The Gods of Lava Cove

by Karsten Knight

  I knew we must be getting close when I heard the tide lapping against the shore. Soon, we stepped out onto a stretch of coastline with the same strange purple sand. This far from the mainland’s light pollution, you could see thousands of stars dotting the clear sky. Under less dire circumstances, I would have paused to marvel at all the constellations.

  Leilani led me down to a rocky section of beach. Coarse volcanic rocks replaced the purple sand. They rose out of the water in sharp black cliffs.

  While I stumbled over the rough terrain, Leilani glided effortlessly ahead. She would occasionally shoot me a warning glare over her shoulder as if to say, “Keep up, loser!”

  It was increasingly tempting to let my cousin permanently stay a ghost.

  At the edge of one rock, Leilani stopped so abruptly that I wandered right through her. My whole body went cold as I popped out the other side.

  We stood at the mouth of some kind of sea cave. The water at the cave entrance glowed an electric shade of green.

  I was starting to get sick of magical glowing things.

  Leilani seemed to read my mind. “That glow is emitted by a species of plankton, microscopic organisms,” she explained in a know-it-all tone. “They light up when they sense a disturbance in the water. That’s their way of scaring off predators. It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought. There just happens to be glowing algae in the one sea cave where the gods hid Tagalo’s bones.

  There was nothing “perfectly natural” about this island.

  As I waded out into the lagoon, I felt grateful for my waterproof sandals. Even this late at night, the tide lapping against my ankles was still warm. With each step toward the cave, the water rose higher, until I was submerged up to my waist.

  Once I waded into the mouth of the cave, the algae glowed even brighter. I tried not to think about the millions of tiny creatures floating around me.

  The cave was even spookier than I had expected. Rows of stalagmites—rocks that protruded down from the ceiling—hung like fangs all around. I nearly walked face-first into one in the dim light.

  Floating beside me, Leilani frowned as she spun in circles, gazing around the cavern. “I’ve snuck in here a few times and I’ve never seen anything that looked like the bones of a god,” she said.

  “Well,” I replied, “I don’t imagine they’d just leave a skeleton floating around for anyone to find.”

  Sixty feet into the chamber, we arrived at a wall—the end of the road. I started to move sideways planning to scour the edge of the cave for clues, when something strange happened.

  The glowing algae stopped glowing.

  I stood there in the dark water, confused. I tried stepping back the way I came.

  The algae glowed again.

  I repeated this process a few more times. The bioluminescent plankton seemed to be concentrated in just one area.

  I decided to attempt an experiment. I reached underwater until I found a loose rock. Then I threw it into the water, back the way I’d walked.

  Once again, the plankton lit up, but now I saw what I hadn’t before.

  They formed a path that snaked from the mouth of the cave to one section of the back wall.

  “Why would the trail lead to a dead end?” I asked out loud.

  Unless …

  I took a deep breath and submerged my head beneath the surface.

  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. However, through the glow, I saw what I had suspected.

  A hole in the wall.

  A tunnel to something beyond.

  I lifted my head back out of the water. “Leilani,” I said excitedly. “Can you use your newfound ability to walk through walls to scout out what’s on the other side of this one?”

  She looked uncomfortable with the request, but eventually she sighed and nodded.

  Then she disappeared into the wet stone.

  I waited for a minute. Then another. What if she’d somehow gotten stuck inside the wall? I worried.

  I felt a wave of relief when she finally reappeared. She seemed hopeful. “There’s a hidden cave beyond this one,” she confirmed. “And there’s some kind of ceremonial altar in the middle of it.”

  I swallowed hard. This was both good and bad news. Good because we were on the right track.

  Bad because I’d have to swim through a scary, narrow tunnel.

  We didn’t have time for me to chicken out. “See you on the other side,” I said to Leilani, trying to sound confident. My voice cracked, though.

  I drew in another deep breath, then plunged underwater.

  Please don’t let me drown today, I prayed silently.

  Little did I know that a far greater danger awaited me on the other side.

  16

  I started to panic almost as soon as I entered the tunnel.

  It was barely wide enough to fit my body. I had taken enough swimming lessons to know I could hold my breath for a full minute. But would that be enough? Even with the plankton lighting the way, I still couldn’t tell exactly how long the tunnel stretched ahead of me.

  With my breath held, I swam through the fissure. When it started to get too narrow to swim, I used the rocky sides to pull myself forward, one handhold at a time.

  My lungs burned. Just when I thought I couldn’t last another minute without oxygen, I squeezed through one last skinny passage—

  And into a wide open space. I kicked off the bottom toward the light above.

  As I surfaced, I sucked in a lungful of air. I promised I would never take breathing for granted again.

  Leilani was hovering next to the spot where I’d emerged. She crossed her arms. “Took you long enough,” she said. “Did you stop to ask the algae for directions?”

  I groaned. Even halfway into the afterlife, my cousin could be a huge pain in my butt.

  I squinted through the dim light, trying to use Leilani’s glow to see my surroundings. We were in a circular cavern, flooded with water like the last. In the center, a small island rose above the surface. A dark object rested on it, but I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was.

  I swam toward the island and pulled myself up onto the rocks. Leilani drifted closer, and her aura illuminated the object at its center:

  A giant oyster. I’d seen the creatures before during a visit to the aquarium, but this one was enormous. Its gray, bumpy shell was twice my size.

  The two halves of its jaw-like shell were open, revealing the oyster’s soft insides. The slimy creature looked like a gray tongue. It pulsated softly, reminding me that it was still alive.

  A single, enormous pearl lay in the center of its quivering organs. The white sphere was almost the size of my skull.

  This was it, I realized. We’d found the first fragment:

  Tagalo’s bones.

  “When Kanaloa stole the trickster’s bones, he must have transformed them into a pearl to hide them better,” I told Leilani.

  My cousin wrinkled her nose. ‘The pearl is pretty, but the inside of that oyster is revolting,” she said. She held up her transparent hands. “Glad I’m not the one who’s going to have to put my hands in there.”

  I stepped closer to the oyster. The pearl was deep enough that I had to lean inside the shell. I wrapped my fingers around the pearl and tried to pull it out.

  The pearl was stuck to the creature. As I tugged harder, I felt the slimy oyster tense beneath my hands. The shell around me quivered.

  That’s when I remembered something else I’d learned during my visit to the aquarium:

  Oysters closed their shells when they felt threatened.

  I glanced up at the shell. How had I not noticed how razor sharp the edges were?

  “Um, Kalon?” Leilani said, concerned.

  My first instinct was to get my head out of the shell. One strong bite from the oyster and my vacation on Caldera would be severed short—literally.

  However, I also knew that if the oyster clamped its jaws shut, we might
not be able to get them open again. The muscles in even the smallest oysters were strong enough that you needed a knife to pry them open. Sunrise was quickly approaching, and we didn’t have time to run back to camp to look for a crowbar.

  This could be my only chance to free the pearl.

  So I dug my hands deeper into the oyster’s slimy mantle. I found the spot where it seemed to be glued to the membrane’s surface. Then I pulled with all my might.

  After a little bit of resistance, the pearl broke free into my hands. Meanwhile, I felt the shell’s trembling grow more intense. I scrambled backward as the shadow of the shell drifted over me.

  I pulled my hands free just as the oyster’s jaws snapped shut. The creature’s shell came so close to crushing me that I felt a whoosh of wind as it sealed.

  A grin spread across my face—a mixture of relief and triumph. The glowing pearl rested safely between my hands.

  “We did it!” I cried victoriously. “One idol down, two to go.” I stopped talking when I felt something wet graze the back of my leg. “Quit splashing me, Leilani,” I snapped.

  As soon as I’d said it, I remembered that Leilani’s ghost form couldn’t interact with the world around us.

  Which meant it couldn’t have been her who splashed me.

  I turned to face my cousin. Her eyes had grown wide. “K-kalon?” she stammered as she pointed at my feet. I looked down.

  The tip of a giant tentacle was slowly wrapping itself around my ankles.

  Then its grip tightened. With a hard jerk, it pulled my body off the rock and into the water.

  17

  I barely had time to yell before I hit the water’s surface. It felt like a hard slap against my skin as I sank into the water.

  All the while, the tentacle kept its tight grip on my leg.

  Somehow I’d managed to hold onto the pearl during my fall. Left with no choice, I swung the pearl at the creature’s tentacle.

  Direct hit. The pearl bashed into the rubbery flesh. I struck it again, and this time I felt the hold on my ankle loosen.

  I kicked free and swam upward, desperate for air.

  As I breached the surface, I drew in a deep, gasping breath. Even though I’d escaped the tentacle, I knew my nightmare was only beginning.

  The water ten feet in front of me began to froth and boil. Steam billowed up off the surface.

  Then a dark shape emerged from the water.

  It started as a brown lump.

  That lump turned out to be a giant leathery head. Barnacles covered every inch of it like blisters.

  The two eyes were the last thing to rise out of the water. They narrowed at me.

  A monstrous octopus loomed in front of me—and it did not look pleased that I had just repeatedly smashed one of its appendages.

  The worst part: the creature had positioned himself directly between me and the exit.

  Without warning, the octopus swung one of its long, thick arms in my direction. I ducked just in time and its pink suction cups sailed over my head, grazing my wet hair. The tentacle passed harmlessly through Leilani. For once, I suddenly wished I was the one whose body Tagalo had stolen.

  Another one of the creature’s massive arms came for me, this time hammering down from above. I floundered to the side as it struck the water with a mighty slap.

  “Leilani!” I screamed. “Don’t just float there. Try to find a way out!”

  I’d hardly finished my sentence when I felt the tentacle wrap around my leg beneath the water. Once again, I was dragged under the surface. This time, the octopus pulled me all the way down to the cavern floor. The pearl slipped through my hands. I reached out hopelessly as I was tugged away from it.

  I needed another object to fend off the monstrous creature. I groped around in the murky water, and that’s when I made another horrifying discovery.

  The cavern floor was covered in bones. Piles and piles of gleaming, white bones. I tried to tell myself that maybe the skeletons belonged to animals that had the misfortune of wandering into the creature’s lair.

  Then I saw the very human skull staring back at me.

  In a few moments, I was about to join the boneyard of victims.

  No! I refused to spend my final moments as an octopus’s dinner. So as the tentacle continued to drag me through the water, I grabbed the nearest bone I could find. It was a long one, and I tried not to think about how it used to belong to a person’s leg.

  The octopus raised me out of the water. It tilted back its head to reveal its gaping mouth. Its black, razor-sharp beak prepared to rip me apart.

  18

  As the tentacle dragged me closer, I gazed down into the mouth. A tongue studded with extra teeth lolled around.

  Beyond it, a dark throat awaited. I pictured myself sliding down its wet, slimy gullet. Then I’d be digested in its stomach like every trespasser who dared enter the cave before me.

  “Not today!” I cried. Just as I arrived at its gnashing beak, I thrust the bone I was holding into its mouth.

  Its jaws started to close—and then stuck. The bone held the top and bottom of the beak open.

  The creature’s eyes bulged. It thrashed around in anger. Still locked in its grip, I was whipped around the cavern like some kind of terrifying carnival ride.

  Finally, I felt its hold on me slacken. Its suction cups released me and I cannonballed back into the water.

  While the creature was distracted trying to dislodge the bone from its mouth, I dove beneath the surface. The magical pearl’s faint glow helped me find it amidst the carpet of bones.

  When I pulled myself back onto the little island, I realized I’d only bought myself time. The octopus still blocked my only way out.

  Leilani had disappeared. Had she floated off, leaving me to be devoured by this monster?

  “Kalon!” I heard her voice call.

  I looked up. My cousin hadn’t left after all. Her face peered down from a hole in the ceiling over the oyster shell.

  “It’s a chute that goes all the way up to the surface!” she explained excitedly. “I saw that all the steam from the water had to go somewhere. It turns out it was escaping up through this hole.”

  Finally, my mischievous cousin had proved herself good for something more than just scaring me.

  I stuffed the pearl into my soggy backpack. Using the oyster as a stepping stool, I climbed onto the top of its shell. I gazed up through the hole above me. The sides of the stone tunnel were just jagged enough that I could use the rocks as handholds.

  “Hurry!” Leilani urged me as she started rising up the chute.

  “Some of us can’t levitate!” I grumbled back.

  I squatted down and then leaped upward. My hands grabbed the edge, and with all my upper-body strength, I hoisted myself up into the tunnel.

  At one point as I climbed, I made the mistake of glancing down. The octopus had slipped one of its long tentacles into the tunnel, reaching up to grab me. I gave its suction cups a hard kick and kept going.

  Eventually, the stone walls turned to soil and roots. Just as my arms and legs felt too exhausted to climb any farther, I popped my head out the top of the tunnel.

  I had emerged into the dark jungle. For a minute, I lay on my back and stared up into the canopy of leaves. My clothes were soaked. Angry red welts circled the skin on my legs where the octopus’s suction cups had latched on.

  And we still had two more items to find.

  Once I’d forced myself to get it together, I retrieved the map from my backpack. The canteen had kept it dry even while the octopus had used me as its own personal pool toy.

  I spread the map open in the dirt. After the sea cave, the trail wound halfway through the jungle. Strange white monuments surrounded the spot where Tagalo’s flesh supposedly resided.

  “What on earth is this place?” I asked Leilani.

  My cousin’s face had gone pale—and that was saying something given her current state. “That’s the Coral Cemetery,” she explained. “
All the locals avoid that place.”

  “Why?” I asked

  She lowered her voice. “Because they say it’s haunted by a flesh-eating ghost.”

  19

  Leilani led the way, drifting in front of me like a magical beacon. Well before we reached the Coral Cemetery, I started to hear the drums.

  Thud. Thud. Thud-thud-thud.

  The ominous sound grew louder as we worked our way up the hill, following the trail on the map. Each strike of the drum filled me with dread. It was like the island itself had a heartbeat.

  Next, I smelled the stench of death and decay.

  It washed over me, filling my nose with a horrible, pungent odor. I gagged. Rotten eggs left out under the hot sun would have smelled better.

  At least I knew we were walking in the right direction.

  We emerged from the trees into a small clearing. Around the field, strange white monuments rose up out of the ground. They were twisted, jagged structures—the remains of coral reefs. They gleamed under the light of the full moon.

  In the water, coral skeletons often had a bright pink or purple color, thanks to the colorful algae that lived inside of them.

  Time and exposure to the air had bleached these coral skeletons white as the organisms inside died. Now they looked like giant, gnarled bones.

  Someone long ago had removed the coral from the water surrounding the island and planted them here. I had to imagine that each hunk of coral marked the remains of a body buried in the ground.

  Given the number of grave markers, there must have been a whole lot of human bones resting somewhere beneath our feet.

  On top of it all, the drumming steadily continued. Thud. Thud. Thud-thud-thud. It sounded closer than ever, seeming to come from everywhere yet nowhere all at once.

  We moved deeper into the cemetery, with Leilani drifting beside me. “Where do you think the gods would have hidden Tagalo’s flesh?” I wondered out loud.