The Altar Girl (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

A
S SOON AS
her father and brother disappeared, Nadia did what she’d been dying to do for the last hour. She ate.

She needed to ration her food because there was no way she was going to hunt small game. No rabbits or snakes were going to find their way into her mess kit. She was fully prepared to boil water but that was it. A human being could survive for a long time without food as long as she had water. Three days wasn’t going to be a problem, especially if she worked her way through her rations slowly.

Her knapsack contained a slice of buckwheat bread, a breakfast-
sized jar of honey, and a bag with about twenty almonds and raisins. Nadia ate five almonds and raisins each and washed them down with some water. The water tasted like warm metal, but she savored the salt and sugar. They tasted so good together, like Doritos and M&M’s. Sometimes she ate a handful of each when she got home after school. There was nothing like it. The thought of chips and candy made her even hungrier, so she ate five more of each. Then she decided she needed her strength now because she would only be building her shelter once, so she ate the rest of the almonds and raisins. A pang of guilt gnawed at her when she was done, but she still had the bread and honey, and half the canteen of water. She vowed not to eat until tomorrow.

Nadia used the map and her compass to find a stream three-quarters of a mile away. She’d studied cartography during summer camps and was an expert with a compass. Once she found the stream, she continued toward high ground to find a campsite.

Finding a source of water quickly cheered her up. She was able to look around and enjoy the sights. She loved the Appalachian Trail and the surrounding forest. Loved everything about it. Plants and animals were nice. People weren’t. Out here, no one threw dodgeballs at her head at recess when she wasn’t looking.

Danger also lurked on the AT, sometimes disguised as beauty. She picked her way through a giant ravine filled with storm-tossed birch trees: severed branches, strips of white bark, and tree rot scattered as if aliens had nuked the place. Amidst the rubble, moisture had given birth to a supersized colony of spectacular white mushrooms.

Nadia sidestepped the fungi, miniature flying saucers docked on rippling stalks, a preview of life on Mars. To the inexperienced hiker, they might have looked like tasty appetizers for the grill. Nadia knew better. Mrs. Chimchak had taught that certain fungi were lethal. Best not to mess with Martian spaceships when you’re living off the AT.

Nadia paused at the top of a hill and looked around. The terrain had flattened out. Water would flow down from here. A small gap amidst a grove of spruce trees would allow the flames of her fire to rise without burning down the entire East Coast. And a pair of young trees were set wide enough apart for her to build a lean-to.

This was the spot.

Nadia dropped her knapsack and turned around to memorize the path she’d taken.

Mrs. Chimchak stood before her with a blank expression.

Nadia jumped and shrieked. She covered her mouth with her hand. Cursed at herself for having shown weakness. But how could she not have been surprised?

There’d been no noise. No sign of a human being approaching.

Of course there hadn’t been. Kids called Mrs. Chimchak the Razor Blade for a reason. If she stood sideways, sometimes you couldn’t even see she was there. In the forest, she moved like a fern with invisible legs. She stood relaxed but poised, the way she always did, in a navy blue work shirt and pants. Never had such a tiny person looked so big and scary.

“
Hotujsh
,” Mrs. Chimchak said in Ukrainian, the traditional greeting among young scouts.

Nadia snapped her feet to attention, returned the greeting, and saluted her elder. The salute consisted of a V formed with the second and third fingers of her right hand. The odd thing was that in the English-speaking world it was the peace sign. But the greeting that went along with it in Ukrainian had more to do with war than peace.

Hotujsh.
Prepare yourself.

“What are you doing here?” Nadia said.

Mrs. Chimchak studied the terrain. “This is good,” she said, ignoring Nadia’s question. “Good spot for a fire. No branches overhead. You won’t burn down the entire forest, will you?”

“Uh-uh,” Nadia said. “Why are you here? I mean, it’s an unexpected surprise.”

“I wanted to make sure you put the right stakes in the fire. You must use live trees. You must cut down two saplings to stack the logs that will roll into the fire and feed it when you sleep. If you use dead trees, they will burn, your fire will die, and you will be at risk.”

“I know.”

“And be careful not to suffocate the fire with too much brush. Let it breathe when you light it.”

“A-huh.”

“And your mess kit. When you boil water from the stream, don’t touch it with your hands until it’s cooled down. Use a stick to lift it off the fire. Young people get all excited, sometimes they forget and they make mistakes. I’ve seen burns on hands like a roasted pig’s behind.”

“Uh-uh.”

“You have your poncho? Packed at the top in your knapsack?”

“A-huh.”

“Good. Good.”

What was up with Mrs. Chimchak? This was basic camping stuff. Nadia knew it cold, forward and backward, like the number pi rounded to eight decimals.

“PLAST was abolished in 1922 when the communists took Ukraine. It survived in secrecy until we brought it to America. You’re the best girl scout we have in this troop. You and others like you are the only hope for a free Ukraine someday.”

Nadia cringed. Why was someone always telling her she was the future? She wished she had a Mounds bar. She wanted to run away but nodded instead.

Mrs. Chimchak’s eyes grew larger as though they were tearing up. Nadia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Everyone knew that Mrs. Chimchak didn’t have tear ducts.

“I want you to know how proud I am of you,” she said. “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you. Will you remember that?”

“Yes,” Nadia said. She had no choice but to be polite, but the comment weirded her out. It was hard enough having two parents. She didn’t need to worry about pleasing someone else, too.

Mrs. Chimchak pulled a small tin box out of her pocket. “Here. Take these mints. Keep them close to you. When a person doesn’t feel well, a mint will always improve her spirits.”

Nadia wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t. Stupid Altoids. What she needed was an industrial-sized Hershey’s Mr. Goodbar, not a box of mints.

Nadia thanked her.

“Now, my young and fearless warrior, would you share a sip of water from your canteen with an old woman before she sets off on her journey home?”

“Of course.”

Nadia hustled over to her knapsack and grabbed her canteen. When she turned around, Mrs. Chimchak was gone.

No noise. No sign that another human being had been there.

Nadia stored the Altoids in her knapsack and went in search of two saplings to act as the feeding mechanism for her fire. Mrs. Chimchak’s words rang in her ears: Nadia was the only hope for a free Ukraine. Great. And she was her father’s only hope, too, given he considered Marko to be a hopeless delinquent. Her father worked on the assembly line in a gun factory. His daughter had to do better. Terrific. Oh, and let’s not forget her mother, who had told her she regretted ever marrying her father. Nadia was the only hope for her mother, too.

Couldn’t all these people get a life? It was hard enough to survive a school year or a summer camp. How could she make everyone happy at the same time? Did they have no clue that she was a person, too?

She cut down two saplings with her knife, stripped them of leaves and branches, and sharpened them to a point. Once the stakes were ready, she began to build a textbook campfire. Nadia loved building fires. So much attention to detail was needed to make it come out right.

The sun slid behind the peaks of the giant oaks. The forest darkened. She picked a flat spot in a clearing away from trees where sparks and flames were less likely to ignite a tree branch. She fell to her hands and knees and cleared the area of leaves and brush until the ground was bare. When she stood up, she was caked in sweat and dirt, but she didn’t care.

She built a mound of dry twigs and created a long fuse of white birch bark. She lined strip after strip in an overlapping fashion so that once she lit it, the flame would zip toward its target the way it did in the last scene in
The Bridge on the River Kwai
. Marko loved that movie, and she watched it with him whenever it was on TV. In three days, she’d be able to tell him she’d been thinking about it when she’d built her fuse. He’d love it. That would be so cool.

Nadia gathered wood into piles based on thickness. She crafted a wooden square around the kindling, using small branches from the second pile. Afterward, she erected a tepee around the square. She moved on to each successive pile of thicker wood, alternately building squares and tepees. When she was finished, Nadia admired her quadruple-layered bonfire with its long, white fuse snaking out on one side.

The final step was to take the two live stakes and nail them into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle to the center of the fire. She’d stack logs from the sixth pile against the stakes. A fresh log would roll into the fire before it died. That way, if she fell asleep, her fire would keep burning. When she was done, she treated herself to another swig of warm water from her canteen.

Dusk had arrived. A pileated woodpecker hammered at a tree in search of ants. Its drumming reminded Nadia that the seconds were ticking away. A cool wind blew through her sweaty clothes and body. She shivered. She needed fire. She needed fire now.

Nadia pulled a baggie from her pocket. It contained her lifeblood: three matches. They were the strike-anywhere kind that could be lit by scratching against any hard surface. At summer camp, Roxanne Stashinski could hold one in her right hand and strike it off the nail of her thumb without using her left hand. Nadia wished she could do something that neat, but those types of things didn’t come naturally to her.

Although the matches could be struck anywhere, she grabbed the same clean gray stone she’d used to bang the stakes into the ground to make sure it lit. As she swiped the match against the rock, a mosquito flew right into her ear. The matchstick snapped in her hand before it lit. She quickly reached down to get it, but the stick had broken so close to the head that it was useless.

One down, two to go. If tonight’s fire went out, she’d have only one more chance to relight it during her three-day test.

She took a second match and struck it on the same stone. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. She tried again, and again, and again, but it wouldn’t light.

She stared at the head. Most of the red lighting compound was gone. There was a tiny spot left. Nadia aimed it at the stone, and with a shaky right hand, snapped her wrist one more time. Nothing. The second match was dead, too.

She was staring at three nights alone with one match left. That reality shook her to the bone. She took two long sips of water from her canteen to try to calm herself, and realized there were only four ounces left. Not enough for one day, let alone for two.

One match, no fire, and soon, no water.

Nadia pulled the last match out of her bag and took aim at the stone.

The match lit on the first try. Nadia cupped her palm around the flame to keep it alive and lit the fuse. The birch bark sizzled. A flame rolled forward like it did when they blew up the bridge on the River Kwai.

Awesome. Nadia wished Marko were here to see it.

She dropped down on all fours and crawled up to the fire. She didn’t care if she bruised her knees. This was survival of the fittest, not the prettiest. She waited for the kindling to light, and fanned the flame with her breath to keep it from dying.

A flame rose from the smoke. The kindling crackled and spit.

Nadia sat up and watched as the fire came alive. It was glorious, maybe the best feeling she’d ever had in her life, except that time she’d scored the winning goal in a soccer game at PLAST summer camp. All her teammates had cheered for her. Daria Hryn, the most popular girl, had actually hugged her. Even now, alone in the wilderness in the middle of nowhere, the memory brought tears to her eyes.