Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Meanwhile, Hyko broke free and scrambled to his feet. He bulled Aidan to the ground, and the two of them writhed and rolled on the ground like a pair of fighting snakes. Orlo and Pobo cheered the match. Reluctant to take sides, they shouted words of encouragement without specifying whom they were intended to encourage.

“You get him, boy!”

“Stuff him down a turtle hole!”

“I saw that!”

The wrestlers migrated dangerously close to the cooking fire, which was still burning. Hyko’s flying leg scattered hot coals and burning sticks well beyond the banked sand that formed the boundary of the fire. But soon they flopped away from the fire. Hyko was getting the better of Aidan now and was having some success cramming the civilizer’s head into a tortoise hole. By Pobo’s rule, a head-cram was deemed complete-and the match over-when both of the losing wrestler’s ears were completely in the hole and not visible above ground. Hyko’s head-cramming task was complicated because the tortoise hole wasn’t as big around as Aidan’s head.

Aidan’s ears, like his mouth and nose, were full of sand, so it was hard to understand the chant Orlo and Pobo had struck up while he was being stuffed into a small hole in the ground. But when Hyko suddenly let go of his hair, Aidan raised his head and saw a broad sweep of wire grass being consumed by an orange flame, just a few feet from the cooking fire. Now he understood what Orlo and Pobo had been chanting: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Aidan scrambled to his feet and ran toward the licking flames. He stomped at the burning grass, smothering the fire in boot-sized patches. The feechies joined, too, stomping as best they could. But even feechies aren’t tough enough to stomp out a wildfire with bare feet.

A steady breeze from the west fanned the fire and it grew, carrying flames from one tuft of wire grass to the next. Aidan fetched his extra tunic from his backpack and used it to smother flames, but it was too late for that. The fire had stretched itself into a long line marching eastward before the prevailing wind. A small holly tree had already caught fire and sent popping cinders out ahead of the fire line. Little troops of flames licked around the bases of the big pine trees, looking to burst into magnificent flame among the long straw of the overstory. But the old trees resisted, and the ground fires died at their feet.

The vanguard of the fire kept marching onward. Rabbits fled before it, as did pine voles, little ground sparrows, and other animals that depended on the high, thick grass for cover. Rat snakes and cotton mice, normally predators and prey, entered a truce born of emergency and sought refuge together in the dark coolness of the tortoise burrows, deep below the crackling fire.

Behind the fire line a swath of charred and smoking ground expanded. But the fire was insatiable. It pushed eastward, devouring every blade of grass, every bush, every little sapling in its path. Aidan looked past the fire to the forest beyond. Dry wire grass waved as far as he could see-leagues and leagues of fuel for a fire that looked as if it might never stop.

The feechies were running in every direction, yelling and waving their arms but not doing anything helpful. They soon lost what little self-control they had and began crying and moaning, heartbroken at the prospect of their beautiful forest going up in flame. Hyko took it especially hard; his leg, after all, had kicked the burning log into the grass to set this conflagration in motion.

But they all snapped to attention when Aidan announced, “I know what to do.”

Hyko wiped his eyes and sniffed a long, wet sniffle. “You do?”

They didn’t understand what Aidan was doing when he pulled burning limbs out of the fire and handed one to each of them. But they were encouraged by the apparent sense of purpose with which he shouldered his pack and raised his own firebrand like a cavalry officer’s sword. “Follow me!” he ordered, and as he ran across the smoking ground toward the fire line, the three feechies followed.

“Ow! Ow! Ooooh! Ow!”

“Hooo! Hooo! Hot! Hot!”

The poor feechies didn’t have the benefit of a layer of boot leather between their feet and the hot ground, and the closer they came to the fire, the hotter it was.

“I’m ’bout to burn up!” complained Hyko above the crackle of flames. But neither he nor the other two feechies turned back.

“It’s cooler on the other side!” shouted Aidan. And with that, he leaped into the chest-high hedge of flame. The feechies closed their eyes and followed him.

“Haa-wee!” Aidan shouted exultantly when he made it through the flames. He turned around just in time to see Hyko throw down his firebrand and barrel into him. Civilizer and feechie fell to the ground.

“Stop it!” yelled Aidan. “Stop it!” But Hyko didn’t stop. He rolled Aidan over on his back as if to pin him. These feechies don’t know when to stop! thought Aidan as he struggled to get away. Then Orlo and Pobo jumped into the fracas and started slapping at him.

“What’s the matter with you!” Aidan screamed. He was good and angry now. A brushfire was bearing down on them, but all these feechies wanted to do was fight and wrestle.

“You’re on fire!” shouted Hyko, and Aidan realized it was true. The flapping tail of his tunic had caught fire as he passed through the flames. The three feechies rolled him back and forth and slapped at his smoking tunic until they were sure the fire was out.

But there was little time to reflect on the near disaster. Aidan relit his smoldering firebrand in the encroaching fire line and led the feechies onward, ahead of the fire, across the open forest. He didn’t stop until he was more than three long stone’s throws away from the fire line. He stopped in a spot where the grass was sparser and more sand showed between the clumps.

The feechies’ eyes grew wide when Aidan touched his firebrand to the wire grass and set it ablaze.

“What’s a matter with you!” barked Orlo, stomping at the burning grass. “I thought we was going to fight this fire, not feed it!”

“It’s called fighting fire with fire,” Aidan explained. He touched off another clump of grass. “A wildfire can’t burn what’s already burned.” He lit another tussock near his feet. “If we can make a backfire we can control, we might be able to kill the wild one.”

Hyko was starting to understand. “We burn out the grass from this end, and when the wildfire gets here, it’s got nowhere to go.”

“As long as this one doesn’t get away from us too,” cautioned Aidan.

Hyko jigged around excitedly. Like all feechies, he liked playing with fire and was glad to have a good excuse. “Hee-haw! This civilizer’s got what it takes!” He set his torch to a tussock of grass, then another and another.

“Whoa, horse!” laughed Aidan, stomping out one of Hyko’s fires. “Don’t make more fire than you can handle!”

Orlo and Pobo were skeptical of Aidan’s scheme, but in the absence of a better plan, they touched their firebrands to the grass.

The westerly breeze tried to push the backfire into the firefighters. Occasional gusts sent them scrambling, stomping out fresh blazes. Aidan stomped and leaped like a buck-dancer and made good use of the long, broad rattlesnake hide as a fire beater to smother the flames. Since his feet were protected by boots, Aidan took sole responsibility for killing errant sparks while Orlo, Pobo, and Hyko broadened the reach of the backfire. Back and forth he ran, up and down, responding to the urgent cries of his men when a stray clump of grass ignited or a popping cinder threatened to set a bush ablaze.

The occasional gust of wind was a crisis, threatening to send the backfire in the wrong direction, to make it an accomplice in the ravages of the wildfire. And as the feechie crew succeeded in stretching out its line of defense, Aidan had farther to run and more emergencies to deal with.