The Light of the Midnight Stars

by Rena Rossner

  Sometimes it’s okay to say no, I think, or at least, it should be.

  “It is likely not often that you are refused,” I say. “I apologize for my rudeness.”

  He tilts his head. “You intrigue me. If you do not want to join us, I accept that. It is not right of me to impose my will on others.”

  “I am not from here,” I say. “Forgive me if I don’t understand the customs of your land.” In my head, I berate myself for giving that much away.

  “Where do you hail from?” he says.

  I pause, racking my brain for a safe answer.

  “I must go,” I say instead. “I left my basket in the woods. I must find it.”

  He cocks an eyebrow at me and tilts his head again. “So be it. You have your secrets; I have mine. I wish for you to hunt with me for I would like to learn more about you so I will return to see if I might change your mind. Good day to you, Stanna of the Woods.”

  He turns and motions to his guards to follow him, and I turn back towards my sisters. Why does he want to learn about me? My sisters pepper me with questions, but I only tell them that the men went away.

  We finish picking berries in silence. We have all been shaken by their presence. What it could have meant. But everything will be okay. I know it will. It has to be. I will do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.

  Laptitza

  I sneak away at night again through the window and out to the fields. I can think of nothing but the light—the way it filled me up. I only want to feel that again.

  I get to the clearing and press my hand up to the sky. I wait. And wait.

  I wait so long my arm begins to hurt.

  Just when I’m about to give up, I see it—a falling star that grows brighter as it falls.

  This is it. My heart beats fast.

  Close.

  Then closer.

  I remember how I wanted to run away, but I don’t want that anymore.

  I don’t move—I don’t even flinch.

  The light continues to fall.

  I see a form at the center of it, a pulse, a bright spot that takes shape into a hand of light, reaching for me. I open my palm to the sky.

  There’s a sensation of frost that touches the center of my palm, then spreads the icy sensation through me.

  I gasp for breath. Is this pain? Will I die?

  No. I breathe in and out, then in again. It’s frosty in my veins, but it generates warmth, like hundreds of sparks igniting within me.

  My mouth opens in a gasp—it’s an intense sensation I’ve never felt before.

  The light spreads from my palm to my forearm, then my shoulder, it engulfs my chest. My entire body is suffused in its glow. I am bright, but the world around me is brighter.

  A laugh bubbles up inside me. I’m happy for what feels like the first time in forever. Like I’m floating on air. I haven’t felt this light since we left Trnava. Since the nights I used to follow my father to synagogue and watch his Hassidim dance while they blessed the new moon.

  The light takes shape, and that’s when I see him for the first time. A man lit up. Naked, clothed only in light.

  His hand reaches for mine and the light wraps itself around us.

  I turn to face him and hold out my hand.

  We are palm to palm and there is something tangible between us.

  I stare into his eyes. They are bright blue, crystal clear like a river, with a bright spark of flame at their center.

  I can’t stop staring at them. Like lamps in the darkness.

  Then his palms leave mine and I gasp, missing his warmth, missing the burning.

  His hand touches my face, his other hand is on my shoulder and it slowly moves down to my chest. Everywhere he touches me I feel the same glow—burning fierce in its intensity while a chill runs through me that thrills me to the bone.

  He traces my face, my hair, my brow, my forehead, my cheek down to my neck, and then lower still. His hands leave sparkling marks everywhere they go. My body drinks in these strange sensations.

  Cold and hot then cold again, and everything burning in a way that makes me buoyant. There is warmth between my legs that has never been there before and tingling everywhere that churns and rises through me. I feel I will burst from all the sensation.

  I know what I want to do, what I must do. It’s the only possible way to express what I feel.

  I press my lips to his.

  He stops moving.

  I take a breath of air, afraid I did something wrong, afraid I broke the spell.

  But then he responds. Softly at first, hesitant, almost as if he didn’t expect me to kiss him back.

  I don’t think of my father or mother or my sisters and their burdens of pain and grief. My lips burn icy hot, then his frozen tongue tentatively brushes against mine.

  My mouth fills with light.

  My lungs fill with a mixture

  of heat and cold.

  I cry out and my hands

  grasp his arms.

  Everything inside me

  lights up.

  We move together,

  light and dark,

  silver and gold,

  starlight and moonlight.

  The sensations explode

  in sparks that travel

  through me.

  I am a golden star—

  bright and burning.

  I am the star,

  falling,

  burning.

  I feel as though

  I will explode

  into a mass

  of starlight.

  He will consume me.

  And in that moment,

  I don’t care

  if he does.

  The light goes on and on

  until I close my eyes

  and see I am part of the sky—

  a diamond placed in the firmament

  to shine bright and full forever.

  Everything tingles with a sweet afterburn.

  Smoke should be rising from my skin.

  I am so warm, my skin glowing.

  My stomach is full and burning.

  My legs are streaked with trails

  of silver starlight.

  He reaches down and takes my hand in his.

  He brings it to his lips.

  Silver tears fall from his eyes.

  He starts to shimmer, then in an instant his body is encased in ice-blue flame.

  He grows smaller and glows brighter, until his hand leaves mine and the light leaves me, and I see him, streaking across the sky.

  I press my hand to my lips, my body still trembling with the memory of him.

  I get up and get dressed and shakily make my way back home.

  This was no dream.

  There are trails of starlight

  between my legs.

  My stomach aches.

  I wonder if there is still

  golden light

  within me.

  Back in bed, I can’t sleep. I roam my arms over every part of me he touched and when I press my hand to the window, I see my hand still glows ever so faintly.

  I place my hand on my stomach

  and there is warmth there,

  pulsing bright.

  I still see the stars in his eyes.

  A universe of stars—

  white-hot specks

  against a black sky of sensation.

  I have merged with a star,

  I have become a part of

  the firmament.

  It sends a new rush

  of thrills through me.

  I giggle, remembering how good I felt filled with his light, what it felt like to float. To have no cares weighing me down.

  If this is the trail I must follow, then I will. Gladly.

  Maybe I can gain the power to change what is written in the stars.

  I cannot rewrite the past, but perhaps I can find a way to chart our future.

  In the morning, I rub my eyes and feel a moment of panic. Was it nothing more than
a dream?

  I reach down and touch myself and my hand comes back silver.

  I close my eyes and my body is white-hot again, reveling in the memory of sensation.

  I look up at the sky. The patterns whisper to me more loudly than they ever have before. The pulse of one bright star echoes within me.

  Last night, I added my own story to the pages of the sky.

  Stanna sits on the edge of my bed. “What do you see up there?” she asks.

  I turn to her, careful to hide my hand under the blankets. “I’m not sure you’d understand.”

  She lifts up the blankets as if she’s asking permission to climb under the covers with me. I stiffen, worried she will know that something about me is different. But then I realize that I’ve done something that my sister has not done. She never got to be with Guvriel because Papa made her wait… even when my friends were already getting married.

  It’s something I might have lorded over her in a different lifetime—but that life is gone.

  A wave of sadness reaches for my heart, but I push it back. I scoot over to make room.

  “Try me,” Stanna says. “Explain it.”

  I look up at the sky and am silent for a few long minutes. Then I smile softly to myself.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” I say.

  “Okay,” Stanna says with a smile. “Tell me your story.”

  Once there was a princess who thought she was alone in the world. She had a mother and a father, but they paid her very little attention. She was their only child—the star in their sky, but because she was an only child, she spent a lot of time by herself. So much so that the stars became her only companions. She would go out onto the balcony off her bedroom every night and look up at the sky and make up stories in the shapes she saw.

  She would connect the stars, naming each one by pointing at them, and after a while the stars obeyed her. She would touch one and it touched her back—it would shine a little brighter and shake a bit in the firmament that held it.

  She moved her bed so that it was under the largest window, and when it was too cold to be outside, she would open the window and stare up at the sky.

  There was one star in particular that was her favorite. It didn’t burn the brightest, or shine with a clear glow; it was a fickle star—which was why she noticed it. Sometimes it shone bright, sometimes its light was dim, and sometimes it pulsed, lighter, then darker, wavering a bit, and then shining brighter than before.

  She thought the star was restless and lonely like she was. Every day, it appeared in a different place in the sky. Still, she knew that it was hers because of the way it shone. She would reach her hand up to the sky as if to touch it—but it never responded to her touch.

  Until one day it did.

  She didn’t know how it happened, or what she did, but then she saw it spark a bit and streak across the sky leaving a silver trail. It blazed golden for an instant before disappearing.

  Had she blinked, she would have missed it entirely.

  She sat up in bed, distraught. Had the star died? She didn’t understand.

  She ran to the balcony off her bedroom and searched the sky.

  But it was gone.

  Quicker than lightning, she sped out of her room, down the large staircase, through the grand hall and outside, across the forest and into the trees in the hope that she might find it.

  She didn’t know where to run, only that she had to do something—she had to find the star. She worried that if she didn’t find it, the star would be lost to her completely.

  Something in her heart led her to it.

  For years when she’d looked up at the sky, it was always there, watching her, helping her feel less alone in the world. And now it needed her help.

  The princess ran and ran as fast as her feet could carry her, and then she came to a clearing in the forest. There was a tree there that looked as if it had been split in two—it was smoldering, not quite on fire, but full of smoke and ash. She was afraid to go near it, but she knew it was where her star had fallen.

  She fell to the earth and started to cry. Her tears became tiny diamond stars that littered the ground beneath her feet. She looked up and saw there was a man watching her. He was covered in ash, and at first, she gasped in fear, but then she saw his eyes were wide with wonder, watching her as she had once watched the sky. His hair was nearly white, his skin pale and glowing in the moonlight.

  She recognized him. She walked a step, and then another step until she was close enough to see that his skin shone with an unearthly sheen. She reached out her hand and touched his cheek, and saw him tremble at her touch, and she recognized the way he shivered.

  “What is your name?” she said.

  The star-man opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “Come with me,” the princess said, and took his hand, but the star-man wouldn’t follow her. He pointed at the sky.

  “I don’t know how to help you go back,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He pointed at her, then at the sky.

  “No, I couldn’t possibly come with you. I don’t know how to fly. And my parents would miss me. Come back with me to the palace!”

  But the star-man only put his hands on her face and traced patterns on her cheeks and on her forehead, on her arms and shoulders.

  She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.

  He didn’t move at first. But then he kissed her back and she lit up.

  When he touched her, it was as though she was touched by the fire of a thousand tiny stars.

  The princess began to cry. The star-man touched his fingers to her tears. He held his fingers out to her as if asking: why do you cry?

  “I’m sad because I’ve waited so long to meet you. Because I’m no longer alone in the world.”

  He leaned over to kiss her again as if to say, “You should be happy,” and also, “You will never be alone again.”

  This time, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back as though he was the only star left in the sky.

  “Come back with me to the palace,” she tried again.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m cold. I must go back,” she said. “At least let me bring you clothes and some food. Where will you live? Out here in the forest? You need shelter. I will get myself a coat, and one for you. Wait for me. I will come back.”

  The star-man walked back over to the tree and curled up inside the bark.

  The princess ran back to the palace as fast as her legs could carry her. She crept into her father’s room and took some clothes from his wardrobe. She snuck into the kitchen and stole bread and cheese and fruit. She took a pillow from her own bed, and a blanket from the chest. She placed everything in the blanket, then she ran all the way back to the forest. But when she got back to the clearing, the star-man was gone.

  She went back home and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but inside, her heart hurt, and when no one was looking, tears fell from her eyes.

  She waited all day until the sun went down, until she could go back to the tree and wait for him again. It was all she lived for. All she wanted in the world.

  Something that could be her own.

  I’m silent for a few minutes and Stanna lays beside me, listening.

  “It’s a beautiful story,” she says.

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  “Why are you telling it to me?”

  “Because I needed to tell it to someone.”

  “Who told it to you?”

  “Don’t you know?” I tell her. “The most beautiful stories are true.”

  And then I turn away from her and close my eyes and try to find sleep.

  It is customary to blow the shofar from the first of Elul until Erev Rosh Hashana, in memory of the covenant with God and in order to confuse the Sattan, so that he won’t know the exact day of Rosh Hashana. Hope is like dust, blown away with the wind; a thin froth driven away by a storm; like smoke dispersed with a tempest. So
too is the sound of the shofar.

  —The Book of the Solomonars, page 61, verse 2

  It is said that high above the town of Curtea de Argeş, a star shot through the sky and landed in the Şinca Veche forest. Where it fell, it formed a cave.

  Ivan Simion’s youngest daughter, Laptitza, thought that she was the only one to see it fall.

  But she was wrong. Basarab’s daughter, Theodora, saw it too, and when it fell, she made a wish. And because such is the way with falling stars and dreams, the wish was granted.

  Stanna

  The strawberry seeds that Anna planted in the forest under the linden tree have more than sprouted, they’ve taken over. I see Anna starting to come back to herself. Her face is different. The soil is different—it responds to her touch, even though she shrinks from it.

  Every day, we go to the woods together—today we gather berries and roots. Mama needs to replenish her medicine stash.

  When Anna and Laptitza walk a bit away from me, I turn back and dig up the tallit.

  I unfold it and it smells like earth. Like moss and soil. It doesn’t smell like Guvriel; it never got a chance to smell like him. I wrap myself in the prayer shawl and break down in tears.

  I feel him like an echo in my mind—his voice, his soft and silly laughter—but the more I try to remember his face, his smile, his fiery sidelocks… the more his image flits away. I want to wrap myself in this shawl and pray and pray and pray until Guvriel comes home to me.

  The world is dimmer without him. The longer I wait, the farther I get from him, and the more I start to believe the ugly truth that he may not ever be able to find me—that he may not have survived. It’s hard to let go. I don’t want to let go. And yet…

  Anna is trying and she lost more than I did…

  I keep seeing Guvriel in my nightmares. I see him sometimes as a fox, and other times an owl, but then the owl turns into a helmet, or the fox turns into a horse, and I see Theodor—his long red hair tumbling down. Sometimes he is Guvriel, and his gray-green eyes stare into mine. Sometimes in my dreams I twine my fingers in his hair, and when he turns his face to me I trace his features with my fingers as if I’m trying to understand them. His face is smooth and chiseled at the same time, and that’s when I realize it’s not Guvriel I’m touching at all and that I don’t have dreams anymore. They’re all nightmares.