The Gods of Lava Cove

by Karsten Knight

  I handed Leilani the lantern so I could I pick up the ceramic sphere. It felt unexpectedly warm in my palms, for something that hadn’t seen the sun in hundreds of years. Even stranger, it felt like it was humming. “Weird,” I said. “It’s … moving. It’s almost like something electric is whirring inside of it, or—”

  Before I could finish my thought, something clattered on the stone floor behind us.

  We weren’t alone.

  We both spun around at the same time, peering into the darkness.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “What was that?” I whispered to Leilani.

  She didn’t reply. The lantern trembled in her hands as she raised it in front of her and took a step forward. Then another.

  At last, the bubble of light revealed the source of the noise—an object that had clattered to the floor.

  The trickster’s mask.

  It must have fallen through the hole just now. There was only one problem with that theory. “Leilani,” I said carefully. “Did you leave the mask near the hole?”

  She was staring at it with wide eyes. “No,” she replied. “I put it back on the altar. My mom would kill me if I just left an artifact like that lying on the ground.”

  “Then how did it get down here?” I asked.

  I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

  As we watched, the mask began to twitch. It was just a little movement at first, and then it vibrated, faster and faster.

  The mask floated up off the ground.

  Leilani and I both moaned in unison. This wasn’t possible.

  “We have to get out of here,” Leilani hissed at me. “Let’s make a run for the rope.”

  Before I could reply, I felt the ceramic orb vibrate again. I tried to cup it in both hands to keep it still but the shaking grew more intense.

  The orb suddenly jerked free of my grip. It flew out of my hands, across the chamber.

  Then it shattered on the ground beneath the mask.

  The moment the orb split in two, a stream of glowing blue particles rushed out. It was like watching a thousand blue fireflies take flight.

  They clustered together in the air under the mask, taking shape.

  Two legs.

  A torso.

  Two arms.

  A neck.

  The mask settled on top of the body. A blue fire ignited around the wood. Two burning eyes gazed out through the eyeholes.

  From the mouth of the fiery mask, a smoky voice hissed something in a language I couldn’t understand: “O ai na faʻasaoina aʻu?”

  Leilani and I exchanged confused, terrifying glances.

  After an awkward pause, the apparition added, “Ah, English speakers. Let me try it again in words you can understand.” He towered over us, as firelight flickered in his eyes. “Which one of you do I have to thank for releasing me from my eternal prison?”

  12

  I opened my mouth but all that came out was a low moan. Leilani took a frightened step back.

  The trickster was so tall his head brushed against the ceiling. His blue, burning body was semi-transparent and bathed the room in an eerie glow.

  Tagalo looked back and forth between the two of us. “Wow, you’re a talkative bunch, aren’t you?” After a few more seconds without a response from either of us, he sighed. “Look, my soul has been stuck inside a clay pot, sealed inside a sarcophagus, and locked away in a tomb for hundreds of years, and it’s been a little lonely in here. I would appreciate it if you could hold up your end of the conversation.”

  Leilani was still frozen in place, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly like a nutcracker. So I decided for now that I would have to be our spokesperson.

  “We … come in peace,” I offered dumbly. I had no idea what to say to a supernatural being who we had just inadvertently released. All I knew is that we needed to get across the room and up that rope as soon as possible.

  The wood of the trickster’s mask warped up into a wicked grin. “Better to come in peace than leave in pieces,” he said.

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said. “That’s why I think we should probably be going now. Happy prison release day, though.” I grabbed Leilani by the elbow and started to edge toward the rope.

  “Not so fast,” snarled the trickster. He snapped his fingers and a single blue spark shot out. When the spark hit our rope, it ignited. In seconds the hungry blue flames incinerated the rope, reducing it to a pile of ash.

  Our only path to safety had just gone up in flames.

  “Is this how you treat your friends?” the trickster asked. “You show up to their party, and leave as soon as you’ve arrived? That’s very poor etiquette.”

  “W-what do you want from us?” Leilani stammered. “You can’t keep us here.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “We’re the ones who set you free,” I said, even though it certainly had not been intentional. “You should be rewarding us, not kidnapping us.”

  Tagalo rolled his fiery eyes. “Mortals—always so dramatic. But you’re right of course. I should reward you. Lucky for you, I am going to give you the greatest gift of all!”

  There was something sinister about the way he said it that turned my stomach. “What sort of gift?” I asked.

  “That, my friends, requires a little bit of a backstory. Check this out.” Tagalo fired another spark. It sailed between us and hit the lid of his sarcophagus, which erupted in sapphire flames. Leilani and I both jumped back as the heat washed over us.

  Then something strange happened. Against the back wall, the flames cast weird shadows with incredible detail. One of them looked just like Tagalo, grinning mask and all. It was like watching someone make shadow puppets without using their hands.

  “Once upon a time, there was a handsome, charming trickster,” Tagalo narrated. “His jokes were always the talk of the islands. Wherever he sailed, everyone loved him—well, not everyone.”

  On the wall, three shadowy figures appeared. They surrounded Tagalo.

  “The trickster’s siblings were very envious of how funny he was,” Tagalo continued. “Together, those three jerks conspired to steal their brother’s incredible body from him. First, his sister Pele sucked all the blood from him.”

  In the weird shadow movie, the volcano goddess approached Tagalo. Instead of walking, she glided on a river of magma. Pele held up her hands, and Tagalo’s life force poured out of him. When his blood was totally gone, Tagalo had shriveled up like a raisin.

  “Then,” Tagalo said, “his sister Hine, the goddess of death, stole his flesh from him.”

  On the wall, a shadowy zombie hand burst from the ground. It grabbed Tagalo’s skin at his ankle. With a sharp tug, his flesh tore away. The trickster’s mask frowned as it looked down at its exposed skeleton.

  “His brother Kanaloa, lord of the sea, snatched his bones from him.”

  A god with tentacles instead of arms wriggled forward. Its appendages wrapped around the trickster’s bones and ripped them away.

  Only the god’s mask remained, floating on a ghostly cloud.

  “Finally,” Tagalo said, his voice sorrowful, “they forced his soul into a pot and sealed it away for eternity so that even his ghost couldn’t play tricks on them.”

  I watched as the trickster was sucked into a vessel. His arms flailed as he was dragged down into his prison. The three gods laughed as they pushed the lid of the sarcophagus closed, silencing the trickster’s screams.

  The shadows on the wall evaporated.

  We turned back to the real Tagalo. He had bowed his masked head. “So now you know my whole miserable story. I am the real victim here, you see.” He lifted his head. “But you two have saved me. So now one of you will receive the ultimate reward.”

  “Wait, just one of us?” Leilani protested.

  “I’m afraid so. See, my soul is free, but my body is still scattered over the island. And I need a body in order to walk out of this temple.” He bared his shark teeth as he leaned
toward us and growled:

  “So I’m going to take one of yours.”

  13

  “What?” I choked out. “You can’t just take our bodies.”

  “I can and I will,” retorted the trickster. “You should be honored! One of your bodies will have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of housing the soul of a god, instead of the meaningless mortal it’s stuck with now.”

  Tagalo took another ominous step towards us. Leilani and I backed up and bumped into the sarcophagus, which was still burning. The heat from the flames washed over us.

  “So which one of you is it going to be?” Tagalo asked. “If neither one of you wants to volunteer, I guess I’ll have to choose for myself.” He tapped a fiery finger against the chin of his mask as he examined me from head to toe. “I was a boy in my last vessel, but you’re a little too scrawny for my liking.” His gaze turned to Leilani. I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes—my cousin was taller, stronger, and less clumsy than I was.

  “Yes,” he whispered to Leilani. “I think I’ll take yours.”

  Leilani’s face went white. “No, you c-can’t,” she protested. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Again with the dramatics!” Tagalo cried. “You won’t totally die. Your soul will take mine’s place here in this tomb. Don’t you want some alone time away from all those annoying mortals back in the real world?” He gestured around at the bare walls. “And the best part is that you’ll have the rest of eternity to decide how you want to decorate.”

  I knew I had to do something. Leilani was a pain in my butt, for sure, but she was also family. I couldn’t just let this trickster hijack her body and imprison her soul.

  And if the stories of Tagalo were true, who knew what kind of havoc he would wreak if he escaped the tomb.

  The trickster loomed over Leilani. She fell to her knees, her eyes wide and frantic, as she searched for any chance to escape. Her pleading gaze fell on me.

  I scrambled to think of what I could do to change his mind. What did Tagalo want more than possessing Leilani?

  And then it came to me.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “What if we got your body back for you?”

  Tagalo froze. His head twisted unnaturally around on his neck to look at me. “Were you listening at all to my story, boy?” he snapped. “The gods took it from me.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to sound confident. “All the more reason to steal it back from them,” I said. “To take back what’s rightfully yours. You said it yourself—your old body was a work of art. I’m sure you were the strongest, fastest, most handsome trickster in the Pacific.” Tagalo obviously had a high opinion of himself, so I hoped he was vulnerable to flattery. “Do you want to spend eternity in your rightful body? Or do you want to spend it in, um, this?” I gestured at Leilani.

  “Hey!” Leilani cried, even though I was helping her out.

  Sorry, I mouthed silently to her.

  Tagalo studied me carefully. “You, a mortal, think you can steal my body back from three angry gods?” he asked.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” I insisted. “They might sense you, even if you’re in disguise. But they’ll never expect two mortal kids. With my knowledge of mythology, we can get the pieces of your body back in no time.”

  Tagalo laid a ghostly hand on Leilani’s shoulder. She shivered. “You can’t out-trick a trickster, boy,” he said. “If I let you both go, you’ll take off running and never come back.”

  He’d seen right through my plan. I struggled to think of a way to convince him. “But … I need Leilani’s help,” I protested. “She’s been sneaking off around the island for months. She’ll know exactly where to look.”

  Tagalo stroked his chin, deep in thought. “If you just need her mind, then I think I have a solution,” he said.

  I didn’t like the sound of that, and from the way Leilani’s eyes were bulging out of her head, neither did she. “Wait—” she cried.

  She tried to talk more, but Tagalo waved a hand. The words evaporated from her lips. Her body trembled.

  I watched in horror as Leilani started to glow. A ghostly copy of her began to separate from her body. It glowed blue, just like Tagalo’s skin—and I could see right through it.

  Tagalo was extracting her soul.

  When it was all over, her body’s eyes flickered closed. The lifeless vessel crumpled to the ground.

  Her soul floated over her own fallen body. Leilani looked right at me. “Kalon?” she whispered faintly. “I don’t feel so good …”

  14

  “What have you done!” I screamed. “Put her soul back immediately!” I was so afraid for Leilani that for a minute I forgot I was talking to a sinister god.

  “It’s not permanent … yet!” Tagalo cackled. “It’s the perfect compromise: her spectral form can float along beside you and help you on your quest. Meanwhile, I’ll keep her body here to make sure you don’t just run off.” His fiery eyes burned into mine. “And if you don’t return the pieces of my body to me by sunrise, then I’ll keep hers …. forever.”

  I tore my gaze away from his terrifying mask to look over at Leilani—the spirit version of her at least. She was holding her hands in front of her face. When she realized she could see right through them, her lips quivered.

  In that moment, I realized I had no other choice but to do as Tagalo ordered.

  He was in control now.

  I sighed. “If I retrieve the fragments of your body, do you promise you’ll put Leilani’s soul back?”

  “Of course!” Tagalo crooned. The wood in his mask creaked as it once again warped into a smile. “Is this the face of a man who would lie to you?”

  “Yes,” I snapped.

  He let out another hoarse laugh. “You’re smarter than you look, boy—and that’s not saying much! You have until sunrise.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Let’s shake on it, then.”

  Tagalo squinted at my outstretched hand with something between curiosity and disgust. “You mortals have the strangest customs,” he said. “How about we seal the deal by you declaring your eternal devotion to me and signing your name on the wall in blood?”

  I just stuck out my hand farther.

  Tagalo shrugged. “It was worth a shot.” He seized my hand with his spindly fingers. It wasn’t like touching skin. Instead, I felt a crackling electric energy as he shook my hand.

  Distantly, the volcano gave another warning rumble as if to say: What have you just done?

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost midnight—which meant we had less than six hours until the sun would rise, and the trickster would take Leilani’s body permanently.

  I turned my attention to the pile of ashes where Tagalo had burned our rope. “How am I supposed to get out of here?”

  Tagalo lazily flicked a finger in my direction. An invisible force wrapped around my body.

  Then it flung me upward through the hole.

  I landed hard on the tile floor in the main room above. It was the second crash landing I’d made tonight, and my body felt like it had been through a blender.

  As I groaned and slowly picked myself back up, Leilani’s spirit rose up through the floor. She passed right through the stone and floated beside me.

  “Do I look as weird as I feel?” she asked me. In her ghostly form, her voice seemed to echo from another realm.

  “Um …” I struggled to think of something honest that wouldn’t alarm her. “You look pretty much the same, just a little more … see-through.”

  She tried to slug me in the shoulder but her hand passed right through. I felt a chill to my bones where she grazed me.

  “Kalon, I can’t live like this forever,” she wailed. “How are we ever going to get Tagalo what he wants by morning?”

  I had an idea. As Tagalo had told us his crazy backstory, I had remembered the parchment I had discovered earlier while dusting off artifacts.

  “I think I might have found a map this morning,” I explained. “O
ne that might reveal the location to the three pieces of Tagalo’s body. If you can help guide me to each spot, maybe we can complete all three tasks by sunrise.”

  I realized that we’d been forced into a lose-lose situation. Whether we succeeded or failed, Tagalo would walk out of that temple tomorrow morning.

  When he did, we would be directly responsible for setting loose an evil trickster.

  And then he’d make the world burn.

  15

  After we exited the temple, we snuck through the camp. Leilani didn’t have to try hard to be silent since her feet were drifting two feet off the ground. I didn’t want to have to explain to my aunt why her daughter was floating along beside me in ghost form.

  In the dark artifact tent, I spread the map out on the table. We didn’t need a lamp to see because Leilani’s blue glow lit up the area around us.

  The map showed the whole island from a birds-eye view. There were three circles on the map, all in different colors: a white one on the shore, a brown one in the jungle, and a red one up the slope of the volcano.

  The locations of Tagalo’s bones, flesh, and blood making a trail up to the volcano’s summit, the island’s burning heart.

  Leilani placed a transparent finger on the white dot. Her fingertip passed right through the map.

  “I know this place,” she said. “It’s a sea cave about a twenty-minute walk from here. I’ve never been inside because the riptide in that area is dangerous.”

  I gestured to her spirit body. “Something tells me I’m the only one who has to worry about drowning today,” I replied.

  Leilani scowled at me. “An evil trickster is holding my body hostage,” she snapped. “Do you really want to play the ‘who has it harder?’ game?”

  She had a point, so I shut my mouth.

  The walk to the ocean was deeply quiet this time of night. There was only the crunch of my footsteps on the ground and the wind rustling through the palm fronds overhead. Leilani’s spectral form floated ahead, lighting the path like a creepy lantern.