Most of the students didn’t sleep very well. The mutton was delicious, but they had eaten so little meat in their lives that it churned and growled in their bellies all night long.
Sometime in the early morning hours, Kibi awoke to the vague memory of hearing a voice. She lay on her cot, gazing up at the sloping roof logs above her, trying to remember the dream. Suddenly she heard the voice again.
Kibi, lead your people into the wind!
She quickly sat up and looked around, the room dimly lit by pre-dawn light. The voice was definitely female, but as far as she could see, Neti was fast asleep.
Remember Kibi, into the wind!
No, it wasn’t Neti’s voice. Kibi crept to the open window and looked out, but saw no one in the street below.
In the other small sleeping room, Boro lay awake, wishing he could throw up like Buna had.
Boro, go into the wind, even if it looks dangerous!
He sat bolt-upright in bed, looking for the source of the voice. It wasn’t Sata’s.
Remember Boro, into the wind!
At the same moment, Boro caught a whiff of an odor he recognized.
Smoke.
“Sata! Toli! Wake up! Get your boots on!”
In the large sleeping room, Ilika climbed out of a dream, vaguely remembering a familiar female voice. Once awake, rubbing his eyes, he heard the same voice again.
Ilika! Arise and lead your people into the wind!
“Everyone wake up! Emergency! Boots on! Packs ready!”
Kibi lay in bed wondering about the voice, and pondering why someone would want them to go into the wind, which would be west toward the ocean.
Then she too smelled smoke and jumped to her feet.
“Miko! Neti! We have to go!”
With an urgent voice, a bright beam from his bracelet, and some shaking, Ilika had his trio wide awake even before he smelled smoke and understood the nature of the problem. Rini quickly helped Mati with her saddlebags.
Soon Mati smelled the smoke too. “We have to get Tera!”
“We will,” Ilika promised as he closed his pack and went to help Buna.
“Whatever happens, follow my directions, even if they seem wrong.”
Caught in the first rush of people down the stairs, Kibi, Miko, and Neti were forced to slip out a side door or be trampled. Once outside, everyone around them saw the fire coming from the west and ran eastward. Miko took one step in that direction, then felt Kibi grab his shoulder with a fierce grip.
“We can’t outrun the fire!” Kibi yelled. “We go west!”
Miko’s eyes swirled with panic for a moment, but when he felt Neti pull gently on his hand, he let himself be led westward, behind the cheese maker and across a footbridge.
To their right the bakery was ablaze, throwing sparks and embers high into the air. A moment later the roof of a nearby house burst into flames.
Kibi pulled Neti and Miko a zigzagging course through the burning town, always west, into the smoke and among the buildings that had been burning longest. Miko was constantly on the raw edge of panic, and Neti began coughing deeply.
An eternity later they somehow found themselves in woods that were blackened and smoldering, but no longer ablaze.
By the time Boro succeeded in convincing Toli to hurry, smoke was coming in the window and making them cough.
“I know where we need to go,” Boro said. “Stay right with me, or you’re on your own. We won’t be able to come back.”
Toli frowned, fumbling with his boot laces. “But how do you know . . .” he began in a whiney tone.
“Just put on your damn pack!” Sata yelled after packing it for him.
“Follow me! Stay close!” Boro commanded, and led them out of the room.
Mati screamed when Ilika picked her up, but he had no choice. Rini took up Mati’s saddlebags and Buna grabbed her bedroll, then they clasped hands to keep from losing each other as they followed their teacher out into the smoky corridor. Yelling, coughing people bumped into each other constantly on the stairs and in the common room. Once outside in the open air, the crowd bolted eastward.
The fire rapidly marched through the woods on the north side of town behind the inn, spreading quickly with the wind from the west. Even as they watched, a burning tree fell from the hillside above, landed just behind the stable, and ignited its back wall and roof.
“My horse!” a man yelled.
“Tera!” Mati screamed.
Ilika set her down, Rini got the crutch under her arm, and both Rini and Buna held onto their worried friend.
No one else was making any attempt to get into the burning stable. “Stay here!” Ilika ordered and ran forward.
Several people watched as Ilika pulled the big door open and went in.
Against a glowing orange background, silhouettes of animals could be seen, flinging themselves about in their stalls as they screamed in distress.
Suddenly the stable was filled with a blue light and the fire almost completely died out. A moment later, a horse came running out, followed by a donkey that wasn’t Tera, another horse, a cow, and finally Tera led by Ilika.
As he stepped out of the building, the blue light disappeared and the fire returned to its work.
“Sorcery!” the man said whose horse had just been saved.
“Witchcraft!” a woman accused with narrowed eyes while holding her precious cow tightly.
Ilika grabbed Mati, planted her on Tera, and quickly led the donkey westward at a fast walk, toward the smoke and fire, the direction everyone else was trying to flee.
Boro, Sata, and Toli veered into the kitchen of the inn to avoid a screaming knot of people, found the side door, crossed the road, and scrambled down into the streambed where the air was slightly better. Boro led them westward through the town, crawling under bridges and often pausing to splash the cold water on their faces and clothes.
Above them on the right, smoke poured from the windows of the dry goods store, and flames began licking the roof just as they passed. On the left, a burning house collapsed, sending ash and embers everywhere. The last bridge over the stream was starting to smolder even as the three crouched low to pass underneath.
Soon the stream began to descend into a narrow ravine, so they climbed out and found a road that wound westward through the smoking trees and bushes. Sata poked and prodded to keep Toli moving so Boro could concentrate on leading the way.
About an hour later, coughing and blinking, they came to a clearing in the woods west of town. The wind off the ocean was strong, the fire had burned itself out, and most of the smoke had cleared. Once a mill, it was now just a gutted building surrounded by stacks of charred wood and piles of drifting ash.
Kibi was completely lost.
Smoke swirled everywhere, and Neti couldn’t stop coughing.
“My eyes are burning!” Miko yelled with a shaky voice close to panic. “I can’t see a thing!”
“Hold onto Neti’s hand!” Kibi yelled through the smoke.
“I
am!”
Kibi had Neti’s other hand, trying desperately to do what the voice commanded. The wind, however, was gusting every which way, making a straight course impossible.
Follow me, Kibi!
The voice again. Kibi looked ahead with stinging eyes. A few yards ahead, and somewhat off to the right, a floating green ball of light danced in the air, but was not blown along with the smoke. After coughing and swallowing once, Kibi followed the green light, pulling Neti and Miko along behind.
Deep Learning Notes
Kibi and Boro’s culture, as well as our own about a thousand years ago, was much more willing to listen to an unexplained “voice” (or “dream”) than we are today. Our popular modern value that everything must have a rational explanation (positivism and rationalism), discounts unexplained “voices,” and tends to assume they are something invalid, such as the effects of mental illness or drug use. Even most religions today discount any unexplained message, unless it comes through “proper channels.”
Why do you think the voice was familiar to Ilika?
Since the land warms in the sunlight much more quickly than the ocean, causing warmer air to rise over the land and colder air to fall over the ocean, most coastal wind is from the ocean to the land. This caused the prevailing wind to be from the west at Lumber Town.
Even Kibi, an intuitive feeling person, might have been reluctant to follow the
“floating green ball of light” in other circumstances. What about the circumstances she was in caused her to follow the light without hesitation?