Free Dash in the Blue Pacific by Cole Alpaugh

little. They gave
up on us and went other places. Manu says they called us godless
heathens, but that shows how dumb they are. We have lots of gods.
Lots more than missioners. How many gods do you have?”
    Dash was suddenly embarrassed about being a
godless heathen. “Pretty much the same as the missioners,” he
said.
    Tiki held out both hands to count on her
fingers. “We have a Sea God and a God of the Sun. A Bird, Time, and
Dirt God. The Volcano God, Storm God, and Wave God. The Wave God is
different from the Sea God. That’s eight, and there’s one more,”
she said, frowning, trying to remember.
    “ Our one god is supposed to watch
over everything.”
    She shook her head. “The world is too big.” She
put a thumb and index finger together and held them to one eye.
“This island is only this big on my teacher’s map.”
    “ Having lots of gods makes
sense.”
    She nodded, then spoke in a low voice. “But it
makes people worry. So many gods to pull you underwater or make you
fall out of a tree. Gods bring thunder to keep you awake at night,
and wind to blow away your house.”
    “ What god protects little girls from
soldiers?”
    Tiki’s smooth lips formed a pout, her eyes
squeezed into a glare. “How much do you want to leave this
place? Do you want to grow old in a stinking jungle?”
    “ But this is your home,” he said.
“These are your people, your family.”
    “ Mama is gone.”
    “ I can only imagine how much that
hurts.” When he reached to touch her shoulder, she slapped his hand
away with the same blind motion as the old woman in the aisle
seat.
    Tiki lurched from the stone bench and kicked
sand over the fire, suddenly furious. “I’ll have two kittens if I’m
pretty enough,” she said, crossing her arms and turning her back to
him.
    He groaned as he struggled to his feet. He was
tired and everything ached. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be
angry.”
    The two lit candles had dripped wax into wide
pools, one now only a stub. He hadn’t noticed their small flames,
had wasted precious light he needed to survive.
    “ I have to make a place to sleep.
Will you help?”
    “ I’ll come back in the morning.” She
headed toward the path, then stopped and turned. “The Fire God is
the one I forgot. He mostly lives inside the Volcano to eat
whatever she swallows.”
    Dash touched his throat. Going back into the
fire was a thousand times worse than going back into the
water.
    “ I told you gods were scary,” she
said, then turned and disappeared into the black tunnel.
     
     

Chapter 7
    S leek birds with white and
black painted bodies patrolled the sky, the calm sea mirroring
their aerodynamic designs and sweeping orbits. A slight wind left
the water mostly still—flat swells that lifted and lowered with
unstirred crests. Dash watched each bird take a turn abandoning
formation, shedding elevation until belly feathers kissed its
reflection. Dagger-like beaks cut the surface in narrow, car-length
incisions, stuttering once with a sideways flick of the head.
Graceful wings stroked the salty air, and the bird would ascend
with a small fish impaled, its flapping body working like a useless
propeller. The birds seemed to never miss.
    To his right was the coral reef looming just
beneath the waves. It was a protective wall running north into the
distance on a parallel track to the island. The reef interrupted
waves born hundreds or thousands of miles away. He wondered how far
short the plane had come from reaching Fiji. The online maps showed
blue almost everywhere in this enormous section of the route. There
were more smudges on his laptop screen than specks of land. He was
now the proverbial needle in a haystack made of infinite pieces of
dried grass because they’d stopped looking. He looked down at the
sheltered calm spot where the women had taken him for his first
bath. He’d been awestruck by the mountain breathing smoke as though
it were a living thing, the exotic leaning trees and