10. The Conflagration

STEPPING BACK IN TIME Part 10

If Owongo was anything he wasn’t a slouch. In a fraction of a second he saw what was happening: the girl he’d learned to look on as someone truly special was running helter skelter towards the man he’d rescued her from not so long ago. And that man had a leer on his face, a spiteful, greedy leer that suggested that he planned to satisfy more than the one appetite before he slung his young prisoner’s bones to the wolves.

And Owongo reacted as any distant ancestor of mine would have reacted. Bellowing, he charged uot of the hollow tree (which was now so filled with smoke he was lucky it hadn’t blinded him to what was going on) and hurled first one of the stones he’d used to start the fire, and then the other, as accurately as he could straight at the thug.

“Mirumda, run!” he shouted when he’d exhausted his lungs of wind for the bellow, and she paused in her headlong race, saw her danger and tried to veer to one side. But she’d left it too late. She was almost within reach of the one person she knew she must avoid at all costs because she guessed that what he meant to do to her would see her life’s ending.

Owongo had used both of his weapons in his initial assault and was too far away to be able to do anything other than make a noise. Which is why it was a very good job that the science that governs all things took over.

As I’ve said, the hollow tree was awash with smoke from the burning debris, its gases filling the air inside the tree with a toxic and highly flammable mixture, and the fire Owongo had created was still burning, not with a huge flame, that’s true, but with enough of a flame to ignite the air in what was no more than a confined space with a through draft upwards, and out somewhere high above the boy’s head. And the inevitable happened. There was enough oxygen in the mix to cause the king of all explosions, and with a whoosh it shot out, narrowly missing a stumbling Owongo, aiming directly for the thug who had reached out to grab at Mirumda who was desperately trying to veer to one side.

I have studied Owongo’s simple text (little more than almost indecipherable scratches on the wall of his cave, where the desperate boy had done his best to preserve an account of his adventure for posterity). I don’t know why he would have done that and assume that he must have had some concept of the passage of time and the great trail of years that lay ahead of him, years that would continue long after his own death, and into the unknown and unguessable future. Or am I fantasising? I don’t know. Maybe I attribute a little too much intellectual thought to the mind of a boy from before the dawn of history.

Anyway, my studies of the text told the story (one scratch, true enough, but what a telling scratch! There was agony in every little shake of the hand that had created I as he described what happened next!)

The worst of the hot gases and superheated steam that had been created within the hollow of the tree hit the thug fully on his front as it exploded outwards, and he had no idea what was happening until it hit him. His yowl of sheer terror and agony brought the other thug into view from wherever he’d been lurking, and he gazed in total horror at his companion and the way his soiled loincloth was already smoking and simmering and hanging limply from him.

Meanwhile, Owongo, who had escaped all but a breath of the explosion, had leapt towards Mirumda, grabbed her by one arm, and dragged her away from danger before she suffered any more than the dying fiery breath that had covered her would-be captor in what must have been unbelievable and almost intolerable agony, as witness his howl of pain.

Meanwhile, the tree started to quite contentedly burn. It was an ancient tree, one that had been standing for a thousand years or more, and much of what had once been moist living wood was by now dried, dead and highly inflammable. Owongo and Mirumda both stood and stared, aware of the second hoodlum but captivated by the sight of a gigantic tree covered in smouldering flames that spread, inch by inch, until it was one smoking monster.

“Come,” urged Owongo, “not safe yet!”

“But tree!” gasped Mirumda, “you, my Owongo, you did that!”

“Not now, not time for praise,” urged Owongo as jhe pulled her along to safety. Meanwhile the second thug had given up hope that he could get the first one to do anything but die, and had melted ito the forest. Owongo watched him go and noted which direction he was going in.

“We go this way,” he growled, indicating the opposite direction.

Mirumda saw that Owongo was displaying an unusual amount of common sense for a boy, and followed him.

Now, what must be remembered was that the two youngsters had sought refuge in the hollow tree because there had been a sudden and nasty summer storm which had covered everything with water and even threatened to flood the forest floor, and it was that water that prevented the fire in the tree from spreading, or it might have decimated a huge section of the forest in the way that forest fires sometimes did. As it was, the original tree suffered badly but the fire failed to spread beyond it’s area of influence, which was a good thing.

The one downside was that Owongo’s sled had been left by the tree and the inevitable had happened as it had been swallowed up by the flame, which meant that he had to return home without it. Mingey was going to be most annoyed, but Owongo knew that somehow he would replace it. After all, it was his own father, now deceased, who had made the one that had been burnt, so he himself saw no reason why he couldn’t replicate that man’s work and create a second sled before long.

“You save me again,” Mirumda told him as, weary and streaked with the detritus of the fire, they made their way home. “Me tell father. Father give you reward.”

“I don’t want anything,” Owongo told her, “my reward is you alive and well. I like you.”

She smiled up at him and giggled. “And Mirumda see you pleased to see me!” she joked.

© Peter Rogerson 21.02.22

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