I'd thought it was stifling before, but now we were way beyond that. We were following some sort of animal trail, using our machetes only when we had to, which thankfully wasn't all that often, winding our way through the thick greenery toward one of the black cinder cones. The air grew hotter and more sulfurous with every step.
We'd entered the borderlands of hell, where even the palmettos seemed to be melting. The trail had petered out a ways back—whatever animals used it were apparently smarter than humans and didn't come this far—but we didn't need it anymore, because as the ground became rockier and less hospitable, the trees and underbrush were petering out as well.
Finally we passed our last stunted palm and with only scrub grass to cushion our way we approached the scarred black flank of the cinder cone. Somewhere past the line where the grass browned out and died, we stopped at the bank of another kind of river: an obsidian channel of hardened lava.
This old lava had flowed and swirled around more permanent rocks that had been here first—granite, I thought—leaving them sitting like islands in the stream. The jutting stones among the lava gyres looked like a Zen rock garden done entirely in ebony.
“Didn't you tell me the lava was flowing?” I said, staring down at the rippled rock.
As if in answer, a jet of steam hissed through a finger-thick hole in the crust, about thirty feet to our right.
“It is flowing,” Maya said. “Just below the crust, oozing from the heart of the cone to the lake shore. It has been quiet for many months. But now . . . that temblor last night must have disturbed it.”
“How does that affect my getting to this fire tine?”
She pointed across the solidified flow. “They are over there.”
Another steam jet let loose with a whistle.
“You're telling me I have to walk on a crust of old lava over a stream of red hot lava . . . just to get a tine?”
“Yes. The fire tines are on the far side, inside that crevasse in the wall over there. The best way to get across is to go from rock to rock, stepping on the crust as little as possible.”
“Because it's so hot?”
Maya was staring straight ahead. “Because the crust could crack and collapse.”
“You've got to be kidding, Maya. I'd have to be crazy to set foot out there.”
She kept staring straight ahead. “Not crazy if it will help save your life.”
Suddenly I wanted to shout at her that I had no proof that it would do one damn thing for me. All I had was new-age mumbo jumbo and her assurances. Not enough—not nearly enough!
But I said nothing. Instead I placed my gloved hand against my pocket and felt the shape of the earth tine through the fabric. I hadn't thought I'd be able to bring that one back, but I'd done it.
I studied the glistening black expanse, gauging the distance. Not much more than thirty feet across—forty, tops—to the narrow rocky ledge on the far side. Not far. And I wouldn't have to stay on the crust the whole distance—I could dash from rock to rock as Maya had suggested, making quick, short sprints that would keep my time on the crust to a minimum. But the zigzag course would take me longer, and I wanted to get this over with.
“Do I have to crawl through any tunnels this time?”
“No. The geode is embedded in the volcanic rock.”
I knew if I was going to go at all, I had to go now.
“Here,” I said, handing Maya the machete.
“What—?” she began, but before she could complete the question I was on my way.
I felt a sudden giddy recklessness perking through me. I had no idea where it came from, but a drunken stadium crowd that had seen too many Nike commercials was streaming into my head chanting Do it! Do it! Do it! and I saw myself scampering across the crust like a bead of water on a hot griddle.
I stepped off the edge with one foot and tested the crust with half my weight. It held, but God, it was hot here. One hell of a fire was heating this pan.
“Be careful,” Maya said.
Slowly I increased the weight on the first foot, then brought the second down. A deep rumble reverberated through the crust and a mild tremor began to vibrate through the soles of my hiking boots. I was turning to make a quick retreat when the noise and the tremor stopped. I paused, waiting for more, but the crust remained silent. The noise reminded me of skating a frozen lake on a still morning, the eerie basso cracking noises deep in the ice that follow you as you glide along the surface.
But if you fell through ice, you had a chance of survival. No such chance here.
The memory of skating gave me an idea, though.
“Remember,” Maya called from the shore behind me, “go from rock to rock.”
Uh-uh. I was going straight across. And I had to get moving before my rubber soles melted.
I began sliding my feet, one after the other, across the crust. I had no delusions that I could glide across that pocked and rippled surface; the idea was to minimize the impact of my feet as I maneuvered my weight toward the far side.
It wasn't pretty but it worked like the proverbial charm—I was even considering patenting it as the Burleigh Lava-Crust Shuffle— until somewhere around the halfway point. I'd slid my right foot forward and was shifting my weight onto it when my boot sank with a soft crunch. I lurched to my left and snatched my foot free as a jet of steam and smoke, hotter than I'd have thought possible, hissed angrily into the air.
I heard Maya cry out in alarm. A series of booming cracks below the surface terrified me and I forgot about the Burleigh Shuffle. With my heart pounding in my throat, I scampered the rest of the way across like a frightened mouse with a hungry cat snapping at its tail.
I reached the far edge and leaped onto the rocky ledge. I crouched there, panting with relief. The surface was hot, but cool compared to the lava crust. To my left I could see the dark slit of the crevasse Maya had mentioned.
I looked back and saw her watching me from the other side, her hands over her mouth.
I straightened and gave her a jaunty wave, as if I did this every day.
“Made it!”
She lowered her hands and I saw her anxious frown. She pointed to the steaming spot were my foot had broken through. I looked closer and saw thick sludge, glowing a dull red, bubbling though the hole and oozing down the slope of the crust. As I watched I saw more pieces of crust breaking away, enlarging the hole, increasing the flow.
“Hurry!” Maya called. “The crust is beginning to break up!”
The old hindbrain was banging on my skull and shouting, Screw the tine and get your irresponsible ass back to the other side! But I was already across. If I could get my hands on a tine quickly, I was sure I could find a way back.
“Don't go away,” I shouted—merrily, I hoped—then turned and ducked into the crevasse.
Sulfurous darkness, even hotter than outside on the crust, enveloped me as I rounded the first bend. The air burned my eyes, but at least the passage was high enough to allow me to walk upright. And I didn't have to worry about running into any dangerous creatures in this inhospitable cauldron.
I pulled out the flashlight and played the beam against the obsidian walls. They weren't smooth like the exterior surfaces. These were grooved and chipped. Hundreds of tools had been hard at work here long ago. I was stalking through a man-made passage. But what men had made it? And when? I passed crude carvings of big-breasted, fatbellied women, obvious fertility symbols. The All-Mother?
But where were the tines? Maya had said they were right inside, embedded in the wall. Why didn't I—?
I cringed as pale red light flashed at me from directly ahead. My first fear was that lava had broken through the wall, and then I saw the geode—huge, even larger than the deposit with earth tines in the sand tunnel, but this one was exploding with pink crystals. And nestled in its heart, four tines of crimson-hued metal.
I stepped closer, momentarily taken by the glittering rosy fire. I allowed myself only a few heartbeats of wonder before reaching into its radiant heart and uprooting a tine.
I hurried back toward the light and stepped through the opening of the crevasse with my hand held high. But my cry of triumph never made it to my lips—Maya's stricken, agonized expression slowed it, and one look at the lava bed killed it.
A glowing, growing viscous river of liquid fire separated us.
Terror locked a fist around my throat as I realized what had happened. The little opening I'd punched through with my foot must have acted like a hole in a dike. The leaking lava had surged up, causing longer and deeper cracks, carrying away larger and larger chunks, until a whole downstream section of the crust had dissolved.
But I still had a chance. The crust upstream from my foot fault still held. But who knew for how long?
“Hurry!” Maya cried, telling me what I'd already guessed. “The whole bed is breaking up!”
If that happened, I'd be stuck on this ledge until the flow dried up and the lava cooled enough to form another crust that would bear my weight. That might be tomorrow, or it might be next month.
I shoved the new tine and the flashlight into my pockets as I moved upstream to my right. The ledge allowed me a scant fifteen feet before it merged with the mountain wall.
I stepped onto the crust and used the Burleigh Shuffle to glide the two yards to the nearest rock. As I leaned on the waist-high granite island to lessen my weight on the crust, I blessed Maya for bringing gloves.
The next rock was larger, lower, flatter, and fully a dozen feet away. I pushed off and shuffled toward it. Half way there I heard a crack like a rifle shot and felt the crust shift beneath me. Jettisoning caution I took two frantic leaping strides that would have put a Jesus Christ lizard to shame and landed on the next rock with both feet. As I teetered there, windmilling my arms for balance, a hair-singeing, eyeball-searing blast of heat swirled around me like a firestorm. I threw my arms across my face and bit back a cry of pain as the inferno seared the flesh of my forearms.
A scream from Maya echoed faintly behind more loud cracks. I lowered my arms and parted my eyelids just enough to see. I gasped searing air and struggled to keep my footing as my knees turned to melting rubber: upstream from me the crust had broken away in a huge “V.” Thick, chunky molten lava now flowed lazily on all sides of my little island. Tongues of flame and puffs of acrid vapor reached for me from the glowing surface. Bursting lava bubbles splattered me with droplets of fire.
Terrified, I turned in a slow awkward circle. I couldn't jump back the twelve feet between me and the rock I'd left. And the next rock on the other side lay a little ways downstream and easily ten feet away. Another half a dozen feet beyond that, Maya's image wavered on the far shore like a mirage.
I was trapped.
I had never been so frightened or felt so helpless in my entire life. I had nowhere to go. I was stuck in the center of a lava flow that was slowly broiling me to a crisp.
I was a dead man.
I fought panic. There had to be something—
I started and turned at another loud crack. Looking upstream I saw a piece of crust break free and float by to my right. Then an even larger piece separated with a crunch and started to follow it. But this one migrated toward my left.
As I watched it approach, a desperate idea took shape in my head. When the chunk of crust came within a yard of my little island, I jumped onto it. It tilted beneath my weight, almost pitching me backward. Dimly I heard Maya scream as I fought for balance. I had to keep moving, had to get off this volcanic flotsam before it passed the next rock. I dug the toes of my boots into the crust, took two stuttering steps across the wobbling surface, then leaped across the intervening lava.
My left boot landed on the edge of the rock island and slipped an inch. For a heart-stopping moment I thought I was going to fall, but then the ridges on the sole caught and I was across. I didn't pause. I kept moving, leaping off that rock onto the still-intact crust between it and where Maya stood. It crunched and crackled beneath my feet but held until my diving leap onto solid ground.
Pain blazed through my knees as I landed. I rolled and ended flat on my belly, scared, scalded, bruised, but alive.
Alive.
But I'd been so close to a brutal, agonizing—
I felt a spasm in my stomach, a surge of bile in my throat. I struggled to my hands and knees. My shaking limbs could barely support me as I retched. But nothing came up.
And then I felt Maya's hands on my shoulders, rubbing them.
“Oh, Will. Will, are you all right?”
I nodded, unable to speak right then. She tugged on my shoulders and pulled me to my feet. I wobbled on Silly Putty legs as she stared at me and I stared back. Tears glistened in her eyes.
She said, “I thought you were . . . were going to . . .”
I could only nod. My emotions were in an uproar. Truly, I'd thought I was going to be burned alive out there.
And then her arms were around me and mine around her and we were hugging each other and rocking back and forth. I felt Maya sobbing against me, and her gentle quakes filled me with wonder and light. And then I heard a strange choking noise, a lost, wrenching, pain-filled sound I'd never heard before.
I realized it was coming from me. I was doing something I hadn't done since I was a kid.
I was crying.