The Forest of Vanishing Stars(82)

Within a minute, Yona and Rosalia had led their small group to a thatch of bushes a hundred meters from the stream. It wasn’t perfect cover, but it would have to do; as they neared the swamp, the area around them was devoid of many of the trees Yona had come to rely on for concealment, giving way to saplings struggling for purchase in the soft earth.

“Where did the shots come from?” Rosalia whispered, moving beside Yona, little Maia wedged between them. Maia’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she was whimpering.

“A few hundred meters away,” Yona said. “We must wait and see if they move closer.”

“They are going to kill us, aren’t they?” Maia cried, and Yona pulled her close.

“No, they are just playing a game,” she said, keeping her tone as light as possible. Rosalia met her gaze over the child’s head, her eyes dark with worry and foreboding. “It is quite a stupid game, yes?” Yona added with more forced levity.

Maia took several seconds to digest this. “Mami says not to say ‘stupid,’?” she said at last, her voice tiny and unsure. “It’s not nice.”

“And your mama is right,” Yona whispered. “But I think she might make an exception for these silly German boys.”

Maia nodded solemnly and then buried her face in Yona’s arm. Her parents, several meters away, crouched behind another bush, watching in silence. Masha, the mother, was clinging to her son Sergei’s arm and crying silently.

There were more shots, but they were farther in the distance, moving away. The voices were fading, too, but there was no sense of relief. The Germans could turn back toward their hidden group at any moment. They had to stay quiet, still, hidden. Maia continued to sob softly; everyone else was silent, waiting.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” Rosalia said softly after a few seconds. Maia looked up at her, and Rosalia smiled reassuringly down at the girl. “I shall lack nothing.”

Yona stared at Rosalia as the other woman continued to effortlessly recite the Twenty-third Psalm. “He lays me down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.”

Chaim was listening, too, and he chimed in, keeping his voice low, saying in unison with Rosalia, “He revives my soul. He directs me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of his name.”

By the next verse, there were more people whispering, Shimon and Elizaveta Sokolowski now, too, Shimon holding their son, Nachum, and Elizaveta’s hands cradling her own pregnant belly. The bullets had stopped flying; the German voices had faded away. “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they will comfort me.” Chaim’s wife and two boys were speaking the words aloud, too, and so were Oscher and Bina, Leon and Moshe. Yona joined in, as did Maia’s parents and brother, as they all said, “You will prepare a table for me before my enemies; you have anointed my head with oil; my cup is full.”

Ruth pulled her children close, all three of them safe and breathing, and whispered with the rest of them, “Only goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long years.”

“Amen,” whispered little Pessia, and as silence fell around them again, wrapping them in safety, the word was repeated by each of them in turn as they all realized that they’d survived against the odds yet again. Still, they stayed just where they were, motionless and frightened, for another hour, until the Germans were long gone.



* * *



Late the next evening, just as the sun was sinking toward the horizon, the group finally arrived at the edge of the swamp, which flowed seamlessly from the more solid forest floor, the distinction invisible to the naked eye. But as they walked, the mud was suddenly at their ankles, sucking them down, pulling at them, and Yona smiled in relief, even as the wet cold seeped into her shoes. “We’re here,” she said, hardly believing it herself.

There was a small whoop of collective glee from the group, and a few of them surged forward despite the muck. Yona held her hand up to stop them. “The terrain gets deeper from here, and soon we’ll be wading through water up to our waists. We must move with caution and stay together.”

“It’s a damned lake,” Leonid said twenty minutes later as they emerged from a cluster of trees, their feet already submerged. There were a few gasps as others arrived at the edge of the swamp and saw muddy water stretching out before them, dotted with drooping trees, tiny islands, and fallen trunks, as far as the eye could see.

“Don’t worry,” Yona said, though her own heart was thudding with uncertainty. The swamp had risen since she’d last been here, and she was no longer certain how easy it would be to make it across. “It is not deep, and you can see there are trees to hold on to the whole way through.” She paused, her mind spinning. “Everyone, please pull out any extra clothing you have brought with you in your packs. We must work quickly, while there’s still sunlight. We will use the clothing to tie ourselves together, two or three to a group. None of us will go down.”

For the next half hour, the group worked on fashioning shirts and trousers into makeshift ropes, and then Yona and Rosalia divided them into pairs or trios, giving the children enough slack in their lines so they could be hoisted upon shoulders when necessary. The leftover clothes were shoved back into packs, and the group set off.