“
It’ll be the best decoration ever,”
she said. “What jewelry did Ginger have on her island? The movie
star woman.”
He tried remembering. The rich old lady had
strings of pearls, but he couldn’t picture a necklace accenting any
of the Hollywood starlet’s low cut evening gowns. “Earrings, I
think. She sometimes wore diamond earrings.”
“
Okay, let’s find diamond earrings.
Then we’re done.” Tiki tiptoed across the round rocks to deposit
the doll in his bucket. “I can wear them when the soldiers
come.”
“
Stop saying that stuff. You can’t
go with them,” he said, but she acted like she didn’t hear, or
didn’t care, walking out to where the water splashed the lava rocks
to continue her search.
The east side of the island was leeward facing
and had no reef. The black earth dropped immediately away at
water’s edge, the ocean steadily undulating rather than forming
waves.
“
That’s where Mama went.” She
pointed out over the water. “Her body, anyway. It’s where the dead
start their journey. They put them right here, then the Sea God
swallows them when they float out a little.”
“
What if I build a boat? One like
the fishermen have, or a bamboo raft. You could help me. You tie
better knots than I ever could.”
“
To go to Vermont?”
“
We could make it to the shipping
lanes, where a bigger boat would take us to Vermont. You could ride
in an airplane.”
She looked at the sky, shaking her head. “Manu
would know.”
“
It would be a secret. We’d hide it
until it was ready to go.”
“
You see all the birds? They watch.
They see everything.”
Dash looked back at the jungle. The treetops
were again filled with small birds that hopped and preened.
Seagulls picked at things along the tide line, patrolled the sky
above.
“
If the Bird God didn’t tell him,
then another god would,” she whispered.
He thought for a minute. “We’d leave when it’s
darkest. There’s more than a week until the new moon.”
“
The black face moon,” she
corrected.
“
Most birds will be asleep. And the
others won’t be able to see us. What if you could have beautiful
clothes and a kitten in Vermont? You’d see the same moon and stars
from your bed every night.”
She squatted, picked a broken clam shell from
between the rocks. “I’d be too lonely in Vermont, even with a
kitten.”
“
No, you’d be with me. I’ll take
care of you. You’ll be in a safe place where no one will hurt you.
You’ll go to a real school and have new friends. I’ll sign you up
for soccer. You’ll play just like here.”
She shook her head as she dropped the shell
into his bucket. “You already asked your god to be saved.
Everything will be okay.”
“
I’m about to be pushed into the
volcano and you’re going to be taken from your people. No little
book is going to stop it from happening.”
“
You need to have faith,” she said.
“Like I have faith I’ll be chosen as pretty enough.”
He stooped to pick up another toothbrush that
had also survived an overseas journey, although sun-bleached and
missing half its bristles. He dropped it into the bucket. “You
aren’t going with them. We’ll figure something out.”
Tiki lifted a dead crab, held it out and
jiggled it to make its legs dance. “I’m going to name my kitten
Ginger, even if she isn’t orange.”
T
iki begged him to return to
the village with her, something to do with the legless doll she’d
found. She remained cryptic, and he couldn’t handle surprises.
Every noise made him jump. They would come for him soon if he
didn’t find a way out. Thatching together a raft was a thing of
stories, not something a sane man considered when sitting on a
beach at eye level to the open ocean. It was suicide.
“
They will be kinder,” she promised,
and took four of his fingers to squeeze. “You are needed. You will
save them. Manu warned that anybody who hurts you will also be
given to the Volcano God.”
Misery loves company.
“
I will protect you,” she told the
man who’d already lost a fight with an unarmed little boy, the man
who’d scurried away in the dark, a drunken eunuch with soiled
underwear balled in one hand.
“
It’s important to me,” she said,
and the coward relented.
Tiki pulled free when they reached the edge of
the compound, sprinting to a tree that had appeared out of nowhere.
As he warily followed, he saw the tree was adorned with shells and
chunks of coral, but was currently overlooked by villagers going
about late day chores. It was a relief to also be
unnoticed.
He walked slowly around the tree while Tiki
searched out a spot to put her ornament. She pulled down a piece of
vine being used for a garland and spliced it into a thin strip to
fashion a noose. She hung the Barbie torso from the highest empty
spot within reach, then stepped back and turned to him with an
enormous grin.
He nodded. “It’s perfect.”
The tree was a twenty-foot bamboo pole plunged
into the earth in the village center. Smaller shoots had been
driven through the upright tube every foot or so, similar to the
artificial Christmas tree Dash’s father had kept year ’round in his
store. Ferns were woven into each level of branches, adding girth,
and delicate flower petals were strung and looped from top to
bottom. Ornaments were hung by woven grass blades, their weight
pulling at the branches, making them droop.
White shells the size of dinner plates were
scattered beneath. Shiny new ones at the perimeter, nearest their
feet; older, dull shells, some badly chipped, were at the center.
Tiki knelt and began lifting the half shells, shaking her head each
time until she found the one she was seeking. She handed it to
Dash, who tilted its concave interior toward the fire. An image of
a woman’s face was scratched into the surface.
“
Mama,” was all she said before
taking it back.
“
Is this Christmas?”
“
It’s Yule,” she said, stepping back
and turning her face to him. “It comes on the same night every
year.”
Instead of a star, the tree was topped by what
first appeared to be a chunk of bleached driftwood. But when a
nearby cook fire flared, he could see the bleached eye sockets and
nasal cavity. The human skull was missing its lower jaw.
“
Who is it?”
She frowned, as though the answer was obvious.
“It’s Jesus.”
“
Who told you that?”
She only shrugged, and before he could press
her, a woman came up from behind and put a torch to the first of
four wood piles set in vertical, teepee shapes. By the time she
reached the last, the entire population had converged around the
tree, shadows cast down over the shell memorials. Tiki crowded him
as the heat rose, flames licking into the night sky.
Rising panic and claustrophobia grew nearly
unbearable. He wanted to bolt, make a break for the tunnel, but the
circle was at least ten souls deep, a mass of brown flesh and
flashing eyes and teeth. The fire crackled, threw sparks into the
night. He would be dead soon, murdered by these savages. Their eyes
were everywhere, boring into him through gaps in the tree, drilling
into his temples from each side, into the back of his
head.
He wanted to scream, and for a brief instant
believed the high-pitched sound was coming from inside his own
frail body. It was the women’s voices first, and then the
children’s, a song in tribal language from a hundred mouths. The
tune was familiar, a Christmas carol.
His heart slowed, and Tiki again took hold of
his fingers, watching him from the shadows.
“
Pa rumpa pump um,” she sang along,
and the men joined in with gusto, their voices so deep the words
seemed to vibrate.
The second song was an unknown mishmash, but
“Let It Snow” was definitely third. And then the villagers with
their backs to the volcano slowly turned, heads rising, voices
lifting toward the orange eye reflecting in the low clouds. When
the eye blinked, some of the carolers lost their place.
The people swayed, clapping in rhythm, although
Dash didn’t feel there was much joy until it began snowing. Voices
reached higher pitches as the space between the first wafting
flakes began to fill in. His eyes began tearing and then burning,
and he rubbed hard with his free hand, a horrible bitter taste on
his tongue. He closed his mouth when he realized it was ash. It was
accumulating on the Yule tree, pushing down the already burdened
branches; the coating on top of Jesus’ skull was a gray
toupee.
Tiki tugged his fingers, pulled him through the
crowd now performing “Winter Wonderland” in their own language,
squeezing sideways out into the cool air toward the unmarried
women’s huts. Except for the end units, all shared outside walls.
Row houses
, he thought, as they left the light of the fires.
She took him to the farthest structure, where the odor from the
outhouse and pig corral mixed with the low hanging smoke. She let
his hand go and ran inside. He could see his feet had turned gray
when she emerged from her small home with a fat candle in one hand,
a cup in the other.
“
Men can’t go inside the girl huts
or they have to get married. It’s a silly rule.” She carefully
placed the candle on the ground between them to brush ash from two
sitting logs. “Here’s some water. The ash burns your
throat.”
“
I thought it was
snowing.”
He drank half and handed back the
cup.
“
Stay here while I find
something.”
She ducked back inside, and he listened to her
rummage in the dark. The ash made his body itch, had attached
itself to his oiliest spots. He thought how good a plunge in the
swimming hole would feel, but resisted any temptation at the
thought of all the terrible things gliding through the ebony
water.
He could see her smiling face when she came
through the opening with hands cupped together, eyes bright from
the distant flames, hair frosted from ash. Sweat ran from her
collar bones down to her belly in shiny lines.
“
What is it?”
“
Something I made.” She held out her
hands. “It’s a Yule present for you.”
“
I’m so sorry. I should have found
you something.” He looked down at his empty hands, then guiltily at
hers. He was almost crying and didn’t know why. “I would have made
you a gift. I would have found diamond earrings.”
“
It doesn’t matter.” She rocked from
foot to foot, anxious for him to take the gift.
“
Thank you.” He lifted a hand and
she let the present drop into his palm, then covered her mouth to
stifle a squeal.
It was the size and shape of a quarter, and he
took it between his thumb and index finger to hold it near the
flickering candle. The molded amber disk, probably formed from tree
sap, was translucent against the flame. Trapped inside were a dozen
white crescent moons.
“
That’s me,” she whispered. “I got
the idea from the missioners. They made us eat the body of Christ,
but it was only little pieces of stale bread. Eating people is bad,
even if the person is a god.”
“
It’s beautiful.”
“
Those are my fingernails
inside.”
“
I thought so.”
She sat next to him and leaned hard, as they
listened to the carolers’ version of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
She yawned and covered her mouth.
He rubbed the smooth disk with his fingertips.
“I’ll keep it forever.”
D
ash sat rubbing the smooth
disk, the sun setting on another day with no escape plan. Willy
hummed a Christmas carol from the window seat.
“
There’s never a ship out there,”
Dash said.
Willy began drumming his fingers. “Only takes
one, right? Gotta look at the glass half full.”
“
I’m a lonely man with
malfunctioning parts. A man in the blue Pacific without a whole lot
of options.”
“
These seats are
sublime.”
Dash turned to look at him. “You just stole
that out of my head. It was a word Sarah used all the time. She
said it about everything, even about dopey things, like ice
cream.”
“
I love ice cream.”
“
You’ve never eaten ice cream,” said
Dash.
“
No, but I know it’s sublime. What’s
your point?”
Dash shrugged. “The girl thinks I’m protected
from the Volcano God, delivered from sin with a baptism by spiders.
They’ll throw me in to save her people, and I’ll swim out of the
fire and brush myself off.”
“
Kids, nowadays.” Willy lifted one
giant foot at a time into the tide pool. Tiny trapped creatures
fled to the far side. He reached up and pushed an imaginary button
for the reading light, his own flesh bulb brightening.
“
Really, Willy?” He felt violated by
Willy’s mind reading, which produced a physical sensation that ran
across the inside of his skull. A tickling, as though a feather
lightly stroked his brain’s gray matter. It was unnerving, and a
little stomach turning. Dash scratched his forehead. “You know that
was my father’s favorite phrase. ‘Kids, nowadays.’ The antique
business doesn’t have a place for kids. Tourists would come into
the shop and their kids would head straight for anything fragile,
or at least that’s how he saw it. They’d flick lamps on and off,
and he’d go crazy.”