Niam awoke with a start. For a moment, he had no idea where he was. The room was dark and the air redolent of hardwood smoke from a fire burning somewhere nearby. Niam even heard the popping of heated wood as the fire bit into its fuel.
Ah, my room, he thought drowsily. Mom must be cooking. There was comfort in that thought, and Niam nearly rolled over and went back to sleep. But there was a fire and his parents were gone.
Niam bolted upright in alarm.
The crackling of hungry flames seemed to be more insistent with each passing moment. Worse, the sound came from overhead.
Niam got out of bed and made his way through the darkened interior. The path from his room, down the hallway, and into the Kitchen was a blessedly simple one. Above him, the sound of the flames was like the sound of an attic licking its thatched tongue across teeth of wooden rafters. That meant the entire roof was ablaze. A flickering light streamed down onto the floor from between the ceiling boards above, and terror instantly flooded into him. That meant the fire had already eaten through the thick layer of thatch on the roof.
And that meant he didn’t have much time
Niam jumped out of bed. Dimly, he remembered the reason for his trip home and paused for the briefest moment. On the other side of his room, his belongings sat neatly on his closet shelves—his clothes, books, and a life’s accumulation of memories. Sarah’s drawings lay in there squirrelled between his own sketches. A pang of grief tugged at his heart, but somewhere in the attic a hot beam cracked loudly amid the flames, and Niam bolted into the kitchen, leaving his coat and memories behind to perish.
As he ran, he noted wispy tongues of smoke gently nudging through the ceiling. Where they met the cooler air below, they curled like babies’ fingers, gently caressing the wood beneath. Knowing smoke meant death, he ran to the door at full speed to catch the latch and launch himself outside. . . and collided hard with unyielding wood.
A loud “oof” escaped Niam’s lips as he bounced off of the door and fell to the floor. Niam looked up dumbly at the thing as if it had moved four feet to the left without prior warning. “No . . .” Niam said in confusion. Fire bit at the wood more loudly now.
“No, no no no!” he shouted. Hurriedly, he scrambled across the floor on all fours as he tried to convince himself that he had just bungled the latch and that it wasn’t locked shut. Feathery-fingered tentacles of smoke pushed trough the ceiling. Niam looked at it and swallowed hard. Dying this way was nearly as unthinkable as drowning.
In a growing panic, he reached out and pushed the latch on the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. For a moment he froze. The air was growing denser. The acrid bite of smoke caught in the back of his throat, making him cough. Niam looked around, noting that the room was growing brighter as he stood there. He had to get out.
The window.
Niam moved unsteadily along the perimeter of the room. In a few short moments the smoke had grown thick enough to make it hard to see. His eyes grew gummy and began to blur his vision. He kept bumping into furniture as he stumbled about. Holding his arms out, keeping his fingers in contact with the wall, his foot connected with something hard and he ran headlong into a cabinet, sending it along with dozens of plates and bowls crashing to the floor.
Niam’s forward momentum sent him sprawling across the fallen mess, and for a second time tonight he found himself on the floor. Pain flared in his head and he was rapidly overtaken with vertigo. The next thing he knew, he was on his side with something hot and thick raining across his forehead and trickling down his cheek. A loud pounding seemed to come from somewhere in the room.
Niam blinked in confusion.
When he stretched his arm out, a hiss formed on his lips. His head throbbed. His eyes were now nearly glued shut by smoke and tears. The air was frighteningly thick, and the roar of flames above drowned out nearly every other sound save the fracturing of charred timbers and the pounding that still seemed to be coming from somewhere in the smoke. Everything became indistinct.
The smoke is getting to me, a distant part of his mind warned him. More of the room was aglow. Niam struggled up, ignoring the pain. The moment he took a breath, the air above waist level was almost too thick to bear. Niam lurched blindly across the floor. Now, firelight emanated not only from narrow seams in the ceiling, but from the hallway as well. His lungs felt like they were about to burst. He didn’t think he was going to make it. As he lurched toward the place where he knew the window lay, a tremendous crash reverberated throughout the room, and a familiar voice cried in alarm. “Niam!”
Niam’s throat worked hard to produce words. “I’m here!” He screamed in terror. He had taken in so much smoke that his mouth was filled with the sickening flavor of charred wood. A painful spasm sent Niam to his knees. Again someone called out frantically. “Niam!”
As he tried to draw enough air into his lungs to respond, his throat closed shut. The world spun nauseatingly, and his field of vision began closing like curtains on a stage. The glow in the room began to recede and grow distant. Somewhere in the back of Niam’s mind, he thought to himself, I’m passing out—and with the thought came a small relief. At least I won’t feel myself burning. But Niam never felt his torso hit the floor. Darkness wound itself in around him, and his world went away into smoke.