by Rena Rossner
I am hollow. There is nothing left for me in this world.
“Isaac, what about your sefarim?” Eema asked.
“We don’t worship books or objects,” Abba said.
I saw Sarah pack the tallit she’d been weaving for Guvriel. Eema slipped her prayer book and her remedy logs into a bag, and gave The Book of the Solomonars to Levana, who put it in her pack. “I’ll keep it safe,” she whispered.
We heard another knock. It was Guvriel, safe and back with the candlesticks and my journal. But not with Nagmama.
“You didn’t find her?” Abba asked him.
He shook his head. His eyes looked haunted.
Sarah went to embrace him, the look on her face a mixture of relief and fear. It hurt me like a punch to my gut.
“There’s no sign of her. They’ve barricaded up the synagogue. They’re going to set it on fire. There are people trapped inside. I can’t stay,” Guvriel said. “I have to help. They’re trying to get the Torahs out. They want me to take one through the window, then run and hide it in the woods. I’m the swiftest…”
“I’ll come with you,” Abba said.
“No,” Eema and Sarah said together.
“Isaac, you will do no such thing,” Eema said.
“But my mother…” he said. “The Torahs! I must.”
“If she’s trapped inside the synagogue, there’s nothing you can do. You’ll get yourself killed. You yourself said we don’t worship objects.”
“A Sefer Torah is different,” he said.
“I said no heroics,” Sarah said to Guvriel. “You’re here and you’re safe. Please stay with us. Don’t leave me.”
“We need you here,” Eema said to Abba. “And I won’t lose more than one groom in a night,” she said, looking at Guvriel. “You are already like family to us.”
My heart stopped. I closed my eyes.
My groom. My Jakob. I could still hear his screams. Why was no one trying to save him?
“My community needs me,” Abba said. “What if I could save everyone? How can I not even try?”
“Sometimes you need to save yourself first. Get your family to safety…” Eema replied.
“Rebbe,” Guvriel said. “My rebbe, with all due respect—” He bowed his head before my father. “—please, go. Find a safe space in the forest. Your wife is right. You may be the only one who can save us, but first you have to save yourself. Get out. Get your family safe. We will join you as soon as we can. You may be our only hope.”
Abba’s eyes met Guvriel’s and I didn’t understand what passed between them, but I saw steel resolve in my father’s eyes.
Guvriel gripped Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. He kissed her again. “Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. I promise—” He looked at her with purpose. “—I will come for you. I will go save one Torah if I can, and then I will follow you into the woods. I swear it.” And then he bolted out the door.
My parents’ eyes met across the room.
“Okay,” Abba said. “Let’s go. We will walk through the forest until we reach the closest clearing and then I will see what I can do. It’s the best chance we have.”
Abba held Eema’s hand, and Eema held Levana’s hand, and we set off. I could barely feel the ground beneath my feet.
Everything I have is gone. Jakob is dead. My Jakob.
Each step took me further away from him. There is a Jakob-shaped hole inside me which grows larger every minute. I fall into it, over and over and over again with each breath I take. I couldn’t write any of these words down if I tried—they are scalded into my soul, his loss written across my face like a searing brand.
All I am, all I used to be, is no more.
I am a scroll of ash.
There are three dreams for which you must fast even on Shabbat: he who sees a burnt Torah scroll, he who dreams of the last moments of Yom Kippur, or if one dreams of the walls of his home falling down.
—The Book of the Solomonars, page 19, verse 2
The thing about the Satu Mare forest, which was also once called the Royal Wood, was that it was the kind of forest that had a way of changing those that walked through it. Long before the mist made people disappear, there were tales told of a shepherd who walked into the forest with three hundred sheep and never returned. There were tales of a place at the heart of the forest where nothing grew. There were stories of lights that popped up in strange places—sparks of fire and faces that appeared in the barks of trees. It was whispered that if you weren’t careful, strange black roots would curl around unsuspecting ankles.
Rabbi Isaac understood two things: he had to find a way to fight the center of the darkness, and he had to keep his family safe. And so they fled, out the Lovčická gate, and into the belly of the Satu Mare forest—right into the depths of the Black Mist itself. They knew they might never return. But the holy Reb Isaac hoped against all hope that he would somehow find a way to change their fate. Because if he didn’t, all would be lost. The forest would change him. Their way of life would be gone forever.
As they tumbled through the trees as fast as their legs could carry them, bony branches tore at their clothes while dark black roots which seeped smoke grabbed at their ankles. Rabbi Isaac and his family kept running. They ran until they could run no more. And then they stopped. And Rabbi Isaac turned into a beast of fog and set off to confront the Black Dragon.
Some might say that the forest demanded a kind of sacrifice that night. An exchange of power. A transfer of flame. That Rabbi Isaac knew very well what he was doing and why. Others think that theirs is just another tale of a family whose faith went up in flames in the face of unspeakable horror. A family that would never be the same again because the Black Mist that afflicted the forest would change them forever.
Levana
I hold Eema’s hand as we walk through dense forest. We have to stop every few minutes so she can catch her breath, step over a root, duck under a branch. We can barely see a foot in front of us. The mist is everywhere.
Abba said we would walk until we came to a clearing, but there doesn’t seem to be one in sight. Eema’s hand is clammy and when she doesn’t grip mine so hard it hurts, she’s shivering.
I don’t say anything. I’m scared to speak, scared to do anything that might reveal our presence in the woods. We may never see Nagmama or Guvriel or Jakob ever again and yet I know there are still stars in the sky. Even though we can’t see them, I can feel them. They are still with us—just in a different form.
How can the stars still shine so bright when everything down here is darkness?
How dare the stars still burn when everything down here is ash?
Sarah stumbles and falls. I turn to her, but Eema pulls me back. She gets up, looks behind her again, and keeps walking.
Hannah doesn’t look back at all—she walks as if she’s lost in a nightmare.
Light starts to bleed from the trees, leaching us of color. With every step that Hannah takes, the trees lose more of their leaves. They fall like ash around us. Everything is darkness, and every sound could mean our doom.
I don’t feel safe. I may never feel safe again.
Eventually, we stop to rest. Abba looks around. He puts his hands on his hips and sighs, but his shoulders tremble.
Abba looks at Eema and she nods; he walks into the depths of the forest.
“Come, girls,” Eema says. “We’ll set up camp here for the night.”
We sit in a small clearing where the leaves and branches form a canopy above us. When Hannah sits, hunched over, the branches reach for her. The forest grows darker and the Black Mist settles on the ground. The branches look sinister.
Hannah looks as brittle and dry as the dead trees around us.
Sarah stares over her shoulder—back the way we came. Then she looks in the direction that Abba went. Her neck turning back and forth in each direction. It looks as though she wants to follow him, but she also wants to stay put.
Then she gets up
and follows Abba, leaving scorch-marks like a trail that anyone could follow.
Eema goes after her, places her hand on her arm in a way that brooks no argument. Sarah comes back and sits down.
Hannah stares at nothing. Every few minutes, I see her shiver.
I want to reach out, but Eema sits beside me and holds my hand. I don’t let go. She needs the comfort. Her eyes close tight, clenched against a fear she won’t put into words. I see the slightest tremor of her lips moving.
Maybe I should pray too.
The mist rises around us.
Abba comes back hours later with a rabbit. I can see it still twitching in his hands. It isn’t kosher, but nobody says anything. Not Eema nor Hannah nor Sarah.
He skins and guts it and gathers twigs and branches. But the second he lights a spark, Hannah stands up, one hand on her stomach, and lurches into the bushes, retching into the underbrush.
Eema releases my hand and gets up. She puts her arms around Hannah as she sobs, her body heaving in Eema’s arms.
Abba stuffs his fist in his mouth as if he wants to scream, then he stomps out the sparks of the fire with his boot and walks away.
When he comes back, the rabbit is gone, but I can still smell the rust of blood on his hands. He sits down in the clearing and doesn’t say a word.
The mist grows thicker.
I sit next to Sarah, but she barely reacts to my presence. She keeps searching the forest, eyes on alert.
I lay my head in her lap and her hands smooth my hair. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. It’s a reflex, something left over from the life we left behind.
Faint smoke rises from the earth around her, ethereal and strange. Like something about to combust. The pressure is rising, but she doesn’t notice.
Eema gets Hannah cleaned up and coaxes her back over to where we sit. She smooths her hands over Hannah’s hair, humming soft sounds to her.
I’m hungry but I don’t want to break the silence, so I curl up and try to snuggle my head further into Sarah’s lap. I turn my head and try to see the stars through the mist and the trees.
At some point, I see Sarah’s eyes close. I move out of her lap, slowly so as not to wake her, then go sit next to Abba. He opens his eyes.
“Why did this happen?” I whisper.
A tear falls and hangs, suspended like a crystal off his beard. He stares out into the dark, his eyes like the dying embers of a fire.
“I don’t know, Levanaleh,” he says. “I don’t have any answers.”
Hannah stirs and starts to sob again. I move to get up, but Abba stops me.
“There is nothing you can do,” he says.
It takes a long time for her to stop shaking.
I move closer, trying to soak in some of Abba’s warmth. But tonight he feels like the dry husk of a giant tree.
I’m trying so hard to keep my eyes open that I don’t even notice when they close against my will. I open my eyes when Abba gets up. I lie silent and still so he thinks I’m sleeping. I count to twenty, then I follow him.
I see him stop in a nearby clearing. He puts his arms up to the sky. Light streams down into his palms. He shouts out something like a bellow, but no sound comes out of his mouth. Light pours from him like an echo of sky. I have to shield my eyes it’s so bright; I’m nearly blinded by it. I don’t understand what he’s doing, or why. Only that this moment feels important. There’s a weight to it that settles in my chest like a stone.
Abba’s face is clenched in concentration. He’s there one minute, then gone the next. I look up at the sky and there’s a dragon of light in the darkness burning, my father on its back. He flies away and I watch the trail of his tail like a comet streaking across the night sky.
Only minutes go by, but it could be hours. I can’t stop staring at the sky. And then as quickly as he left, he comes back.
The dragon’s light is dimmer, and his head hangs low.
Light pours back into the clearing and my father with it.
“Abba?” I say. “What happened?”
He doesn’t reply. I don’t think he sees or hears me. He looks older now, sad and empty.
“All is ash,” he whispers, then he wails at the sky, fists punching air. “Why? Why did you take them from me?”
My father is a great rabbi, a man who loves God with all of his heart. But the man I’m watching curses God; he turns his face away from the sky and doesn’t look back.
My heart is a dark black coal—burning up inside but covered in ash. I swallow hard and wince against the pain. I won’t let the fire go out.
I vow in that moment that I will never fall in love—not with God, or a man, not with any living thing. Love brings pain, only pain: this is what I’ve seen.
I return to where my mother and sisters sleep. I lie on my back and stare at the patches of sky I can see through the trees. The world has profoundly shifted, yet the sky doesn’t look any different.
I pray silently to the God I still believe in, the one who made the sky and all the stars in it, for deliverance. “Ani maamin,” I say, “I believe with my whole heart in the coming of the Messiah. Ani maamin—I believe.” I chant it silently, over and over again, hoping that maybe one of the stars I can see is an angel in disguise.
Sarah
I stumble through the trees, but these are not the same trees I’ve come to know and love at night, with Guvriel beside me. These trees are different—darker and more sinister. I tell myself that he promised, that he said he would always come for me. But all I can see in my mind is a fiery furnace with black-tipped flames that don’t care who they touch or burn. Some fires cannot be put out, my heart tells me. Some fires are unquenchable—and as badly as I want it to apply to the love I feel for Guvriel, my mind completes the thought for me—in their thirst for revenge and destruction.
He doesn’t have the tallit, I keep thinking. How can I protect him from the furnace if he doesn’t have a shield?
I search the brush for sparks of red-orange, for any sign of a bushy tail. I search the branches of the trees above for the whisper of a wing or the dark hoot of an owl—a sentinel in the form of one of Abba’s disciples. I see ripples of fog and mist between the trees and hope there is a face there, mid-transformation, but there is nothing but the beating of our hearts and the harsh thumps our boots make on the forest floor.
I want to leave something in my wake—a trail of crumbs for him to follow—but we have nothing except for the clothes on our backs and whatever we were able to pack before we fled. I can’t bring myself to waste food. I have to trust that Guvriel is okay, that he got away, that he will follow because he must, because I can’t imagine my life without him. I put my hand out as we walk and lightly touch a leaf, a twig, some bark, hoping to mark a way for him. But instead I leave broken pieces of myself as a trail for him to follow.
The anger rises in me again—my curse that I’d been trying so hard to see as a blessing. What good did it do to wait for Hannah? Everything good in my life is snatched away. Every time I close my eyes, I see him—hair blazing like a halo of flame around his head, and he’s marching into the synagogue—our holy of holies, our community’s sanctuary, its ceiling like a starlit sky, its walls covered in the seals of Solomon—and everything is on fire. The flames lick the precious parchment skin of our Torahs. And I see Nagmama screaming—is she there? Did he find her? Or did they disappear in the fiery furnace together with the scrolls we hold so dear.
I cough and it feels like ash coats my lungs. My breath is black as tar. The smell of burning flesh is an odor I will never forget. It fills my nostrils and haunts my dreams. He said he’d come for me. He promised. He said that not even a fiery furnace would keep him from me. Or was he just a vessel for a prophecy destined to come true? My curse will consume us all.
We walk for endless miles, feet blistered by the ice that crunches under our boots. We hear packs of wolves howling in the night and I stay awake, huddled under my cloak, hoping he will find me. Maybe if I�
�d been honest—if I’d told Guvriel my true nature, things would be different now. But I am a fiery serpent, a slithering thing that no one wants to hold. He could have married someone else. Someone warm and full of spirit—someone more like him. But I wanted him for myself and now he’s gone.
The forest changes and we change with it. The Black Mist lifts until it only curls around our wrists. The branches at first claw at us; they try to trip us, to trap us, but after a while we stop running, our hearts stop thrumming heavy panicked beats with every step we take. The branches go from black with sickly rot, to brown with only spots of death. The short stabbing branches, sharp as knives, get smooth and green until healthy moss-covered limbs part for us. There is a canopy of green above us at night. The linden trees shed heart-shaped leaves and their pale yellow blossoms spread sweet perfume. The sky is brighter. We see the stars again. Our pace becomes slower. Our breaths become steady, the air no longer tainted. Our hearts freeze and crack and melt and then reform again against our will. The trees turn pale and the sky fills with clouds so white they blind us with their brightness. The ground is dusted with the first frost of spring. We are entering a new world. One without Nagmama, without Jakob, without our community.
We don’t know what landscape the next clearing will bring, and we know nothing of the path of our lives after this. Where do we emerge from the forest, and how? It is clear that we are not the same family that walked into these woods—but neither is it the same forest. The blood of grief chills us from the inside, running through our veins. What if we can’t be replanted? I don’t think that I can bloom anymore. Everything that was once alive in me feels severed. I never want to light another fire as long as I live.
I will be chaste, I promise the pale green leaves that sprout from the white branches of the birch trees. I will fill endless cups with the water of my tears, I tell the fresh clean rivers we pass. I will be kind, I tell the finches that flit from tree to tree—just please bring him back to me. Find him. He’s a bright little fox with a red bushy tail who knows all the secrets of my heart except one. Bring him back to me, I beg the rabbits that we see, bring him back and I’ll tell him everything. That I’m here, that I will wait forever and a day if that’s what it takes.
