The Forest of Vanishing Stars(34)

“Ty yevrey?” the smaller man repeated more loudly, his eyes narrowing, and Leib shook his head, clearly frightened.

“Of course he’s a Jew, Vadim,” the large man said in Russian as Leib began to back away. “Look at that nose. Look how dirty he is. He’s probably one of the bastards who’s been stealing from us.”

“Dirty Jew.” The smaller man spat on the ground.

“I think we make him pay. Make an example of him.”

“String him up like a warning, yes, after we put a bullet in his head?”

The men both cackled, and Leib’s eyes darted desperately back and forth from one to the other. It was clear he had little idea what they were saying but realized it was bad. Yona crept closer, close enough that she could smell them. They were both unwashed, stinking of sweat and saline, mud and adrenaline. They were so focused on the boy they were hunting that they didn’t realize they, too, were being hunted.

Slowly, carefully, she reached for the knife that she kept strapped to her ankle, but to her horror, it wasn’t there. She realized in a flash that she had left it beside her reed mat when she had gotten up that morning with panic knotting her insides. She had never done that before, not even when she was a child; she slept with the knife within arm’s reach and then slipped it into its sheath the moment she awoke. Her blood ran cold, but there was no time to curse her terrible timing.

“All right, then. You want to do the honors, Tikhomirov?” the skinny one asked as he continued to leer at Leib.

The big one raised his rifle, pointing it at Leib, who was shaking now. Instantly, Leib raised his hands over his head. Yona had to do something. Her mind spun back to Jerusza’s lessons.

“Shis mikh nisht. Ikh bet aykh!” Leib said in Yiddish, reverting in his panic to the language he’d been speaking in the woods. Don’t shoot me, please.

“He talking that Jew language now?” the big one asked.

The other one laughed. “Think so.”

“Last time he’s ever gonna—”

But the larger man didn’t finish, because Yona had leapt forward, silently, deftly, landing on his upper back, her legs instantly wrapped around his ribs to brace herself.

“What the—?” he began, his voice strangled, but that was all he had the chance to say, because Yona, stabilizing her body with her inner thigh muscles, hoisted herself higher until her head was above his, reached her left arm with lightning speed under his chin, wrapped her left hand around the back of his neck, and jerked up and back as hard as she could. She heard the snap and slid from his back as his body collapsed. She fell instantly behind him, using his body as a shield from the other man, whose face was white with fear as he swung his rifle wildly in her direction.

“Run, Leib!” she called, and as she had predicted, it was enough of a distraction for the confused man, who whirled in the direction of the stream. In the instant before he had turned fully back to her, she struck, first springing forward to gouge his eyes with the sharp index and middle nails of her left hand, and then, the second he tilted his head upward to scream in pain, slicing forward at his unprotected neck with the outer edge of her flattened right hand and thrusting sharply up into the hollow of his throat, crushing his windpipe. He slumped to the ground beside the other man.

Instantly, Yona put her aching right hand to her mouth. What had she done? She had acted on instinct, doing the things Jerusza had made her practice a thousand times, beginning when she was just a little girl. There will come a day when you’ll be glad I have taught you what I know, Jerusza had said. Yona hadn’t believed her then, hadn’t really believed that taking another man’s life could ever be necessary. But now, now she understood. There had been no other way; if she hadn’t acted, they would have killed Leib for no reason at all. Still, that didn’t negate the guilt that surged through her, hot and buzzing. She dropped to her knees beside the two bodies, her hand still over her mouth, tears stinging her eyes. She could hear Leib calling her name, but he sounded very far away.

“I killed them,” she whispered, staring at the bodies. She felt as if she were in a trance, floating above the stream, looking down at the horrific scene. “I took two lives.” She could feel eyes watching her, eyes she knew weren’t really there. “Jerusza,” she murmured. “I killed them.”

“Yona!” Leib’s voice was louder now, and then his hand was on her back, and he was pulling her up. “Yona, we have to go. What if there are others?”

She turned to him, dazed. His face, just inches from hers, looked blurry.

“Yona!” he said again, panic lacing his voice. “Yona!”

She could feel herself coming back to reality, but she still felt as if she were underwater, in the deepest part of Kroman Lake. “I think they were alone. But you’re right. We can’t be sure,” she said dully. She had listened hard to the forest before she struck, and had heard no other human movement. They weren’t with a Soviet unit; they were wandering the forest on their own. Were they trying to make their way home? Did they have wives, children they had hoped to return to? They shouldn’t have been here at all, and now they were dead. “I killed them,” she said more loudly now as Leib’s face finally swam into focus.

“You did it to save me,” Leib said. His eyes were bloodshot, damp, and Yona could see that he was trying hard not to cry.