Og—Son of Fire

by Irving Crump

Suddenly the hissing grew more intense and the air very much hotter. At the same time loomed through the steam a vast stretch of smooth, black, polished rock that took queer forms as if it were so much soft dough that had been poured over the ground and allowed to harden. All about its edges, where it came into contact with the ground, jets of steam were spurting out, each hissing and curling like huge evanescent reptiles. The hairy boy gasped and drew back. Then he stopped and stood staring, club upraised. He was alert and ready for danger, but he was frankly curious too. He could not understand why this black rock that never had been in the valley before could give out such intense heat and cause the snaky spouts of steam that hissed so ominously and lingered in the air like a swamp fog. He crouched on his haunches and stared for a long, long time while the wolf-dog cubs, crowding close to him, looked at the black rock curiously while their tongues lolled because of the intense heat.

Finally the hairy boy got to his feet. His curiosity was mastering his fear and suspicion. He began to approach the edge of the hot lava bed very cautiously. As he advanced the heat grew more intense until his hairy coat dripped perspiration and water from the condensing steam. Closer and closer he moved until he was almost within touching distance of a big black globule of the cooling lava that was detached from the main mass. Then he reached out with the stick he still carried and tapped it curiously.

A strange thing happened. Each time the stick came into contact with the hot rock a wisp of blue smoke went up as the heat scorched the wood. This was puzzling to the hairy boy. Why did this happen? He tapped and tapped again; then he examined the scorched end of the stick and felt of it. It was very hot. It burned him. He grunted and pulled his hand away. Then he sat and thought for a long time until his slow brain reasoned that the rock burned the stick, and the heat that the stick carried from the rock burned his hand. The stick carried the heat from the rock for a little while; then the heat mysteriously disappeared.

Still he sat and thought and slowly a question took shape in his mind. If the stick carried the heat for a little while just by tapping on the rock, why wouldn’t it carry heat for a long while if he held the stick onto the rock a long time? Perhaps it would, then that would be a way of taking with him the good of the Fire Demon and leaving behind the bad. He wanted the heat the Fire Demon could give but he wanted to leave behind the power it had to kill and destroy.

He decided to try an experiment. He reached forth and held the stick against the rock. Slowly the blue smoke appeared. It grew and grew in quantity; then suddenly a tiny red flame began to lick at the end of the stick, for the lava had set the pitchy knot on fire.

When the hairy boy saw the flame he grunted in terror, dropped the stick and leaped backward in fear. Of course, the tiny flame went out. The boy sat and watched the stick for a long time, and his brain was so busy that his round head positively hurt. What were these sinister red and orange things that had licked at the end of the stick? Were they the fingers of the Fire Monster? If they were, why had they not held the stick and consumed it?

He picked up the stick and tried the experiment again. Once more the flames appeared, but went out when the stick was dropped. Again he tried, but this time he held the stick longer. While he held it he found that the flames waxed stronger and grew bigger. He studied them curiously, holding the stick at arm’s length, and, while he watched, he wondered whether, after all, these flames were not the beneficial thing that the Fire Monster had to give him. They were hot. He could carry them by carrying the stick away. Yet he could kill them by merely dropping the stick or tapping it on the ground. He tried it again and again, and each time he lit the stick and put it out he sensed a feeling of elation within him. He felt as if he were doing a masterly thing. He could awaken or conquer the Fire Monster at will. It was wonderful; almost a triumph. The hairy boy felt as proud as he had the day he had leaped out from behind a rock and slain his first wild goat with a stone hammer that he had borrowed from his father’s cave.

He was so elated by the knowledge that he was master of the fire that he began to dance up and down in a peculiarly weird sort of a way and drum on his chest with his fists, chanting the while, “Og, og, og, og, og,” which to him meant “I am a great man now; no longer a boy. I am the conqueror; Og, the conqueror.” And thus it was that he gave himself a name, after the manner of the hairy folk. Og he was to be thenceforth, for he felt that he had won this name, for among the hairy men only the people who had achieved something notable were entitled to a name.

After that for almost an hour he amused himself by lighting and putting out the stick and slowly a sense of self-confidence grew within him, and he no longer had the awe and fear of the Fire Demon. Indeed he held the burning end of the stick quite close to him, watched the flames curiously, felt their heat, broke off slivers from the other end of the club, lit them and knocked them out. Once he breathed hard upon one of these splinters and it went out. Here was a discovery, indeed. With his very breath he could kill the Fire Demon. He blew hard upon the flames that curled about the pitchy knots of his club to prove it and they went out too. After that he lost all fear of the Fire Monster. Anything so weak that he could conquer it with his breath was not at all to be feared.

He held the stick to the lava to light it again, his mind intent on what he was doing; indeed he had been so fascinated with his experiments that he had forgotten everything, even the wolf-dog cubs. He had not noticed how the hair on the back of their necks bristled or how they cowered with tails between their legs while they looked furtively into the swirling steam behind them. In truth, the first that he realized that anything was amiss was when both cubs with a frightened snarl tried to crowd between his legs for protection. At the same moment a snort sounded behind him, followed by a strident trumpeting.