Finally, Jerusza whirled on her. “Enough, child! There is nothing here for you, nothing but despair and danger! Yearning for a life you don’t understand is like staring at the sun; your foolishness will destroy you.”
Yona was startled into silence for a time, but after Jerusza had slipped through the back door of the house and reemerged carrying a pair of boots, trousers, and a wool coat that would see Yona through at least a few winters, Yona refused to follow when Jerusza beckoned.
“What is it now?” Jerusza demanded, irritated.
“What are they doing?” Yona pointed through the window of the farmhouse, to where the family was gathered around a table. It was the first night of Hanukkah, and this family was Jewish; it was why Jerusza had chosen this house, for she knew they would be occupied while she took their things. Now the father of the family stood, his face illuminated by the candle burning on the family’s menorah, and though his voice was inaudible, it was clear he was singing, his eyes closed. Jerusza didn’t like Yona’s expression as she watched; it was one of longing and enchantment, and those types of feelings led only to ill-conceived ideas of flight.
“The practice of dullards,” she said finally. “Nothing there for you. Come now.”
Yona still wouldn’t budge. “But they look happy. They are celebrating Hanukkah?”
Of course the girl already knew they were. Jerusza carved a menorah each year from wood, simply because her mother had commanded it years before. Hanukkah wasn’t among the most important Jewish holidays, but it celebrated survival, and that was something anyone who lived in the woods could respect. Still, the girl was being foolish. Jerusza narrowed her eyes. “They are repeating words that have likely lost all meaning for them, Yona. Repetition is for people who don’t want to think for themselves, people who have no imagination. How can you find God in moments that have become rote?”
Neither of them said anything for a moment as they continued to watch the family. “But what if in the repetition they find comfort?” Yona eventually asked, her voice small. “What if they find magic?”
“How on earth would repetition be magic?” They still needed to procure a few jugs of milk from the barn, and Jerusza was losing patience.
“Well, God makes the same trees come alive each year, doesn’t he?” Yona said slowly. “He makes the same seasons come and go, the same flowers bloom, the same birds call. And there’s magic in that, isn’t there?”
Jerusza was stunned into silence. The girl had not bested her at her own game before. “Never question me,” she snapped at last. “Now shut up and come along.”
It was inevitable that Yona would begin wondering about the world outside the woods. Jerusza had always known the time would come, and now it was heavy upon her to ensure that when the girl thought of civilization, she regarded it with the proper fear.
Jerusza had been teaching Yona all the languages she knew since she had taken her, and the child could speak fluent Yiddish, Polish, Belorussian, Russian, and German, as well as snippets of French and English. One must know the words of one’s enemies, Jerusza always told her, and she was gratified by the fear she could see in Yona’s eyes.
But she had more to teach, so on their forays into towns, she began to steal books, too. She taught the child to read, to understand science, to work with numbers. She insisted that Yona know the Torah and the Talmud, but she also brought her the Christian Bible and even the Muslim Quran, for God was everywhere, and the search for him was endless. It had consumed Jerusza’s whole life, and it had brought her to that dark street corner in Berlin in the summer of 1922, where she’d been compelled to steal this child, who had become such a thorn in her side.
And though Yona irritated her more often than not, even Jerusza had to admit that the girl was bright, sensitive, intuitive. She drank the books down like cool water and listened with rapt attention whenever Jerusza deigned to impart her secrets. By the time Yona was fourteen, she knew more about the world than most men who’d been educated in universities. More important, she knew the mysteries of the forest, all the ways to survive.
As the girl’s eyes opened to the world, Jerusza insisted upon only two things: One, Yona must always obey her. And two, she must always stay hidden in the forest, away from those who might hurt her.
Sometimes Yona asked why. Who would want to hurt her? What would they try to do?
But Jerusza never answered, for the truth was, she wasn’t sure. She knew only that in the early-morning hours of July 6, 1922, as she hurried with a two-year-old child into the forest, she heard a voice from the sky, sharp and clear. One day, the voice said, her past will return—and it will alter the course of many lives, perhaps even taking hers. The only safe place is the forest.