Chaim was listening, too, and he chimed in, keeping his voice low, saying in unison with Rosalia, “He revives my soul. He directs me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of his name.”
By the next verse, there were more people whispering, Shimon and Elizaveta Sokolowski now, too, Shimon holding their son, Nachum, and Elizaveta’s hands cradling her own pregnant belly. The bullets had stopped flying; the German voices had faded away. “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they will comfort me.” Chaim’s wife and two boys were speaking the words aloud, too, and so were Oscher and Bina, Leon and Moshe. Yona joined in, as did Maia’s parents and brother, as they all said, “You will prepare a table for me before my enemies; you have anointed my head with oil; my cup is full.”
Ruth pulled her children close, all three of them safe and breathing, and whispered with the rest of them, “Only goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long years.”
“Amen,” whispered little Pessia, and as silence fell around them again, wrapping them in safety, the word was repeated by each of them in turn as they all realized that they’d survived against the odds yet again. Still, they stayed just where they were, motionless and frightened, for another hour, until the Germans were long gone.
* * *
Late the next evening, just as the sun was sinking toward the horizon, the group finally arrived at the edge of the swamp, which flowed seamlessly from the more solid forest floor, the distinction invisible to the naked eye. But as they walked, the mud was suddenly at their ankles, sucking them down, pulling at them, and Yona smiled in relief, even as the wet cold seeped into her shoes. “We’re here,” she said, hardly believing it herself.
There was a small whoop of collective glee from the group, and a few of them surged forward despite the muck. Yona held her hand up to stop them. “The terrain gets deeper from here, and soon we’ll be wading through water up to our waists. We must move with caution and stay together.”
“It’s a damned lake,” Leonid said twenty minutes later as they emerged from a cluster of trees, their feet already submerged. There were a few gasps as others arrived at the edge of the swamp and saw muddy water stretching out before them, dotted with drooping trees, tiny islands, and fallen trunks, as far as the eye could see.
“Don’t worry,” Yona said, though her own heart was thudding with uncertainty. The swamp had risen since she’d last been here, and she was no longer certain how easy it would be to make it across. “It is not deep, and you can see there are trees to hold on to the whole way through.” She paused, her mind spinning. “Everyone, please pull out any extra clothing you have brought with you in your packs. We must work quickly, while there’s still sunlight. We will use the clothing to tie ourselves together, two or three to a group. None of us will go down.”
For the next half hour, the group worked on fashioning shirts and trousers into makeshift ropes, and then Yona and Rosalia divided them into pairs or trios, giving the children enough slack in their lines so they could be hoisted upon shoulders when necessary. The leftover clothes were shoved back into packs, and the group set off.
Full dark had fallen, but the sky was clear, and a half-moon lit their way, the stars tiny pinpricks of light in a blackening sky. The children all looked up in awe, and even Leon, who at seventy was the oldest among them, sighed in contentment. “It has been many months since we’ve fully seen the stars,” he said, and the group murmured their assent. “You can hardly make them out above the trees. They disappear deep in the forest, don’t they?”
“So do we, if we’re lucky,” Moshe said, and a few of the others laughed.
“Yes,” Leon said, tapping his chest, where once upon a time, the star of David had marked him as a lesser citizen, as a target for elimination. But the forest knew no difference when it came to race, religion, or gender; it smiled and frowned upon all of them in equal measure, sometimes providing protection, sometimes peril. “By the grace of God, may we all be vanishing stars.”
Despite the chill of the mud, and the fact that there was water now, too, dragging at their calves, and then at their knees, the group made good progress for the first hour. “Do you think we’ll see the others soon?” asked Bina after a while. They were all trying to be quiet, but it was hard not to talk now and then, just to remind themselves that even in the darkness, they still existed. “Perhaps they’re already at the island.”