Once Upon a Time Long, Long Ago by Henry Shykoff

Author:Henry Shykoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781554882540
Publisher: Dundurn

Six

Two Pieces of Wood

For Eevo and Sim, leaving the cave for any length of time had always been a problem. The fire needed frequent attention from them. To date they had only solved this predicament once. The moving of the fire from the original burning tree to their new home by carrying burning sticks and a bundle of firewood had worked well. But this would not work for travelling any big distance.

Some time before, Sim had made a basket from coarse rushes like the ones used for their bed, and had lined it with damp clay from the stream bed. He then dried it by the fire. Could this rock-hard basket be used to carry a small fire? It was awkward and heavy, and would need frequent addition of wood, but perhaps it would work. This was Eevo’s hope. Use the basket to carry the fire to the home cave of the clan. After a permanent fire was established there, she could return to their own cave with a portion of that fire.

Eevo, even more than Sim, was extremely interested in fire. Where did it come from? What was it? She had tried putting various things on it to see what foods it liked. She did this when she first met fire that night outside the small cave and, since that time, continued to try different things. She knew that fire ate anything that grew and nothing that had not grown. It ate no earth, no rocks and no water. Water, in fact, fought the fire and, if there was more water than fire, the fire died. Moreover, the remaining wet wood would not light until the water was gone. If there was more fire than water, the mix of the two would crackle and spit until the fire drove the water away, and then it would become a normal fire. Where the water went to was another one of her puzzles.

Of all the things she fed the fire, dry wood seemed to be its favourite food, but a small fire could not eat a large piece of wood. One had to give it small pieces until it grew big. Then it could eat and be happy to eat even the biggest pieces of wood she could find. When the fire had finished eating, what was left was a grey powder that, as Sim had pointed out, was much like the brownish grey powder found around trees that had fallen a long time ago.

Could it be that fire lived in wood and in other things that grew? She knew that when she was out in the sunlight she felt warm, sometimes in the summer much too warm. Did the sun get into things when they grew? Things did grow quickly when there was more sunlight and the weather was warm. Did the sun put little bits of itself into growing things? Was fire really sunlight getting back out when the growing thing died? But when a stick was broken there never was any fire falling out.

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