Wall Of Flame

• Aleah Kripp, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

Wall Of Fire
The sound of the blaring the alarm pierced through me. Thick sinuous vapour undulated in the air and seeped under my door. Confused, disorientated and panicking I violently threw open the door.
Dancing flames burned with the heat of a thousand suns. My eyes stung as they released pearly tears that streaked lines in the ash besmeared my face. As I looked into the blazing room, the illusion of a human shape being welded and formed by flame arose from the ashes pooled on the floor like a phoenix. The fire burned higher, swirling around the advancing figure. The roaring blaze grew and suddenly died, in its place, the looming figure now flanked by the blazing shapes of five more humanoid things.
Their eyes were vacant and black as pitch. I recoiled in horror, too petrified to move or make a sound. I screwed my eyes shut—willing with my all my might that they would go away. After what felt like an age, the roar of the flames began to quieten; I mustered the courage to open my eyes, prepared to face the devastation and horror.
They were gone. All that the spirits left was a pile of ashes; it was as if they had been snuffed out by the wind. Wherever they had gone, they had taken the flames with them. I took in the ruin of my bedroom; my eyes following the marks burned into my splintering oak floorboards like twisted black roads. Several glowing embers were still smouldering and crackling. I knelt by the ash pile, wanting to be sure it was real I caressed the ashes, letting them run through my fingers like dark rain.
I arose and threw open the window, breathing in in the pure air and cleansing my lungs of the serpentine smoke. Exhausted, I collapsed onto my frayed wicker desk chair, my eyes sweeping over the open pages of the book I had lost myself in the day before: a Norse dictionary and a crash course in the Viking Gods.
Learning Norse felt more natural to me than it did to learn English. But alas, the ancient culture was now nothing more than words in a history book and time cannot tick backwards. I carefully took up the book, my bleary eyes focussing on the page I had been reading the day before.
Fire Giants
The Fire Giants, lead by Surtr, wielder of the flaming sword and his kin. They inhabit Muspelheim, one of the nine worlds, where they have always stood and always will until Ragnarök. At Ragnarök, They will finally set out and destroy the Gods, including Freyr, brother of Freya. They will join forces with the three children of Loki; Hell and her skeletal legions, Jormungandr the Midgard serpent and the wolf Fenrir. For the stories of Loki’s Children turn to page 511.
Maybe, I thought slightly hysterically; they do leave Muspelheim occasionally.