The Forest of Vanishing Stars(23)

Aleksander’s brows rose. “I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, Yona.”

“I won’t stay long. But the forest can be dangerous.” She thought of Chana and her family, and she swallowed hard. “I will teach you to live—and to disappear.”

Aleksander’s gaze never left hers as he nodded slowly. “Thank you, Yona. But I—” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. “I don’t want to disappear. I want to survive so we can tell the world what has happened.”

“I don’t want you to disappear, either.” She was surprised by how vehemently she meant the words. “And that is why you must become one with the forest to survive.” Just like a pack of wild animals, they would need to remain on the move as long as the weather was good, for the longer they stayed in place, the more vulnerable they became to predators—both man and beast. And Yona couldn’t let that happen.



* * *



That night, after filling their basket until it overflowed with fish, Yona waved goodbye to Aleksander and Leib as they disappeared into the forest with their new fishing nets. She watched them as they went, somehow knowing, even before it happened, that Aleksander would turn around not once but twice to see if she was still there. Then she slipped back into the woods toward the hut she had called home for the last week.

She had little to travel with, so it took her no time at all to pack her things into the leather knapsack she’d used for years, the one that smelled like the damp of the forest even on the driest days. And then, when the moon rose overhead, bathing the forest in light, she stared up at it in the clear sky, listening to the sound of her own breath, the comfortable rhythm of solitude. Tomorrow, everything would change.

But for now, she was alone with her thoughts. Above her, the stars stretched across the heavens, a familiar canopy that would be with her wherever she went.





CHAPTER EIGHT




In the morning, Aleksander was waiting beside the stream, the woven basket next to him, when Yona arrived. He watched her as she approached, and when she was within earshot, he smiled and said her name. Two eagles lifted off from a nearby pine, and a crow squawked his protest over the interruption.

She continued her silent walk toward him, and when they finally stood just a few meters apart, she studied his face for a few seconds before speaking. “Hello, Aleksander,” she said, her voice sounding strange and high-pitched to her own ears. She was nervous, and when he took a small step back, she wondered if he could sense it. Did he understand how profoundly her world was changing?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, the question sounding strangely formal.

She nodded, though she had barely slept at all, her dreams punctuated by strange visions of Jerusza silently screaming in the darkness. “Did you?”

He smiled ruefully. “To be honest, I was worried about you.”

“About me?”

“About whether I’m forcing you to do something you don’t want to do.”

She thought of Jerusza. Of a lifetime of being told what to do, how to feel. Of a stolen childhood, of a life of loneliness she hadn’t asked for. “No. This is my choice.” It felt good to say the words, to remind herself that she had the right to a road of her own choosing.

He hesitated, watching her closely. “Yona, have you ever lived outside the woods?”

She opened her mouth to say no, but then she thought of Berlin and the shadowy sketches she could sometimes see in her mind’s eye of her life before Jerusza. A wooden children’s bed. Billowy drapes the color of spring sunshine. A mother with brightly painted red lips, a father with a neatly trimmed mustache and grease in his hair. How could she still see them so clearly? In trying to make her forget, had Jerusza instead frozen the images in time? They were faces that felt like they belonged to a dream, but she knew they were real, vestiges of the life she should have had. “Yes,” she said after a while. “A long time ago.”

“And now?” he asked. “You are all alone?”

“I am. For almost half a year now.” She took a deep breath.

“I see.” Something in his expression shifted slightly, a recognition of pain. “You lost someone very recently. I’m sorry. What happened to him?”

His assumption that she had been sharing her life with a man was almost laughable because it was so far from the truth. He was the first man other than Chana’s father whom she’d seen up close, if you didn’t count Marcin, who had been just a boy, and who existed now only in her distant memory. “It was a woman named Jerusza. She is the one who raised me. She died just before the spring.”

“Oh. Yona, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was her time. She lived to be one hundred two.”

“One hundred two?” His brow creased in confusion. “Surely not. People don’t live that long. And certainly not in the wilderness.”

Yona held his gaze. “She did.” She turned before he could ask more. How would she explain Jerusza? It was impossible.

“Well.” He cleared his throat, at a temporary loss for words. “Would you like to go see my people now, Yona?”

“No. Let’s catch some more fish first. Then we can feed them when we arrive.”

He nodded and busied himself with helping her to unspool and stake the gill net she had crafted the day before. As they waded into the water together, they were silent at first, concentrating on the placement of the mesh. But as they moved to the shore and Yona looked up, she found him studying the curves of her body. It made her stumble and blush. He looked away instantly and cleared his throat.