“They’re really here,” Rosalia whispered once the trucks had disappeared into the distance. The vehicles were heading southeast, and Yona had to swallow a lump of fear in her throat before she replied. What if Zus’s group was in the convoy’s path? What if she had let him go straight into harm’s way? She would never forgive herself.
“We’re only a day or so from the swamp now,” Yona said, trying to hide her fear. She looked back at Rosalia and forced a resolute smile. “We must keep moving.”
Rosalia nodded, but from the way she avoided looking Yona in the eye, Yona knew the other woman doubted the plan, perhaps even doubted that there was, indeed, a swamp where Yona had said it would be.
The following evening, the group paused by a stream to drink and gather some berries. They were all exhausted and hungry; they’d been eating little so their supplies might last, for they didn’t know how long they’d have to wait out the Germans, or what food might be available to them in the swamp. They were almost there; Yona felt certain of it. The ground beneath them was losing its firmness, the moss and ferns growing lusher.
Yona had just bent for a drink beside Maia, the little daughter of the Gulniks, when the first gunshots rang out, a staccato hail of them, one flying close enough to Yona that she could feel it as it passed above her head. Immediately, she flattened herself on her belly, pulling the girl down with her. Rosalia hit the ground, too, but some of the others merely looked confused; Oscher actually took a step out into the open, craning his neck as he scanned the forest curiously.
“Get down!” Yona hissed, crawling forward and tugging at his pants leg, and then at Bina’s leg, too. They both looked down at her, blinking, bewildered, but after a moment, they crouched beside her, then flattened themselves on the earth, too. “Is everyone all right?”
There was a mumbled chorus of assents, a panicked glancing around to ensure that everyone was accounted for. They were, thank God, and now Yona gestured silently for the others to follow her, keeping low. There were more bullets overhead, and then a German shouting in the distance, “Juden, Juden, kommt raus, wo immer ihr seid!” followed by a chorus of laughter. “Jews, Jews, come out wherever you are,” the German voice repeated in a singsong, and then there were more bullets whizzing around them. In that instant, Yona understood that they weren’t actually being fired upon; the Germans didn’t know they were there. This was merely posturing between the soldiers, an amusement. They were playacting at the sport of hunting men.
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.”