* * *
Tiki was waiting in his hut. She sat folded up
in the back corner as if hiding. Her voice was tiny. “I’m sorry for
ruining your pile of wood.”
He shuffled across the bamboo floor hunched
from the low roof to sit facing her. Her hair had been chopped off
in spots, a lopsided cut that looked self-inflicted. “I’m sorry I
left you.”
“
I wasn’t pretty enough to go with
the soldiers. I was only pretty enough to be hurt.”
“
Being pretty had nothing to do with
it. Those men are monsters. Evil.” It killed him to look at her.
She’d been crying, mud-stained tears tracing vertical lines down
her cheeks. He wanted to touch her face, but his hands were a mess.
He put them palm up on her knees, and she reached down to feel his
damaged skin. She drew soft outlines with the tip of one index
finger, sketching paths over the rough texture. He could feel her
wounds through that finger, but only the very surface.
“
I think I want to die,” she
said.
And then he was weeping, taking back his hands
to hide his face. “I wish I could make everything better,” he said.
“I tried to find help because I didn’t know what else to do. I
couldn’t protect you. I lost your gift. It fell in the
water.”
She tugged his hands back down and held on.
“When I dream that I’m with Mama and then wake up, I get mad at the
gods. I get so mad that I scream how much I hate them. Sometimes
it’s hard to believe in anything.”
He leaned forward and she let go of his wrists,
then practically knocked him over, throwing her arms around his
neck and clinging. He hugged her back, careful not to squeeze too
hard. They rocked that way until her body stopped hitching. He let
her go, and she sat back to wipe her face.
“
Maybe we can each half-believe,” he
said. “Together, it’ll be like a single person who’s one of those
Holy-Rolling Bible thumpers.”
She smiled. “What’s a bible
thumper?”
He had to pause. “Someone who believes so hard
that they don’t tolerate anyone who thinks differently.”
“
Like the missioners,” she said,
“and like Manu, I guess.”
Dash didn’t say that murdering your child put
you right at the top of the zealot category, whether you were on a
remote South Pacific island or on some cult ranch in rural
Texas.
“
It’s one more night until the black
face moon,” she said, looking beyond him to the hut’s
opening.
He quickly counted the eight days they had to
live. “We just call it a ‘new’ moon. It’s the opposite of a full
moon.”
“
New moon,” she repeated. “That
sounds nice. Things are new because the moon goes
black?”
“
I learned it in school, but don’t
remember. It means the moon’s phase is starting over, or maybe just
ended.”
“
We call it a black face moon
because everything is hidden in the dark, and you can’t see a face,
even if you are looking right at it. It’s when they come to be near
us.”
“
Who comes?”
“
The gods,” she said. “They walk in
the jungle all around, but only when it’s darkest. They want to be
close to us and feel our love. But they know how scared we’d be if
we could see them.”
He thought of Willy’s encounter with the boys
along the shoreline. “That doesn’t sound like something Manu told
you.”
“
No, Mama told me when I was little.
I remember, though. I remember everything she told me, even though
I was a baby. You’re lucky to still have a mama. You don’t have a
papa, though.”
“
No, he died when I was in
school.”
“
How did he die?”
“
His heart was sick. One minute he
was alive, and then he wasn’t.”
“
Were you sad, too? I cried until
the village was flooded by little girl tears when Mama was killed.
That’s what the grownups said.”
“
I was sad for my mom, but I was
mostly sad about things that never happened. And when he died there
was no chance for them to ever happen. Does that make
sense?”
“
I guess.”
“
My father didn’t play with me. I
was jealous of boys whose dads would kick balls with them and throw
a football in their yard. Or go skiing with them.”
“
Skiing?”
“
It’s like sledding from the Yule
songs, only you stand on plastic boards and slide down a mountain
on snow.”
“
I love snow,” she said, nodding,
and he thought of the ash that fell on their ceremony once a
year.
“
Me too.”
“
I still want Mama to brush my hair,
and put it in braids.” She fingered her curls. “What did your papa
do instead of playing?”
“
He worked in his antique shop.
That’s a place that sells old furniture and things. He worked every
day, all day long, even in the slow season when my mother could
manage by herself. He went to flea markets and garage sales on
weekends. That’s where people put old belongings they don’t want
out in front of their houses to sell.”
“
Your papa took their
garbage?”
“
Yeah, pretty much.”
“
I’d rather play with a ball than
garbage.”
“
It was a treasure hunt,” he said.
“Like when we hunted for things on the beach. He always talked
about finding a painting from a famous artist. Or coming across
priceless jewelry.”
“
Things people put in their garbage
by mistake?”
“
Yes, that’s right.”
“
You shouldn’t keep stuff like that.
You should tell the people what they did wrong. They’d be happy
that you found it and gave it back.”
“
You’re right,” he said. “Things are
different where I’m from. Some are worse, some are
better.”
She looked up at him. “Your people would never
throw anybody into a volcano.”
“
There aren’t volcanoes anywhere
near where I’m from,” he said, but figured there were plenty of
gangs and mobsters who would happily take advantage of any
volcanoes popping up near metro hubs. “Most of my people believe in
very different things.”
She shook her head. “But you stopped believing
in anything.”
He smiled, thinking again of Willy and the boys
he’d frightened so badly. “My father used to say that seeing is
believing. It’s why he didn’t believe in God.”
“
Okay,” she said. “Then I have
something to show you. But you’re going to have to be really,
really quiet, or they won’t come.”
D
ash woke from a dream of
oiled dancing women when something began tapping his forehead and
then squeezed his nostrils shut.
“
Shhhh.” Tiki let her fingers slide
from his face. “Don’t make noise. We have to be more quiet than
ever.”
As he rose to his feet, the wooden floor
creaked as he’d never heard, the thatched grass asking questions
when it brushed his hair. The stone slabs rocked the earth with
tiny landslides that might have filled the mouths of snoring guards
curled up on their mats. They tiptoed over crushed shells and
through ash, swept into piles. The last coal from a dying fire
blinked twice and stayed black.
She led him away without fire or moon for
light, the stars no longer able to penetrate the volcanic fog. The
only sound was the whispered counting of her steps in the
pitch-black darkness, something she’d practiced in daylight. He
held her hand, trusted where she took him despite his fear of what
might be inches away.
She brought them toward a point of light
hovering low to the ground. She pulled the candle from its shallow
resting place and tugged him along a path. The flame was held high,
a beacon dripping wax over her wrist. They skirted the edge of the
clearing where the bees slept, Dash walking extra softly to avoid
crushing any scouts and provoking a new attack. They pressed on,
into the wide taro field, stalks too narrow to support elephant ear
leaves that were perked up to hear distant lions.
They ducked beneath leaning trees and hurried
through silky webs that ignited in bursts, and the flame worried
him. The farther they made their way along what was more an animal
trail than human path, the more trapped they’d be if the candle
went out.
He sensed the expedition’s vital nature and
didn’t want to spoil her secret mission with his worries, even
though he could barely take his eyes from the fragile
flame.
She handed him the candle when necessary. When
she needed both hands to climb over a set of downed palms, the
rotted wood teeming with shiny black bugs, some flashing oversized
pincers resembling the letter C. He carefully returned the candle
and followed, mindful of where he put each bare hand and foot. They
startled dozens of rats, which meant the biggest snakes would be
out hunting.
Tiki hesitated beyond a small patch of open
jungle where newly fallen trees had pulled down a tangle of vines,
had a hard time deciding which way the path continued. The fog was
thinner, allowing a blue glow to wash over the scene. Lit by stars,
the landscape might have been an animal burial ground for enormous
creatures, a maze of twisted rib bones and lifeless
tails.
“
Is there an easier way?” he
asked.
“
Yes, but it’s much longer.” She
walked on, the candle lighting the trail of bent weeds and tracks
of much smaller animals than what would have been ancestors to the
decaying skeletons they climbed through. “This is a
shortcut.”
He followed her back under the canopy, into a
shroud of fat leaves and wispy hanging creepers.
“
How much longer?” He knew he
sounded like a child in the backseat of a car on a road trip, but
the scabs on his legs had torn and the candle lit almost nothing.
The darkness was dizzying, the uneven ground hard on his knees and
back.
“
Shhhh.” She reached back to tug him
forward. The air was hot and noisy, and he could feel them gaining
elevation. “No more talk. We’re getting close.”
“
We’re going up the volcano?” he
whispered, but she didn’t answer.
Another fifty paces and she stopped and turned,
the flame under her face casting stark shadows. He worried about
the drip of sweat on her chin, whether it was big enough to douse
their only light. “Just a little more, but they won’t come if they
hear you. This is our last chance to see them.”
He wanted to ask who
they
were, wanted
to tell her he had no interest in meeting anyone or anything out
here in the jungle, but she began pulling him along like a toy
wagon on rusty wheels.
I have one week to live, and don’t want
to be stranded chest deep in quicksand listening to hungry growls
and circling footsteps
.
The air cooled when she led them through an
opening and back into the open air. They stood breathing hard at
the foot of an enormous mound of glistening black shards that
reminded him of a quarry back home. She led them up the hill at an
angle, using one hand for balance. The lava here had been
pulverized and deposited by a violent geologic event. When they
were above the treetops and had more useful starlight, he could
make sense of what might have happened. The volcano’s hip had
sprung a leak, spilling out tons of small black stones that
contrasted with its own brown body. The rocks made tinkling,
shell-like sounds when they tumbled away beneath them.
“
Is this it?” he asked, but she
again grunted for his silence.
She took them to a plateau on the volcano
itself, a spot where the ground was level because the earth had
collapsed when the stones had fallen out. They would climb five
times as high in seven days. Or maybe it was ten times. They would
climb until there was no more climbing to do.
She pulled him down to the dirt next to her,
and he nearly cried out when he saw her blow the flame
dead.
“
It’s okay,” she whispered in a
voice so soft that he mostly read her lips. “We can go the long way
back. It’s under the stars.”
He would have sat right there until daylight
before returning to the jungle with no candle. There hadn’t been
the usual swarming mosquitoes, but the air was filled with a
symphony of restless legs and wings. He imagined the infinite tiny
scenes of fighting and mating going on all around.
She leaned into him. “No more talk. They will
be here soon.”
He tried to relax, allowed his eyes to adjust.
He blinked, then kept them open wide and focused on the lighter
spots of the canopy. They had a view all the way to the sea, a
black semicircle across the horizon, ocean darker than the land
except where the waves broke and boiled. The air was chilly for the
first time since he’d been washed up. The stars were an endless
carpet of twinkling dots, and he could make out the trail of smoke
from the volcano.
The jungle went silent, as though a switch had
been flicked. The vibrating bodies, hoots and squeals, and the
beating wings became still all at once. She squeezed his hand, and
he could see her white teeth as if she were smiling wide. There was
gooseflesh across her naked shoulder and her body shook. She
snuggled in closer, and he wrapped an arm around her, trying to
give some warmth.