Underground Soldier by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch Page A

then disappeared through the boughs. Finally her head poked out. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
    I followed.
    She moved with such ease that I knew it was second nature for her, and I tried to keep up, but she was incredibly swift. Finally she sat down in the crook of a branch and patted the spot beside her. I sat too, taking deep, slow breaths. I didn’t want her to realize how winded I was.
    She pointed down through a break in the branches. “See that?”
    I looked where she pointed but didn’t see anything remarkable.
    “The bends in the leaves show the soldiers’ bootprints.”
    Once she pointed them out, I could see them clearly.
    “ You left your giant clumping bootprints all over the forest,” she said. “I’ve been following you all morning.”
    “But why?”
    She rolled her eyes. “So you’d live. I walked behind you and covered your tracks. Those soldiers would have found you otherwise.”
    No wonder there had been no birds chirping. They had noticed all the activity, but I hadn’t. And here I thought I’d been honing my survival skills. How humiliating to owe my life to a girl — and one who was likely younger than me, about ten or so. “Why would you want to save my life?” I asked her.
    “I’m guessing you’re an escaped slave labourer, like me. You don’t seem to have the survival skills of a spy. But maybe you’re only pretending.” She held out her hand. “My name is Martina Chalupa, and I’m Czech.”
    I shook her hand. Her fingers gripped mine with surprising strength. “Were you in a labour camp?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “A farm.”
    “Are there others like you out here?”
    She looked at me with troubled eyes. “Many escape, but few survive. This whole area is swarming with Nazi bandit hunters. They’ll kill you on sight.”
    “So what do I do now?”
    “Do you want to travel with me?” asked Martina.
    “It depends,” I said. “Where are you going?”
    Martina sighed. “I don’t really know. I’ve just been trying to stay alive and safe.”
    “I want to get to the mountains,” I told her. “And as far away from the war as I can.”
    “I’d like to get away from the war too,” she said.
    “Let’s travel together, then,” I said. “We can look out for each other.”
    Martina smiled.
    “So what do we do now?” I asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “We can’t just stay here.”
    “Rule one of surviving in the woods: move by night, hide by day.” She pointed to my boots. “Do you have to wear those?”
    Her question surprised me. “These are valuable.”
    “You can’t feel what you’re stepping on.”
    “I was barefoot when I escaped,” I said. “I stepped on some glass when I was running, and cut my heel. It’s barely healed even now. I need these boots.”
    She looked at me skeptically. “I’ll try to teach you how to walk quietly then — even with boots.” She reached into her pouch and brought out a dented metal flask.
    “Hold these,” she said, unscrewing the top and thrusting the cap and flask towards me. Next she opened up the ration box she’d stolen from me and drew out a small foil packet. “You don’t even know what this is, do you?”
    She ripped the packet open with her teeth and sprinkled the contents into her flask, screwed the cap back on and shook it. She poured some into the cap and passed it to me. I took a sip — sweet and fruity. “Tastes good.”
    Martina sipped the rest of the cupful and smiled. “I know. There are several kinds of ration boxes and they all contain something good. One has something like a beef broth. Another has coffee. Another has pure sugar.” She screwed the top back on and placed the flask back into her pouch.
    I thought of the nine other boxes in my knapsack and realized just how generous Helmut and Margarete had been. I was about to speak, but Martina’s attention was drawn to something down below. She held a finger to her lips.
    I followed her gaze. Three German troopers shuffled