The Fire

• Zoya Rathi, Grade 7, Arden Anglican School
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

June 6th 1859
My throat was as dry as sandpaper. My voice hoarse. The flames behind me danced and leapt, forming sneers, daring me to go back. Back to what? The flaming body of Aliha? It was too much to bear. I took off, leaping over branches and debris. I could hear the crackle of leaves and twigs burning behind the curtain of flames. The sky was grey. The smoke suffocated me. Why us? Why couldn't it have been someone else? NO! That's so selfish! But, WHY, WHY, WHY? These thoughts churned in my head like knives, stabbing me. I took a moment to catch my breath and it all came rushing back. Her scream, the erupting flames. I could feel the bile rising in my throat. My eyes stung. Was that my tears or the smoke? It was too hard to tell. I collapsed. Let the flames take me. I closed my eyes. Darkness.
Aliha and I had just turned 17. We had been best friends forever. Now elders of our Puanga tribe, we had to hunt for our food.
I woke up with a shudder. Someone was calling my name. I was wet and cold. I could hear the footsteps crunching over dry leaves. My father, my Aunty and an elder I didn’t know, came into blurry view. My mother was probably at the village looking after my brothers. My father knelt, his face serious. Suddenly he broke down in sobs. “Thank god Maria, you 're safe! Did you stumble through the lake? Oh my god!" he stammered. "I can't remember papa" I sneezed. "Come, let's go back to the village," the elder said.
On the way back, we passed huge logs burnt by the fire. I tripped over one - but it wasn’t a log. This was where I had been when the fire started. This was Aliha's body. I screamed. My Aunty rushed to my side. "It's okay. It's okay." She tried to reassure me. The tears that I had held in came streaming out. I stumbled all the way back to the village, crying. The whole village was there. I saw Aliha's parents in the crowd. They were weeping. Her grandfather came towards me. I wanted to run but I knew I had to face this. He spoke in barely a whisper, but I understood him perfectly. "How could you take something so precious away from me?" He wasn't angry, he was grieving. I fell to my knees, sobbing.
I woke up sweating, pushing off the stifling covers. That nightmare again. It was as though I lived it in a past life. I mean, I was born in 1999, so this was 140 years before I was born, I've never known anyone called Aliha, never been in a forest, live in a penthouse in New York and have no siblings. I remind myself that this was just a dream. A bad dream. I gently drifted off.
Little did I know this was just the beginning…