by Rena Rossner
I turn to look…
The voivode’s guards
have come for me.
Their hands are on my arms.
Something covers my mouth.
I try to cry out, to scream,
to wrestle my way free
but their grip is too strong.
Why are they here?
Didn’t we only just sit down
for a picnic together?
They wrench my arms
behind my back and tie
my wrists together.
I don’t understand
what’s happening.
Why?
I turn my head
from side to side
frantically, trying
to breathe, trying
to see who is behind me.
Is it Constantin?
Please, you know me!
I want to say.
But then I see
Marghita
behind them.
A small, sad grin
of triumph
on her lips.
There is cloth
in my mouth.
My eyes
fill with tears.
Marghita watches
as the guards
pull me down
the hallway,
out of my room,
and down the stairs.
She doesn’t follow.
They cover my head
with a sack that smells like hay.
Only pinpricks of light get in.
They shove me into a carriage.
I hear horses; the carriage starts to move.
First we bump over dirt and rocks,
then the road grows smoother.
It is not a long ride.
They don’t need to go far
to dispose of me.
They open the doors
and heave me outside.
I can feel the light
of the moon
and the stars
through the bag
over my head.
We are outside.
My feet touch earth.
I am barefoot.
I hear shovels, digging.
The sound of steel
hitting earth.
Again
and again
and again.
I can’t stop shivering.
They shove me
and I fall.
For an instant,
I think I will land
and break my neck
and it will all be
blessedly over.
But my feet
touch earth again
and my arms feel soil.
I struggle to undo
the bindings
at my wrists.
There is earth
all around me.
I can smell it.
The roots of plants
tickle my nose.
Is it a bug?
The smell
of freshly turned soil
floods my senses.
And then the shovels
of earth
begin to fall.
I try to move,
but there is nowhere to go.
I try to cry out,
but cloth still gags me.
I can’t breathe.
My eyes fill with tears.
I see stars.
There is nothing
I can do
to stop them.
No one comes
to my rescue.
The stars see everything—
and they do nothing.
The earth rises
with every shovel-full.
It is up to my neck now.
There is no room to move.
My head is still above earth.
When I hear a horse.
A carriage.
Footsteps.
The hood over my head—removed.
I blink up
at the light
of the stars.
So bright.
Why do
none of them
save me?
My vision adjusts
and I see only Marghita.
She spits in my face.
“A Jewish demoness—
a striga that’s
what you are.
You seduced my son
and found your way
into his bed
even though you knew
you carried the spawn
of a different man—
a demon,
just like you.”
She bends down
and I think
that she will
strike me.
I close my eyes
and wait for
the blow.
Instead, there’s a cool blade
at my throat.
So that’s it, I think.
She will slit my throat.
But she doesn’t.
She cuts off my hair.
Long copper strands fall
around my head.
I feel the metal
pressed to my skull
and then the skritch
of the blade.
She nicks my skull
in so many places,
I see rivers of blood
in front of my eyes.
I don’t have hands
that I can use
to wipe the blood away.
The guards fill
the burlap sack
with my hair.
“Burn it,”
she tells them.
“Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live!”
She kneels down
before me
and takes the cloth
out of my mouth.
Help! I cry out,
as loud as I can,
as loud as my lungs,
which are pressed in by earth
will allow.
But then
she is shoving something
in my mouth.
I taste dirt.
My body wants
my hands to fight—
to struggle.
But I cannot
feel them
anymore.
Sh’ma Yisrael!
I choke and gag
and try to dislodge
the dirt
from my mouth,
Adonai Eloheinu!
but she only shoves
more in.
Adonai Echad.
So much earth.
My mouth feels
as though it will burst.
My jaw aches.
I start to choke.
Earth at the back
of my mouth.
I can’t swallow
it
down.
I can still breathe
through my nose,
but just barely.
Marghita gets up.
She wipes her hands
on her gown.
Then she takes
something out of a sack
and I hear the sound
of salt spilling.
A ring of salt
around my head.
Everything blurs.
My eyes water.
I try to breathe,
to keep a clear path
down my throat
for air.
But there are
black shadows
in the corners
of my eyes.
I am too scared
to move my lips.
I am Levana bat Yitzchak,
I say in my heart,
daughter of Esther and Isaac
Oh Lord our God
who I know I’ve forsaken.
Please… save me…
Marghita spits.
She curses at me.
“Stay here
until she stops
breathing,”
/>
she tells the guards.
I hear a horse,
galloping away.
Then all is quiet
and still.
I try to look up
to the heavens.
Ezri me’im Hashem—
My help comes from the Lord
oseh shamayim va’aretz—
who made heaven and earth.
It hurts my neck,
but if I am to die,
I wish to die
with the stars
in my eyes.
It is the wrong choice.
The angle only sends
the earth in deeper.
I struggle and gasp;
I can’t breathe;
there is nowhere for
the air to go.
The black velvet I see
is like a night
with no stars.
Hannah
23 Iyar 5123
I woke before dawn again today and made my way through the forest to the cave. I thought that I was only going to check on the babies—my nephews—but something had been set into motion last night that would change our future forever.
I found the babies sleeping peacefully. They must have woken up, then cried themselves back to sleep again, poor things, but they are safe, and alive. The forest is caring for them, and that is all that matters. I changed their soiled clothing and fed them milk. I know this is not a permanent solution: they need mother’s milk—they need a mother. Soon they fell back asleep, stomachs full and content… for now.
I didn’t want to leave them. I cradled one to my chest, and then the other. What will become of them? Who will take care of them? I cried and my tears wet their little faces.
When I stopped crying, I put them down and watched the rise and fall of their chests. Something felt wrong. Something in the earth. There is a rumbling beneath the earth, a trembling in each branch and leaf. I felt it then, a disturbance, an unease. The roots of the trees are unhappy.
I kissed the boys on their foreheads and my eyes filled with tears again.
I will be back again, little ones.
Hăita liuliu, sleep softly.
Hăita liuliu. Hăitu lulu.
I cut through the forest and made my way to the town square. The sense of unease I felt grew. The trees vibrated with something I can only now describe as sorrow. The closer I got, the worse it felt, the trees both getting in my way and urging me on. I walked fast, then ran faster, and faster. The trees whispered in my ears. Something was very, very wrong.
When I got to the center of the town square, the crows were already circling. I saw my little sister and dropped to the ground, hand over my mouth, stifling my scream. “No…” I whispered, hoarse. Her hair… her beautiful hair, I remember thinking, with no rational reason why I thought that when faced with the horror of her death. I fell to the ground and dug my fingers into her mouth, trying to pry out the earth, but it was no use. My little sister was cold and dark. No longer bright. No longer breathing. No breath left in her. No air.
I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the air was choking me. As if I’d swallowed earth. And that was when I noticed it—the Black Mist like a carpet, blanketing the floor. Smothering everything.
Levana. My baby sister. My little light. Once I held her like I hold her babies now. My body heaved. It tried to empty me of everything within me. But the life within me held fast.
How can anything matter now that she’s gone? I have known too much of loss and not enough love. We all have.
And now there are two motherless boys in the world. Boys who will never know the light that used to shine in her eyes. The soft sound of her voice when she sang our prayers. The way she looked up at the sky and believed, with all her heart, in the power of the stars to save us all.
She was wrong. No angel came. Not to save Jakob, or Guvriel, or her babies, or her soul now.
Leaving our faith behind wasn’t enough. Constantin wasn’t enough. Nikolas wasn’t enough. Even the stars, that shone so bright for her, left her alone and scared in the end.
I don’t know how to live in a world without her.
I can’t stop my body from shaking, the sobs from finding their way out of my mouth.
I try to breathe, but it’s so hard. Was this what it was like for her in her last minutes?
Did she know that no one would save her?
We can only save ourselves, I heard my mother’s voice and I knew that I had to go to her. To tell her and Abba what happened here.
Why did I leave her? I could have tried to save her… but I chose her boys instead.
It is a choice I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
One day, her children can read these words. One day, they’ll read how brave she was until the very end.
The sun was rising. I felt its warmth on my face. I didn’t want its light or its comfort, but its dawning rays broke through the haze of my sorrow and knew I had to act quickly.
I stood up and took off my shoes. I planted my feet in the earth by her head. My toes curled into the soil and I closed my eyes. Tears poured down my cheeks. I sought her soul. I reached out with my senses and looked for it amid the thick black mist, and then I felt it. A bright spark trapped inside the husk of her body. I tugged, but it didn’t budge. I tried to entice it, but it paid me no heed. It wouldn’t leave my sister’s body even in death.
And then I realized why. I remembered. A tahara wasn’t done. This wasn’t a proper Jewish burial. But I didn’t have the time or the strength to dig her out.
My tears continued to fall. I felt the seed of a tree take root, and as I struggled to free her soul, a sapling sprouted. It was not something I asked for. Not something I called into being, but still it came and I sang to it, one of the songs that Levana used to sing…
May the angel who redeems me from harm
bless the children and call them by My name
and by the names of my forefathers, and may they
multiply like fish in the midst of the earth.
Its roots surrounded my sister’s head, cocooning her body, wrapping around her until she was planted, firmly rooted like I wanted to be, pulled down into the earth and buried within it.
The tree’s limbs already reached for the sky like she did.
I whispered softly, begging the ground for the release of my sister’s soul.
I gave you life, I said, now give me this light.
I felt a small glow sputter and stop, then sputter again and begin to shine. It traveled from the belly of the earth through the roots of the tree and up a branch, until one silver star sprouted from the top of the tree. It shimmered in the near-dawn of sky.
It detached itself from the top of the tree and took flight, spiraling upwards. It rose, faster and faster, until I could no longer see it. I only saw the shimmer it left behind.
This was not the way my sister’s story was supposed to end, but her soul is free now. It was the best I could do. The only thing.
She is with her beloved in the sky.
And then I heard her voice on the wind. “Every star in the sky is a soul. When someone dies, a star falls. It is our job to put the stars back in the sky. Rekindle the light.”
I’ve always wondered, with so much death in the world, how there were still so many stars.
Now I know that there is more than one way to make a star. When I get home, I will light a candle and place it on the windowsill.
Perhaps from up there she will see it. Perhaps she can already see her little boys, that they are safe for now, and sleeping.
She is the angel who will watch over us all.
When I looked up at the tree, it was covered in star-shaped leaves.
I saw an owl swoop down, then land on the branches of the tree.
“It is a tree of life, for those who take hold of it,” I said out loud, remembering the verse from synagogue, from when we returned the Torah scrolls to their ark.
Then, like I used to do in
synagogue when I was a little girl and the gabbai raised the Torah scroll so that all could see it, I kissed my fingers, then pressed my palm up to the sky.
I turned in the direction of my parents’ home. I had to go tell them that their daughter was gone. I must help them tear kri’ah, we must all sit shiva. We may have left our religion behind us, but the seven days of Jewish mourning will begin with or without us. Some traditions are as immutable as the stars.
I will mourn Levana in the traditional way. I will sit shiva for seven days.
And then I will tell her story.
Stanna
I can no longer deny what is growing within me. Ivan Alexander sends us to a monastery so that Theodora might come back, bearing my baby in her arms and ensuring Ivan Alexander’s succession.
But Theodora knows what happens to women who are sent to monasteries, and though I crave the solitude and peace the place affords us—and the relief I get from Ivan’s attention—she can’t find peace. She paces the halls restlessly, claiming she hears voices in the walls and the wails of babies at night.
“But we are alone here together, iubirea mea,” I try. “Ivan Alexander can no longer bother us.”
“Ivan Alexander will no longer bother you,” she bites back at me. “That’s all you care about.”
Days turn to weeks and she is not thriving. There is no horse she can ride here, no escape. The eyes of the clergy are upon us constantly. We have privacy in our chambers, but no peace.
“Take to the skies,” I say to her one night. “Fly through the forest and all around the monastery and you will see that there is nothing and no one to fear.”
Theodora takes off that night under the cover of darkness. She soars for hours in the sky and comes back. Her cheeks are flushed and ruddy, her eyes bright in a way I haven’t seen in a long time.
“There,” I say. “That was all you needed. Some fresh air. A way to be free.”
“This place is a cage,” she says, out of breath. “Nothing more than a prison.”
I hear in her words the way I felt about Ivan Alexander’s castle.
“He will order all the doors and windows closed,” she says, eyes crazed. “He will bury us here, entombed with the bones of all those buried in the crypt.”
“What I see as a sanctuary you see as a tomb,” I say.
We go to bed that night, but neither of us sleep for a long time.
When I finally do fall asleep, I have a dream.
Once there was a girl whose first love was lost to her, so she fell in love with a dragon.
But the dragon was captured by an evil prince, and she did the only thing she could think to do.
If you love something, her heart told her, you set it free.
