The Forest of Vanishing Stars

by Kristin Harmel

  He held her gaze. “I pray to God you’re right.”

  “May I say something, too?” She hesitated, fighting the urge to look away from him. “I don’t know much about these things. But I think that broken hearts heal. I think that perhaps the only way through that kind of pain is to move forward. I think that losing people you love changes you forever, but I think that God finds a way to let the light in.”

  He blinked a few times and nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. He hesitated for only a second more before stepping closer and kissing her once, gently, on her right cheek, his warm lips lingering there for a long time. By the time she opened her eyes, he was already walking away, back to the camp, back to the forest that lay before them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Yona had been to the swamp only once—with Jerusza, in that strange summer of 1941—and as she walked through the forest now, deeper and deeper into the darkness, she wondered if Jerusza had taken her there because she saw this moment coming. But if she had seen the world descending into madness, why hadn’t she warned Yona? Why hadn’t she told her that in two years’ time, she would need to help lead a group of innocent people into the forest’s invisible heart to save their lives?

  Yona walked ahead while the rest of her small group followed slowly behind her, Oscher doing the best he could with his limp to keep up, Bina beside him for support, Rosalia bringing up the rear several paces back, a gun over her shoulder as she silently scanned the forest. Yona was glad that Zus had suggested that Rosalia accompany Yona’s group; Yona trusted her more than anyone else in the camp except for Zus himself, and she felt safer knowing that she was there. Chaim, Leonid Gulnik, and Shimon Sokolowski each carried a gun, too; the two new families had each arrived with one.

  As she led the group deeper into the dark woods, Yona found herself thinking about Zus and the things she should have said before they parted ways. He had told her that she was more special than she could see, but why had she missed the opportunity to tell him the same? After all, it was Zus she had thought of during her long walk back from the village, and it was his voice, his words, that had led her home. The way he commanded the respect of the others, through his gentle compassion, was something that moved her, but she didn’t know how to put it into words. Now, though, the things she’d left unsaid tugged at her heart.

  After an hour or so of walking, Chaim fell into step beside Yona, his wife and boys several paces behind. They were all moving slowly northeast, deeper into the heart of the forest, navigating by the setting sun. At nightfall, Yona planned to stop and let them rest for three hours before moving again. To avoid the Germans, they would need to shelter during the day and walk at night from now on.

  “My brother is a good man, you know,” Chaim said gruffly after they’d walked side by side in silence for almost thirty minutes.

  His words, out of the depths of his silence, startled her. “How did you know I was thinking of him?”

  “I didn’t.” He smiled. “But I hoped you were. I believe he is thinking of you.”

  Yona shook her head. “He sees me as more than I am, I think.”

  “No. He sees you for exactly who you are. And that is very difficult for him.”

  “Difficult?”

  Chaim scratched his jaw and paused before speaking again. “It nearly destroyed him when Shifra and Helena, his wife and daughter, died. It’s not my place to tell you, Yona, but he is not able to talk about it himself yet. And I think… I think he would want you to know.”

  “What happened to them, Chaim?”

  Chaim was silent for a long time, and it wasn’t until Yona turned her head that she realized he was trying not to cry. “Shifra had been married to Zus since they were teenagers, for more than ten years. She was a very good woman, and Helena, their daughter, she was only four. She was intelligent. Funny. Kind. She would have grown to be a good person, like her father. He loved them both with his whole heart, and I loved them, too.”

  “I’m so sorry.” It was all Yona could think to say, though it would never be enough. Chaim didn’t seem to hear her.

  “The Germans came. Zus, he had made a name for himself as someone people respected. We think that’s why they targeted him, to eliminate anyone who might speak up against them, who might encourage people to resist.” Chaim took a deep breath and went silent again. Their footsteps crunched over the fallen leaves, and the birdsong had gone silent, as if the forest were waiting for the remainder of the story, too.

  Chaim’s voice was hollow as he began to speak again. “The day they came to move us all to the ghetto, they bound Zus’s hands and feet tightly, tied him to his stove so he couldn’t move. They beat Shifra unconscious, right in front of him, and then shot her and little Helena while he begged for their lives. They left, laughing, saying that by the time anyone found him, he’d be dead, too, but in the meantime, he could think about how it was his fault that his family was dead. They must have thought that no one would come to save him, since the Jews had all been moved. But five days later, I was able to sneak out with a work detachment, and I made my way back to our village. I found Zus, delirious, still tied to the stove. He had stopped trying to escape; he had given up. I brought him back to the ghetto, because I couldn’t abandon my own family, and I knew nowhere else to take him to nurse him back to health. His body eventually healed, but the rest of him…”

  Yona choked on a sob as Chaim paused.

  “He was whole once, Yona,” Chaim said after a moment. “He laughed all the time. He loved life, but they broke him. He’s broken.”

  “We all are,” Yona murmured, but she knew now that Zus had been shattered in a different way than she had. You can’t heal a heart that has been smashed to pieces; you can only move forward, doing your best to hold the shards together until they eventually form into something new.

  “He cares for you, Yona,” Chaim added after a few minutes. “I didn’t realize it at first, maybe because he was so careful to respect the fact that you were already with Aleksander. But when you left last month, I saw some of the light go out of him. If we’re fortunate enough to make it through this alive, you must promise to never leave again, not without warning. Please. We are your family now. All of us. But Zus… No matter what you feel for him, you must know that in a corner of his heart, something blooms for you.”

  Yona bowed her head. She wanted to give Chaim her word that she wouldn’t leave, but she didn’t know what the future would bring. All she could say was, “I care for him, too, Chaim.”

  He must have heard the truth of it in her voice, for he nodded, and after a while, he fell back and rejoined his family, leaving Yona to walk alone once again.

  * * *

  Yona’s group had just begun their second evening of walking, after a long afternoon break to eat and rest, when they heard the first signs of the German incursion. She had been wondering how Zus’s group was doing as she led them past an overgrown, abandoned dirt road that didn’t look like it had been used in months, but now, as twilight fell, the warm evening stillness was broken by the rumble of approaching trucks. Instantly, Yona hushed her group and pulled them back behind the trees. Less than two minutes later, two large vehicles passed, each loaded with several German soldiers, each bearing a swastika flag that whipped in the wind.

  “They’re really here,” Rosalia whispered once the trucks had disappeared into the distance. The vehicles were heading southeast, and Yona had to swallow a lump of fear in her throat before she replied. What if Zus’s group was in the convoy’s path? What if she had let him go straight into harm’s way? She would never forgive herself.

  “We’re only a day or so from the swamp now,” Yona said, trying to hide her fear. She looked back at Rosalia and forced a resolute smile. “We must keep moving.”

  Rosalia nodded, but from the way she avoided looking Yona in the eye, Yona knew the other woman doubted the plan, perhaps even doubted that there was, indeed, a swamp where Yona had said it would be.

&nbs
p; The following evening, the group paused by a stream to drink and gather some berries. They were all exhausted and hungry; they’d been eating little so their supplies might last, for they didn’t know how long they’d have to wait out the Germans, or what food might be available to them in the swamp. They were almost there; Yona felt certain of it. The ground beneath them was losing its firmness, the moss and ferns growing lusher.

  Yona had just bent for a drink beside Maia, the little daughter of the Gulniks, when the first gunshots rang out, a staccato hail of them, one flying close enough to Yona that she could feel it as it passed above her head. Immediately, she flattened herself on her belly, pulling the girl down with her. Rosalia hit the ground, too, but some of the others merely looked confused; Oscher actually took a step out into the open, craning his neck as he scanned the forest curiously.

  “Get down!” Yona hissed, crawling forward and tugging at his pants leg, and then at Bina’s leg, too. They both looked down at her, blinking, bewildered, but after a moment, they crouched beside her, then flattened themselves on the earth, too. “Is everyone all right?”

  There was a mumbled chorus of assents, a panicked glancing around to ensure that everyone was accounted for. They were, thank God, and now Yona gestured silently for the others to follow her, keeping low. There were more bullets overhead, and then a German shouting in the distance, “Juden, Juden, kommt raus, wo immer ihr seid!” followed by a chorus of laughter. “Jews, Jews, come out wherever you are,” the German voice repeated in a singsong, and then there were more bullets whizzing around them. In that instant, Yona understood that they weren’t actually being fired upon; the Germans didn’t know they were there. This was merely posturing between the soldiers, an amusement. They were playacting at the sport of hunting men.

  Within a minute, Yona and Rosalia had led their small group to a thatch of bushes a hundred meters from the stream. It wasn’t perfect cover, but it would have to do; as they neared the swamp, the area around them was devoid of many of the trees Yona had come to rely on for concealment, giving way to saplings struggling for purchase in the soft earth.

  “Where did the shots come from?” Rosalia whispered, moving beside Yona, little Maia wedged between them. Maia’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she was whimpering.

  “A few hundred meters away,” Yona said. “We must wait and see if they move closer.”

  “They are going to kill us, aren’t they?” Maia cried, and Yona pulled her close.

  “No, they are just playing a game,” she said, keeping her tone as light as possible. Rosalia met her gaze over the child’s head, her eyes dark with worry and foreboding. “It is quite a stupid game, yes?” Yona added with more forced levity.

  Maia took several seconds to digest this. “Mami says not to say ‘stupid,’ ” she said at last, her voice tiny and unsure. “It’s not nice.”

  “And your mama is right,” Yona whispered. “But I think she might make an exception for these silly German boys.”

  Maia nodded solemnly and then buried her face in Yona’s arm. Her parents, several meters away, crouched behind another bush, watching in silence. Masha, the mother, was clinging to her son Sergei’s arm and crying silently.

  There were more shots, but they were farther in the distance, moving away. The voices were fading, too, but there was no sense of relief. The Germans could turn back toward their hidden group at any moment. They had to stay quiet, still, hidden. Maia continued to sob softly; everyone else was silent, waiting.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” Rosalia said softly after a few seconds. Maia looked up at her, and Rosalia smiled reassuringly down at the girl. “I shall lack nothing.”

  Yona stared at Rosalia as the other woman continued to effortlessly recite the Twenty-third Psalm. “He lays me down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.”

  Chaim was listening, too, and he chimed in, keeping his voice low, saying in unison with Rosalia, “He revives my soul. He directs me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of his name.”

  By the next verse, there were more people whispering, Shimon and Elizaveta Sokolowski now, too, Shimon holding their son, Nachum, and Elizaveta’s hands cradling her own pregnant belly. The bullets had stopped flying; the German voices had faded away. “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they will comfort me.” Chaim’s wife and two boys were speaking the words aloud, too, and so were Oscher and Bina, Leon and Moshe. Yona joined in, as did Maia’s parents and brother, as they all said, “You will prepare a table for me before my enemies; you have anointed my head with oil; my cup is full.”

  Ruth pulled her children close, all three of them safe and breathing, and whispered with the rest of them, “Only goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long years.”

  “Amen,” whispered little Pessia, and as silence fell around them again, wrapping them in safety, the word was repeated by each of them in turn as they all realized that they’d survived against the odds yet again. Still, they stayed just where they were, motionless and frightened, for another hour, until the Germans were long gone.

  * * *

  Late the next evening, just as the sun was sinking toward the horizon, the group finally arrived at the edge of the swamp, which flowed seamlessly from the more solid forest floor, the distinction invisible to the naked eye. But as they walked, the mud was suddenly at their ankles, sucking them down, pulling at them, and Yona smiled in relief, even as the wet cold seeped into her shoes. “We’re here,” she said, hardly believing it herself.

  There was a small whoop of collective glee from the group, and a few of them surged forward despite the muck. Yona held her hand up to stop them. “The terrain gets deeper from here, and soon we’ll be wading through water up to our waists. We must move with caution and stay together.”

  “It’s a damned lake,” Leonid said twenty minutes later as they emerged from a cluster of trees, their feet already submerged. There were a few gasps as others arrived at the edge of the swamp and saw muddy water stretching out before them, dotted with drooping trees, tiny islands, and fallen trunks, as far as the eye could see.

  “Don’t worry,” Yona said, though her own heart was thudding with uncertainty. The swamp had risen since she’d last been here, and she was no longer certain how easy it would be to make it across. “It is not deep, and you can see there are trees to hold on to the whole way through.” She paused, her mind spinning. “Everyone, please pull out any extra clothing you have brought with you in your packs. We must work quickly, while there’s still sunlight. We will use the clothing to tie ourselves together, two or three to a group. None of us will go down.”

  For the next half hour, the group worked on fashioning shirts and trousers into makeshift ropes, and then Yona and Rosalia divided them into pairs or trios, giving the children enough slack in their lines so they could be hoisted upon shoulders when necessary. The leftover clothes were shoved back into packs, and the group set off.

  Full dark had fallen, but the sky was clear, and a half-moon lit their way, the stars tiny pinpricks of light in a blackening sky. The children all looked up in awe, and even Leon, who at seventy was the oldest among them, sighed in contentment. “It has been many months since we’ve fully seen the stars,” he said, and the group murmured their assent. “You can hardly make them out above the trees. They disappear deep in the forest, don’t they?”

  “So do we, if we’re lucky,” Moshe said, and a few of the others laughed.

  “Yes,” Leon said, tapping his chest, where once upon a time, the star of David had marked him as a lesser citizen, as a target for elimination. But the forest knew no difference when it came to race, religion, or gender; it smiled and frowned upon all of them in equal measure, sometimes providing protection, sometimes peril. “By the grace of God, may we all be vanishing stars.”

  Despite the chill of the mud,
and the fact that there was water now, too, dragging at their calves, and then at their knees, the group made good progress for the first hour. “Do you think we’ll see the others soon?” asked Bina after a while. They were all trying to be quiet, but it was hard not to talk now and then, just to remind themselves that even in the darkness, they still existed. “Perhaps they’re already at the island.”

  “They might be,” Oscher said. “If they found the Bielskis quickly, they could have made it here before we did.”

  “We will see.” Yona hoped that the knots in her stomach were simply a fear of the unknown rather than a harbinger of approaching trouble. Jerusza had always taught her to be attuned to her own body, to the messages it gave her even before events unfolded, and now, though she was trying to explain away her rising sense of discomfort, she couldn’t ignore it.

  “Are we almost there?” Maia asked an hour later, her voice small and weak.

  “I’m afraid not,” Yona said. This wasn’t the time to remind them that they would have to wade through water of varying depth for another day more before reaching the island. “But look up ahead. I think we’ve found some solid ground. Let’s take a rest.”

  The group quickened their pace and found that though the ground Yona had seen was thick with mud, it appeared to be stable. It was barely large enough for all of them, and Yona cautioned them to leave their ties in place and to use the extra clothing from their packs to fasten themselves to trees and bushes, whatever they could find, so they could sleep in peace without worrying about drowning. Still, though her head throbbed and her eyes were heavy with exhaustion, Yona refused to sleep. She kept watch while the others slumbered, their clothes and hair caked with mud, their lips cracked with thirst, their bodies twitching in the throes of deep dreams.