The Light of the Midnight Stars

by Rena Rossner

  I turn to look…

  The voivode’s guards

  have come for me.

  Their hands are on my arms.

  Something covers my mouth.

  I try to cry out, to scream,

  to wrestle my way free

  but their grip is too strong.

  Why are they here?

  Didn’t we only just sit down

  for a picnic together?

  They wrench my arms

  behind my back and tie

  my wrists together.

  I don’t understand

  what’s happening.

  Why?

  I turn my head

  from side to side

  frantically, trying

  to breathe, trying

  to see who is behind me.

  Is it Constantin?

  Please, you know me!

  I want to say.

  But then I see

  Marghita

  behind them.

  A small, sad grin

  of triumph

  on her lips.

  There is cloth

  in my mouth.

  My eyes

  fill with tears.

  Marghita watches

  as the guards

  pull me down

  the hallway,

  out of my room,

  and down the stairs.

  She doesn’t follow.

  They cover my head

  with a sack that smells like hay.

  Only pinpricks of light get in.

  They shove me into a carriage.

  I hear horses; the carriage starts to move.

  First we bump over dirt and rocks,

  then the road grows smoother.

  It is not a long ride.

  They don’t need to go far

  to dispose of me.

  They open the doors

  and heave me outside.

  I can feel the light

  of the moon

  and the stars

  through the bag

  over my head.

  We are outside.

  My feet touch earth.

  I am barefoot.

  I hear shovels, digging.

  The sound of steel

  hitting earth.

  Again

  and again

  and again.

  I can’t stop shivering.

  They shove me

  and I fall.

  For an instant,

  I think I will land

  and break my neck

  and it will all be

  blessedly over.

  But my feet

  touch earth again

  and my arms feel soil.

  I struggle to undo

  the bindings

  at my wrists.

  There is earth

  all around me.

  I can smell it.

  The roots of plants

  tickle my nose.

  Is it a bug?

  The smell

  of freshly turned soil

  floods my senses.

  And then the shovels

  of earth

  begin to fall.

  I try to move,

  but there is nowhere to go.

  I try to cry out,

  but cloth still gags me.

  I can’t breathe.

  My eyes fill with tears.

  I see stars.

  There is nothing

  I can do

  to stop them.

  No one comes

  to my rescue.

  The stars see everything—

  and they do nothing.

  The earth rises

  with every shovel-full.

  It is up to my neck now.

  There is no room to move.

  My head is still above earth.

  When I hear a horse.

  A carriage.

  Footsteps.

  The hood over my head—removed.

  I blink up

  at the light

  of the stars.

  So bright.

  Why do

  none of them

  save me?

  My vision adjusts

  and I see only Marghita.

  She spits in my face.

  “A Jewish demoness—

  a striga that’s

  what you are.

  You seduced my son

  and found your way

  into his bed

  even though you knew

  you carried the spawn

  of a different man—

  a demon,

  just like you.”

  She bends down

  and I think

  that she will

  strike me.

  I close my eyes

  and wait for

  the blow.

  Instead, there’s a cool blade

  at my throat.

  So that’s it, I think.

  She will slit my throat.

  But she doesn’t.

  She cuts off my hair.

  Long copper strands fall

  around my head.

  I feel the metal

  pressed to my skull

  and then the skritch

  of the blade.

  She nicks my skull

  in so many places,

  I see rivers of blood

  in front of my eyes.

  I don’t have hands

  that I can use

  to wipe the blood away.

  The guards fill

  the burlap sack

  with my hair.

  “Burn it,”

  she tells them.

  “Thou shalt not suffer

  a witch to live!”

  She kneels down

  before me

  and takes the cloth

  out of my mouth.

  Help! I cry out,

  as loud as I can,

  as loud as my lungs,

  which are pressed in by earth

  will allow.

  But then

  she is shoving something

  in my mouth.

  I taste dirt.

  My body wants

  my hands to fight—

  to struggle.

  But I cannot

  feel them

  anymore.

  Sh’ma Yisrael!

  I choke and gag

  and try to dislodge

  the dirt

  from my mouth,

  Adonai Eloheinu!

  but she only shoves

  more in.

  Adonai Echad.

  So much earth.

  My mouth feels

  as though it will burst.

  My jaw aches.

  I start to choke.

  Earth at the back

  of my mouth.

  I can’t swallow

  it

  down.

  I can still breathe

  through my nose,

  but just barely.

  Marghita gets up.

  She wipes her hands

  on her gown.

  Then she takes

  something out of a sack

  and I hear the sound

  of salt spilling.

  A ring of salt

  around my head.

  Everything blurs.

  My eyes water.

  I try to breathe,

  to keep a clear path

  down my throat

  for air.

  But there are

  black shadows

  in the corners

  of my eyes.

  I am too scared

  to move my lips.

  I am Levana bat Yitzchak,

  I say in my heart,

  daughter of Esther and Isaac

  Oh Lord our God

  who I know I’ve forsaken.

  Please… save me…

  Marghita spits.

  She curses at me.

  “Stay here

  until she stops

  breathing,”
/>
  she tells the guards.

  I hear a horse,

  galloping away.

  Then all is quiet

  and still.

  I try to look up

  to the heavens.

  Ezri me’im Hashem—

  My help comes from the Lord

  oseh shamayim va’aretz—

  who made heaven and earth.

  It hurts my neck,

  but if I am to die,

  I wish to die

  with the stars

  in my eyes.

  It is the wrong choice.

  The angle only sends

  the earth in deeper.

  I struggle and gasp;

  I can’t breathe;

  there is nowhere for

  the air to go.

  The black velvet I see

  is like a night

  with no stars.

  Hannah

  23 Iyar 5123

  I woke before dawn again today and made my way through the forest to the cave. I thought that I was only going to check on the babies—my nephews—but something had been set into motion last night that would change our future forever.

  I found the babies sleeping peacefully. They must have woken up, then cried themselves back to sleep again, poor things, but they are safe, and alive. The forest is caring for them, and that is all that matters. I changed their soiled clothing and fed them milk. I know this is not a permanent solution: they need mother’s milk—they need a mother. Soon they fell back asleep, stomachs full and content… for now.

  I didn’t want to leave them. I cradled one to my chest, and then the other. What will become of them? Who will take care of them? I cried and my tears wet their little faces.

  When I stopped crying, I put them down and watched the rise and fall of their chests. Something felt wrong. Something in the earth. There is a rumbling beneath the earth, a trembling in each branch and leaf. I felt it then, a disturbance, an unease. The roots of the trees are unhappy.

  I kissed the boys on their foreheads and my eyes filled with tears again.

  I will be back again, little ones.

  Hăita liuliu, sleep softly.

  Hăita liuliu. Hăitu lulu.

  I cut through the forest and made my way to the town square. The sense of unease I felt grew. The trees vibrated with something I can only now describe as sorrow. The closer I got, the worse it felt, the trees both getting in my way and urging me on. I walked fast, then ran faster, and faster. The trees whispered in my ears. Something was very, very wrong.

  When I got to the center of the town square, the crows were already circling. I saw my little sister and dropped to the ground, hand over my mouth, stifling my scream. “No…” I whispered, hoarse. Her hair… her beautiful hair, I remember thinking, with no rational reason why I thought that when faced with the horror of her death. I fell to the ground and dug my fingers into her mouth, trying to pry out the earth, but it was no use. My little sister was cold and dark. No longer bright. No longer breathing. No breath left in her. No air.

  I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the air was choking me. As if I’d swallowed earth. And that was when I noticed it—the Black Mist like a carpet, blanketing the floor. Smothering everything.

  Levana. My baby sister. My little light. Once I held her like I hold her babies now. My body heaved. It tried to empty me of everything within me. But the life within me held fast.

  How can anything matter now that she’s gone? I have known too much of loss and not enough love. We all have.

  And now there are two motherless boys in the world. Boys who will never know the light that used to shine in her eyes. The soft sound of her voice when she sang our prayers. The way she looked up at the sky and believed, with all her heart, in the power of the stars to save us all.

  She was wrong. No angel came. Not to save Jakob, or Guvriel, or her babies, or her soul now.

  Leaving our faith behind wasn’t enough. Constantin wasn’t enough. Nikolas wasn’t enough. Even the stars, that shone so bright for her, left her alone and scared in the end.

  I don’t know how to live in a world without her.

  I can’t stop my body from shaking, the sobs from finding their way out of my mouth.

  I try to breathe, but it’s so hard. Was this what it was like for her in her last minutes?

  Did she know that no one would save her?

  We can only save ourselves, I heard my mother’s voice and I knew that I had to go to her. To tell her and Abba what happened here.

  Why did I leave her? I could have tried to save her… but I chose her boys instead.

  It is a choice I will have to live with for the rest of my life.

  One day, her children can read these words. One day, they’ll read how brave she was until the very end.

  The sun was rising. I felt its warmth on my face. I didn’t want its light or its comfort, but its dawning rays broke through the haze of my sorrow and knew I had to act quickly.

  I stood up and took off my shoes. I planted my feet in the earth by her head. My toes curled into the soil and I closed my eyes. Tears poured down my cheeks. I sought her soul. I reached out with my senses and looked for it amid the thick black mist, and then I felt it. A bright spark trapped inside the husk of her body. I tugged, but it didn’t budge. I tried to entice it, but it paid me no heed. It wouldn’t leave my sister’s body even in death.

  And then I realized why. I remembered. A tahara wasn’t done. This wasn’t a proper Jewish burial. But I didn’t have the time or the strength to dig her out.

  My tears continued to fall. I felt the seed of a tree take root, and as I struggled to free her soul, a sapling sprouted. It was not something I asked for. Not something I called into being, but still it came and I sang to it, one of the songs that Levana used to sing…

  May the angel who redeems me from harm

  bless the children and call them by My name

  and by the names of my forefathers, and may they

  multiply like fish in the midst of the earth.

  Its roots surrounded my sister’s head, cocooning her body, wrapping around her until she was planted, firmly rooted like I wanted to be, pulled down into the earth and buried within it.

  The tree’s limbs already reached for the sky like she did.

  I whispered softly, begging the ground for the release of my sister’s soul.

  I gave you life, I said, now give me this light.

  I felt a small glow sputter and stop, then sputter again and begin to shine. It traveled from the belly of the earth through the roots of the tree and up a branch, until one silver star sprouted from the top of the tree. It shimmered in the near-dawn of sky.

  It detached itself from the top of the tree and took flight, spiraling upwards. It rose, faster and faster, until I could no longer see it. I only saw the shimmer it left behind.

  This was not the way my sister’s story was supposed to end, but her soul is free now. It was the best I could do. The only thing.

  She is with her beloved in the sky.

  And then I heard her voice on the wind. “Every star in the sky is a soul. When someone dies, a star falls. It is our job to put the stars back in the sky. Rekindle the light.”

  I’ve always wondered, with so much death in the world, how there were still so many stars.

  Now I know that there is more than one way to make a star. When I get home, I will light a candle and place it on the windowsill.

  Perhaps from up there she will see it. Perhaps she can already see her little boys, that they are safe for now, and sleeping.

  She is the angel who will watch over us all.

  When I looked up at the tree, it was covered in star-shaped leaves.

  I saw an owl swoop down, then land on the branches of the tree.

  “It is a tree of life, for those who take hold of it,” I said out loud, remembering the verse from synagogue, from when we returned the Torah scrolls to their ark.

  Then, like I used to do in
synagogue when I was a little girl and the gabbai raised the Torah scroll so that all could see it, I kissed my fingers, then pressed my palm up to the sky.

  I turned in the direction of my parents’ home. I had to go tell them that their daughter was gone. I must help them tear kri’ah, we must all sit shiva. We may have left our religion behind us, but the seven days of Jewish mourning will begin with or without us. Some traditions are as immutable as the stars.

  I will mourn Levana in the traditional way. I will sit shiva for seven days.

  And then I will tell her story.

  Stanna

  I can no longer deny what is growing within me. Ivan Alexander sends us to a monastery so that Theodora might come back, bearing my baby in her arms and ensuring Ivan Alexander’s succession.

  But Theodora knows what happens to women who are sent to monasteries, and though I crave the solitude and peace the place affords us—and the relief I get from Ivan’s attention—she can’t find peace. She paces the halls restlessly, claiming she hears voices in the walls and the wails of babies at night.

  “But we are alone here together, iubirea mea,” I try. “Ivan Alexander can no longer bother us.”

  “Ivan Alexander will no longer bother you,” she bites back at me. “That’s all you care about.”

  Days turn to weeks and she is not thriving. There is no horse she can ride here, no escape. The eyes of the clergy are upon us constantly. We have privacy in our chambers, but no peace.

  “Take to the skies,” I say to her one night. “Fly through the forest and all around the monastery and you will see that there is nothing and no one to fear.”

  Theodora takes off that night under the cover of darkness. She soars for hours in the sky and comes back. Her cheeks are flushed and ruddy, her eyes bright in a way I haven’t seen in a long time.

  “There,” I say. “That was all you needed. Some fresh air. A way to be free.”

  “This place is a cage,” she says, out of breath. “Nothing more than a prison.”

  I hear in her words the way I felt about Ivan Alexander’s castle.

  “He will order all the doors and windows closed,” she says, eyes crazed. “He will bury us here, entombed with the bones of all those buried in the crypt.”

  “What I see as a sanctuary you see as a tomb,” I say.

  We go to bed that night, but neither of us sleep for a long time.

  When I finally do fall asleep, I have a dream.

  Once there was a girl whose first love was lost to her, so she fell in love with a dragon.

  But the dragon was captured by an evil prince, and she did the only thing she could think to do.

  If you love something, her heart told her, you set it free.