The Altar Girl by Orest Stelmach Page B

cross again, one thing was certain. No loving mother was going to pick me up and save me from the undercurrent of the ocean.
    I was on my own.

CHAPTER 15

    W ATER . S HE NEEDED water.
    During the early afternoon of the second day of her survival test, Nadia ate half of her buckwheat bread and washed it down with half of her jar of honey. It took all her discipline not to finish the bread and the honey because she felt as though she was starving. Her body was sending her a signal that she needed nutrition, but she ignored it. She could deal with the hunger. Water was the key to her survival.
    The one thing she knew not to do was drink from the stream. One of the boys had done that last summer camp and ended up in the hospital with a Cryptosporidium parasite and diarrhea for a week. Nadia could name fifteen parasites that lurked on the Appalachian Trail. She’d memorized them from a guidebook she’d studied as soon as she learned she was going to try to pass the survival test.
    After lunch, Nadia trudged toward the stream to keep her mind occupied. Her legs wobbled a bit and she got winded much faster than usual. But the challenge of surviving a night without fire consumed her and she couldn’t stand the thought of sitting around thinking about what awaited her. It wasn’t the realization that she was surrounded by wild animals that scared her. She was an animal, too, and even though she was still a kid she was bigger than most of them. And she had a knife.
    No, it was the uncertainty that scared her. The darkness, the noises, the openness of her camp. A fire offered not only heat and light, it issued a warning to every living thing in the vicinity. It did so not only with its flames, but with its spitting and cracking noises. Nadia had once seen a sign hanging on the shed of a house near the Uke campground in Colebrook. It said, “Fuck the dog, beware of owner.” That’s what the roar of a blazing fire told the animals. “Forget the fire, beware of the girl who built it.”
    Nadia took a circuitous route toward the stream to waste some time and see something new. In doing so, she stumbled upon a spectacular marble face. It formed an “L” on the ridge above the water. She knelt down beside the marble and swept a layer of limestone off the rock to reveal rich swirls of bronze and sapphire. When she nestled into their confines, Nadia felt like a princess in one of the corny Egyptian movies her mother liked to watch.
    She closed her eyes and tilted her head toward the sky. The sun soaked her face like warm syrup. Her exhausted body absorbed the heat, and in less than a minute, she drifted to the border of consciousness. It was a delicious place, better than sleep itself.
    A honk startled her. Nadia snapped upright. Scanned the horizon. A heron swooped down in slow motion from its perch on a limb across the stream and spread its wings six feet wide. As it dove, the bird’s blue-gray plumes cast a dark shadow on the water. The heron landed on a rock midstream and snatched a fish from the water with its yellow bill, barely causing a ripple. It tossed the fish in the air, uncurled its “S”-shaped neck, lunged forward, and swallowed its prey midair. Batted its wings three times and soared over the trees out of sight.
    Awesome.
    Mrs. Chimchak had taught Nadia that the forest was no different from the city. There were two types of creatures in both places. The hunter and the hunted. Which one did she want to be?
    Maybe the other kids in her neighborhood in Hartford were tough when they were in groups. Maybe they tossed bubble gum in her hair and chanted “lesbian” when she walked by because there were usually three or four of them and she was alone. Maybe they wouldn’t be so strong out here, alone in the wilderness, where you had to be a hunter to survive.
    An hour later, Nadia turned to head back to camp. The late morning sun shone on four bumblebees buzzing around a cluster of creeping bellflower, their open purple