Dash in the Blue Pacific (15 page)

“
Don’t grab the vines,” Tiki warned,
and must have seen the puzzled look on his face. “They might be
something that bites.”

“
I won’t touch anything.”

They maneuvered through a maze of deadfall for
the first hundred yards. The sound level rose with each step—birds
angry at the intrusion, and darting tree creatures that whooped and
howled, some stopping to hurl broken twigs.

“
It’s not too much farther,” she
said, allowing him to catch his breath. Even she was coated in
sweat, little dead bugs dotting her body like black pepper. She
squatted with elbows on her knees, while he swatted the
air.

The jungle continued moving when you stood
still. Every inch of plant and rock surface had an ant or
beetle-like insect performing choreographed labor. The more
dangerous creatures, the brightly colored spiders with hinged legs
perhaps designed for jumping, lurked higher up, building sticky
webs at a white man’s eye level. The ground was carpeted with
spotted leaves and ancient ferns, all hosting colonies of smaller
life forms. Exploring bamboo shoots were alien fingers pointing the
way home.

“
Come.”

She led them deeper into the interior, slashing
with bare feet and tiny hands. She climbed over the sturdy vines
and plowed through the weak. The ground tilted upward as they
neared the base of the volcano’s cone, glimpses of sun on its brown
face appearing through breaks in the canopy.

They came to a spot that had once been cleared,
trees chopped to stumps, broken lava stacked knee high in a
perimeter wall. He brushed bugs from a log and risked sitting,
breathing air so thick it was practically warm liquid. The flying
swarms were scarcer here, and he assumed it was due to the pungent
flowering bushes left to flourish within the black wall.

“
This is what you wanted me to see?”
He tried to make sense of the manmade landscape. In front of them
was a raised area topped with a flat rock the shape and size of a
twin mattress. It was a stage of sorts, probably something to do
with religion and gods. Dash had a vision of a more hands-on brand
of human sacrifice, and the savages who chanted for the blood to
hurry up and flow.

“
It’s where the missioners explained
how there is only one god. They named it God’s House. There was a
path to the village.” She pointed to a solid wall of greenery, then
began rooting through an old pile of cut bamboo shafts at her feet.
She chose a pair of fat, foot-long sections and held one out. “The
Volcano covered the path with rocks to block the way. Manu said it
was a warning for our people not to come here. The missioners were
angry.”

He took the bamboo, held it like a knife. “It’s
pretty spooky, but so are the churches back home.” He looked
through the treetops to where the volcano continued spewing a line
of smoke.

“
Our gods like it here. You can feel
them close by, especially during the black face moon. And sometimes
you hear a voice which sounds like all the people from a hundred
villages speaking at once. I was scared the first time. Help me
dig.” She knelt below the stone altar and jabbed the bamboo into
the soft earth, as he came beside her. “It’s not deep, but the
roots will try to hold on.”

He dug in, easily pulling away the rich dirt
for the first few inches, but then struck the network of
subterranean bamboo runners. “What are we looking for?”

“
A box.” She maneuvered her stick as
a crowbar against the stubborn roots. “It’s right here.”

He tugged tendrils that came free like buried
rope. She dropped her tool to scoop the dirt from the top of a
metal container the size of a cigar box, lifting it from the
shallow hole. She wiped her hands on the sides of her underpants
and worked the latch, forcing hinges that made a sound like one of
the jungle birds. Inside was a lump of clear plastic she began
carefully unraveling. Protected from moisture was a small
leather-bound book, maybe four inches tall and about half as thick.
She brushed bits of dirt and her own sweat from the cover that read
Holy Bible.

Dash was deflated. He sat back, realizing he’d
been hoping for some sort of magic weapon. A glowing lightsaber,
perhaps, or a Harry Potter wand. The hole had been too small for a
time machine, but if only Gollum’s precious ring had been buried
here to protect one heathen from a miserable, fiery end. He looked
up at the canopy, a torn green tent fed by death and decay. Birds
zipped from side to side, and giant white moths flew in slow
meandering paths.

“
It’s only a Bible,” he finally
said.

She held the small book out with both dirty
hands. “The missioners said it saved people. It can save
you
, let your god know where you are, and that you need
help.”

“
It’s only paper and ink. It has a
fancy cover with nothing but words inside.”

“
They used it to baptize our people.
They talked to your god, prayed to him every day. They said being
saved meant you were delivered from sin and death.” She lowered her
voice to a whisper. “If it keeps you safe from the devil, then it
will protect you from the Volcano.”

He shook his head. “It’s not a magic book. And
they needed water to baptize people. Lots of water. Maybe even a
river. There’s no water here, Tiki. There’s just sweat and blood.
Were missioners on the island when the soldiers took
girls?”

“
Sometimes, but the missioners never
interfered. They came here to be with their god until the soldiers
left. They said the soldiers were punishment for our sins.” She
paused to get her words right. “God didn’t cause Mama to be killed,
sinning did. And not being saved. I think having one god makes
things more complicated.”

She reached out and pressed the Bible into his
hands. “Hold this until I’m ready.”

“
What are you doing?”

“
You must be quiet and not move. Sit
here.” She stood and patted the first chiseled step that led to the
altar, then climbed up onto the huge flat rock and swept away dead
leaves and brown, skeleton-like fronds. She sat and brushed her
hands, then took a few deep breaths. She held out one hand and
wiggled her fingers at him.

“
What?”

“
The Bible.”

He put the book in her hand, and she clutched
it to her chest. She made the sign of the cross, then put the same
index finger to her lips to keep him quiet. She lowered onto her
back and dropped both arms to her sides, the Bible lying there as
if weighing her down.

He listened to the birds talk and small animals
rattle through the undergrowth. He watched the pretty little girl’s
chest rise and fall under the leather-bound book, her brown eyes
fluttering closed just as a dragonfly came in for a closer look and
then zoomed away. Minutes passed, and he had to stifle a yawn,
thinking she might have fallen asleep. The girl seemed at peace, a
child in a comfortable place about to dream.

The leaves scattered about the stone’s
perimeter began to move. And as if Tiki knew he was about to call
or reach out to her, she slowly raised one hand to him, waved her
fingers for him to stop. The swarm of a million tiny creatures,
black spiders no bigger than grains of rice, emerged from every
direction and scrambled over themselves to reach her smooth skin.
The spiders came up from the heels of her feet and from her pointy
elbows. They surged along the tops of her fingers, tumbling over
her knuckles, sprinting past her wrist for the long stretch of her
forearm. Her hair began to sway and shift as if it had come to
life, the tight curls a twisting roller-coaster path for countless
scurrying legs. A palpitating black shade was lowered over her
face; a wriggling mask out of some fever-induced
nightmare.

Dash wanted to go to her, brush them away, but
he held back because this is what she’d wanted him to see. In only
two or three minutes, nearly every bit on her skin was coated in a
throbbing layer of tiny spiders that seemed to be turning in
circles, searching for something once they’d found their place on
her body. Even her underpants had gone black as they raced across
and under the thin material. The Bible had also come alive; it
moved and swayed, threatened to slide off her body as though
balanced on ball bearings.

A few more minutes and the process reversed
course. Sections of Tiki’s skin reappeared as the spiders finished
their crazy waltz and flooded back down her arms and legs. The
spiders rushed from her chest and face, poured from her hair out
onto the stone, where they disappeared into the carpet of leaves.
Under the dappled sunlight, he could see the girl’s skin had been
left perfectly clean. The specs of dead flies, the sweat-streaked
mud, and every bit of oil in her hair had been consumed by the
swarm that streamed off her fingertips and down her ankles like
black sludge.

She opened her eyes and sat up, smiling. She
brushed her hands together. “It’s kind of icky when they go up your
nose.” She shook out her hair, then rubbed her face. She turned and
looked at him closely. “Now it’s your turn to be saved.”

T
hey’d been scavenging the
eastern beach for an hour when Tiki let out a squeal that chased a
hundred birds from a cluster of nearby trees, the brown-winged
creatures careening through the air as though navigating an
invisible maze. She hopped up and down, bird-like herself, and
waved a pink toothbrush above her head.

She stopped to hold it out, turning it over in
her hands. “Can you believe it? It’s so pretty. I wished for one
like this.”

“
It looks brand new.”

“
The missioners gave us ugly black
ones.” She ran a finger through the bristles. “The hair was no good
and fell out. This is special.”

She smiled, then stepped up on the crown of a
large rock and began brushing her teeth, turning a slow circle to
scan for more goodies.

It was morning, and Tiki had pulled him away
from a dream in which he stood poised at the very end of a diving
board, toes curled over the edge, judges in all-white off to one
side with score cards at the ready. The Olympic-size pool was
filled with millions of tiny spiders instead of water, but they
weren’t his concern. Spiders were a good thing, in fact, since they
didn’t cause a splash even with a less than perfect entry. It was
the chanting crowd that was making him sweat. “Burn up slow, burn
up slow,” they sang with increasing fervor. And the dreaming Dash
knew they meant for him to suffer a long, agonizing death in the
volcano. They were willing him to miss the fire, land among the
scorched rocks to languish in a slow broil. He’d woken with the
image of the cards held high over the judges’ heads, and he quickly
tried adding the numbers before they dropped their hands. He was
certain his score was how many days he had to live.

He held his bucket half-filled with pieces of
civilization that might have traveled from cities for which the
girl was destined when the soldiers returned. He’d hoped for
containers to store water, recalling the bleak news reports of
islands made up of plastic bottles floating across the Pacific,
slowly disintegrating into pieces small enough for aquatic life to
eat and thus becoming part of the food chain. But the bottles he
found were torn and useless, except as souvenirs. He picked up each
fragment, brushed away the sand. If only their labels—with numbers
and weights and words—had survived, perhaps some generic warning to
prove he was worth keeping alive.

Tiki scoured the rocky beach, head down,
picking at tangled seaweed clumps. “I want to find a special
decoration for tonight, something better than a toothbrush or
coral. All the kids find stupid coral.”

She squealed again before he could ask what she
was decorating. She dropped the pieces she’d found and ran, feet
kicking a spray of sand. He followed, stealing a glance in the
opposite direction, half expecting a ghost, or maybe a giant man
with a fish where its head should be.

She stopped and fell to her knees, allowing him
to catch up to her. “What is it?”

“
A little woman,” she said, her
voice awe filled and breathless. “A fairy princess.”

He watched her carefully lift a blonde Barbie
doll that was missing both legs, but otherwise intact. It had blue
eyes, and lips the same color as the nipples of last night’s
dancers.

“
It’s Barbie,” he said.

“
I get to name her,” she snapped. “I
found her.”

She smoothed the doll’s hair with her palm,
licked her thumb and cleaned smudges from the mounds of its bare
chest.

Dash stood, not wanting to argue. She also got
to her feet, held the doll out by its tiny hands. He could see her
thinking hard then break into a smile.

“
Her name is Sarah, like the girl
you wanted to marry. She’ll be my decoration.”

He laughed. “Sarah would love that. It’s a
wonderful tribute.”

“
What’s a tribute?”

He scratched his head. “It’s doing something to
show respect for someone.”

Tiki nodded that she understood. “Like how Manu
is giving you to the Volcano?”

Joy from the treasure hunt drained away. “Are
we done now?”