The Gods of Lava Cove

by Karsten Knight

  “It’s exhilarating, right?” Aunt Samira said. She handed me a small brush and a pair of gloves. When I glumly stared at them, she put a hand on my shoulder. “I’d love to have you work at the main site, but it just isn’t safe. There’s no guarantee the roof won’t cave in after all these years, and the other day one of my coworkers almost fell down a shaft when the floor crumbled away. To be honest, I shouldn’t have even brought you inside in the first place, but I couldn’t resist. Your parents would kill me if anything happened to you.”

  I sighed. “They might even build you a magical prison and stick your soul in there for eternity.”

  My aunt’s singsong laugh filled the tent. “The good news is that I got you a surprise to keep you company while you work,” she said.

  My ears perked up. “Really?”

  A shadow had appeared at the tent’s entrance. “In fact, here’s the big surprise now,” my aunt said. With a flourish, she peeled back the flap and cried, “Ta-da!”

  I stared in horror at the creature that stepped inside the tent.

  6

  I recoiled when I saw the figure standing before me, a nightmare from my past I had hoped to forget:

  My cousin Leilani.

  Despite being a month younger than me, Leilani had enjoyed a growth spurt since I last saw her. Her eyes peered out from beneath her black bangs with a glint of mischief.

  “Hi-yo, shrimp,” she greeted me.

  I hadn’t seen her in two years, but I would never forget the miserable week she once spent at our house. On the first day, she stole all the white clothes from my closet and tie-dyed them bright purple—including my socks and underwear. For the next week, it looked like a box of crayons had exploded in my closet.

  On the third day, she hid anchovies in all the different pockets of my backpack. By first period, I smelled like fish and my classmates were edging their chairs away from me.

  It took days to find all the anchovies, and by then, even my friends were calling me “Fish Boy.”

  Leilani thought she was the world’s greatest gift to comedy.

  For a moment, I hoped that maybe my cousin had changed. Maybe she’d grown up in the years since we last crossed paths.

  Then she said, “I helped the captain move your suitcase into your tent.” She leaned in and whispered so her mom couldn’t hear. “I appreciated how many pockets it has.”

  My eyes bulged. Who knew what kind of slimy, smelly sea life I’d discover in my belongings later.

  My aunt beamed at the two of us, oblivious to what a royal monster her daughter was. “Well, I have to get back to the dig,” she said. “You two don’t have too much fun dusting these awe-inspiring relics!”

  Leilani draped an arm over my shoulders. “Don’t you worry,” she replied. “Kalon and I are going to have a blast!”

  I was surprised that afternoon when Leilani behaved herself. Maybe she really had turned over a new leaf.

  However, after a few hours of artifact dusting, I made the mistake of letting my guard down. When I came back from using the bathroom, I took a long swig from my water canteen—and spit it out all over the table.

  My mouth burned. A sour, nasty taste lingered on my tongue.

  Across from me, Leilani laughed uncontrollably. From beneath the table, she produced a bottle labeled “vinegar.”

  I felt grateful when my cousin eventually got bored and wandered off to explore the island. Even though I was disappointed I wasn’t out discovering hidden rooms in the temple, it was pretty cool handling these artifacts.

  Under the overhead light, I examined the offering cup I’d been dusting off for the last hour. It had been expertly carved from koa wood.

  Someone hundreds of years ago had held this very chalice and presented it at the altar of the trickster. Maybe it had been a boy or a girl my age, who lived long before the era of televisions or laptops or cell phones.

  As I continued to marvel at the cup, I ran my finger over the wood—and accidentally pressed a button hidden in the base. A compartment in the stem popped open.

  A piece of cloth dropped out.

  I unfolded the fabric. It was barkcloth, a traditional textile made from the inner bark of the Mulberry tree. The islanders used it for everything from clothing to artwork.

  In this case, someone had drawn a map.

  7

  I immediately recognized the outline of the island, along with a sketch of the temple I’d toured earlier.

  However, I couldn’t make sense of the dotted line that traced its way up the volcano. It began at the water and made several stops as it climbed toward the summit. Some sort of treasure map? I wondered.

  I had a million questions, but my thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the dinner bell. I decided to hide the map until I had time to study it further. Maybe if I made an important discovery, Aunt Samira would realize that my rightful place was working alongside her in the temple.

  Inside the mess hall, I spotted Leilani sitting at a table near the buffet. The dinner bell had barely rung five minutes ago and she was already halfway done with her first course.

  One of the archaeologists, a tall Samoan man with tattooed arms, was barbecuing mahi-mahi on a charcoal grill. As he placed a fish fillet on my plate, he surprised me by asking, “Do you want extra blood?”

  I stared at him with wide eyes. “What did you say?”

  He grinned and held up a gigantic bottle of thick, red liquid. “Everyone here loves my signature Blood Marinade!” he replied. “It’s a mixture of sweet and sour sauce and cherry juice. The fish can be a tad dry without it.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and held out my plate. “In that case, drizzle away.”

  After dinner, we all gathered on benches outside. Night fell on the camp, and a local Calderan treated us to a thrilling performance. He hoisted a staff with a blade on each end and set the two sides aflame. Then he began to twirl the burning knives around him. Faster and faster, the blades spun until the flaming ends were just fiery blurs drawing circles in the air.

  I looked around the audience for Leilani—but my cousin was nowhere to be seen.

  That should have been my first indication that trouble lay in store for me. I didn’t find out exactly what mischief Leilani had planned until I got back to my tent an hour later.

  My suitcase had gone missing.

  It had everything I needed for vacation—clothes, books, right down to my toothbrush. At first, I thought that maybe I’d just wandered into the wrong tent.

  Then I saw the note someone had left in its place, pinned to the bed with a stone so it wouldn’t fly off in the breeze. I snatched the letter and held it up to the lantern light.

  In jagged red ink, it read:

  If you want your belongings back, you’ll have to journey into my lair.

  Are you brave enough to walk among the gods when the night is darkest?

  Or will you cower in fear?

  -TAGALO THE TRICKSTER

  8

  Okay, so I knew immediately the note wasn’t really written by a trickster god. I would recognize Leilani’s jagged cursive anywhere. She’d certainly left me enough mischievous notes during her last visit to scar it into my memory.

  My first instinct was to refuse to play her game. So I’d have to sleep in my day clothes instead of pajamas. So I’d miss brushing my teeth for a night. I could just wait until morning, then ask my aunt to demand that her daughter return my backpack.

  Then I changed my mind. Maybe this was my chance to show Leilani that her pranks would no longer get to me. That I was no coward.

  Yes, I thought. I would march right into that temple and calmly retrieve my backpack. I would not let my cousin have the satisfaction of seeing me all riled up.

  Besides, I had come here to see the temple. With my aunt being so overprotective, maybe this was my chance to experience the ruins again for myself, without supervision.

  What was the worst that could happen?

  I tiptoed thro
ugh the dark camp. As soon as I was far enough from the tents, I switched on the electric lantern I’d brought. The glow cast a bubble of light around me, but barely penetrated the thick darkness of the forest.

  Even at midnight, the sound of crickets chirping and bullfrogs croaking filled the air, a symphony of the night.

  I hoped it would also drown out the sounds of me walking through camp.

  After I made my way down the temple steps, I paused at its entrance. The torches inside had all been extinguished for the night. The chamber looked as black as ink.

  I took a deep breath and then passed through the front columns, into the darkness.

  I walked carefully across the temple floor. The last thing I wanted was to strip over another skeleton.

  I swiveled my lantern around. Now, where would Leilani have hidden my suitcase? There were plenty of dark corners and alcoves where my demonic cousin could have stashed it.

  As I moved deeper into the temple, I felt like something was wrong here. It wasn’t until I turned my gaze to the altar that I realized what.

  Moonlight cascaded through the hole in the ceiling. It illuminated my suitcase, which Leilani had placed in plain view on the altar.

  But something was missing, too. The mask had vanished from the air over the altar.

  I felt a presence behind me. The hairs on my neck stood on end.

  I spun around and thrust out my lantern. I peered into the darkness, searching for any movement beyond my orb of light.

  Nothing. I was alone.

  I released a sigh of relief and turned back to the altar.

  The evil, grinning mask leered down at me. It hovered just inches from my face as it rasped, “Who dares trespass in my sacred resting place?”

  Then the trickster’s hands wrapped around my throat.

  9

  I started to scream—but the trickster’s hand moved up to cover my mouth.

  From behind the mask, a familiar voice said, “Pipe down, shrimp. Are you trying to wake up the whole camp?”

  “Leilani?” I asked. Now I could see the details I’d missed before—her hazel eyes through the slits in the mask, and her purple Nikes poking out from the bottom of her jeans.

  My cousin burst into hysterical laughter. She peeled the mask off her face and tossed it onto the altar. “Kalon, you have got to learn not to be such an easy target,” she said. “Otherwise you will never survive the sixth grade.”

  My heart still pounded in my chest, but anger quickly replaced my terror. “What is your obsession with pranking me?” I shouted. My voice echoed through the chamber. “I flew all the way to an island in the middle of the ocean and you’ve still found a way to ruin my vacation in less than twenty-four hours.”

  I started to reach for my suitcase, ready to storm out of the temple. Leilani put a hand on my shoulder. “Wait,” she said softly. “I was just having a little fun. The truth is … it’s a little boring around here.”

  “Boring?” I repeated incredulously. “This is the most beautiful place on earth, with an ancient temple no one has seen in hundreds of years, and you’re bored?”

  Leilani threw up her hands. “Mom won’t let me do anything!” she cried. “The woman sees dangers wherever she looks. If I play in the ruins, she worries the roof will cave in. If I want to wander in the forest, animals might eat me. Swim in the ocean and I might get dragged out to sea by a rip current.” She kicked a clump of dirt on the ground. “What’s the point of even being here? If I wanted to spend all day in a tent, I would have just pitched one in our yard back in New Jersey.”

  Part of me wondered if Leilani was just getting me to lower my guard so she could trick me again. However, as I studied my cousin’s face, I realized she truly was fed up with island life.

  “Well,” I said finally, “we’re already here. So we might as well look around and have an adventure before we get stuck back on artifact-dusting duty tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Leilani’s mood visibly perked up. “Maybe you’re not the cowardly shrimp I always thought you were.”

  I shrugged. “What could go wrong?”

  I took a step backward.

  And fell straight through the floor.

  10

  I didn’t have much time to react. One moment my feet were on solid ground. The next, the stone floor crumbled away. My stomach lurched as the world opened up beneath me.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of Leilani’s surprised face before I plummeted into the abyss.

  In that moment, I pictured myself falling down an endless well. Maybe I would be doomed to tumble deeper into the earth until the magma burned me to ashes.

  Then I landed.

  The impact rattled my bones. I probably would have broken something if I hadn’t landed on a pile of dust and volcanic ash that cushioned my fall.

  I coughed as the plume of dust settled around me. I had landed in some sort of hidden, underground chamber.

  I groaned as I peeled my sore back off the floor and staggered to my feet. Ten feet above me, I could see the outline of Leilani peering down through the opening. “Kalon!” she called. “Are you okay?”

  “Nothing broken,” I said, clearing my throat, “except for maybe my pride and my butt.”

  “The dangers of being bony—there’s nothing to break your fall,” she quipped.

  I had just fallen down a shaft and my cousin still couldn’t resist giving me a hard time.

  I reached for my electric lantern, which lay on its side a few feet away. As I held it up, I could see that I was in a small chamber. My aunt and the other archaeologists must have somehow missed it when they were digging out the larger room above.

  “I’ll look for some rope to lower down to you!” Leilani’s voice echoed through the hole. I heard her footsteps clamor away across the stones above me.

  I was alone in this cramped space. My initial thought was to panic. In my imagination, I pictured hundreds of spiders skittering across the walls, or perhaps a venomous snake coiled in the dirt, ready to sink its teeth into my ankles.

  Then I took a deep breath. I was the one who had wanted an adventure when I flew here, and now I was standing in space that no one—not even my aunt—had set foot in for hundreds of years.

  So I decided it was time to start thinking like an archaeologist. First question: why was this room built? What was it designed for? And why had the builders hidden it beneath the main room?

  As I crept deeper into the chamber, my lantern illuminated a raised, stone platform. My first guess was that it was another altar—it seemed to be directly beneath the one in the chamber above me. This one must have been close to seven or eight feet long.

  Then I saw the lid.

  This wasn’t a second altar, I realized with a chill.

  It was a coffin.

  I had read in my archaeology books that a coffin made out of stone was often called a “sarcophagus.” They were common in ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt. I had never heard of any of them being discovered in the Pacific.

  “Coming down!” Leilani announced behind me. She threw a coil of rope through the opening and slid down it. She landed on both feet, much more gracefully than my fall through the floor.

  “What is this place?” she asked, gazing around the dark chamber. “Some sort of bedroom?”

  I nodded to the sarcophagus. “A room for a more eternal sleep.” I swallowed hard. “I think we're standing in a tomb.”

  Leilani’s eyes lit up. “Cool,” she breathed. She slapped me on the back. “See, I told you we’d find some adventure!”

  I didn’t want Leilani to see that I was afraid, so I took a step toward the sarcophagus. “Whose body do you think is inside there?” I asked. Beneath the thick layer of ash covering the coffin, I could see designs etched into the stone. “It looks like they engraved something on the cover, but I can’t quite make out what.”

  I inhaled a deep breath, lowered my head to the lid, and blew. My breath gradually cleared away the layer of ash, rev
ealing the etching in the stone.

  When the dust settled, the shark-like face of the trickster stared back at me.

  “Do you …. do you think that means he’s in there?” I stammered.

  Leilani rolled her eyes. “Get a grip, Kalon. Tagalo is just a myth. The gods were just stories that people made up to explain things like storms and eruptions before they had science.”

  In response, the ground quaked with yet another of the volcano’s unsettling rumbles.

  “Well, somebody must be inside the sarcophagus,” I replied. “They wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to build a secret underground room just to house an empty box.”

  A mischievous grin spread across Leilani’s face, the same smile I had come to know meant that something bad was coming. “Only one way to find out for sure,” she rasped.

  Leilani pressed her hands against the lid and started to push.

  “Wait!” I cried out.

  Before I could stop her, the lid began to shift. The heavy stone made a grating sound as it slid aside. Musty air billowed out, and I expected to smell the stench of a thousand years of decaying flesh.

  However, when I summoned the courage to lean over the edge of the coffin and peer in, I was shocked by what I discovered inside.

  11

  Nothing. The sarcophagus was empty.

  No, that wasn’t entirely true. Toward the top of the coffin, where I had expected to see the head of a corpse, I found a clay orb. It was about the size of a softball.

  Leilani groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. “We found a hidden tomb, and opened a sarcophagus—and all we have to show for it is more pottery. If I wanted to dust off another vase, I would have stayed back in the tent.”

  I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, too. “It doesn’t make any sense,” I agreed. “Why go to all this trouble just to hide a ball?”