There would be just enough food to see the group safely through the cold, thanks to the autumn attack on the German truck as well as a few supply missions to neighboring villages. With the Germans mostly dispersed from the area now, it was easier to venture in and forage for food left behind. Before the world was frozen, they had brought home half-rotten potatoes, a dozen hens that had somehow managed to escape the Nazi slaughter, and even some bags of grain from a hidden basement in a barn.
With the cold of the winter, too, came a warmth Yona had never known. Without saying a word about it, she and Zus had drifted together, spending more and more time with one another and eventually moving into the same zemlianka, where they huddled together at night under a shared blanket, absorbing the heat of each other’s bodies. There hadn’t been time to build smaller shelters this year, so they were living with eight others, packed in wall to wall. Modesty prevented them from doing more than holding each other at night, but the way he kissed her gently and cradled her like a treasure was enough. Yona knew how he felt, and her heart echoed his.
“You’ve found love in the madness,” Ruth said to her one day with a small smile as they stood in the clearing watching Leah, Pessia, and Daniel play with the Gulniks’ little girl, Maia. Daniel was toddling now, unsteady on his skinny legs, and the girls delighted in being teachers, showing him how to put one foot in front of the other and giggling with him when he tumbled into the snow. “What a blessing.”
Yona hugged her arms around herself and gazed around the camp. It was relatively warm for a winter day in the forest, the biting wind absent for a change, though the snow was falling enough to erase the traces of them when they went back beneath the earth. Elizaveta was outside bouncing a giggling Abra on her knee, while Nachum tossed a ball made from Moshe’s yarn back and forth with Chaim’s boys. Four of the adults were playing cards with a tree stump for a table, and a few more were laughing at something while passing a bottle of bimber back and forth. It felt strangely normal. The threat wasn’t gone, and there was still a smattering of Germans in the area, but on this day, no one was thinking about survival. They were simply enjoying the moment, a rare luxury in the woods, and it was beautiful. “I think we’ve all found love,” Yona said at last, smiling as she watched the children. She hadn’t realized it was happening, but somehow along the way, they had all become her family, each and every one of these refugees. She had thought she was teaching them how to live, but now she realized that in many ways, she had been the student all along.
Ruth nodded and put a hand on Yona’s arm. “Thank you, Yona. I’m not sure if I have said this before, but I don’t think we would have survived without you.”
Yona looked away, embarrassed. “You would have. I only helped a bit.”
“Yona, you saved us.” Ruth cleared her throat. “You are a true gift from God, and I thank him for you every day.”
Yona looked once more at the scene before her, normalcy in the midst of madness. “I thank God for all of it.”
That night, the whole group crowded into the largest zemlianka, and in their hiding place beneath the earth, they sang the Hebrew songs Yona had come to know, and Ruth told the children fairy tales of elflike creatures called shretelekh, who brought goodness to those who were good to them. It was an evening that should have felt magical, but Yona found herself thinking instead of the winter before, and the first night the group had lit a menorah together. Hanukkah would begin again in a few days, but so many of the people from that celebration were no longer here. Her heart ached for all that was lost.
Sulia was with Harry Feinschreiber now, having moved on from Aleksander almost as if he’d never existed, but the past never really disappeared, did it? There were ghosts in the woods that night—Rosalia, Aleksander, Leib, Luba—but it wasn’t just their ghosts. It was the sense of countless lives snuffed out, the hopeless cascade of future generations lost. She glanced at Zus, who sat in the shadows, and when he turned to look at her, she had the strange sense that he was thinking the same thing.
And though the night of celebration eventually ended and Zus came to bed with Yona as he always did, his body warm against hers in the stillness, he didn’t say a word, and it felt as though a cloud had moved in front of the stars, obscuring all the light in the world.
* * *
Later, long after the sun had disappeared, the whole camp was asleep, tucked away in their winter homes beneath the ground. Yona awoke with a start in the pitch darkness and realized right away that she was alone in her reed bed. Zus was gone.