The Forest of Vanishing Stars(9)

CHAPTER FOUR




By the time 1942 dawned, frigid and empty, Yona had grown used to her own company, for Jerusza, now 102 years old, hardly spoke at all anymore. Yona was nearly twenty-two, and she knew everything there was to know about the earth beneath her feet, and the things that sprang from it, but nearly nothing about the ways of mankind. She hadn’t seen another human in nearly three years other than occasional glimpses of the bad men from deep within the trees. She held conversations with red squirrels and mountain hares. She cooked, she cleaned, she spoke to a God she couldn’t understand. But venturing outside the forest had grown too dangerous, even for Jerusza. The deeper into the Nalibocka they went, the more the world outside disappeared.

Before she knew it, it was March, and the cold was seeping back into the ground, the snow melting, the frost releasing its hold. On a day when the sun rose above the treetops in a cold, cloudless sky, Jerusza, who hadn’t moved from her reed bed, summoned Yona.

“Today,” Jerusza said, her voice raspy, breathless, “is the day I will die.”

Yona’s eyes filled with tears. She had known the time was coming, for Jerusza’s body was slowing, growing colder. The birds, reemerging to look for signs of spring, had kept their distance like never before, and Yona had felt a shadow looming over their home dug into the earth. They’d been living there since November, the longest they’d stayed in a single place.

“What can I do?” Yona asked, coming to kneel beside her.

“Prepare me some linden tea.” The old woman drew a trembling breath.

Blinking back her tears, Yona scrambled to do as Jerusza had asked, brewing a strong concoction made from the dried flowers of linden trees, which she and Jerusza had gathered last summer. It would bring Jerusza’s fever down and help with the pain, but it wouldn’t slow her transition to the other side. As she waited for the flowers to steep, Yona tried to focus on how to keep Jerusza comfortable, but dark thoughts kept creeping in at the edges; what would become of her when Jerusza was gone?

When she knelt again beside Jerusza a few minutes later, a steaming cup in her hands, the old woman’s breathing had grown noticeably shallower, but still she recited the vidui, the prayer of confession, before taking the cup in her trembling hands.

“Jerusza, what will I—” Yona began to ask, but Jerusza cut her off.

“There are things I must tell you.” Jerusza took a long sip of the tea. She blinked a few times, and when she turned her cloudy eyes again to Yona, she looked stronger and more alert than Yona had seen her in months.

“I am here.” Yona leaned in and put her hands over Jerusza’s, an expression of solidarity, but Jerusza shook her off.

“First, you must never venture outside the forest. Not while the world is at war. You must promise me, Yona.”

It was the deal they’d had since the bombs had begun to fall two and a half years before, and Yona had stuck to her side of it. But once Jerusza died, she would be all alone in the darkness. What if she craved human contact once in a while? “But if I need food…”

“The forest will provide, child!” Jerusza let out a great, hacking cough that shook her whole body. “The forest will always provide. You must give me your word.”

It would have been so simple to just agree, but Jerusza had taught Yona long ago never to lie unless her life was in danger and an untruth was the only way out. “I can’t do that,” she whispered.

Jerusza struggled to sit up. Her eyes were blazing, even as the life seeped slowly out of her. “Then you are a fool, and you will put yourself at great risk.”

“But maybe great risk is the only way to a better life,” Yona said. “Isn’t that what you’ve told me about our existence? Life in a village would be easier, but we take the risk of living in the woods because it gives us a bigger life, here under the stars.”

Jerusza’s upper lip curled. “It appears the student has become the teacher at last.” Her voice was raspy and growing weaker. “Well then, I suppose there is something else you should know, too. Of course you are already aware that I am not your real mother.”

“Of course.” A sudden ache of loneliness shot through Yona. She had tried asking about where she’d come from several times over the years, but Jerusza had always stormed off, calling Yona an ungrateful wretch. Yona had come to believe, over the years, that she must have been abandoned by heartless parents in the woods, and that the old woman had saved her life.

“I stole you,” Jerusza continued, her tone even. “I had no choice, you see.”

Yona sat back on her heels, sure she had misunderstood. “You stole me?”

“Yes. From an apartment in Berlin. From a woman and a man you were not meant to belong to.” She delivered the blow as calmly as if she were remarking on the weather.

“What?” Yona stood abruptly, shaky on her feet, disbelief mixing with an inkling of a sense that there was a small part of her that already knew the story. Berlin.

“Sit down, child. There’s no time for your dramatics now.”

Yona took a few gulps of air, her body tensed to flee into the forest, where she wouldn’t have to swallow the pain of whatever Jerusza was about to say. But she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t, because the old woman would be dead before she returned, and she would never hear the things she needed to know. “What did you do, Jerusza?” she whispered, sinking back down.