- Get to the River! -
“Ouch!” Something hot and sharp smacked Poppy’s cheek, waking her. She sat up and brushed the object from her face. “What’s going on?” The sky to her left was scarlet with boiling clouds of flames and smoke. Small fires erupted in the dry grass of the meadow and were coming closer to where she had been lying. Sparks scattered and fell from the hot wind.
“The world is on fire!” She scrambled to her feet. Where was she? She hadn’t paid attention when she had found the meadow.
It didn’t matter. She had to get away from that terrible glowing sky and the sparks that were blowing and lighting dried leaves and trees all around her. She stumbled over the grass until she reached the road. Then she headed in the opposite direction from the fire, trying to get a sense of where she was. She remembered she had come up several side streets, so she tried to race back the way she had come.
A frightened procession of families pushed wheelbarrows filled with belongings. Baby carriages were loaded with crying children, birdcages, mattresses, and family treasures. People packed the thoroughfares and alleyways, jostling themselves and their burdens away from the blasting hot wind and flaming sky. Frantic horses driven by fear and whips wildly raced through the streets without a pause for anyone in their path.
One side roadway was so crowded that Poppy could hardly make her way through. When she finally reached the next crossing, she turned in another direction, hoping to find it less congested.
Suddenly she realized where she was! It was Justin’s street, and his house was right up the road. She flew to the driveway and looked up at the house. There were no lights on in the windows. Had they left? Did they know the fire was heading this way? She had to warn them.
She ran down the driveway, and as she got closer to the house, she was comforted to see the kitchen door had been left ajar. The family had obviously left in a hurry. Poppy realized with relief that the goat barn was empty. She was about to go back to the street when she heard a familiar cry coming from the kitchen.
It was little Mew! Poppy went back to the porch, calling softly, “Come, kitty.” The kitten purred as Poppy picked her up. Why had Claire left her? She’d said she’d love the kitty forever. “I won’t leave you here, little Mew,” she whispered gently. “You’re coming with me.”
A gust of wind blew the kitchen door open wide. In the light from the burning sky that shimmered through the windows, she spotted Claire’s apron draped over a chair. Poppy grabbed it and quickly placed it over her head. “Now you’ll feel safe,” she murmured as she tucked the kitten into the front pocket.
Mew cried while Poppy ran to the street, but when she put her hand into the pocket, Mew soon snuggled down and began sucking on Poppy’s finger.
Already houses behind her were in flames. The cracking and snapping of burning wood was loud and close. Poppy coughed and gagged as smoke gusted around her. She held one hand over her face and kept one hand in the pouch on Mew’s soft fur.
Once again she found herself struggling in a frantic parade of men, women, and children, who pushed and shoved and stepped on one another in their terror.
Poppy let herself be swept along in a stumbling, hysterical maze of humanity.
Now the structures around them were burning. “Help!” a man cried from a window high on the fourth floor of a nearby building. Flames spit out the windows below.
“Jump!” came calls from the street.
The man disappeared for a moment and then reappeared. He struggled with a bed mattress that he finally threw out the window onto the ground below.
“Jump!” the voices of the crowd called again.
Poppy held her breath as the man backed out the window and hung by his arms, trying to reach the windowsill of the floor beneath him. The fire was spreading and one of the walls on the side of the building was already crumbling.
“JUMP!” the crowd demanded.
He did, tumbling through the air to the ground below, missing the mattress.
Folks ran to him, but it was no use. He lay motionless.
Poppy felt sick and turned her head away. She tried to run, but it was impossible to move ahead through the wall of people.
She struggled to slip to the side of the street and stopped. A little girl was standing on the burning wooden sidewalk, screaming, “Mama! Mama!”
Her long blond hair was on fire!
“Help her!” Poppy screamed, not knowing what to do. A man standing nearby with a drink in his hand stepped closer to the girl and then threw the liquid on her.
“Stop!” his companion yelled. “That’s alcohol!” In an instant the child’s dress caught on fire.
Poppy put her hands over her ears to drown out the girl’s screams and watched helplessly as the little girl turned into a blue pillar of fire.
Poppy felt faint. Everything seemed to be spinning. Then her legs buckled and she fell to the ground.
Someone stepped on her; a shoe dug into her ribs like an axe. More people stumbled over her without stopping.
I must get up or I’ll be crushed here. Poppy tried to push the horrible sight of that burning, screaming little girl from her mind.
Little Mew cried and was about to creep out of the apron pocket. No! I can’t let anything happen to my kitten! I’ve got to get up.
She pushed Mew gently back into the pouch on the front of her apron, then tried to stand. It took several tries as grown-ups and even children pushed her out of their way, knocking her back to the hard-packed dirt street. She kept one hand over the pocket to protect Mew, but her hand was bleeding. A sharp pain shot through her right leg where someone had crushed it with a heavy boot.
One woman stopped and pulled her up. “You’ll be killed if you stay on the ground, dearie,” she said. “Now keep movin’ toward the water. The fire won’t hurt you there.”
Poppy nodded and limped along slowly. The pain in her leg shot up to her hip. She could no longer hold back tears. Ma had hit her many times for crying, so she rarely cried. But now the pain was too much. She sobbed as she hobbled along, trying to hold her own with the rough crowds. With each breath, her lungs burned with the hot, fiery wind.
A large building on the other side of the street buckled under the flames and then, with a crash, collapsed into sparks and cinders.
“God help us!” someone yelled.
“Don’t give up. Get to the river. Once we cross a bridge, we’ll be safe!”
“That’s right! Fire won’t cross the water!”
“Yes! To the river!” came the cries.
Poppy felt Mew’s little tongue licking her hand and then sucking again on a finger. She ignored her pain and walked faster. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be safe once we cross the river,” she promised little Mew.