The Forest of Vanishing Stars(6)

Yona looked up, startled. “I—I didn’t get close to civilization.” The salty taste was back.

Jerusza’s expression was knowing as the shape of her eyes finally returned to normal. “Of course you didn’t. We’re in the middle of the trees. You couldn’t have made it to a village and back without—”

“Berlin!” Yona blurted out, desperate to change the subject.

“Pardon?” All at once, Jerusza was very still.

“Berlin,” Yona repeated less confidently. “Did we live there when I was young, Jerusza? In a house with beds and blankets and fresh milk?”

Jerusza’s lips puckered, the way they did when she tasted a sour berry. “You foolish girl. Can you imagine me in Berlin?”

Yona’s heart sank. Sometimes dreams were just dreams. “No.”

“Then don’t ask me such questions.”

That night, Yona didn’t dream of Berlin. She dreamed of a boy named Marcin who approached and touched her on the cheek. But then, before she could say a thing, he turned into a warbler and lifted off, soaring above the treetops while she stayed rooted to the ground.



* * *



It was three days before Yona saw Marcin again. When he looked up and saw her coming toward him from among a cluster of oaks, relief swept across his features.

“Well, I thought you were gone forever,” he said as she approached.

“I was not gone forever.” It was a foolish response, and she knew it the moment she’d said it. She was glad when he laughed.

“Yes, I see that. So where have you been? Did you go back to Berlin, then, German girl?”

She could see amusement in his eyes, so she allowed herself a small smile as she took him in. His clothing was worn, his shirt too small for him and torn at the elbows. Yona was startled by the impulse that ran through her then, the urge to mend his sleeves. There was something else, too, something that unsettled her even more—a desire to touch his skin, to see if it burned as hot as hers did. “No, I did not,” she answered abruptly.

His smile slipped a bit. “I was only joking.”

“Of course. It is just… I have not…” She trailed off helplessly. How could she explain to him that she had never in her life spoken to anyone but Jerusza? That she didn’t entirely understand jokes, because Jerusza never made them? That her only glimpses of the world outside the forest had been on the few occasions each year that Jerusza had allowed Yona to follow her into a village in the dead of night?

“It’s all right.” Marcin’s tone was gentler now. “It was a bit of a silly joke anyhow. Berlin wouldn’t be a good place to be now.”

“Why not?”

He blinked at her a few times. “Surely you’ve heard about the things that are happening there.”

“What things?” She had a bad feeling suddenly, a glimpse of storm clouds moving in, a sense that whatever he was about to say was something she already knew in her bones.

His smile was gone, but his eyes were still kind. “I should not have assumed. It has been in the newspaper. Can you read, Yona?” The question was not cruel. He thought she was simple, uneducated, a girl from the woods who had lied about the only distant city she had heard of.

But he was wrong. The problem was that the books Jerusza stole from the libraries in the towns and villages outside the forest, or from churches and synagogues, were chosen according to some plan that Yona didn’t understand. Her education had been limited to histories of the world and scientific texts on plants, herbs, and biology, as well as multiple readings of texts from various religions. Life, Jerusza said, was an endless search for the true meaning of God. “Yes, I can read.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you can… I just thought that…” Marcin trailed off, but he looked chagrined.

“It’s all right. I—I do love books most of the time. They are…” She hesitated, the right words dancing on the tip of her tongue. “Books are magic, aren’t they?”

“Well, in Germany right now, the people in charge would disagree. They would say that books are dangerous.”

“But how could a book be dangerous?”

“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “They are burning them there, in your Berlin, you know. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“Burning books?” Yona blinked at him a few times. “But why would anyone do such a thing?”

“I suppose they don’t believe people should be able to read books they don’t agree with, written by people they don’t agree with.”

It sounded a bit like the way Jerusza thought of things—a righteous sense of deserving control over others’ thoughts—but Yona doubted the old woman would go so far as to incinerate knowledge. “How terrible.”

A faint call came from somewhere in the distance, the call of a man’s deep voice, and Yona stiffened, her hand going instantly to the knife at her ankle. Marcin heard it, too, for he cocked his head in the direction of the sound and sighed. “My father,” he said. “Do you want to—”

“I should go,” Yona said quickly. And though she wanted to stay, though she wanted to ask Marcin what else was happening in the world, and what his life was like, and what he had read in books and newspapers, she was suddenly terrified. Marcin seemed like a friend. But what if his father was one of the people Jerusza had warned her about? She had already stayed too long. “I—I’ll return tomorrow.”