The Forest of Vanishing Stars(31)
She had been right to insist they move—the longer they stayed in place during the summer, the more dangerous their situation became—but Yona also had to admit to herself that the group had fared well on their own. They had figured out a way to gather food, to tell basic poisons from basic sustenance, to build rudimentary shelter, even to arm themselves. It spoke volumes about Aleksander, Rosalia, Leib, and the others that they’d had a sense of what they needed to take from the villages and what they had to do to stay alive. Yona would help to make the upcoming winter easier, but even without her, it was possible they could all survive if they were fortunate enough to stay out of the path of those hunting them.
As Yona stood, she shivered, though the summer day was already warm. Hunting. The word lodged in her chest and throbbed there dangerously. She had hunted animals. She had been hunted by animals. But the thought of humans hunting humans—it was difficult for her to understand, and it made her feel ill.
She headed toward Aleksander, who turned and spotted her as she approached. “You should go back to sleep,” he said. “Get some rest.”
“I don’t sleep much.” It was true. Jerusza had taught her long ago that sleep, though necessary, was equivalent to weakness. Slumber left one vulnerable, useless. With the exception of her final few months, as she slowly passed from this world to the next, Jerusza had never slept more than four hours at a time, and she had often pursed her lips and chided Yona for sleeping for any period longer than that. Last night, though exhausted from the unfamiliar strain of human contact, Yona’s brain had raced with thoughts about all the things she wanted to do in the coming days. She would need to teach the group to preserve fish, to dry bilberries and cawberries for winter, to gather and store mountain ash berries and tree cranberries. She had to teach them how to hunt without weapons, which wild animals would provide the most nutrition, which frogs and snakes could be eaten, which herbs could be picked to help make food more palatable, which could be gathered to help treat ailments. She would need to show them how to build winter shelters and to catch fish when ice had crusted the ponds. They were the secrets of the forest that villagers couldn’t know, secrets that would mean the difference between life and death.
“You look troubled,” Aleksander said after a moment.
She was, of course. She felt responsible for everyone here. But then she looked back at the camp—where Ruth lay clutching all three of her sleeping children, where Oscher and Bina held each other, where Miriam slept with one arm slung protectively over a snoring Leib—and a great peace settled over her, all the questions and worries fading to a whisper. “It will be all right,” she said, as much to herself as to Aleksander.
“I’m very glad you are here, Yona. That we found each other.”
She turned to him. The way he was watching her made her breath catch. “You were already doing a good job, long before I arrived. Everyone is alive and well-fed.”
He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t talking about survival, Yona. I’m grateful for you.” His eyes held hers for a second more before he dropped his gaze. “For your company, I mean.”
Her cheeks warmed, and as she looked back toward the group, she had the feeling that there was deeper meaning in his words. “And I am glad for yours, Aleksander.”
The sky was light a half hour later, and the camp began to stir, the baby crying first. As Ruth pulled him to her breast, she jostled the girls, who both awoke muttering remnants of their dreams. Rosalia was awake next, then Oscher and Bina. Yona watched in silence as they all yawned and stretched, standing and wandering to the edge of the clearing, some of them taking swigs from the canteens they had filled last night, others taking turns relieving themselves in the privacy of the shadows beyond the perimeter.
By the time the sun had crested the trees, Rosalia was on guard, Aleksander had taken Moshe and Leon with him to show them how to use the gill net in the stream they’d passed the night before, the girls were cheerfully gathering berries with their mother, and Yona was teaching Sulia, Miriam, and Luba how to gather the pink Saponaria flowers that bloomed in the summer on hillsides, and how to crush the roots with small stones and mix in a bit of water to make a basic soap.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something more useful?” Sulia asked, loudly enough for her voice to carry to the others, as she bent beside Yona to yank a handful of blooms from the earth. “This feels unnecessary.”
Miriam and Luba glanced at her, but they didn’t say anything. Yona could feel her chest constricting the way it sometimes did when she knew a predator had picked up her scent. “Without soap, you will have disease and lice,” Yona replied. “We’re fortunate that it is summer now, but by autumn, these plants will wilt. Before then, I’ll teach you to make soap from hardwood ash and animal fat.”
Sulia made a small noise in the back of her throat, but she didn’t say anything else.
“Leib said you are very good at catching fish, Yona,” Miriam said after a while. She had moved beside Yona, her skirt lifted in the front to create a basket for the hundreds of flowers she had gathered. She was quiet, and a hard worker, which Yona respected. Sulia and Luba had moved farther down the hillside and were chatting with each other.
“I have been fishing all my life,” Yona replied. “Your son, he has good instincts. He will be a fine fisherman once he learns, and a good hunter, too.”