The Forest of Vanishing Stars

by Kristin Harmel

  It was dawn when she stirred them awake, urging them to move again. Now that they were in the swamp, they no longer had to be as wary about moving in daylight; the Germans would have to wade in after them even to catch a glimpse, and Yona felt sure that wouldn’t happen unless the soldiers had some indication they were here.

  “Are you all right?” Rosalia murmured, coming up beside Yona as the group untied themselves from the trees and made sure the knots connecting them to each other remained secure for the trudge ahead. “You didn’t sleep.”

  “I’m fine,” Yona reassured her, but as they waded once again into the mud, Yona could feel the exhaustion in her bones, and she worried that it would blunt her instincts, make her less capable of spotting trouble ahead. She started off leading the group, but after a few hours, Chaim, who’d been walking behind her, offered to switch off for a while, and Yona gratefully accepted the reprieve.

  By noon, the water was up to the middle of their chests, and all the children had been hoisted onto the shoulders of adults so they wouldn’t slip beneath the muck. Yona untied herself and moved toward the back of the line, where Rosalia was supporting almost the full weight of Oscher, who was having trouble moving forward.

  “We’ll never make it,” he moaned as the sun beat down, turning them all redder by the hour, blistering their skin. In the depths of the forest, they were shaded enough not to burn, but out here, the light ate at them, and though Yona paused the group so they could all tie clothes around their heads for protection from the sun’s rays, it wasn’t much relief.

  “Are we almost there?” Leon whispered in the early afternoon, and Yona was startled that she hadn’t realized how much he had slipped behind, how he was faltering, gasping for breath. “Can we take another break?”

  They were nearly up to their necks now, so deep that it was impossible to have any perspective on the distance to land. All they could see ahead of them were endless fallen trees, tangled vines, and marsh grass. But something was tingling in the pit of Yona’s belly now, a feeling that they were close. She could hear Jerusza whispering in the breeze, Keep going, and she almost wanted to tell the old woman to be quiet, because they had no choice.

  Instead, she moved back to walk beside Leon, and then she snaked her arm around his back and held tight, forcing him to lean into her for support, even if he was too proud to do so.

  They were approaching another twilight, a few of the brightest stars already appearing overhead as the sun crept toward the horizon, when Chaim, who was still leading the group, let out a muted whoop.

  Yona’s head snapped up. Was it possible that they had found the island at last? She hardly believed it, but ahead of her, the single-file line of haggard refugees began to rise from the mud, footstep by footstep, until they were standing on a wide swath of solid land.

  “My God, it’s real?” Leon asked aloud before shooting Yona a guilty look. “It’s not that I didn’t believe in you.”

  “I hardly believed in myself,” Yona admitted as the two of them took their first steps onto firm ground. Soon, all the group was on the shore of the island, which was larger than Yona remembered, and for the first time in days, she felt safe again. The Germans would not find them here. They had reached the shelter in the midst of the swamp that would give them refuge until the storm passed. “Quickly,” Yona said, “let’s move into the trees so we’re less visible, just in case.”

  But as they did, her heart sank, for though their group was safe for now, the island wasn’t large enough to hide a second contingent. Zus and the others hadn’t made it yet.

  As night fell over the island and the exhausted travelers quickly ate some of their stored provisions, settled down, and fell into a deep sleep where they lay, Yona looked up to see Chaim and Rosalia just as alert as she was, despite their exhaustion. In the moonlight, she met their worried gazes, and she knew that they were wondering, as she was, if the others were all right.

  It was midnight before Yona finally drifted off, and she slept soundly until she was awoken, just before dawn, by the piercing sound of a woman’s screams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Yona sprang awake, already on her feet and clutching her knife before her eyes adjusted to the darkness. But Rosalia, who had been sleeping beside her, put a hand on her arm to still her.

  “It’s Elizaveta Sokolowski,” she said. “Her baby is coming.”

  And though this should have consoled Yona—the screams hadn’t been about the Germans approaching or a wild animal attacking in the night—it instead filled her with fear. “It’s too early,” she whispered to Rosalia, lowering her weapon. “She said her baby would not arrive for another two months.”

  “Yes, well, the baby seems to have its own plans,” said Rosalia, her face white in the moonlight.

  Together, they moved to Elizaveta’s side. Her husband, Shimon, knelt beside her, weeping, and Masha had taken their son to a spot several meters away, behind a bush, so he could not see or hear his mother’s distress.

  “She must keep quiet,” Chaim hissed in the darkness. “It is so still out here.”

  “I know,” Yona murmured. She put her hand on Shimon’s arm. “Shimon, you must help me now. You must help calm Elizaveta,” she said, and his eyes flashed with a dangerous blend of anger and fear.

  “She will die out here!” There was panic in his voice. “Have I saved her only to let her perish in the wilderness?”

  “No.” Yona was firm. “We will keep her safe. But you must help her stay quiet or we will all die. Think of her, and think of your baby. Think of your son, Nachum.”

  He seemed to search Yona’s eyes, and then quickly he nodded and moved to murmur in his wife’s ear. She was writhing, her face red, her forehead beaded with sweat, her lips contorted in a pain Yona couldn’t imagine, but she seemed to understand what her husband was telling her.

  “I didn’t intend for this to happen,” she said to Yona, the sentence beginning as a whisper and ending in a gasp of anguish as a contraction racked her body and she fought not to cry out. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Yona said when the woman was still again. “What can I do to help you?”

  Elizaveta was in no shape to be dispensing medical advice, but still, she whimpered, “Sterilize what you can, I think. That’s what the midwife did when I had Nachum.”

  The words snapped Yona into action. She had read about childbirth, for Jerusza had insisted that her base of knowledge be broad and deep. She understood infection and the risks it would pose for both mother and child. But she couldn’t let Elizaveta or her child perish simply because they were stuck in the midst of a filthy swamp. There had to be something she could do.

  “Who has alcohol?” Yona called out to the camp, which had now come awake with people watching, their eyes wide with fear. No one replied, and Yona tried again. Rudimentary distilled spirits, bimber, often wound up in the camp after food missions to nearby villages—most farmers kept many bottles—and though she had always discouraged drinking in the camp because it made the senses less sharp, she knew it was still widespread, a way both to cope and to ensure that liquid was purified. “I know you were not meant to bring it with you. But please tell me one of you disregarded my words. Please.”

  It was Bina who finally spoke up. “In my pack,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I—I have it for Oscher’s pain. This trek has been difficult.”

  “Bina,” Oscher murmured, but there was no time to discern whether he meant to offer explanation or apology, for time was of the essence.

  “I need it now,” Yona said, and in a few seconds, Bina had placed a bottle, half-full, in her hand. It was some sort of miracle that, after the trek through the forest and the swamp, the bottle was still intact, but Yona didn’t have time to thank God for that now. She poured some of the moonshine over her own hands to sterilize them as much as possible, and soaked a portion of the rope Moshe handed her with more. She edged between Elizaveta’s open legs and
saw to her horror that the baby’s head was already there. Elizaveta would need to push or the baby might not be able to breathe.

  “Someone give us some clean cloth!” Rosalia called, and rags and a scarf appeared from nowhere, thrust forward into the darkness. The scarf Yona gently laid beneath Elizaveta’s hips the next time they rose and bucked, and the scraps of fabric she handed back to Rosalia for when the baby emerged.

  Elizaveta cried out again, her voice strangled, and then, in a rush of liquid, the baby—a girl—slipped from her body and into Yona’s waiting arms, tiny and still and blue, membranes covering her silent face like a burial shroud.

  “No,” Yona whispered, frozen in place, unable to accept that Elizaveta’s child could be stillborn. It was Ruth who came from behind her, her voice solid and commanding in a way none of them had heard before from the shy mother of three.

  “It’s the cord,” she said. “It’s wrapped around the baby’s neck.”

  Yona saw it then, too, but Ruth was already in motion, unwrapping the umbilical cord. Yona stared at the baby, paralyzed, before remembering that the cord was supposed to be cut. Wasn’t it? Was that why the baby wasn’t moving yet? Taking a deep breath, she reached for her knife.

  “No!” Ruth cried, flinging her hand out to stop Yona. “No! Don’t cut the cord yet. It is the baby’s only source of oxygen until we can get her breathing.”

  Horrified, Yona dropped the knife, and for a long second, she and Ruth just stared at the motionless baby. Then she shook herself out of her horrified trance and reached for the tiny infant, hardly bigger than a sparrow. “Make sure Elizaveta is all right,” she said to Rosalia, and Rosalia nodded, moving away from her and back to Elizaveta, who was whimpering, a sound that filled Yona with relief, for it meant she was alive and alert enough to be scared.

  Yona prayed now as she tore her own shirt off and laid the baby down on the fabric, faceup. She rubbed the baby’s stomach and chest, and then tapped on the bottom of her feet. Still nothing. Yona stopped her conversation with God as she took a deep breath and bent to the tiny child. She would need to breathe for her, the way Jerusza had taught her so many years before, one in a countless number of scenarios the old woman had prepared her for, just in case. Would she remember how? Jerusza’s voice whispered to her from somewhere far away as she placed her lips over the baby’s mouth and nose and pushed a small burst of air into her lungs.

  All around them, their small island, and the swamp in which they floated, seemed to have gone silent. The stars held their breath, the moon hid behind a cluster of clouds, and even Elizaveta had stopped sobbing. It was into this silence that the most beautiful sound Yona had ever heard emerged: a tiny sputter, then a cough, then a mewling that sounded like a kitten’s, coming from the lungs of the tiny baby before her.

  And just like that, in the midst of an inhospitable wilderness, another life came into the world, a tiny, impossible miracle that reminded them all that even when there were those trying to wipe them from the earth, they could survive by the grace of God, and by the sheer force of will. Before Yona passed the crying baby to her mother, she looked into the child’s eyes and saw a future there, long and beautiful and bright, a future that would go on after Yona herself had passed from the world, a future still unwritten. Whatever else she would do, Yona vowed she would make sure this baby survived, and she would fight to the death for all those who had gathered here, under the stars, on this night.

  * * *

  Elizaveta and Shimon named the baby Abra, which meant mother of nations, and she carried the hope of all of them. Though she was tiny and struggled for life in her first few weeks, the other adults in the group gave up a portion of their meager supplies without being asked so Elizaveta could eat enough to make milk to nurse the infant to health. At night the baby cried, and Elizaveta muffled the noise so that it sounded like little more than the grunts of a bear cub finding her voice.

  Against the odds, Abra began to thrive, but the rest of the group was withering; the island had almost no food available beyond the edible flowers and mushrooms they had already picked clean, and though the water around them was plentiful, it seemed to be making some of them sick. They couldn’t stay here forever, and they were all worried about Zus and the others, and so after a month had passed in the swamp, Rosalia and Chaim set out to venture to the nearest town to see if the Germans had gone.

  It was five days before they returned with eight loaves of dried, brittle bread, a bottle of vodka, and good news. The Germans had departed a week earlier, and though they’d caught a few dozen fleeing Jews and a handful of Russian partisans on the outskirts of the woods, they’d been mostly unsuccessful, missing both the Bielski and Zorin groups, and had abandoned the forest after torching many of the villages in retaliation for their failure.

  “We will return to our camp,” Yona said an hour after everyone had finished eating the bread and swigging from the bottle. “Let us pray that the others are waiting there.”

  She was greeted with silence, and she realized that the others feared, as she did, that the other half of their group was dead, that they were among those the Germans had swept from the safety of the forest before retreating. But she wouldn’t speak the words aloud, nor would she allow anyone else to, for perhaps if they believed strongly enough in a God who would spare them, he would listen. That was foolish, fruitless thinking, Yona knew, but it was all she had, and as she came up beside Chaim and put her hand on his, she reinforced the folly by speaking it aloud.

  “They will be there, waiting,” she said firmly.

  Chaim hesitated. “But they were meant to meet us here.”

  “And there must be a reason they chose not to,” Yona replied. “I believe that. Don’t you?”

  Chaim looked away. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  But as they began their long walk back through the watery swamp to dry land, toward the camp they’d abandoned weeks before, she could overhear him more than once telling his sons the fun they would have with their uncle Zus, once they were all reunited. And she knew he wouldn’t dangle hope that he believed to be entirely false; there was a sliver of possibility that the others were still alive.

  Yona found herself thinking of Zus in the long moments of silence as they moved slowly, quietly, through the muck. Since the conversation she’d had with Chaim on the way to the swamp the previous month, she’d been thinking a lot of him, in fact. Aleksander’s betrayal had made her feel as if she wasn’t worthy of love, that she was as disposable as the shelters they used for a few days at a time. But in Zus’s eyes before they parted ways, she had seen herself as something more. There was so little she understood about dealing with others, and she had blamed herself for how complicated things had gotten with Aleksander. But perhaps things didn’t have to be difficult at all.

  “We are lucky to have found you, Yona,” Chaim said as they walked side by side on the fourth night of their trek back, their first out of the swamp, after they’d paused for a few hours to rest, drink, and eat all the berries they could pick on dry land. Tomorrow they would pause to fish, and in two days’ time, they would know whether the others had returned. She could barely stop herself from running ahead to find out, but this group needed her.

  “I am lucky to have found you, too.” Yona hesitated. “I have never known what it felt like to have a home. And though we move often—”

  “Home is not a place, but the people you choose to love,” he said, finishing the thought she hadn’t quite known how to put into words. And she did love these people, from tough Rosalia, to quiet and honest Chaim, to hardworking Moshe, to the children whose survival every day was a triumph against the odds.

  “I’m frightened by it, though,” she said after a while. “For when you love, you stand to lose so much.” She thought of the nun whose empty eyes she had pushed closed. She thought of little Chana, a bullet through her head, and of Anka, whose parents had been stolen from her so violently. And she thought of Zus and ho
w he had been forever transformed by the terrible things that had happened to his family.

  “But I think you stand to lose far more when your heart is closed,” Chaim said. “That is no life.”

  Yona thought of Jüttner, the father who had been made cold and hard by the loss of his child and then his wife, and she felt a surge of guilt for the pain she had surely inflicted by leaving. “You’re right,” she murmured.

  Two days later, after sleeping mostly during the days and walking by the light of the moon, the group was finally approaching the camp they’d left behind six weeks earlier. Yona could feel it, taste it, and she and Chaim, who were walking ahead, both quickened their pace. It was nearly dawn, and if the others were there waiting, they’d just be waking up to start their day. If the camp was occupied, there would be some sign of a guard any moment now.

  But the forest was quiet, the only sounds the stirring of animals emerging to greet the day and the rustling of leaves and grass in the breeze. Chaim gave Yona a look of despair, and she swallowed hard. He was thinking the same thing she was, that it was too still, too deserted. The missing group couldn’t be up ahead.

  But then the new baby broke the silence among them by letting out a long, plaintive wail, and all at once, there was movement in the trees ahead. In that moment, Yona knew that God had been with them all along, for Zus emerged from the forest, his gun leveled at them. He stopped abruptly, blinking in confused recognition, and as Yona ran forward without pausing to think, he lowered his weapon and stumbled forward into her arms, clinging to her like he never intended to let go again.

  “You’re alive,” he murmured into her hair, his voice husky with emotion, and then they were forced apart by the tidal wave of others rushing forward to greet Zus with hugs and handshakes and tears of gratitude. “What’s this?” Zus asked with a smile, eyeing the new baby, and as Chaim’s sons began to regale their uncle with a rapid, scattered story about their adventures, Zus looked up, his gaze meeting Yona’s again and lingering there. When the boys were done talking and Zus had greeted the new baby with gentle kisses on her tiny cheeks, and on Elizaveta’s cheeks, too, he gestured for Yona, Chaim, and Rosalia to step aside with him.