conflagration karasu daylight had come and the two boys headed back to the field. each had an identical mark on his forehead resulting from the falls taken the last time they were in the field if there had been a high enough point for them to look down upon the field, they would have seen the deliberate shape of the trench that had formed in the dry meadow the brothers carried with them a small stepladder and a couple of garden trowels, in search of the items the one had seen during his brief period of entrapment the green and blue jewels embedded deeply in the walls one would go down and dig while the other would make sure that a repeat of the previous situation did not occur the one who had been in the trench jumped down into the hole bracing himself for the impact of his feet against the unusally hard earth. in daylight he could see that this had not been dug from the land but fallen in as there was the same type of dry parched grass on the floor. he looked around and could see what appeared to be signs of where the earth had pulled itself under from the walls. on one hand, his adventurous nature caused him to feel a rush of fascination at what could have caused this, but on the other hand, he was still not too much more than a child and instictively felt the same fear a toddler might have of being alone in the dark he looked about warily as his brother called down to him wanting to know if he had found them yet "no, still looking" he shouted back. he advanced a few steps and fond the spot where the soil appeared to have crumbled more naturally than in any of the other spots and saw them there he ran to the spot and shouted up. "Bingo! buried treasure dead ahead!" his brother ran to the spot and dropped the trowels to him causing him to realize how silly it was to have brought two if he was going to be the only one actually down in he hole digging. he laughed as he picked one up and tried to dig the jewel fee of the wall. he tried to chip at the wall but it gave very little as he hit it, as if it were frozen. careful not to strike the pieces, he picked up the other trowel and decided to work further around the jewels, digging away at the surrounding soil to see if maybe he could crack it and cause them to fall out he had some success and in a few minutes he had bared half of the handles of each and dug a small circular hole around them allowing him to move his hands fairly well. he saw the back legs and feet of the warrior carved on the handles and his mind raced. he tried to yank he handles free but didnot apply all his strength for fear he would snap them he called up to his brother and told him to run and get the hatchet from the toolshed and maybe the firecrackers as his brother ran off to get the necessary supplies he sat down and thought: "finally, those damn things will do us some good instead of getting us in trouble," recalling the saucepan incident that had gotten them kicked out of their favorite class during the point where the teacher let them put what they had learned recently to good use they took their mothers box of matches and soaked them long enough to remove the heads in a moist pulp. they waited for their father to misplace a pack of cigarettes as he was often prone to doing and figured out a way to use the cigarettes as casings. they read up on how some bomb makers made explosives from a mixture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel and took a small amount of the fertilizer from the tool shed, deciding that they would have to improvise the diesel fuel part with a bit of used cooking oil and gasoline (as well as a few other various ingredients they thougt might help it along) from the lawnmower. they took the greasy fertilizer paste and carefully stuffed it into the cigarette casing all the way down to the filter, they followed with a small layer of the wet matchhead paste as a cap and stuffed the segments from the wick of the antique hurricane lamp that hung neglected in the garage figuring that the worst ot would do was flare up and smoke out, the science teacher laughed as they laid the doctored cigarette on the lab table and placed a cast off saucepan they had found in the alley while taking out the trash on top of it. they lit the makeshift fuse and told everyone to cover their ears as they hid behind the next lab table the force of the blast from the miniature bomb blew a crater in the table and hurled the saucepan just high enough to ruin a light fixture in the classroom the science teacher was duly impressed but the principal and the custodian were incensed and so they were barred from the science class for the remainder of the year (which was only a couple of weeks anyway as it was already late may) they surrendered a portion of the product to their father and the principal but kept five of them planning to save them for the 4th of July they cased them in red modeling clay to make them look like miniature sticks of tnt and hid them in the old metal crayon box iin their closet as he laughed about it, his brother came running back with the supplies he had asked for, lowering the items more gently owing to their more dangerous nature than the simple trowels he picked up the hatchet and gouged out some more of the hard soil around the daggers before creating a small niche where he could lay a couple of the fire crackers he picked up the pack of matches that his brother dropped in after handing him the rest of the tools, he placed a coule of them end to end next to the firecrackers to buy himself a few extra seconds and lit the first one, running away from it as he did. "Fire in the hole!" he shouted to his twin as he hit the floor. a few seconds passed and nothing happened... just as he was about to get up and move toward the dig and try again there was a cracking sound the crack was interuppted by a whooshing sound as a disoproportionaltely large and hot fireball shot from the place where he had laid the firecrackers and spewed broken chunks of the earthen wall the daggers lay on the floor in the dry grass of the trench floor which was on fire in some spots. he called to his brother to throw down the ladder as he flung the turquoise handled blade up out of the trench "whoa! cool" he shouted down as he lowered the ladder down. the other twin did not see that the second firecracker had not lit, but been blown free and now lay next to a small patch of burning grass on the floor, as he handed the last of the tools to his brother and reached down to pick up the jade hadled dagger, the second one blew even more concussively, and violently shook the ladder, causing him to fall off as the grass on the floor and around the lip of the trench ignited the other twin reached down to his brother and tried to get his hand but the distance was too great and as it looked like he could jump to him, his sleeve caught fire and he withdrew from the hole trying to put it out. he tried to run from the fire watching as it spread through the trench and the field above. he called to his brother. "RUN! get out of here, get help but get out of here" leaving everything but the dagger, the other boy ran as fast as he could crying out for help as he ran he was trapped between a dead and an inferno. he clutched the dagger in his hand and ran toward the head of the snake the ground shook and suddenly the hole seemed even deeper as the fire came closer he heard a rumbling sound and felt a very large hard, rough hand cover his face to stifle his scream as it dragged him seemingly through the earthen wall it would be his last memory for quite some time 010802 ... wicker man neat. is there more? 011009 ... silentbob up at the place 011010 what's it to you? who go blather from