Lei and the Fire Goddess by Malia Maunakea

Author:Malia Maunakea [Maunakea, Malia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

He’s Not Who You Thought

“What in the . . .” Anna stared at the crack in the ground, not believing her eyes.

“Anna! Girl, we get in one argument, and you go running off to the enemy? What were you thinking?” Ilikea came back down out of the trees, struggling mightily with the massive scale in her batty toes.

Anna couldn’t even say anything. She just kept staring at the crack. Was she a mean-girl magnet? How could she have been so blind? No. She wouldn’t let this bring her down. It wasn’t her fault that she was nice and open. Her gullibility and willingness to make friends didn’t make her a pathetic sucker. The other people taking advantage of that were the ones who were messed up. Being a goddess was not an excuse for being awful and tricky. The adrenaline that had flooded through Anna’s system moments ago drained out of her, and anger took its place. She kicked a flimsy fern and roared in frustration.

Until another rustling in the brush caught her attention.

“Did you hear that?” Anna asked, crouching into a kung fu ready-for-anything stance.

“Hard to hear anything other than my furious flapping . . .”

Anna made big waving arm motions at the tangled vines off the trail. A black shape separated from the shadows and took off deeper into the jungle. The boar!

“Hello? Earth to Anna. Could you take this scale? It’s kind of a downer. Get it? It’s pulling me down?”

Anna shook her head and relaxed out of her position. She looked at the bat. “Did you see that?”

“Can’t. See. Anything . . . trying. To stay. Up.”

“Oh yeah, sorry.” Anna took the plate-size scale. It was still cool to the touch but was no longer vibrating. “You came back.”

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t gonna just let you go tromping off on your own. We needed to chill, take a breather, then go get Kaipo. Wait, wasn’t that your plan, too?”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “Totally doing the same thing. You just beat me to it.” She put the scale in her backpack and shouldered the load. “Okay, but for real, though. I really could use some truth right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, what’s your deal? Why do you go from being awful to helpful? How do you even know Kaipo?”

Ilikea stayed silent so long Anna wondered if she’d ever speak. “Well?” she asked.

Ilikea heaved an enormous sigh, and her whole body rose up, then sank closer to the ground. She mumbled something low.

“What’d you say?” Anna asked.

“I said if you hadn’t gotten Kaipo kidnapped, maybe I’d be better at the whole protector thing,” Ilikea blurted out, then darted up into the canopy.

“Wait!” Anna called after her. “What does that even mean?”

“He was my kumu,” Ilikea said, her voice filtering down through the leaves like the weak sunlight. “He was teaching me to be an ʻaumakua.”

Anna rotated in a small circle looking for Ilikea but couldn’t find her in the shadows. “Hold up. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.