The Forest of Vanishing Stars(61)

“Anka. She will live if you keep the wound clean and her fever down. I have brought you some yarrow, which—”

“I know,” Maja interrupted. She smiled slightly. “I know the forest’s secrets, too. Before I married my husband, before I came here to live, I was a nurse. It is why the sisters send people to me from time to time, people who need healing.” She bent beside Anka, who was watching them with wide, confused eyes, and said slowly, “Hello, Anka. I am Maja Yarashuk. I will keep you safe.”

Anka blinked at her but didn’t say a word.

“What will you do with her?” Yona asked.

“I have friends. They help people disappear. But I will wait until she is stable and well.” She stood abruptly.

“Here in this house?” Yona looked uncertainly toward the front windows. If anyone had an inkling that there was something suspicious going on here, there would be nowhere to hide.

Maja stared at her for a long time, evaluating her. “There is another trapdoor in one of the stalls in the barn. That is all you need to know. Now go. The sooner you are gone, the safer she will be.”

Yona knew the words weren’t intended to wound her, but they did. Was she only meant to preserve life for a moment before being driven away? It was a strange role to play, and it stirred in her a great feeling of loneliness, a sense of belonging nowhere. But Maja was right: better for the girl to be absorbed into this house, hidden and healed, and then sent on to start a new life somewhere else, God willing.

Yona knelt beside Anka and placed a hand on the little girl’s forehead. It was still cool, a good sign. “You will be safe here,” she murmured, touching the girl’s hollow cheek.

“How do you know?” Anka asked in a whisper.

Yona looked up at Maja, who was watching them. “I know,” she said, looking back at Anka. “We must trust Sister Maria Andrzeja. She risked her life to save you, and she trusts Maja. We must believe in her, too.”

Anka searched Yona’s eyes, and then she nodded. “All right.” She glanced up at Maja and then back at Yona. “All right.”

Yona stood and nodded at Maja. “Shall I bring you some more herbs? Some food?”

Maja glanced at Anka and then led Yona out of the room. Over her shoulder, as she went, Yona raised her hand, a silent goodbye to Anka. The little girl raised hers in return, touching the air where Yona had just been.

“I’ll say it again: you must not return,” Maja said firmly once they were out of the girl’s earshot. “It is for the girl’s own good. And for yours.”

“But I—”

“Thank you for bringing her here. But you cannot save everyone all by yourself. Trust me to do my part.” Maja’s voice was firm, and had there not been kindness in her eyes, Yona might have gone back for the girl immediately, taken her with her. But she could read the honesty in Maja’s face, the grit, the weariness, and she knew Anka would be as safe here as anyone could be in the midst of a war. “Now, go.”

Yona drew a deep breath and then, without allowing herself to look back, she slipped out the front door and scanned the quiet morning. She would need to cross through the heart of the village to make it to the woods on the other side. Anka would be safe. Maja was right: she couldn’t save everyone all by herself. And now, as the nun had said, it was time for her to go.

Yona had been gone for only an hour and a half when she reentered from the dirt road leading into town. A young German soldier, who hadn’t been there before, was blocking the road as she approached.

“Halt,” he said in Belorussian. “Who are you and where are you coming from?”

For an instant, instead of fear, Yona felt instead a great sweep of sadness. The man’s accent was foreign, but his words were perfect; unlike the officer she had met earlier, he was obviously bright. But instead of spreading his wings in a university somewhere, using his intelligence to make the world a better place, he was here, an anonymous soldier on a dirt road to nowhere, doing the devil’s work in a foreign land.

“Do you not speak Belorussian?” he asked after Yona’s silence had gone on too long, and now she felt less pity for him, because there was a curtness to his tone. “Damn it, I can’t make heads or tails out of these towns. Are you Polish? Do any of you peasants even know what you are? No matter, soon you’ll all be speaking German.”

She looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were icy blue, his narrow nose sharp as a bird’s beak. “I am on the way to pray in the church,” she replied in perfect Belorussian.

He arched an eyebrow. “And you are coming from where?”

“Milk. I went to see if any of the farmers on the edge of town had milk they could spare.” It was the first thing she could think of.

“Milk? For whom?”

She thought instantly of Anka. “My daughter.”

His eyes moved to her belly, flat as a board, and then back to her face. “Your daughter?”

She refused to look away. “She is four years old and starving.”

The soldier continued to study her. “But you have no milk.”

“None of the farmers had any to give. I—I could not pay.”

The soldier snorted. “And you hoped that someone would give you some out of goodness? Madam, there is no goodness left here. Don’t you know?”