The Forest of Vanishing Stars(44)

“Not much, though, brother,” Chaim said. He was slimmer and a few centimeters shorter than the broad-shouldered Zus. He was sitting with his back to his brother, rubbing Sara’s shoulders with one hand as he grabbed a fish with the other, tossing it straight into his mouth. He paused to chew and pull the bones out. “And in the ghetto, they also had bullets for us.”

“I don’t forget that.” Zus scratched his jaw and glanced at Yona for a few seconds before abruptly looking down. “But if I can’t keep us alive in the forest, maybe we would have been better off.”

“Penned like someone’s livestock?” Chaim asked. “I would rather die out here, on our own terms.”

“You will not die.” Yona spoke before she could stop herself, and she was unsettled to feel Aleksander’s eyes on her, as well as Chaim’s and Zus’s. She glanced at Aleksander, but his expression was unreadable. “You will not die,” she repeated, looking back at Chaim and then at Zus, who was staring at her again in a way that made her stomach flutter. “We will not let you.”

“Yona,” Aleksander murmured, his tone a warning.

She glanced at him again, and she could see what he wanted to say, that they couldn’t support eleven new, hungry mouths. But she couldn’t send these people back out into the wild to perish during a harsh winter, either. Nature had given her a gift, and she couldn’t turn her back on people who wanted only to live. “You will stay until the spring,” she said, looking directly at Zus. “All of you.”

Beside her, Aleksander murmured her name again, his tone sharper this time, but she didn’t look at him. She had a say, too.

Zus looked from Yona to Aleksander and then back to Yona. “Thank you,” he said, his voice deep and warm, but also uncertain. His eyes returned to Aleksander. “Thank you,” he repeated, but this time, some of the warmth was gone.

Aleksander nodded at Zus, accepting the gratitude, but then he stood abruptly and left without a word, disappearing out the door of the zemlianka into the wind-whipped night. Yona watched him go, wondering if perhaps she could have handled things differently. He would understand later; he had to. She believed in speaking what was in her heart, but in a group, there were clearly roles they were all meant to be playing, roles that had been determined long before she got here, and she didn’t entirely understand them yet. She had the sense she’d made a serious misstep.

“I’m sorry,” Zus said a moment later, and by the time Yona turned back to him, Chaim had slipped into conversation with Sara and one of the cousins, and Yona felt suddenly as if she were alone with Zus, though they were elbow to elbow with two dozen other people.

“You don’t need to apologize for anything,” Yona said, looking away.

“I didn’t mean to create a problem.”

She turned back to him. His eyes were as green as oak leaves at the peak of the summer, and they were so full of sadness that looking into them for more than a few seconds made her own soul heavy with grief. Still, she held his gaze in silence. “Aleksander is just worried about everyone surviving, but we will. All of us will. I promise you that.”

He studied her. He seemed to be trying to read her eyes, her thoughts, and she wondered what he was seeing. “Thank you, Yona.”

She nodded, and as the light from the fire flickered across his face, sending shadows dancing across his eyes, she found she couldn’t look away.



* * *



Aleksander wasn’t in Yona’s shelter when she returned an hour later after helping to sort the sleeping arrangements for the rest of the camp. There would be more time to talk about how to spread out tomorrow, but for now, the newcomers would take the second-largest zemlianka and the original group would take the largest. There was barely enough room in Yona’s small shelter for Aleksander to share her space, so there was no mention of new occupants there.

It took Yona more than an hour to fall asleep, and before she did, she went out for a walk around the camp in the cold just to see if she could find Aleksander. He had not returned to the shelter, and she was worried. “He’s in our group’s zemlianka,” said Leib, pausing in his patrol around the perimeter to press his gloved hands to his red, cold face. He blew steam into the air and looked at the sky, which was clouded and starless. There was a snowfall coming; Yona could taste it in the air. “Some were upset with the new arrangements.”

Yona nodded and returned to her shelter, her stomach twisting. Why did it feel as if she had something to apologize for? The existing group was no more entitled to survival than the newcomers. Weren’t they all obligated to help each other?

Once, Jerusza had told Yona of her travels south, down through Austria-Hungary, through Bosnia and Herzegovina, edging into Serbia, and finally the Ottoman Empire. She’d been a young woman then, and Yona had listened with fascination to this rare glimpse into Jerusza’s life long before Yona had existed. Jerusza had been in the forests near Prizren, in the ?ar Mountains, when the Albanians there had sworn a besa to preserve the integrity of their land, and that besa had come to mean, over the years, a word of honor, an obligation to help their fellow man in moments of need.

Yona had liked that, the idea that there was a term for that sense of integrity, of responsibility to all those who shared the earth. Over the last few months, she had found herself rolling the word around in her mouth, tasting it, reminding herself that though it was a concept that belonged to the Albanians, it was also a belief that should apply to all humankind. People should always help others in need; there was no other way for the human race to survive. And now, there was no choice but to extend that besa, that protection, to Zus and his group. Aleksander would have to understand.