“You’re scaring them all off!” Shade said sharply.
“Perhaps it’s your glow they’re frightened of,” Murk retorted.
“A glow is one thing, a cannibal bat is a whole new level of terror.”
“Did you lose Griffin in your travels?”
Shade said nothing, having no desire to share anything about his son with Murk. He hated the fact this creature even knew his son’s name. And he certainly didn’t want Murk to know Griffin was alive.
“Look,” said Shade, flustered, “maybe it’s best if you just wait for us at the rendezvous.”
“Did you want to talk to these bats?”
“That was my plan, yes.”
Murk grunted impatiently, then flew past Shade into a clearing, circling at treetop level.
“Hear me!” Murk blared. “You know my kind, you know that we live here in the billions. Shade Silverwing would like to speak with you. Answer his questions! Or I will send an army of Vampyrum who will enslave each and every one of you, and take you to a place of suffering too great to imagine! Speak now!” Murk flew up to a tree and roosted, gazing malevolently over the clearing. Shade circled in amazement, astounded at what Murk had just done. Whispers flitted through the trees. Wings creaked in agitation. Then from the cover of a large pine came the uncertain voice of a Silverwing female.
“I am Corona, elder here. I will speak to you.” Shade could scarcely believe his good fortune. “I’m looking for a newborn,” he said eagerly. “Griffin Silverwing. Is he here?”
There was a brief pause and then she said, “We have seen a newborn, though he never told us his name. He was like you, though. With a glow to him.”
A glow. A life.
“Where is he?”
“No longer here.”
“How long ago did he leave?” Shade asked, dismayed.
“Not long at all. Perhaps a full rotation of the stars.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He spoke with the Pilgrims and left for the Tree they talk of.” Here her words took on a scornful tone.
“He went alone?”
“No. He convinced another bat to go with him. Another newborn called Luna. Foolish child.”
Luna. Why was that name familiar? Then he remembered it was Griffin’s friend from Tree Haven. The one injured in the fire, he realized with a cold jolt. She must have died and come here. He felt relief, though, that his son was not alone. That was good news. It would keep his spirits up, and they would help each other. One of them must have the map.
“Was he well, the boy?” Shade demanded. “Not injured?”
A dreadful silence seeped out from the trees. Shade’s heart contracted in fear. What were they hiding?
“Tell him what he asks!” roared Murk from his branch.
“Yes,” stammered Corona. “He was fine.”
“Tell the truth,” barked Murk, “or I will be back to confront you with your lies!”
“Some were suspicious of his glow and wanted him gone. They tried to drive him off.”
Shade’s heartbeat pounded in his ears so he could barely hear. Rage threatened to choke his voice.
“You attacked him?”
“He wasn’t hurt. They simply wanted to scare him away.”
“Because he glowed?”
“Because he wanted to poison this colony with lies! Telling us we were dead, that we should go to the Tree. But I promise you, the newborn was not harmed. I have answered your questions. I’d ask you to be on your way now.”
With a rush of wings, the bats were gone. Shade circled, relief sapping his anger. Griffin was alive, and now Shade knew where he was going. He would catch up with him. If there was time, they could escape through the tunnel in the stone sky. If not, they would have to take their chances in the Tree.
“So. Your son is already on his way,” Murk said, flying over.
“Yes,” Shade said, then frowned, a peal of alarm sounding through his head. He looked at Murk. “I never said he was my son.”
Murk gave a hoarse laugh. “You didn’t need to. I too had children once.”
“Oh,” Shade said, unable to meet Murk’s eye, unable to thank him. Never had he imagined he’d get help from a cannibal. Still, he was suspicious, but his suspicion was barbed with guilt. Perhaps here in the Underworld, it was possible for Silverwings and Vampyrum to live in a kind of amnesty; yet he didn’t know if he could ever stop thinking of them as vile enemies.
Shade called out across the treetops for Java and Nemo. He told them his happy news as they made their way to the rendezvous together. The tree—some weird hybrid Shade had never encountered, half oak, half cedar—was near the crater’s rim. From the top branches, Shade looked out at more interminable badlands. Yorick was already there waiting for them.
“You’re late, all of you,” he snapped by way of greeting. “I was just about to strike out on my own.”
“Spare us,” said Nemo. “You’re about as likely to strike out on your own as get struck by a shooting star.”
“Shade’s son was here,” Java told Yorick with a smile.
“He’s gone on to the Tree ahead of us,” Shade added. “Any chance of catching up with them?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we,” said Yorick. “I’ve got to plot our next route, and my wing is still killing me, by the way—not that anyone has ever shown the slightest bit of concern.”
“We’ve put up with you, haven’t we?” Nemo remarked. “Not many would, I reckon.”
Yorick didn’t reply to this, only flapped from the tree and circled, taking his bearings. Shade waited impatiently.
“It’s all wrong,” Yorick muttered, his voice rising. “The wretched Pilgrim must have made a mistake. There should be a clear furrow in the earth for us to follow, but it’s not here.”
Shade looked down at the spiderweb of cracks in the mud plain; certainly there wasn’t any one gouge that cut a straight path.
“It’s like the landscape has changed completely!” wailed Yorick.
“Frieda told us the map could change,” Java said. “I remember that.”
“That’s why we were to hurry!” Yorick moaned, shooting a resentful look at Shade and Murk, “and not waste time on distractions. Remember? She warned us all. Now look at the mess we’re in!”
Shade flew up from the tree. “Sing me the map,” he told Yorick, and immediately regretted the harshness of his tone.
“Certainly not,” said Yorick. “The map is mine and mine alone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s for everyone who needs to get to the Tree.”
“I won’t tell you, and you can’t make me,” Yorick said petulantly.
“Sing it to him,” said Nemo. “Maybe he’ll have some luck with it.”
“I won’t!”
“Why not!” demanded Shade. “You want to get to the Tree, don’t you?”
“Of course, but—”
“What is it you’re afraid of, Yorick?” asked Java in her mellifluous, gentle voice.
“If I sing it to you all, how do I know you won’t fly on without me? It’s not like you need a crippled bat slowing you down.”
He looked so crestfallen and pathetic that Shade instantly felt sorry for him.
“Of course we wouldn’t do that,” said Shade. “I just thought I could help. I’m good with maps, too.”
But Yorick, despite the reassurances pouring from Java and Nemo, was still unwilling to sing the map. Shade looked out to the horizon desperately.
“Look,” he said with sudden realization, “my son must have got a map just recently, right? So all we have to do is follow him.”
“Granted, but how?” Yorick demanded, as if Shade had gone crazy.
“If he was nearby, I’ll be able to hear his echoes.”
“You can do this?” Java asked, incredulous. “With your ears?” Shade closed his eyes and listened, shutting out the other sounds, swimming back through time. He heard the trace of a
n echo image ahead of him and flew after it over the desert. Closer, he saw that it was a Silverwing newborn, a female—and off to her left was a second vaporous flash of wings. Griffin.
Shade listened as their echo residues wisped towards the horizon, then opened his eyes and superimposed their sonic trajectory against the landscape, plotting their course.
“I’ve got it!” he called out to the others. “We’ll follow them.”
Yorick looked unconvinced, muttering glumly under his breath.
“You’re assuming, of course, that they’re going in the right direction.”
“It’s the best we’ve got,” said Shade, intent on following his son, wherever it might lead.
“Good, then,” said Murk. “Let’s go.”
“I need to know our course!” said Yorick petulantly. Shade paused, circled back to him, and showed him their destination on the horizon.
“This way!” said Yorick, and pulled ahead. Reluctantly Shade let Yorick take the lead. They flew. After a few hundred wingbeats, Shade listened again for Griffin’s echo traces. Still on course. He was about to open his eyes when his echovision caught a faint trace of something else, a more recent noise, but on the same course as his son.
Shade pulled away from the others for a moment, hoping for a clearer image. As he’d thought, it was the blurry silhouette of another bat. He listened harder, urging the silver image to crystallize.
A wing, a face. Goth.
Griffin was dreaming of bugs. Too many bugs. His sugar maple was covered with tent caterpillars and he could see the leaves being devoured before his eyes. The caterpillars swarmed over the branches and trunk, burrowing into it, eating the tree into a skeleton of itself. And there was nothing he could do. Too many caterpillars—how was he expected to eat them all? Why weren’t any of the others helping him? At least Luna should be helping him. Suddenly the bugs weren’t just on the tree, they were on him, all over him, thickly coating his fur, and he couldn’t shake them off fast enough, and they were eating him now, boring into him.
Luna, he was shouting. Luna, Luna, Luna!
“Luna!” He wrenched open his eyes. She was watching him.
“Did I shout your name?” he asked.
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“I … I had a … hey, am I still alive?” he blurted in panic.
“You’re still very sparkly,” she said with a grin. “I’d say yes.”
“Just a bad dream,” he said uncertainly. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” He frowned. “Not at all?”
“I guess we don’t need sleep anymore,” she said a bit wistfully.
“You were just hanging there the whole time?” Her face looked a bit pinched, and he wondered if the pain was still there.
“I was thinking,” she said. “Remembering bits of things.”
“That’s good,” said Griffin, hoping she wouldn’t ever remember how he’d dropped the firestick on her.
He noticed that the earth was finally still, gelled into a plain of hardened mud.
“You rested enough to get going?” Luna asked. She seemed as eager as he was to get out of here.
“Yeah. We just need to set our new course.” He flexed and was ready to fly to the hole, when Luna cried out. He looked over and saw her dangling in mid-air, an inch below the branch, thrashing indignantly.
“Something’s got my leg!” she shouted, swinging wildly.
Astonished, Griffin stared for a moment before he understood. He started laughing. “It’s just a little shoot from the cactus. It got kind of tangled around your left ankle.” Luna jerked her leg hard, but the tendril held tight.
“Griffin, get it off me, will you?”
“Hang on. I’ll just bite it off.” He swung his upper body onto the branch and held tight with his thumb claws. He crawled towards the base of the tendril and put his jaws around it. The moment he started to bite, the tendril flinched against his teeth, and Griffin pulled back with a yelp.
“What? What’s going on?” Luna demanded beneath him. Griffin stared at the tendril. It was growing, slithering like a snake up Luna’s leg.
She giggled in alarm. “Um, Griff, it’s crawling up me!” She beat her wings hard, trying to pull free. Useless. With her free foot she slashed at the shoot, but it just tightened and twined itself even higher towards her hips.
“Okay,” Griffin said. “It’s okay. Just a slithering tendril kind of situation here. I’m going to … um … try again.”
He clenched his eyes shut and bit, the fleshy tendril writhing in his jaws like a living thing. His teeth went all the way through. There was a sharp hiss, like a shocked intake of breath. In revulsion Griffin spat it out immediately. The severed shoot fell earthwards, withering off Luna’s ankle, dissolving into thin air.
“Fly clear!” he shouted.
“Can’t!”
Wildly he looked around and saw that a second shoot had sprung from the branch and coiled around Luna’s leg. He fearfully checked over his own body—he was clear—then stretched forward to bite off this new shoot. Suddenly, all along its length, wicked little thorns were pricking up.
“Griffin, there’s something coming!”
He jerked around, thinking, Not someone, something. His eyes swept the sky and picked out the silhouette, flapping towards them over the desert plain. It was still quite far away, but just from its size and the jagged cut of its wings, he knew it was not a Silverwing. Every second he stared, it was getting bigger. He didn’t know why the sight of it made his body turn liquidy with fear. The creature was alone, but aimed straight at the cactus, and there was something brutal about the bundled intensity of its hunched shoulders, the ferocious slash of its wings, which made Griffin think, Coming for us.
“Come on, Griff,” shouted Luna, dangling helplessly, “get this thing off me!”
“Working on it!”
He turned back to the thorny shoot and found a bare patch. Even as he clamped down, from the corner of his eye he saw two new tendrils spring from the branch. Quick as he could, he severed the tendril in his mouth, but the others had already coiled themselves around Luna’s wings.
“Griffin!”
He cast a frenzied glance skywards and—The bat’s huge wings blocked out the stars as it plunged.
Griffin stared, transfixed with horror. Three-foot wingspan, a big-chested body, a long skull whose snout flared upwards into a spike. Its jaws, opening.
I know what that is.
Vampyrum Spectrum.
The cannibal bat made a quick circle of the cactus, studying the thorny weave of branches, plotting the best approach. Griffin let go with his thumb claws and hung by his feet, watching, wanting to fly. Maybe it was just terror. Maybe it was Luna, tangled and helpless beside him. But he could not fly.
The Vampyrum swung in, disappeared for a second beneath the branches—and then came straight up at them. Griffin heard screaming, and didn’t know if it was his own or not. He saw Luna flailing her wings. He saw the Vampyrum and its eyes locking onto him. What Griffin did next was pure instinct; he’d never fought another bat in his life. He pulled his wings tight across his chest and lashed out with both of them, putting his whole might behind the blow. He heard and felt the concussion through his entire body, waited for his wings to crumple, waited for the numbing final impact of hard body and jaws.
It didn’t happen.
He could scarcely believe his senses as he felt the Vampyrum being driven away from him. The cannibal bat staggered back through the air, hard against a branch. Thorns pierced its wings, and it roared. And even as it tried to wrench itself free, the cactus sent out quick tendrils around its legs and shoulders.
Griffin wasted not a second. With three brutal bites, he severed the last tendrils around Luna, and she lurched free. Shaking terribly, Griffin flipped himself off the branch and unfurled his wings, wincing at the sharp lightning bolt of pain through his bruised forearms.
“The map!” he cried in
dismay. The Vampyrum was flailing directly in front of the oval hole that was to guide them on their voyage. Griffin didn’t dare go any closer. They’d just have to guess. Before he could stop her, though, Luna flew for the hole, passing a mere wingbeat from Goth’s snapping jaws. She took a quick look through, then veered up and away.
“Just like the owl game,” she panted.
“You get it?” he said, catching up.
“Not great, but it’ll have to do.”
They flew hard over the desert plain, wanting to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the thrashing monster impaled on the cactus.
“What could have been easier, Goth?”
Zotz’s laughter was a tremor, rumbling the cactus on which he was pierced.
“I led you to the newborn,” Zotz said. “I delayed him by melting the earth and destroying his trail.”
“I don’t understand,” said Goth, burning with shame and fury. “I was upon him and he struck me, and—” “Could it be that he was stronger than you?” “Impossible,” said Goth. “A bat of his kind, a newborn …” “You are forgetting one important thing. You are dead. He is alive.”
Goth said nothing.
“Arrogance, Goth. You assume too much.” Shaking, Goth bit back his temper. That such a pathetic little creature could best him was more than he could bear. And the added humiliation of being impaled on thorns while Zotz rebuked him by wrapping him up in these tendrils!
“My failure is despicable,” said Goth evenly, “but I wonder, my Lord, that you did not ensnare the newborn in the same way as me.”
“Have you not understood me, Goth?” came Zotz’s sharp reply, so deep in his ear that he winced. “I cannot touch the living. I cannot harm them. I cannot kill them. That is your task—and a simple one I had thought.”
“I did not know I would be so weakened.”
“Know this, then. Without food, without water, the newborn’s strength decreases second by second. Yours grows. As you become acclimatized to my world, you will regain all your strength. But wait too long and the newborn will die, and his life will be lost.”