The Children Rescue…Something

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The children used their poles to pull the boat over to the bank. (They were getting much better at it.) Although it was quite warm here, the ground was lush with plants and there was no sign of lava, so they secured the mushroom cap boat and followed the sound of the dogs. Adolphus and the twins had armed themselves with oars and the boat pole. Gerhardt clutched his stone axe.

They followed the sound away from the river, up a slope. It was rough going. Gerhardt lead the way, hacking a path through the undergrowth with his axe. Within a few hundred yards the dense vegetation just stopped, and they stood at the edge of a desolate landscape. Before them the blackened ground rose gently to a summit in the distance, scattered with rubble.

Mirabelle nudged her twin and pointed. Three figures were outlined by the orange glow behind them, and the children could see a mass of moving, lighter colored shapes at their feet. The orange glow came from a crack in the ground just above them on the hill.  Two at a time, the children darted out to the closest pile of rubble and clustered behind it, and darted to the next, making their way closer to the volcanic fissure.

Then a heartbreaking squealing sound shattered the air followed by a terrible POP POP POP POP POP. Bettina put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

Claire stuck her head up out of their cover and dared a look.

“Three men,” she said, “three men with sticks driving the dogs… um, dog-things into a volcanic fissure.” She spun round to face her siblings, pale with horror. “They’re driving them across the fissure to set fire to them!”

“By golly they won’t for long!” Adolphus said. Gerhardt brandished his axe in agreement.

“Just three of them with sticks?” Annabelle asked. Claire nodded, and Annabelle offered her the geology pick.

Mirabelle took Bettina’s shoulders. “You stay here and be our back up. If it looks bad, give us a warning and blow something up.” Bettina nodded, looking grim.

“Ready chaps?” Adolphus said, “On my mark. One…”

The heartbreaking squeals started again, and Gerhardt charged with Claire right behind him, howling like a banshees.

Adolphus, Annabelle, and Mirabelle followed, yelling a frightful din.

The men, if that’s what they were, looked up in shock at the screaming, running, stick- and tool-waving children. The children were streaked with dirt and blood and turnip juice. They were angry, hungry, unwashed, frightened, and howling. The men dropped their sticks and fled up hill, disappearing into the woods. The von Hedwigs stopped and watched them retreat, surrounded by the animals they had saved.

Bettina toddled out to join them and one of the creatures ran to her. She picked it up and cuddled it, giggling.

“Doggy!” she squealed. The older children stared at her, then down the swarm at their feet, then back at Bettina.

The creature squirmed in her grip, brushing her cheek with long, pale fibers. Its belly was bumpy and yellow, but its back seemed papery, as though it were sheathed in folded wings. Claire blinked several times.

“Corn?”

The creatures yapped and yipped, jumping up onto the children, and generally milling about away from the heat of the fissure.

The boys knelt to play with them, but Claire and the twins looked across the fissure. Through the waves of heat distortion they saw fluffy white piles on the other side.

“Popcorn,” Mirabelle confirmed.

Adolphus laughed as half a dozen wriggling creatures tickled him with their silk.

“Corndogs!”

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Photo credit: By Jonathan Lewis from London i ´spose….., Blighty (Volcano Villarrica, Pucón, Chile) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. This image was originally posted to Flickr by welsh boy at http://flickr.com/photos/46348898@N00/100117888.