aglow with wisdom and a thirst for knowledge, but more than anything, with understanding.

  My thoughts drift on the wind, distracting me.

  “In times like these, we can’t afford to wait,” he says.

  “I agree completely.”

  He stops and looks at me, his eyes wide, searching mine as if he seeks truth in them. “Does that mean you say yes?”

  “Wait… to what?” I wrinkle my brow in confusion.

  “I asked you to marry me… well, to give me permission to ask your father for your hand, which is really the same…”

  “What?” I splutter. My heart leaps in my chest and my eyes go wide. He is everything good that has happened to me. My hands find each other and they are ice. I rub them together nervously. I want this, don’t I?

  “If it’s too early, I understand and I will wait. I will be patient. But it is you I want to spend my days with, Sarah. Only you. I’ve been trying to gather up the courage to ask you for weeks.”

  I swallow hard. Am I ready for this? But this is the way of things. I look down at my hands.

  “You can think on it. I don’t want to…”

  “Yes,” I blurt out. “Yes, you may ask my father.”

  My emotions change as quickly as the weather. I try to stifle the grin that spreads across my face. A wind picks up. My chest fills with a surge of flame. It’s a strange feeling—one I’ve never felt before. I press my hand to my heart and let out a breath.

  “You feel it too?” He puts a hand to his chest, over his heart. “The Talmud in Moed Kattan says that every day a bat kol issues forth in a heavenly voice that says, ‘The daughter of so-and-so is destined to be the wife of so-and-so.’ I think that’s what I’m feeling. The echo of that voice.”

  “I… I don’t know? Maybe?”

  “You have made me so happy, Sarah. I can’t wait to go tell my father, and to speak to yours. I never understood what it meant, when Ben Azzai says in the Mishna that we should run to perform even a minor mitzvah—I’ve never wanted to run to do a mitzvah before in my life. But right now, all I want to do is run. I mean, I won’t,” he says. “I’ll stay right here by your side and walk you home, but I want to run.”

  “So run!” I say. “I’m not stopping you.”

  “Later, I will run through the forest to proclaim how happy I am. I will sing shirah, but not now. Now I’m walking with you. My… soon-to-be betrothed.”

  Girls my age are already married. He’s right to ask me. But Hannah isn’t married yet. My chest feels tight with a sadness that says I am not deserving of this happiness. I’m not good at heart like Guvriel. I’m not obedient and devout. Something’s going to ruin this for me. It can’t be this easy. Not for me, Sarah Solomonar, town firestarter.

  Later that night, I follow Guvriel into the forest. He comes to fetch me in fox form. He waits until Abba leaves the house, then I follow the lead of his bushy red tail back into the woods. It is a dark night, the coldest I remember, even though it’s already spring. He runs ahead and circles back, again and again, full of nervous energy and excitement.

  But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s very wrong in the Šenkvický wood. When Guvriel shifts back and comes to sit beside me, I can tell from his face that he doesn’t have good news.

  “Your father refused,” he says.

  “What?” I’m outraged, even though something inside me knew this was coming. “Who does he want me to marry?”

  “No, no. He approves of the match. He won’t allow us to marry until Hannah does.”

  Father’s verdict knocks the breath from my lungs. I knew this was coming, so why am I upset? Tears freeze two trails down my cheeks and I shiver and wrap my arms around my chest.

  “Sarah, don’t be sad. Please. Seeing you cry… I feel as though a knife is slicing through me. I’m so sorry.” I see that tears brim in his eyes too. “I never wanted to make you sad. I would never have asked you if I thought it would cause you pain. He didn’t say no forever, just no for now.” There’s a hopeful lilt at the tail end of what he says, and I want so badly to hang onto that, like the curve at the end of a letter. I want to reach for it—for him, but I can’t help but feel it like the blow it is. My father slamming yet another door in my face.

  “What proof does he have?” I rage. “What pasuk? Please tell me! In what verse does it say that she gets to marry first?” I scream at Guvriel, though I know that none of this is his fault.

  I’m angry at my sister and my father. Burning with rage. All the feelings I’d worked so hard to suppress ignite within me. I hear a sound, and Guvriel grabs my shoulders and moves me aside as branches crack off the tree above us and fall to the ground at our feet, smoldering.

  “Sarah…” Guvriel cautions. His arms are around me and now I’m full of fire of a different kind. I’m still so angry, but his arms make me go still. This is forbidden.

  “My whole life…” I say, my voice strained, my hands clenched into fists.

  “Sarah, you need to breathe.” Guvriel’s gentle voice urges me.

  I let out a breath in a huff. “She’s always… I’ve always felt like she gets the first pick—the first of my parents’ love and attention—the first choice when it came to chores—maybe even the first of the talents our parents gave us. I always get her leftovers. She gets life and the ability to make things grow, and she leaves me with fire—with death and destruction.”

  “No,” Guvriel says. “You don’t see yourself like I see you. You’re a hundred times stronger than she is. You’re smarter, and funnier, and so talented you haven’t even scratched the surface of what you can do. When Nimrod threw Abraham into the kivshan ha’esh, what happened? There’s a midrash in Psachim that says that the angel Guvriel told God that he wanted to go save him. And do you know what God said?”

  I shake my head.

  “God said, ‘I am unique in my world and he is unique in his world… It is only appropriate for a unique one to go and save a unique one.’ But in reward for making that offer, God told Guvriel that he could save Abraham’s descendants—Chananya, Mishael and Azarya, when they would be thrown into the fiery furnace. You are unique in this world, Sarah. I wouldn’t want it any other way. It is not for nothing that I am named Guvriel and you are named Sarah. Sarah was Abraham’s wife. Our souls come into this world with their own destiny; they choose when they come to earth and whose bodies they inhabit. None of the things that happen to us are by chance. I promise, Sarah—I promise that I am your angel, your Guvriel and no one else’s. I will go into the fiery furnace if I have to so that we can be together. What is time in the grand scheme of the universe? Nothing. I would wait for you until the end of time.”

  His face is so close to mine that the tears that fill his eyes spill over and wet my cheeks, a
nd there is no force in the universe that can keep our lips apart.

  Maybe we are but a link in a chain of tradition that stretches all the way back to the great King Solomon himself, but the blood that runs in our veins feels connected—like we are part of some giant body—something larger than ourselves. Our lips touch and fire transfers—from my lips to his.

  He moves away and I’m frozen still in shock. He kissed me.

  “I’m still mad,” I say, but my voice is steadier, “because I know that if I was in her situation, I would never stand in the way of her happiness.” We hear the crack of another branch, and I smell smoke.

  He looks up, then back at me. “I kiss you and the first thing you have to say is, ‘I’m still mad?’” he laughs.

  I scowl. But then his laughter wins me over.

  “That’s more like it,” he says tenderly. “You know, that’s what I love about you. You always do the unexpected.” He tucks a curl behind my ear. “But we need to get out of here before you set the woods on fire.”

  Everything hits me in one full swoop, like a gust of razor-sharp wind. Love. He said the word “love”. He smiles wider as he watches my face, like he can see what’s going on in my head.

  “I love you too,” I say, and all the anger in me drains away. “I’ll wait. I don’t want to, but as long as you never leave me, I’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

  The sky grows brighter above us, as if with a rush of flame, and he leans in to kiss me again. He spins us out of the way just in time, as another smoking branch falls from the canopy above.

  Levana

  My eyes wander the night sky as though I’m lost in a labyrinth. When I’m awake, my eyes dart across the horizon, and when I’m sleeping, I pace the corridors of the sky in my mind. I’m searching for my star. I know I will recognize it when I find it.