Firewing (6 page)

“My grandson,” Ariel reminded him. “And if you go, my heart tells me I will lose my son, as well. And Marina her mate.”

“Anything we say will only seem cruel to you,” Lucretia said, addressing Shade again. “We know that. But the opening must be shut immediately, to prevent anyone else being lost—and to prevent anything from coming up.”

“I know it’s got to be closed, I know that. But not yet. Please.”

He looked up at his mother in confusion. “You would’ve done the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would’ve.” She fluttered down beside him, pushing her face against his. He breathed in her scent, wished for a moment that he could go back in time—not that his past had ever been particularly easy. “But I’m not just your mother anymore, Shade,” said Ariel. “I’m also an elder. And my own wishes are not always those of the council.”

“The council can’t stop me,” he said.

“Shade,” Lucretia said sharply, “it is inviting death to go after your son. It is unlikely there is any food down there, or any water. There may not even be air to breathe. No Silverwing was meant to go to the Underworld of Cama Zotz.”

“But Griffin
has!
Two nights is all I want,” Shade persisted. “If I haven’t returned by then, block the opening.”

The elders were silent for a moment. Then Lucretia sighed and looked down at Ariel. Sadly, she nodded up at the chief elder.

“Very well,” Lucretia said, “two nights. But that is all.”

“I’m coming, too!” Marina raged at him.

“You can’t,” Shade told her. “You’ve got to let your wing heal. If you don’t, you might never fly again.”

“It’s not fair!” she said through her tears. “It’s not fair you get to go, and leave me behind where all I can do is worry!” She looked so angry, he couldn’t help smiling just a little. “And you,” she said. “What if I lose you, too?” He sighed, spreading his wings around her. “Tell me what you want me to do.” “Go get him,” she said. “Go get him and bring him home.” “Yes,” he told her. “Yes.”

For a long time, Griffin stared blearily, trying to understand what he was looking at. Slowly, things began to make sense. He was peering up at a complicated tangle of branches and leaves, and beyond them, stars blazing in the night sky.

Flat on his back, wings sprawled, jagged images of his crash-landing flickered in his memory. His body tensed. What if he’d broken something …? A wing? He swallowed, afraid to move; he certainly didn’t feel any pain. But maybe he was in shock. Maybe he’d broken his back and wouldn’t feel anything ever again. Cautiously Griffin turned his head. Good, that worked. He inspected first his left wing, then his right. They didn’t seem damaged. He twitched his fingers, one at a time, then slowly furled both wings tightly against his body. Gently he rocked himself from side to side until he had enough momentum to flip onto his belly. He grunted as the bruised muscles all across his back and chest clenched. But at least nothing seemed to be broken. The thick bed of leaves and moss on the forest floor must have broken his fall, saved his life.

Stupid of him to linger so long on the ground. Just asking to be eaten. He wasted no more time. Wincing, he beat his wings hard, working up some lift before shoving off with his legs. Slowly he ascended in a series of jerky spirals. He wondered how long he’d been lying stunned down there. Lucky he hadn’t been wolfed down by some passing beast. He reached the peak of a tall tree, and there he roosted.

He took a good long look around. Forest everywhere, looking enough like home that he felt a surge of hope. But when he turned his gaze to the sky, his hope seeped away. All the stars were arranged in constellations he’d never seen before. He began shaking, a deep inner trembling that had nothing to do with cold.

Where am I?

He couldn’t rip his eyes away. The stars were bigger than he remembered, and extraordinarily bright. Even with no moon in the sky, the light from the stars alone was enough to bathe the forest in a silver that was more like approaching dawn. Something else about them, too … what was it? Then it came to him. The stars weren’t twinkling at all. Their light was pure and unwavering.

He clamped his jaws together, tried to stop his teeth chattering.

How did I get here?

He’d fallen down a hole.

Then fallen from the sky.

It sounded like something from a terrible dream, but he knew it wasn’t. He’d had plenty of bad dreams—he was an expert—and right now this did not feel like a dream. But how had he gone from the
hole
to the
sky?

“It’s not possible,” he said quietly to himself, trying to reason this out. “I mean, that just doesn’t happen. Except … well, what about this? The tunnel goes right through the entire earth and spits
me out the other side into the heavens, and somehow I just crash-landed on a totally different world?” His breath snagged. That felt worse.
Much
worse. Now he wasn’t even on the same
world?

Wrapping his wings tightly around himself, he covered his head. His stomach roiled. He tried to think of something positive. At least he wasn’t dead. After a landing like that, he was lucky.

“So I’m here, and I’m not dead,” he muttered aloud, not feeling lucky in the slightest. He wanted this to be over now. He wanted to be back at Tree Haven. He’d face his mother, the elders. Luna. Maybe if he just slept, everything would be fixed when he woke up.

As if he could sleep.

Timidly he unfurled his wings and took another look. Same forest. Same strange stars. A beetle, bigger and spikier than any beetle had a right to be, droned past his nose, and Griffin grunted, momentarily distracted.

“That is one ugly bug,” he said. But he was too dispirited to pursue it. He felt no hunger at all, just a heavy, crushing despair.

There must be other bats here. He should go look. Maybe they could tell him where he was, help him get back home. But he stayed locked to his roost, gazing around fretfully. There was something weird about this place … something
wrong
with it.

Then it came to him.

No smell.

This forest had absolutely no smell. He blew hard through his nostrils, in case they were clogged, then tried again. No rich, loamy fragrance of soil, no leaf mould, no sharp tang of bark and pitch. He swung up onto the branch and put his nose right against it. Nothing. He tried a leaf—same thing. There was something terribly disturbing about all this. He frowned as he took a closer look at the leaves. Couldn’t quite place them. Some sort of oak, maybe. But a little further down, sprouting from the very
same branch, was a tuft of pine needles. Leaves and needles on the same tree? Completely freakish.

Instinctively he flattened his entire body against the bark. He was being watched.

Not just by one creature, but many. His fur tingled unpleasantly as dozens of sonic gazes bombarded him from all sides. They were taking a good long look at him. With his own echo vision he cautiously scanned the branches and caught sight of a multitude of bats, roosting deep in the trees. His body relaxed a little. He’d been afraid they might be owls. But why were they just hanging there silently, staring at him?

“Hello?” he called out.

His greeting triggered a collective gasp, a brief silence, and then a chorus of hushed chittering.

“… fell from the sky …”

“… Corona saw him …”

“… came down like a shooting star …”

“… not a Vampyrum …”

“… maybe a Pilgrim …”

A Pilgrim? Griffin’s head was starting to ache from the effort of catching all these muted voices.

“… look at him …”

“… at his wings, see …”

“… the way the light moves …”

“… the glow of him …”

Glow? Griffin thought in alarm, glancing at his wings. He wasn’t
glowing
. What were they talking about?

“Oh, do you mean my fur?” he called out, hoping to clear up the confusion. “My father’s a Silverwing, but my mother’s a Brightwing, so I sort of got fur from both of them. That’s why I have all these bands of bright hair. Maybe that’s why you thought
I was glowing … you know, just the, um, contrast between the dark fur and the light? It’s pretty weird, I know …”

He trailed off, discouraged. He didn’t get the feeling he was convincing anyone. He took another look at his wings and chest hair, and still didn’t see anything glowing. Was there something wrong with these bats? Maybe this was some kind of strange joke. “I really don’t see anything,” he said, trying to stifle a nervous chuckle. “I’m sorry, if I glow, but I really … don’t have anything to do with it.” It sounded ridiculous, but he felt it was best to apologize for pretty much everything at this point. He wished these bats would just show themselves.

“… ghost …” came an anxious whisper from the trees, and then that one word was transmitted across the clearing, round and round him, like a tornado, faster and faster. “… ghost … a ghost … ghost, ghost, ghostghostghost …”

He felt as if he himself were spinning, the air whipped away from his nostrils by this whirlpool of whispers. They thought he was a ghost. Starlight in his fur. He remembered his plunge from the sky, how fast the trees had come up, branches thrashing and slashing all around him. Then nothing. And then waking up—

Waking up alive?

Or dead?

Griffin’s breath congealed in his throat. Panicked, he folded his wings around himself, felt the warmth trapped against his fur, felt his furious heartbeat. Beating heart. That meant not dead. Alive.

“I’m not a ghost!” he shouted out, more to reassure himself than the others. “I’m a Silverwing! I’m just lost!”

A long silence stretched out, and for a moment Griffin wondered if they’d all silently flown away. But then he heard the rustle of unfurling wings, the squeak of claws pulling free from bark, and a flurry of bats emerged from their hiding places, curiously
circling around him but keeping their distance. They were all Silverwings, males and females both. Many were extremely old, and kind of mangy looking, even more so than Lucretia and the other ancient elders back at Tree Haven. A lot of these bats had fur that looked as if it had been chewed up by a racoon and then stuck back on. Even some of the younger ones looked a little grizzled and squished out of shape. And they think
I’m
weird, Griffin thought.

His eyes skittered from one to the next, hoping he’d recognize someone. A knot of bats parted respectfully and a silver-streaked female—no older than Ariel, his grandmother—flew towards him and roosted on a branch overhead. Of all the Silverwings he’d seen here, she looked the most normal, barely bashed or chewed up at all. Even though she was comparatively young, she had the bearing of someone in authority. Her eyes did not meet his, but strayed across his body, as if following some kind of moving pattern. The glowing thing again, Griffin guessed. Her ears had a suspicious forward tilt, making her demeanour rather fierce, and he noticed she kept her knees flexed, as if ready to take flight at any moment. Still, just being in the presence of a grown-up made Griffin feel calmer and more hopeful. She would be able to help him.

“My name is Corona,” she said. “I am chief elder here. Where are you from?” Her voice was gruff, not unkind but not exactly welcoming, either.

“The northern forests. From Tree Haven.”

The tips of Corona’s ears twitched together into a peak, and Griffin heard startled squeaks erupt from the other bats. He glanced around in alarm. What had he done now?

“
The
Tree?” Corona demanded—angry or frightened, Griffin couldn’t tell.

“Well,” he stammered, “it is
a
tree, an old silver maple actually, but Tree Haven is just what we call it. It’s our colony’s nursery roost.”

Corona’s ears relaxed. “I see,” she said.

“You’ve heard of it, then?” Griffin said hopefully. “Maybe you know Lucretia, she’s our chief elder; or Ariel, she’s my grandmother actually, you might have heard of her, too….”

He trailed off as Corona shook her head. “I haven’t heard of this place, or these elders.”

“Well, what about Stone Hold—that’s the males’ summer roost. Near the ocean?”

“I know of no ocean here.” Griffin swallowed. “Where am I?”

“This is Oasis.”

Oasis. He’d never heard of it. Then again, he didn’t know very much about the world. He’d never been beyond the valley that sheltered Tree Haven. His mother hadn’t even sung him the sound map to Hibernaculum yet.

“But we’re
near
the northern forests, aren’t we?” he asked. “Maybe you can tell me how to get back there?”

Again Corona shook her head. “How is it you fell from the sky?” she asked.

Griffin tensed. He didn’t really want to try to explain this part right now. They thought he was enough of a freak already, with the glowing and all. But he figured there was no going back. He took a breath.

“I was in the tunnels under Tree Haven, and there was an earthquake and I got cut off by a cave-in kind of situation, and the only way out was down. Through a crack in the rock. There was a breeze, and I thought it would take me back to the surface but it just went down and down some more, until I fell … well, really, I got sucked
down by the wind. I couldn’t stop, and I came out really fast from … this hole, I guess … and into your, um … sky.”

He paused, watching Corona’s face. She was motionless, only her nostrils flaring and contracting as she breathed.

“I’m as confused as you are, really,” Griffin said. “I just want to get home.”

“You’re not a Pilgrim?” Corona asked intently.

“No. I mean, I don’t even know what a Pilgrim is,” he replied, feeling close to tears.

“I am sorry you are lost,” she said, without sounding terribly sorry. “Perhaps someone else here has heard of Tree Haven, but I am doubtful. Beyond Oasis is only desert. But I wish you the best of luck on your journey.”

And with that, she gave a curt nod and flew off, the other bats streaking after her through the forest.

“Journey?” muttered Griffin. “How am I supposed to go on a journey? I don’t even know where I’m going!” And for a moment, his anxiety was doused by anger. Corona hadn’t helped him at all, hadn’t told him anything useful! She just wanted to get rid of him! This was no way to treat a fellow Silverwing! If she knew who his parents were, she wouldn’t have treated him like that! But that was the problem: she didn’t seem to know anything about his colony or where he came from. Stupid bat. He’d find someone who did. Must be plenty of bats in this forest. He’d get directions from them. He dropped from his branch, and flapped into the trees. Right away he realized this wasn’t going to be so easy. At the mere sight of him, the Silverwings scattered as if he were a demented owl. He couldn’t get within fifty wingbeats without them pelting for cover. Must be my glow, he thought. Still, how scary was a glowing newborn?

He tried calling out to them.

“Hi, excuse me, I—”

“I was wondering if you knew where—”

“Please ignore the glow, I just wanted to ask you—”

It was no use. Without fail, the Silverwings fled before he could get more than a few words out.

“These bats are
pathetic
,” he said, throbbing with loneliness. What was he supposed to do now? He looked up at the sky again. Still no sign of the moon but the stars had shifted. He wondered how long it was until dawn.

His stomach hurt, and he felt strangely reassured by it. Hunger. Something familiar. This he could deal with. He remembered that big bug he’d seen earlier. Hadn’t looked particularly appetizing, but a few of those would be the same as a thousand mosquitoes. Pricking up his ears, he listened for the whine of insect wings as he soared through the forest.

Strange that he hadn’t seen any other kind of creature here. At night he was used to spotting deer, flying squirrels, and kangaroo mice, sometimes even a bear shambling through the undergrowth or a moose stepping softly through the trees. Here, the forest floor was deserted.

An insect swooped up before his nose—some kind of winged spider by the looks of it, not something he’d ever seen. He switched over to his echo vision and locked on. It wasn’t too fast, and he came in quickly and smacked it from his wing into his open mouth. With a bit of trepidation he clamped down on the bug and—