"Gods of the universe, forgive me," he whispered and turned to take her throat in his hands.
Light flashed across his face. It was Dorothy's mirror. She held it, smoothing her sun-burnished hair. A thought burst into his consciousness like a butterfly from a cocoon.
He jumped over and snatched the mirror from her hand, ripped his watch from his wrist and flipped off the crystal with his thumbnail, letting the watch drop to the ground.
"What're you doing!"
He didn't bother to answer. His pulse was liquid fire as he held the watch crystal close to the glass wall with one hand and focused the rays of the sun into it with the mirror. A thin curl of smoke rose from the jungle across the field. Then where the smoke had been an orange flame licked up from the dry grass. He dropped the mirror and the watch crystal and grabbed Dorothy close to him in the center of their prison, holding her tightly.
"Why! Why!"
"You'll see!"
Lashed by the wind, the fire spread like a flood. A blast of smoke engulfed the glass obscuring their view with its swirling whiteness. Then bits of flaming ashes dotted the smoke as the flames found new fuel in the rotted trees. Standing there, holding Dorothy in his arms, Norman saw the glass around them slowly darken. Quickly, as the wind brought the increasing heat upon them, the glass turned black and all he could see was the wild smoke rolling across the hole at the top of their stifling cage. He felt Dorothy coughing. Heat swam in the blackness about them.
Then almost as suddenly as it had begun, the wind swept the smoke away and Norman tore himself away from Dorothy and sprang to the glass wall. Without waiting till the glass lightened, he ran his hand across its blistering surface. When the thermal quality of the glass permitted the passage of light and the sight of the smoldering forest across the field, Norman was half way up the slick side, climbing like a ladder the bulging ridges that encircled the glass at its invisible seams.