9. ...Into The Fire

STEPPING BACK IN TIME, Part 9

So far as Owongo was concerned, no sooner had the plan sprung unbidden into his mind that it was ready to be put into the world as a real thing. He could be like that: impetuous, even though he is a distant relative of mine.

“Mirumda watch,” he said with the sort of smile that told the girl that no matter what he did it would be practically perfect and if he said he was going to create fire out of a few old stones then that is exactly what he would do, and no messing. So she settled down as close to him as was possible, which was a tad closer than their confined space dictated, smiled at him, flashing those wonderful teeth of hers. And he liked the proximity. After all, Mirumda was special and he knew it.

The smile and the teeth added to his determination and he picked up the two largest stones. How they’d got there and why, he had no idea. He couldn’t see that the fox who he had forced to vacate the hollow would have had anything to do with stones, large or small. Stones weren’t at all fox-like.

She looked at him, still smiling, though he imagined he could detect the start of a questioning frown on her face, so holding the stones in his two hands he crashed them together using every ounce of his strength.

A cascade of sparks issued from them as one glanced off the other, and Mirumda pulled slightly back from him in shock as he blessed her with a broad grin that suggested that in his mind at least he was master of all he could survey

“Mirumda watch,” he said, and he pulled a small pile of the withered and dried remnants of the tree’s dead core towards him and winked broadly at the love of his life. Then he struck the two stones violently together using as much strength as he could muster, and a cascade of sparks shot towards his little pile. Nothing happened, so he repeated the action and this time was rewarded with a curl of grey smoke from somewhere in the heart of his dusty pile of detritus.

“Owongo great!” gasped Mirumda when she saw it.

Moments of genius come so rarely in a person’s life, and Owongo was still little more than a boy even though babes were forced to grow swiftly into independent people back in those dark times. But something came and went in his mind, and left an impression. And responding to that impression he leaned towards the curl of smoke, and blew gently. If asked he would have been unable to say why he did that, just that an inexplicable something made him try so silly a thing as blow. I mean, he had no science in his learning, no concept of a fire needing oxygen to prosper.

And at the source of the curl of smoke a little collection of the dried materiel glowed. Small it was, but both he and Mirumda could see it, and the excitement it brought to his mind was enough to make him want to blow again, carefully lest the wind from his breath scattered his magical fire.

Let me make one thing clear. Men in those far off days did know something about fire. But as far as Owongo was concerned, his people sought fire that had somehow been started naturally, lightning maybe, or a wildfire on a torrid summer’s day, and knew how to carefully transfer what they found from one place to another. And that was dangerous work for men, not boys, but both had to do it.

Yet the creation of fire itself was another matter altogether, the use of cold and even damp stones to be the source of a living flame may well have been known by a handful of tribes-people as their special contribution to early human life. For a boy to discover it for himself was, indeed, special, and my ancestor Owongo did exactly that!

It was mere minutes after making his discovery that Owongo learned a very important lesson.

“Mirumda blow!” he invited, and the girl looked at him then smiled, then blew on what was already becoming a substantial little fire. Owongo dragged more of the dried matter from the corners of the hollow trunk and piled them on his fire, and suddenly, it seemed, their hollow tree was filled with acrid smoke that made their eyes sting.

Then Owongo saw a greater danger than mere smoke. Flames started growing from small flickering creations that were really quite amusing to look too much like threatening fires, the sort tales were told about when adventurers came home from their adventures. For a moment he saw them in his mind’s eye, saw flames that seemed to climb up the smoke and spread out wherever that smoke went.

“Come Mirumda!” he shouted, pulling her. But for once Mirumda was interested in nothing other than staring with awe at the fire Owongo had made.

“This adventure”, she breathed, and Owongo cursed another three syllable word before pulling her by one arm and shouting “fire burn, Mirumda, fire burn bad, kill!”

“I like,” she replied, smiling at him, “Owongo make fire and Mirumda like fire!”.

The air inside the hollow tree became almost electric as gases from the drying tinder did a bit more than make their eyes water. Those gases, most of them inflammable, had reached a point of concentration when they might explode any moment. Owongo saw the danger but the love of his life was unaccountably blind to it.

“Mirumda die soon!” he warned her, “fire kill Mirumda, Owongo left alone!”

It was at this moment that they were rescued, not by common sense or Owongo’s foresight, but by the two thugs who had already held the girl as a hostage to whatever it was they wanted. And rather than Owongo, it was Mirumda who saw them and whose heart was suddenly filled with a much more logical fear. Fire didn’t scare her, but the promise of torture did.

The moment she saw them she pulled away from Owongo and darted out of the hollow tree, running as if she was being pursued by the worst devils from nightmares.

And in her blind panic she ran straight into the arms of her would-be enemy.

“Come to Ugg-ugg, Pretty-pretty,” he said.

© Peter Rogerson 19.02.22

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