The Forest of Vanishing Stars(13)

“Because I am Jewish.” The girl’s voice was flat, sad. She touched the yellow star sewn onto her sweater. “They are trying to kill us all.”





CHAPTER FIVE




For two days, Yona fed Chana a soothing stew made from fish bones, chanterelle mushrooms, and acorn flour, and each night, she waited until the girl was sleeping soundly before she let her own tears fall.

If an adult had said the things the girl had, she would have believed the person was lying. But Chana, just six years old, was guileless. Her voice had stayed low and flat as she told Yona, haltingly, of the terrible things that had happened to the Jews who lived in the villages around the forest’s edge. Arrests and deportations of the strongest men. Ghettos where streets overflowed with human waste and garbage. Rampant disease, starvation, orphans with nowhere to go who froze to death in the winter, their hands still reaching for bread that would never come.

The realization of what was happening outside the forest swept over Yona like a virus. She dry-heaved in the mornings, out of sight of the girl. And when she smiled and reassured the girl that all would be well in the end, she could taste the salt on her tongue, just like when she’d lied to Marcin in the woods all those years before.

The Germans had done this to the child, and Yona couldn’t stop thinking of the things Jerusza had said on her deathbed. She had stolen Yona from German parents. Bad people, she had called them. Evil parents. Is this what Jerusza had meant? Could people be so cruel to their fellow man? Had Jerusza been right to do what she had done?

“Please, will you take me to find my mother and father?” the girl asked just after dawn on the third day. She had gained some of her strength back, and she had told Yona that she’d been separated from them a week earlier, when they fled the ghetto together along with a dozen others through a tunnel they’d dug by hand. Germans had given chase, shouting words she couldn’t understand, and when gunfire rang out, she’d been so frightened that she ran without looking back. When her legs faltered beneath her and she could go no farther, she stopped and found herself completely, terrifyingly alone.

Yona feared that the girl’s parents were dead, but she nodded and forced a smile. “We will begin looking for them today. But the forest is large, Chana. It is possible we might not be able to find them. You must prepare yourself for that.”

“They will be looking for me, too,” Chana replied with certainty. “They are out there.”

And so, although it went against Yona’s instincts, they began moving that day toward civilization on the northern edge of the forest, the direction from which Chana had come.

It took them a day and a half, walking by the light of a full moon, sleeping in the day, before Yona picked up a trail. Two pairs of footprints led east, away from a riverbank, and one of the sets was too small to be a man’s. Could they belong to Chana’s mother? They were fresh, less than a day old.

Six hours later, just as the sun was beginning to rise, they found the footsteps’ end. Set between two oaks was a poorly constructed lean-to with an inexpert roof of scattered branches that couldn’t possibly have done much to keep out either rain or sun. The second Yona spotted it, she pulled Chana behind a tree and motioned for the girl to be quiet. She had to be sure that the people who had built it would not harm them. Chana looked at her with wide eyes and nodded her understanding, but after a few minutes had passed, a woman emerged, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders like a curtain, and Chana was off like a shot. “Mami!” she cried.

The woman turned, and Chana flew into her arms. Both of them were crying and talking at the same time, and as Yona stepped from behind the bushes, she was surprised to feel tears in her eyes. It was the sort of reunion she would never have; there was no one out there waiting for her.

After the woman let Chana go, Chana turned and pointed toward Yona, and the woman’s expression changed from one of pure joy to one of guarded curiosity in an instant. “She saved me, Mami,” Yona could hear the girl say, and after a second, the woman’s face softened, and she beckoned Yona closer.

“Is this true?” she asked, her voice deep, strong. She spoke Polish, unlike her daughter. “You saved my Chana?”

“She was injured,” Yona replied in Yiddish, the language the woman must have been more comfortable with, for it was the one she’d taught her child. “I promised to help her find you.”

The woman stared at her for another moment. “You speak Yiddish. You were in the ghetto, too? I have not seen you before.”

Yona shook her head. “I am only from the forest.”

The woman studied her for a minute more. “You know how to help people who are hurt, then? Please. My husband, he needs help. Will you come?”

Yona nodded and, ducking her head, followed the woman toward the poorly built structure, Chana tailing behind them.

“Thank you,” the woman added without looking at Yona. “Thank you for saving my child.”



* * *



Chana’s father was dying, his torso a bloodied mass, his face beaded with sweat. He lay on his back, breathing rapidly, his eyes half-open and glazed. When Chana came close, whimpering, he looked as if he did not know her, and her mother quickly pulled her back, wrapping her in a hug.

“Who… you?” he managed to ask Yona. He struggled to sit, but Yona put a firm hand on his shoulder and eased him back down.