The Forest of Vanishing Stars(16)

Yona blinked a few times. The words wounded her, though of course they were true. How foolish she had been to imagine a world in which she could protect them, a world in which loneliness would be a distant memory. But they needed her now, at least for a little while, for they didn’t know the woods like she did. She opened her mouth to say that, but Isaac spoke first.

“Esta, please, don’t disrespect her. Yona can show us where to go, where to hide. She can help us with what to eat until we know what to do on our own.”

Chana’s eyes were wide with fear as she watched her parents trade verbal barbs.

Esta’s eyes raked Yona over once, and then, her jaw tightening, she turned again to her husband. “No. I will not make the mistake of trusting the wrong person again.” She looked at Yona, her eyes alight with anger, before turning back to her husband. “Anyhow, you think I don’t see it, Isaac? The way you whisper to each other while she’s dressing your wounds?”

“I was telling her about the atrocities against our people,” Isaac shot back. “Hardly words of seduction, Esta.”

“She’s a lonely woman in the woods. She has helped us, and we are grateful, but now we must go. It is our fate, not hers.”

Yona’s heart pounded as she looked back and forth between husband and wife, both furious. “Please, let me help you.” She stood, and though she wasn’t sure why she was begging them, she continued. “I—I have come to care for Chana. For all of you. Please, we must go south.”

“I’m sorry, Yona,” Esta said stiffly. “But I must protect my family.”

“From a woman who has shown us nothing but kindness?” Isaac asked, his voice finally rising.

“Mami?” Chana ventured, but Esta ignored her.

“We will survive without her,” Esta said. “We do not need her anymore.”

“I—” Yona began.

“Thank you for all you’ve done to help us,” Esta said as Isaac sighed and sat back down, muttering to himself. It was clear that Esta had won, but at what cost? “You can leave whenever you like, Yona. You must be eager to return to whatever it was you were doing before we interrupted you.”

Yona stared at her for a long time. She could see a dozen futures unfolding for the family, none of them good. She couldn’t leave them defenseless. “I will stay as long as you are here.”

“Then we will go,” Esta said abruptly. “Chana, help me pack our things.”

“Please, you are making a mistake.” Yona waited until Esta met her gaze. “The forest can be cruel if you don’t know it, and—”

“Thank you for your concern, Yona.” Esta looked away. “We will leave in an hour. We appreciate all you’ve done, but we can take care of ourselves.”



* * *



Yona tried once more to talk Esta out of her decision, but it was clear the woman had made up her mind, driven by a deep distrust that Yona couldn’t undo. She didn’t understand Esta’s decision, and she didn’t know how to reverse it—nor did she have any idea if it was even her right to try. As Esta had said, whatever happened next was their fate, not hers. And so, as the family packed up—Isaac shooting her uneasy glances, Chana crying, and Esta avoiding her gaze altogether—Yona forced herself to walk away, beyond the clearing, so she couldn’t beg them to stay any more than she already had, and so she wouldn’t have to watch them go.

“Do we have to leave, Mami?” she heard Chana ask. “Can’t Yona come with us?”

“Yona needs to remain here, my darling,” Esta replied. “She is not one of us. Your father and I will keep you safe.”

For a long time after their footsteps had faded, Yona wondered whether she should go after them, persuade them to stay with her for a little while more, perhaps even just give the girl one last hug goodbye.

But fate is part chance and part choice, and Yona understood that Esta had chosen a path for her family that didn’t include her. Indecision paralyzed her for so long that by the time she stood, her heart aching, the family was long gone.

Yona spent the next four days telling herself that she’d made the right choice, although at night she dreamed of Chana’s soul coming loose from her body, lifting up like an incandescent butterfly into a dark night, and she awoke each morning with a sense of foreboding. On the fifth day, reluctantly, she began moving east, in the same direction the family had gone, though she knew she wouldn’t see them again. The forest was too vast.

It was midmorning when she heard three distant gunshots, each snapping the stillness of the forest, and when she doubled back in the direction of the terrible sounds, and found the family’s bodies in a clearing, she knew she’d made a tremendous mistake. She watched from the shadows as two German soldiers walked away with Isaac’s shoes, laughing and patting each other on the back. And then, when they were gone and the forest was still again, she slipped from the darkness and gently turned Chana over so that the girl’s empty eyes looked up at the sky. She lay motionless between her mother and father, all three of them in a row. They’d been executed, at point-blank range, a single shot to the back of each one’s head.

Yona let the tears fall as she stared down at the child’s destroyed face. She hadn’t been directly responsible for Chana’s death, but she had failed her, hadn’t she? She had let Chana and her family go out into the wilderness, knowing the dangers, and because she had done nothing, they had died. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the little girl. “I promise I won’t make the same mistake again.”