The Forest of Vanishing Stars(86)

“They will be there, waiting,” she said firmly.

Chaim hesitated. “But they were meant to meet us here.”

“And there must be a reason they chose not to,” Yona replied. “I believe that. Don’t you?”

Chaim looked away. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

But as they began their long walk back through the watery swamp to dry land, toward the camp they’d abandoned weeks before, she could overhear him more than once telling his sons the fun they would have with their uncle Zus, once they were all reunited. And she knew he wouldn’t dangle hope that he believed to be entirely false; there was a sliver of possibility that the others were still alive.

Yona found herself thinking of Zus in the long moments of silence as they moved slowly, quietly, through the muck. Since the conversation she’d had with Chaim on the way to the swamp the previous month, she’d been thinking a lot of him, in fact. Aleksander’s betrayal had made her feel as if she wasn’t worthy of love, that she was as disposable as the shelters they used for a few days at a time. But in Zus’s eyes before they parted ways, she had seen herself as something more. There was so little she understood about dealing with others, and she had blamed herself for how complicated things had gotten with Aleksander. But perhaps things didn’t have to be difficult at all.

“We are lucky to have found you, Yona,” Chaim said as they walked side by side on the fourth night of their trek back, their first out of the swamp, after they’d paused for a few hours to rest, drink, and eat all the berries they could pick on dry land. Tomorrow they would pause to fish, and in two days’ time, they would know whether the others had returned. She could barely stop herself from running ahead to find out, but this group needed her.

“I am lucky to have found you, too.” Yona hesitated. “I have never known what it felt like to have a home. And though we move often—”

“Home is not a place, but the people you choose to love,” he said, finishing the thought she hadn’t quite known how to put into words. And she did love these people, from tough Rosalia, to quiet and honest Chaim, to hardworking Moshe, to the children whose survival every day was a triumph against the odds.

“I’m frightened by it, though,” she said after a while. “For when you love, you stand to lose so much.” She thought of the nun whose empty eyes she had pushed closed. She thought of little Chana, a bullet through her head, and of Anka, whose parents had been stolen from her so violently. And she thought of Zus and how he had been forever transformed by the terrible things that had happened to his family.

“But I think you stand to lose far more when your heart is closed,” Chaim said. “That is no life.”

Yona thought of Jüttner, the father who had been made cold and hard by the loss of his child and then his wife, and she felt a surge of guilt for the pain she had surely inflicted by leaving. “You’re right,” she murmured.

Two days later, after sleeping mostly during the days and walking by the light of the moon, the group was finally approaching the camp they’d left behind six weeks earlier. Yona could feel it, taste it, and she and Chaim, who were walking ahead, both quickened their pace. It was nearly dawn, and if the others were there waiting, they’d just be waking up to start their day. If the camp was occupied, there would be some sign of a guard any moment now.

But the forest was quiet, the only sounds the stirring of animals emerging to greet the day and the rustling of leaves and grass in the breeze. Chaim gave Yona a look of despair, and she swallowed hard. He was thinking the same thing she was, that it was too still, too deserted. The missing group couldn’t be up ahead.

But then the new baby broke the silence among them by letting out a long, plaintive wail, and all at once, there was movement in the trees ahead. In that moment, Yona knew that God had been with them all along, for Zus emerged from the forest, his gun leveled at them. He stopped abruptly, blinking in confused recognition, and as Yona ran forward without pausing to think, he lowered his weapon and stumbled forward into her arms, clinging to her like he never intended to let go again.

“You’re alive,” he murmured into her hair, his voice husky with emotion, and then they were forced apart by the tidal wave of others rushing forward to greet Zus with hugs and handshakes and tears of gratitude. “What’s this?” Zus asked with a smile, eyeing the new baby, and as Chaim’s sons began to regale their uncle with a rapid, scattered story about their adventures, Zus looked up, his gaze meeting Yona’s again and lingering there. When the boys were done talking and Zus had greeted the new baby with gentle kisses on her tiny cheeks, and on Elizaveta’s cheeks, too, he gestured for Yona, Chaim, and Rosalia to step aside with him.

“We lost four,” he said, his voice gruff, his eyes downcast as Rosalia gasped and Chaim grunted as if he’d been punched in the gut. “I’m very sorry. I tried my best to keep everyone safe…”

“Whatever happened, it couldn’t have been your fault,” Yona said. “I am to blame for being so willing to let you go without a fight.” The weight of that realization had sat heavy on her for weeks.

He looked up at her. “Yona, you are blameless. It was the only choice. We couldn’t just protect ourselves if there was a chance to save other lives. All of you survived?”

Yona nodded.