The Light of the Midnight Stars

by Rena Rossner

  “Do you think they’ve come for us?” I whispered.

  “There is nothing we can do but wait until they pass,” he whispered back.

  My father who never cowered a day in his life is broken, crouched and hiding in a forest.

  “I will creep to the edge and try to see who they are and where they’re going.”

  “No, Anna,” he said.

  I’d never betrayed my father before, but for a while I’d been feeling like all the rules we ever had were gone. This was yet another one I was breaking.

  I walked forward. My heart matched the sound of the horses’ hooves. I don’t know what we’ll do if trouble truly comes to our door again. I can’t bear to lose anyone else.

  We didn’t flee all the way to Wallachia, didn’t discard everything we believed in as though it were a cloak that no longer fit, only to face the same kind of persecution.

  Stanna is the bravest of us all. She has the most to live for… so I decided to be brave today, like her. I would give my life to be in her situation… to still have hope.

  Tears smart at the corners of my eyes but I wipe them away.

  I crept silently through the trees and made it to the edge of the forest. Papa didn’t follow me—he crouched and hid like an animal in the brush.

  The sound of hooves got louder and louder and then I saw them. A hunting party. An entire entourage of men who look well dressed—royal. There was a young man in the lead, surrounded by men who looked like guards. They were headed into the forest. To hunt.

  My heart beat faster. I had to get my father out of the woods.

  The young man at the center of the party called out to everyone around him and they ground to a halt.

  His eyes scanned the trees and then stopped. He was staring straight at me. I felt like a deer, caught in dense thickets, unable to move, unable to run. Fear tasted like ash on my tongue. If I ran, he might see the rustle of leaves and open fire. If I stayed, he might come closer and find me. There were no good choices. I decided to creep back, step by step, inch by inch, until he could no longer see me and I could fade into the trees.

  I called on the power that was once inside me. It’s still there, a tiny glowing spark like a forgotten ember. It stings. I ask the trees to hide me, to protect my father, to make it impossible for him to track me. For them to show us a way out, a way forward.

  I’m out of practice. I never thought I’d call on my powers again. But I would do anything to protect my family. Even this. It felt as if it took a long moment—then I heard the slow awakening of the trees around me. As I took small noiseless steps back in the direction of my father, I felt the leaves begin to cover my trail.

  Laptitza

  Late that night, after my sisters have gone to sleep, I go back to the forest. I enter the woods near where the strawberries grow. I can still see the path that my feet made. I walk from golden star to golden star—they light my way. There is no fog. The mist doesn’t coat the air here—greasy and slick. The moon shines brighter. The stones in my path are bathed in light and I’m able to make my way more quickly—the moon and stars hurrying me along—follow us, this way, you must bear witness.

  In the woods where the moonlight is dimmer, the stars glow brighter.

  First, I stop in the dark shadows of the forest by the roots of the big tree where we buried the relics of our past. I dig, shoving earth aside until I grip the book with my hands.

  I clutch it to my chest and look up at the sky.

  I open the book and start to hum a melody—

  “Adon Olam—Master of the universe, who reigned before every being was created…”

  The words are coming from my lips being borne along on the wind. My heart is tight in my chest. I’ve missed the words of these prayers, the time I used to spend hidden under my father’s tallit as his followers danced circles around him under the moon.

  The words provide comfort to me now, wrapping themselves around me like a prayer shawl. I lie down on the ground. I feel roots, branches, wet leaves beneath me. The earth looks silver-gray in the moonlight and the trees are bent at odd angles around me. The air here isn’t thick, dead, wrong, devoid of life. Here, I am moonlit.

  I lift my hand. My pale skin is almost blue. I press my hand up to the sky. I need for something to press back. I can’t wait any longer. If I am to save my family, the time is now.

  I must find a star. My star. My guardian angel.

  And that’s when I see it. A falling star grows bright and golden as it falls.

  Close.

  Then closer.

  As though it is about to fall and injure me.

  I know I should jump up, scream, move out of harm’s way, but as the light falls, burning its way through the sky, growing bigger and brighter, I am not afraid.

  Maybe this is the light my father lost. The light he let go.

  I must not be afraid to receive it.

  At the center of the fiery mass there is a pulse, a bright spot that glows, reaching for me in the same way that I reach for it. I cup my palm as though I’m waiting for it to be filled. The light envelops my body, wrapping itself around me until I glow. I am starlit.

  None of this is possible. And yet, I know I am awake and breathing. It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for. It was written in the stars—a prophecy I’d missed somehow because of all the mist. I see it now, splayed out against the sky. A trail of light for me to follow.

  I’m too afraid to move, to say or do anything that will break the magic of this moment. I should be burning up, or frozen solid, but I am neither. Exhilaration courses through my body like a river of light. The nahar di nur that father always speaks of runs through me.

  As the light starts to recede, only my head is surrounded by starlight. The light pools into one slowly churning spiral that brands my forehead. I can’t see it, but I can feel the weight of it, and for the first time, it burns. The light shimmers and shifts and, with one last painful sear of light, it shoots off my head and back up into the night sky.

  It is only a trail of stardust now. My forehead burns.

  An instant later, I see the blue flame of a star in the sky, slightly brighter than everything around it. This is the star that branches off from the clear path.

  My star.

  I touch my hand to my forehead. There is a raised mark there. I look at my fingers and see that they shine with what looks like stardust.

  I walk back through the forest. Golden stars follow in my wake—brighter than they were before. I slip back into the house, slide into bed and touch my forehead again—my fingers come back shimmering with light.

  I stare up through the window above my bed up at the sky. Have I been touched by an angel? Has he come to save us all?

  The night of Passover is a night of vigil, a night when the mazikim come down to this world. One is not to lock the doors on Seder night for it is a night when God himself protects us. A night when we cover ourselves with light like a garment. Though it is said: a wise king is the upholding of the people, on Passover night there is only one king.

  —The Book of the Solomonars, page 52, verse 9

  In a neighboring land, a man named Basarab the First came over the Caucasus Mountains. Some say he was a Turkic man; others say he was a Vlach. The circumstances of his ascension are completely unknown. We only know that one day, he seized the Banate of Severin from King Béla and raided the southern regions of the kingdom of Hungary, then formed the independent province of Wallachia, which granted freedom of religion for all.

  After Basarab the First lost his first wife, who left him childless, he married Marghita, a widow like himself, who had been the wife of Radu Negru the Great. She brought a daughter with her in her belly to the castle, and Basarab raised the girl as his own. Soon after, Basarab and Marghita had a boy named Nikolas, and together, they ruled all of Wallachia.

  Anna

  4 Iyar 5122

  Mama keeps encouraging me to go out to the garden, but I don’t know what she expe
cts me to do there. The plants don’t speak to me like they used to. Only the strawberries try, each night, to wrap their vines around my ankles.

  Stanna likes to go to the forest every day. I know what (or who) she’s looking for, but I don’t think she will find it (him). Still, it’s something to do, so I don’t mind. I want to accompany my sisters now. Life can change in the blink of an eye. One spark can mean total destruction. I will do everything I can to protect what I have left in this strange new world.

  Today, we went looking for wild mushrooms. Mama makes the best mushroom soup. Where we used to live, the forests were flooded with mushrooms, and this forest is no different, but you need to know which ones to pick. Out in the fresh air, I had a moment today where I thought I could taste the thyme and honey that Mama used to use to flavor the soup. As I put the mushrooms in my basket, the memory of the taste turned to ash in my mouth, the mushrooms to ash in my hands. I dropped the basket. They all spilled out.

  I called Laptitza over to me. “Here, you pick these.” I didn’t explain more. Mama says that here we have nothing to fear. Maybe she’s right. But nothing will ever be the same again.

  Still, being in the forest nourishes me. I can draw courage from the things which grow in the most unlikely places—seeds that fall and are buried in the darkness but still find a way to sprout. I gather strength from the air around me, from the roots beneath my feet and the sap inside them. In the forest, there is room for new beginnings.

  It was perhaps because Laptitza and I were deeper into the woods than Stanna was that we didn’t hear the sound of hooves until it was too late.

  Laptitza stopped humming a song. Stanna dropped her basket and stared off into the distance.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  Stanna only pointed, and then I saw them, the same group of men—the hunting party. They’d stopped in a field nearby. Their horses were grazing so close that I could see them breathing and hear their teeth clacking as they nibbled the grass.

  How did I miss it? How did I not hear them come? How did the trees not warn me?

  “Shhhh…” Laptitza whispered.

  Then Stanna surprised me. “I’m sick of hiding,” she said. “I will emerge from the trees and one of them will raise his head and see me—a forest maiden, raised only on berries, rising up from the darkness of the woods.”

  Laptitza giggled.

  “Stanna…” I warned.

  “What?” she whispered. “Maybe they’re handsome. You could find someone. Marry again.”

  I brushed off a chill. “Don’t.”

  “Come on.” She elbowed Laptitza. “Let’s play a game. Who would you pick?”

  “What?” Laptitza said, still watching the men.

  “Who would you pick?” Stanna repeated.

  “What did Anna say?” Laptitza answered absently.

  “Ahh… we caught you,” Stanna laughed.

  “Caught me what?” Laptitza responded, still staring at the men in the clearing.

  “Anna didn’t say anything yet. She was still thinking. You are clearly distracted. Tell us which one you’d pick.”

  I am not the person I used to be.

  I found myself opening my mouth. “If I were ever to marry again, I would bake my husband strawberry bread every day from the berries here in the forest to keep his lips and cheeks pink and his heart red and full so he could stay young and brave and mine forever.” I felt the earth and everything around me responding to my words in a kind of hushed chorus: “Amen.”

  Yet another thing to add to the strange things that keep happening.

  Stanna looked at me, eyes wide, as if she couldn’t believe I’d spoken. That I agreed to play her silly game. “That’s so ridiculous.” She laughed. “Okay. I will make something up that matches how wild this conversation really is.” She whispered a sound like a call to battle. “If I were to be chosen by one of those fine strapping young lads, which I won’t be, but in case I was… I would weave him a sha—” I knew she meant to say shawl, but she stopped and swallowed hard and said instead, “—a shirt… out of the branches of this tree and it would wrap itself around him and fit him perfectly, and keep him from drowning and protect him from fire…” She paused and cleared her throat and we didn’t say anything; we just listened to the wind.

  Then she continued: “It will leave him unscathed when he fights dragons and other kinds of beasts and he will live forever. There.”

  “Amen,” Laptitza said, and I rolled my eyes, but then the wind picked up and tossed Stanna’s hair. I shivered and wrapped my arms around me.

  “I wasn’t finished.” Stanna lowered her voice and the wind seemed to change its tone too, swirling around her and carrying what she said on its wings. “When he puts the shirt on his body, it will turn into the finest armor anyone has ever seen—it will shine silver in the moonlight and gold during the day and it will be intricately carved with branches and trees and all the creatures of the forest. They will protect him too; he will be invincible.” A gust of wind sent all the leaves around us up into a frenzy.

  I watched the sky. “We should go,” I said.

  “I thought that was a good one.” Stanna grinned. “Because baking bread that will keep someone brave and young is far more realistic, right, Anna…?” She rolled her eyes at me. “Laptitza, your turn,” she said.

  I can’t remember the last time the three of us were laughing and joking like this. It feels like we inhabit another life. Another lifetime.

  Laptitza looked like she was holding the most delicious secret between her lips. “I will not marry a man…” she said softly, then her voice rose. “I will give myself to the stars!” She laughed and then looked at me and Stanna. “If we’re being ridiculous: I will give birth to two boys—twins. And each of them will be born with a golden star on his forehead. Bright as the stars in the sky. I will name one for the star of morning and the other for the star of light. And everyone will think that golden stars are the mark of a king. Not something to be ashamed of anymore.”

  We didn’t say anything after that. There was nothing to say. Our faith is like a stain we can’t wash off, no matter how hard we try.

  I sighed and it felt like the forest sighed with me, stirring the leaves again. The men turned their heads in our direction. Even the horses looked up from their grazing. One of the men stood. He walked towards us. Suddenly, I felt like the forest maiden Stanna mentioned, brave and bold in a way I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  I am not the person I used to be.

  It felt like we were standing at the edge of a cliff. At the beginning of a tale. I remember thinking—maybe I’m the one who should emerge, not my sister. Maybe this is how my life begins again.

  I heard a voice in my head and realized it was Laptitza, saying, “Once upon a time, three girls stepped out of a forest…”

  I took a step…

  Stanna

  I step out from behind a tree. I must be brave. I must protect my sisters. I won’t let Anna or Laptitza go out there alone. This is something I can do—for her, for all of us. I am a red-haired forest creature, shy and timid, but brave nonetheless.

  The man in the center of the guards gets off his horse and starts to walk towards me. Four guards dismount and follow him. He comes closer, still closer. He moves with the assurance of someone who has never had to fear anything in his life. I don’t know what possesses me to be so brave. But I can’t let Anna be the one to sacrifice herself. She has sacrificed enough.

  My hands are shaking. Maybe this is a bad choice, the wrong choice. I have a moment when I want to retreat, slowly losing my courage—but before I can take a step back, his hand is reaching for me.

  “Stop,” he says. “Don’t go. Who are you?”

  He takes off his helmet and his hair cascades down around his shoulders. It’s the shade of a fox’s tail and I gasp.

  “Don’t be afraid—I mean you no harm,” he says, taking my response for fear. “Where do you live?” he asks
.

  This is too much. Is it a coincidence that he reminds me so much of Guvriel? Am I seeing my beloved in every reddish hue? Or is it a sign—an omen? What if Guvriel couldn’t come and so he sent a messenger—an angel. We once used to believe in such things.

  “I am Theodor, and you are…?” he prompts, now clearly trying to gauge if I even speak his language. My heart patters in my chest like the pulse of a frightened rabbit.

  “I am…” My throat catches. What do I say? He is young, perhaps my age. His eyes are green like the leaves that surround us. But the more I look, the more I see he doesn’t look like Guvriel at all. His face is elegant, softer, more refined, with no whisper of hair on his cheeks or chin. I shouldn’t be afraid, except he’s finely dressed and clearly the commander of the guard he travels with. Yet… it is something unnamable I feel. I think of the way Guvriel’s orange sidelocks swayed as he walked, the sound of his voice when he laughed, how the hairs on his arm would sometimes brush my hand when he leaned close to whisper to me.

  Theodor takes a step, breaking me out of the cage of my thoughts. “Don’t be afraid. I just… I saw something rustle in the trees—I thought it was a deer! But now I’ve found you, I must know your name. Please. You are new to these parts?”

  “Stanna,” bursts out of my mouth.

  “A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  The words feel false on his lips. Only one person ever thought me beautiful.

  “Will you join me on the hunt? I can have a horse prepared,” he asks.

  “I cannot,” I say.

  He looks taken aback.

  My chest clenches. Once upon a time, a girl named Hannah was made an offer she couldn’t refuse… and look where that led us.