The Forest of Vanishing Stars(5)

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, and so she coughed to clear her constricted throat and forced out the first words she could think of. “Why are you here?” she asked.

He raised his eyebrows—which were so blond they were almost invisible—and laughed. “I suppose for the same reason you are. To gather food for the winter.”

She had a million questions. Where had he come from? Where was he going? What was the world like outside the forest? But all the queries battled for space within her head, and all that came out was, “I’ve not seen you before.”

He laughed again, and she realized she liked the sound. It was different from Jerusza’s laugh, which was jagged, raspy, and steeped in all-knowingness. There was nothing Yona could do to shock Jerusza, and she understood now that there was power, maybe even joy, in surprising someone.

“I’ve never seen you before, either,” the young man said. He took a step closer, and reflexively, she stumbled backward. He stopped instantly and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She forced a smile. “Oh, you didn’t.” The lie tasted salty in her mouth.

There was a moment of silence as he regarded her. “You live around here?”

“Yes.” Then instantly, she amended the answer. “Ah… no.” She could feel her cheeks grow warm.

The young man hesitated, studying her. “All right. Well, I live in Hajnówka.”

“I see.” Yona had no idea what that meant.

“On the edge of the forest,” he clarified. “About a day’s walk from here.”

“Of course.” The feigning of knowledge she didn’t possess tasted like another lie. Jerusza had made her learn all the countries of the world; she could pick out Brazil, Nepal, Tripura, on a map, and sometimes she dreamed of taking flight like a bird and soaring far, far away to another land. But she knew little of the villages just outside the forest, which she suspected was Jerusza’s intention. Knowledge was temptation, and Jerusza’s refusal to show her maps of the local region was a way of ensuring that there was nowhere tangible for Yona to go.

“And you?” the boy asked. “Where do you live?”

“We—” She stopped abruptly. She had been about to say that she lived in the forest, but hadn’t Jerusza told her not to tell people that? That men might come to harm them? She didn’t think this young man would do something like that, but she had to be cautious. “I am from Berlin.”

She didn’t know why she’d said it. Jerusza had never said a word about Yona coming from anywhere but the woods. But at night, when Yona slept, she sometimes dreamed of a city, a wooden bed, plush blankets, parents who loved her, and milk that tasted different from that which Jerusza sometimes procured from wandering goats. The word—Berlin—didn’t taste like salt, though, and Yona wondered if somehow it could be true.

“Berlin?” The young man’s eyebrows shot up. “But that’s six, seven hundred kilometers east of here.”

Embarrassed, Yona shrugged. Of course she knew that from the maps she had studied, but why had she named Berlin? It was a world away, a place she could see only in her imagination, a place Jerusza would never take her. What a foolish thing it had been to say. “I know,” she mumbled.

The man frowned, his forehead creasing with doubt. “Well, maybe I will see you again.”

Yona knew she was losing him, that he was about to leave, and she felt suddenly desperate to make him stay. “Who are you? Your name, I mean.”

He smiled again, but only slightly this time. His brow was still heavy with his lack of trust in her. “Marcin. And you are?”

“Yona.”

“Yona.” He seemed to roll her name carefully on his tongue. She liked the way it sounded. “Well, Yona, I’ll be back here tomorrow if you are around. My father and I are camped nearby.”

“All right.” And because she didn’t know what else to say, Yona backed away slowly, melting into the forest, until she couldn’t see the boy at all anymore. Then she turned and ran. It took her an hour to double back and head in the direction of the hut she shared with Jerusza, for though she was intrigued by Marcin, she wanted to be sure he wasn’t following her.

That evening, over a dinner of sweet honey mushrooms with wild garlic, Yona had to bite her tongue. She knew that if she mentioned the young man, they would move immediately.

“You’re very quiet tonight,” Jerusza said as they walked down to the stream nearby to clean their dishes, stolen long ago from a farm at the edge of the forest. They had accumulated most of their things that way: their clothes, their boots, their pots, their axe, their knives.

“No, I’m not,” Yona said right away, which of course made Jerusza’s eyes narrow in suspicion. Yona could have kicked herself for being so carelessly transparent.

“Usually you tell me about your day—the creatures you saw, the things you gathered. Usually you talk incessantly, in fact, for you aren’t wise enough yet to know the best tales are told in silence.”

Yona forced a smile, though the words stung. “An aquatic warbler!” she said too quickly, too brightly. “I saw an aquatic warbler.”

“Ah.” Jerusza’s eyes were dark slits of skepticism. “Like you, a bird that cannot be caged. A sign, perhaps, that you came too close to civilization, and that if you’re not careful, your freedom will be taken from you.”